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No matter your industry, if you have a business, it’s important to understand why SEO matters. People search for information about a topic, a topic that businesses sell products on, all the time. They also search for products and companies themselves. And that’s why SEO for businesses is such an important strategy to focus on.
It’s one of the most important things you can focus time and resources on despite it requiring some patience. Whether you’re looking for construction and roofer SEO services, you’re a marketer in tech, or an e-commerce business, optimizing your site for search matters.
Search engine optimization or SEO means setting up your business website and its content to show up in online search results. Many marketing tactics rely on you as a business reaching out to your targeted audience. SEO is unique because you reach people as they’re actively searching for information related to your products or services.
Search engines use algorithms to determine how to provide people with relevant information. You want your site to appear on page one whenever possible. Even better than that, in the first three search results on the first page, You need to build authority on topics related to your business. That can be done through on-site SEO.
Despite its importance, too few businesses strategically emphasize SEO. The following are eight specific reasons why SEO for businesses matters.
Web story: Why SEO matters more than ever
1. Organic search is usually the primary source of web traffic
Organic search is a primary part of the performance of most business websites, and that’s why SEO matters. It’s a key part of your buyer funnel and will get users to complete a conversion or engagement.
Google owns a much larger segment of the search market than its competitors, so it’s where you should put most of your attention.
Google is the world’s most visited website, and YouTube is the second-largest search engine, underscoring the importance of including video as part of your SEO and content marketing strategy.
2. Building trust and credibility
When you are easily found in searches and provide relevant information to people looking for answers to questions they may have, it helps you cultivate trust and credibility as a business.
People will learn to turn to you when they need your products or services because you are top of mind for them.
You can also continue building on your online authority. For example, you’ll get more natural links to your site as you focus on SEO, improving your content rankings.
As you build your site and content, you establish your brand as an authority and a go-to in your industry.
Consumers are very discerning and skeptical now and often completely ignore ads. SEO is organic, though, so they feel like it’s more trustworthy in many cases than paid ads.
Read next: Want to Build Customer Trust? Try Using the Magic of Reception Marketing!
3. Use SEO to learn more about customers
Brands and businesses spend a lot of time and money researching their targeted customers to find out what they want. SEO can help you uncover consumer intent in very specific ways.
For example, when you’re doing keyword research to use as a basis for your content creation, you’re also able to learn what questions people most often have. You can learn how to be a problem-solver for your targeted customers and fill in gaps from your competitors by researching keywords.
4. Local search matters
Local search isn’t a big part of their SEO strategy for certain businesses, but for many, it should be. The construction and roofing businesses mentioned above are great examples. Local search is much less competitive (volume-wise, at least) than general SEO, so you can refine your content creation and SEO strategies to appeal to those near your business.
In this piece of SEO for businesses, you optimize your digital properties for a particular location so people can find your business easily, putting you one step closer to acquiring a customer.
Optimizing for local search involves focusing on neighborhoods, cities, towns, and regions and sometimes is as broad as optimizing for a particular state.
Home-based businesses can also benefit from local SEO. If they choose to promote their home address, they can compete directly with brick-and-mortar businesses. However, if they prefer to hide their address, they should follow similar local SEO tactics as SABs.
Virtual and remote companies may face challenges with local SEO due to the lack of a physical address. However, they can still build a local presence by localizing their website content, creating hyperlocal landing pages, and earning links from local websites.
The growth of hybrid businesses, particularly in the retail sector, has been significant since the pandemic. These businesses can leverage both local SEO and ecommerce advantages to reach a wider audience.
5. It’s cheaper than paid campaigns over time
You might focus much of your digital strategy on paid advertising, which is fine, but SEO can be way cheaper over time and doesn’t stop driving results. If you’re doing the research and the work, it’s free, although this requires dedication of your time. You can also hire relatively inexpensive agencies compared to the long-term returns you will get.
You only get the benefits from that one click when you pay for ads. With SEO, your content stays on your site and compounds itself. For example, the more optimized content you create, the more links you will get back to your site. Then this is going to further improve your rankings over time, and it will keep building.
If you implement SEO well now, it will be relevant and help you for years.
SEO is very much a long-term strategy. It can have a short-term impact, but it often grows and evolves.
6. SEO is measurable
You can easily see and measure if it’s working and driving people to your site. Remember to optimize the website for conversion!
7.Good SEO = good user experience
Google has refined its algorithm so that it serves results of the highest quality to users and will reflect their needs and interests in the best ways possible. Google can interpret a good versus a bad user experience, and you’re rewarded with higher rankings when you provide a positive experience.
This is a win-win from the business perspective because you’re pushed to optimize the user experience to rank, and both will be beneficial for your growth and success.
8. Owning the messaging
It’s an SEO disaster when some unrelated Facebook page ranks for your main offering, and your website doesn’t.
Sure, it might drive some awareness for you, but are they sending people to the right place? Is the message on point? And do you want to be affiliated with that Facebook page?
It’s way better for a business to have its own website rank for that offering.
That way you can control the messaging, details, and related stuff.
But how do you do that? It means your website’s technical SEO needs to be well done, and related answer-type content also needs to drive SEO performance.
Read next: Strategies to Increase Your Branded Search Volume
Some people will say oh, but we don’t need it. Things are going well. That might be true today, but how about tomorrow?
Search engine optimization and good content strategy are hardly ever about today. They’re usually about next week and how to protect your digital reputation in the future.
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