Want to know the top benefits SEO can offer your brand?

Search Engine Optimization is one of the underrated digital marketing strategies. Business owners often give up fast if their SEO efforts are not working.

In this article, I will share a list of SEO benefits that will amaze you. I’m sure you will be thankful for this article.

In 2021, it is a must for every business to invest in SEO. Search Engine Optimization is a digital marketing process of optimizing your web pages and contents to rank high on search engines. This drives massive organic search traffic to your website.

This article is for everyone who gave up on SEO. You made a huge mistake by giving up too early and ignored utilizing SEO to its full potential.

Just remember.

Search Engine Optimization produces long-term results for your online business. You’re losing out to your competitors if you’re not getting your website optimized for the search engines.

Let’s move on to the benefits.

Your potential customers are searching for your products and services on search engines

Billions of people are using the Internet today. 93% of those people start their online activities with search engines. According to Google, there are approximately 40,000 searches per second, more than 3.4 billion searches per day, and 1.2 trillion searches per year.

With such a huge amount of searches being made, your business has great opportunities in attracting the right customers.

Trust me.

People are actively searching for information related to your products and services on a daily basis.

SEO Drives Targeted Traffic

Search traffic is the best source of traffic. This is because people are actually searching for something. Most of the time they are actively searching for solutions to their problems. When your business offers the solution they are eagerly searching for, they will end up on your site.

The people who land on your site are most likely interested in the solution you’re providing. According to SEO statistics by Forbes cite Borrell Associates, businesses in the United States are expected to spend approximately $80 billion in 2020 for Search Engine Optimization initiatives.

Why business owners are investing in SEO? Because SEO drives targeted traffic.

SEO traffic has a higher conversion rate

There are different sources of traffic you can rely on to increase your business revenue. But, among all those traffic sources, Search Engine Optimization offers the best conversion rate.

Eric Sui has mentioned that the leads generated from SEO have a conversion rate of 14.6% compared to other online and offline traffic sources.

When you focus on ranking high on search engines for relevant keywords, you’ll invite more visitors that convert into paying customers.

SEO Increase Sales

The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy is to make sales and generate more money for a business.

SEO is not a scam or a myth.

If your products and services have the ability to solve people’s problems, you just need to get in front of them on search engines. As search engines are the go-to place when they are looking for solutions.

Rather than just offering your products or services, providing them with accurate information on how they can solve their problems using your products or services will definitely increase sales.

Just simply investing your money in SEO without doing proper research and analysis might not increase your sales. You need to hire the right SEO agency or consultant to help you in developing the best SEO strategy that suits your business needs.

SEO Reduces Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Many digital marketers claim SEO to be a “free” source of traffic. I somehow disagree with the statement. The competition is increasing as businesses tend to compete to get the top spot of search engines.

However, when you compare SEO with other digital marketing methods, it is relatively cheaper to acquire a customer. You just need to invest a good amount of money to get started with SEO.

The investment relatively reduces over time when you start to rank for the right keywords. You just need to spend on maintaining the rankings later on.

If you’re investing in social media advertising or paid search advertising, your visibility disappears instantly when you stop paying.

Rather than spending time and money to learn SEO, you could spend on the right SEO agency or consultant to get the job done.

SEO helps you to be less dependent on Paid Advertising

I’ve written an article on the difference between SEO and SEM.

Some people still have the misconception that paid search advertising helps their site to gain a higher organic ranking.

Come on guys, that never happens.

It’s good to run a paid search advertising campaign along with SEO efforts as you can gain instant traffic from PPC. Once you start getting traction with organic search traffic, you can slowly reduce the money spent on PPC.

In the long run, you don’t have to be dependent on paid advertising and automatically generate quality traffic from search engines.

You can actually solidify your SEO efforts by investing more in the right SEO strategies.

High rankings on search engines provide free promotion

When you have a website is like having your business open 24/7. It’s the same when you reach high rankings on search result pages. Your site is there on the search engine all the time. This is one of the top benefits of SEO.

The best part is that your SEO ranking doesn’t go away overnight unless you stop your SEO initiatives. Just make sure you’re consistent with your content publishing and keep your site updated with the current trends in your industry.

