No smart businessman would ignore a market of 4.57 billion.
I’m talking about the internet that is visited by billions of people several times a day to find solutions to their everyday problems.
A business is about solving one or more problems for a defined audience. The internet has enabled these businesses to meet their target audience with their solution.
You also need to take your business online if you want to take advantage of this opportunity. It requires building a website and some social media pages to get started; you can learn more about it here. There are already over 1.3 million businesses on the internet, and more are joining them every day.
This means there is a crowd of competition and you need to stand out by working smart – that’s where SEO practices come in hand. You can either become an SEO analyst yourself or use the service of an experienced professional for this job. It’s better to opt for the latter so you are not diverted from your primary responsibilities.
This article has shed light on the importance of SEO for businesses and discussed why it’s impossible to survive in the online world in 2021 without it.
Search Engines as a Source of Traffic
Search engines like Google and Yahoo have made the internet very simple and user-friendly. It would have been impossible to find a website that provides the right solution without these services.
This is why it didn’t take long for them to acquire billions of users. With over 130 trillion indexed pages and 1.5 billion active users, Google is the biggest and most popular of all search engines.
Traditional stores are being replaced by online stores and people want to get everything done while sitting at home.
An SEO analyst will optimize your website for Google to make sure your page shows up on the first page of the search result when someone searches a relevant query. The use of these search engines and the trend to buy online is only increasing with time.
Prepares You for the User
While the main goal of SEO is to improve ranking on SERPs, it involves processes that prepare you business for the user. Search engines rank what they consider best for users.
It means that SEO practices revolve around providing the best service to your target audience. For example, it’s necessary to provide a great user experience on the website to improve its rankings.
Google studies user behavior to see how they interact with each website and decides their rank after considering that information. If a user closes your website seconds after opening it, it wouldn’t be considered a very good signal.
The percentage of visitors that left a webpage without taking any action is called the bounce rate, and it is believed to have a negative impact on the rankings of a website. So, SEO will ensure that each web page loads fast, it’s friendly, and there is content to engage the visitors.
Transparent and Quantifiable Efforts
SEO practices are easily quantifiable and you see results as you get them. Digital marketing is powerful because it collects and uses data in the right way.
Among many other tools, Google Analytics easy and helps you see the traffic and conversion and their source.
Backlinking is the most popular and important practice of SEO. You can see how much return you got from each backlink and even study the behavior of use coming from each source. All this data is recorded and used for future marketing campaigns and decision making.
Control the Complete Buying Cycle
You can’t go to an unknown person and ask him to do business with you. You have to first introduce yourself, tell about your product or services, and how you can help him before offering anything.
This is why marketers follow a series of steps called the buying cycle to first create awareness and familiarity before leading to any transaction.
SEO allows you to control the entire buying cycle of your target audience, which is not an easy task otherwise. You can create landing pages and publish guest posts that step by step lead each reader towards your goals. Planning the buying cycle doesn’t just get website traffic but also ensures you get a better conversion rate.
SMEs Can Easily Afford SEO
Although it has so many benefits, SEO is way cost-effective compared to other marketing tactics. It doesn’t bring results right away as it doesn’t involve much paid marketing, but it benefits in the long term.
Even if you don’t have a lot of money to invest, you can use free keyword research tools to get started with the SEO of your business.
Paid advertisement only brings results as long as you keep investing in it. SEO, on the other hand, brings organic traffic from search engines and you can maintain a good position by making simple updates.