SEO for 2019. Why SEO is important for your business
If you have a website for your business, search engine optimization (SEO) is an important marketing tool you should be taking advantage of. Not only will optimizing your site for SEO get you more traffic and conversions, it’s one of the most inexpensive, yet effective ways to spend your marketing dollars. In the world of pay-to-play marketing like social media and search engine marketing (SEM), SEO is one of the few completely free ways to advertise your business online.
So, what exactly is SEO and why is it so important? SEO is a way to optimize your website for search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing to improve your search engine rankings. For example, if you’re a law firm and you want to get more clients, you want your site to be the first thing someone sees when they search for a lawyer in their area. The best way to do that is by making SEO optimizations to your site, as well as doing some other common SEO strategies. Essentially, SEO encompasses a set of best-practices for creating and maintaining your web properties. A lot of basic SEO optimizations can be done on your own with just a little research, but if you really want to take your website to the next level, plan to hire an agency that specializes in SEO like Firestarter SEO. Understanding the nuances of how search engines work is invaluable as SEO best practices are constantly evolving.
Here are just a few of the reasons why SEO is so important for your business:
1. Organic search often makes up a large percentage of a website’s overall traffic.
Most small businesses rely on organic search traffic to get potential customers to their website. By optimizing your site for SEO, you’ll appear higher in search rankings, which will generate more traffic to your site.
2. Optimizing for SEO also means optimizing for the user.
While great for Google and other search engines, most SEO optimizations are also great for the user. Providing a better user experience on your website is another way to help convert more of those potential customers to paying customers.
3. SEO builds your brand’s trust and authority.
By utilizing SEO strategies like building a strong and credible backlink profile, you’re spreading awareness for your brand. Getting a link to your website on a topical, highly authoritative website will not only do wonders for getting more people to visit your site, it also tells Google that you’re a valuable resource. Google wants to serve their users so they want to show them the best, most relevant results to their queries. By building your authority, you’re more likely to rank higher in search results.
4. Local SEO is more important than ever.
Search engines have moved toward prioritizing local search results, which is great news for businesses that only serve a specific region. Local SEO is the same as SEO as a whole, but instead of performing a general search, users are searching for a business nearby. Because local keywords typically have a lower search volume, there’s less competition.
5. SEO has a lasting impact.
Social media moves quickly — the average half-life of a tweet is around 18 minutes! Even though the tweet technically stays on your profile indefinitely, most tweets don’t generate much attention after that short initial period. SEO on the other hand is a long-term strategy. The optimizations you make today will continue to benefit you for years to come.
6. SEO has one of the highest ROIs of all marketing channels.
SEO strategies tend to be more cost-effective than any traditional marketing, and most other forms of internet marketing as well. Why? Because when a user comes across your website by searching online, they have a high-intent to convert. They’re likely looking for exactly the product or service you offer. That makes your job easier since once they come across your page, your only job is to convince them that you’re the best provider in your category.
