Is SEO Necessary for Businesses?

The answer, in short, is yes! SEO is an intentional, data-driven approach to increase the quality of your business’s digital marketing and the visibility your business receives. The benefits of SEO can only help your business, making it worth the time spent researching. SEO takes a lot of deliberate analysis. It is a complex, ever-changing practice. As new technology emerges and evolves, so too does SEO. 

SEO drives traffic, promotes your brand, engages with customers, and directly relates to user experience. SEO is an integral component of your business’s successful digital marketing.  Here are some specific examples explaining how different aspects of SEO can impact and improve your business in various ways: 

Website Traffic 

According to Hubspot, “51% of website traffic comes from organic search” (https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics). What this means is that out of all the people who visit websites each day, more than half of those visits come from people who found the site through a search engine like Google or Bing. And it’s not just about quantity–quality matters too. In fact, “a study by Chitika Insights showed that Googlers were twice as likely as non-Googlers to visit websites on the first page of correlated searches” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/16/four-reasons-your-business-needs-seo/#401764de6f5b). So not only will investing in SEO increase the number of people visiting your website; it will also increase the likelihood that those visitors will convert into customers or clients. 

Brand Awareness

A good SEO strategy will help potential customers become more familiar with your brand through consistent exposure across multiple channels. If someone sees your company name pop up in their search results multiple times, they are much more likely to remember it when they are ready to make a purchase.  And according to Entrepreneur magazine, “80% of searchers don’t go past the first page of results” (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279724), so if you want your brand to be seen, you need to be on that first page!       

Cost Effective 

One common misconception about SEO is that it costs a lot of money; however, this doesn’t have to be the case. You can certainly spend a lot of money on an agency or consultant to help you with your SEO efforts, but there are also plenty of free resources available online (including our very own blog!) that can teach you everything you need to know about getting started with SEO for your business. Additionally, once you have a solid understanding of what needs to be done, you can always do the work yourself or hire an in-house employee to handle it for you–either way will be cheaper than paying an outside agency every month. 

https://thehoth.com/blog/small-business-seo/   

Conclusion 

Your competitors are already using SEO–which means that if you’re not using it as well, you are at a disadvantage in terms of both visibility and reach. But luckily for you, there are plenty of resources available (including our own blog!) that can help get you started down the path toward a successful digital marketing strategy for your business–one that includes everything from website design and development to social media marketing and beyond!  For more tips on how CEO’s & Entrepreneurs can effectively market their businesses online stay tuned for our next blog post…coming soon!