The internet. A vast, never-ending hole of information. And with more and more things moving digital, being found on the web can make or break a business.
As of January 2021, there were 1.83 BILLION websites on the internet. With the earth’s population currently close to 7.9-billion, that means there is one website for every 4.25 people on the planet. That is a lot of competition for your website to stand out, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to do.
There are a lot of contributing factors when it comes to building a great website, including SEO or search engine optimization. SEO is the practice of improving your website ranking in search engine results such as Google or Bing which increases both the quality and quantity of organic traffic to your website. Organic meaning through non-paid advertising.
Nowadays, a lot of that organic traffic will likely be coming from Google. A new study looked at the number of Google searches that take place in a month - are you ready? 40-60 billion searches happen on Google.com every month. That’s just in the United States! Of those searches, nearly 60% result in a click. Let’s make sure your business is getting noticed during those many, MANY, MANY monthly searches and winning those clicks.
WHY INVEST IN SEO
1. SEO helps you get ranked higher on a search engine results page (SERP) such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing
We all know Google is king. The search engine has cornered more than 90% of the search engine market share. Getting found on Google is an essential step to increasing your business. But, most people don’t go past page one.
Ever heard the saying, there’s no better place to hide a body than the second page of Google? That’s because if it’s not on the first page, it’s unlikely anyone will find it. According to Moz, the first page of Google captures more than 90% of search traffic clicks. The second page gets a measly 6%.
With a well-implemented SEO strategy, you can steadily increase your ranking and appear in more searches. The higher you appear, the more likely you are to have more traffic to your site.
2. Not just more traffic, better traffic
SEO will not only increase the amount of traffic you are driving your website but the quality of people viewing your content. Optimization isn't about tricking search engines into displaying your website. It’s about letting search engines know exactly what your content is so that it appears to the right people. People who are interested in businesses like yours.
Researching and building a list of keywords that your customers would commonly search to find your products and services and then ensuring those words are implemented in your website's content to attract relevant users.
3. Organic results are more popular with users than paid advertising
Paid advertising can be a fast way to make your website and content appear toward the top of the search results, but recent studies have shown that only 3.4% of clicks that are made after a search are on paid advertising. That is not a huge number. This tells us that all those clicks are happening somewhere else, like on organic results.
4. SEO typically has a long-term return on investment
Recent research shows that SEO yields the highest return on investment (ROI) for most industries.
It not only has a high ROI during the campaign but even after you stop actively investing in SEO. This is in stark contrast to many other paid campaigns. Take Google Ads for example. When your campaign is running, your ROI will continue to increase. Once your ads stop, your ROI from that campaign usually takes a drastic hit. After 30 or 60 days, it diminishes to next to nothing.
Your investment into SEO can continue to help your business grow and bring in ROI even after the initial SEO campaign.
5. Build credibility
If you’re looking to build a credible online presence, having additional content on your website that people can turn to when they are looking for information relevant to your business helps.
Keywords are important, but it is critical that those keywords are not just randomly placed throughout the site. They need to be used in content that is worthwhile to your audience and that they will find useful.
If users don’t find your content useful and “bounce” or leave your site without navigating further, this hurts your credibility with search engines like Google and can reduce your ranking for the keywords that were searched if they determine that users don’t find your content credible and trustworthy.
To wrap it up, you may have the best product, service, or business in the world, but if you’re not getting found, you are missing out on customers.
Get found online. Increase business. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but if you need a little help - we’re here for you. To get started, you can get a complete overview of your Local SEO performance on our website, right now.