An effective SEO strategy will keep your site at the top of the search engine and continuously promote your business for free.

SEO Builds Authority and Trust

How do you gain trust from people?

When someone they know trusts you, they will follow and trust you instantly.

People trust search engines like Google as it provides the best results for the keywords and phrases they search for.

When you rank high on search engines, people will be more than happy to trust your business and believe that you’re an authority within your industry.

SEO is a long-term digital strategy

Do you want short-term or long-term results from online marketing efforts?

I’m sure you want both.

There are other digital marketing strategies that can offer short-term results. As for SEO, it takes around 4-12 months to see results and it depends on the level of competition in your industry.

If you use the right strategy to rank on search engines, your ranking rarely goes down. In most cases, the ranking changes only happen when your competitors are doing SEO better or changes in search engine algorithms.

SEO influences audience purchase decisions

When you’re searching for information, search engines are the first thing you use to perform your research.

Your customers will do the same. They scroll through the search result page to find the headline they are looking for. Once they click on the result, they gather the information they need.

When your site ranks high on search engines for the searched information, it allows you to educate your visitors about a specific product or service. Providing such useful content will increase the likelihood for the visitors to get the product or service they are looking for from you.

SEO helps to influence audience purchase decisions by providing the right information at the right time. If you’re not appearing on search engines, your potential customers will go to your competitors who are ranking.

SEO improves brand awareness and loyalty

You want your potential customers to have awareness of your brand. Once they see your brand, they should know your business offerings.

SEO will help you build brand awareness. When you consistently appearing high on search engines for keywords and phrases related to your business, people will start recognizing your brand.

Your website visitors might not be ready to purchase from you at first. Once they are aware of your brand, the possibility for them to buy from you in the near future increases.

On the other hand, a higher ranking will build brand loyalty among your customers and encourage them to make repetitive purchases.

Organic results get more clicks than paid search advertising

Did you know search engine users tend to click more on organic results on Google?

SEO overrides paid search advertising. According to Hubspot, 80% of users ignore paid ads on search result pages. If you’re investing in PPC, you’re only attracting 20% clicks to your ad. However, it depends on your industry and whether your ad copywriting entices people to click.

SEO is something you don’t want to ignore or you’ll be losing quality organic traffic.

SEO efforts are measurable

You want to invest in a marketing effort that is measurable. You need to measure the effectiveness of what you’re investing in.

SEO is measurable. You can measure important metrics like:

Conversion Rate
Time on Page
Bounce Rate
Page Per Visit
Search Traffic
And many more…

Google Analytics is a free analytics tool that you can use to measure all the necessary metrics that matter to your business. It will be easier for you to measure the progress of your site on search engines by looking at the search traffic growth.

Other than Google Analytics, you can use paid tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and SE Ranking to check the position of your website on search engines.

SEO Drives Physical Store Sales

Do you actively sell your products at your physical store?

Don’t worry.

I won’t encourage you to focus on offline marketing. You need to understand that SEO can help you drive sales to your physical store.

People will make in-depth research online before making their purchase. When your site appears for their intended search, it creates an opportunity for those people to either visit your physical store or make a call to purchase your products.

So don’t ever think that SEO is a waste of time and money for physical stores. It actually works.

If it doesn’t work, physical stores would not be competing to get their business on Google Map by creating Google My Business Page.

You can learn how to create a Google My Business page for your business with the following article:

Google My Business (GMB) Guide for Malaysian Businesses

SEO is cost-effective compared to other digital marketing channels

Why do you want to spend money on digital marketing channels that do not offer long-term results?

I can argue with anyone that SEO is the most cost-effective digital marketing strategy that offers long-term results. On average, businesses need to pay approximately $3-$5 per click to drive traffic to their site.

There is no need to allocate a budget for paid advertising campaign once you start ranking for the right keywords that drive targeted visitors to your website.

If you have a limited budget and looking for long-term success with digital marketing, SEO is your best digital marketing strategy to focus on.

SEO offers an edge for small businesses over large organizations

Small businesses are often hindered with limited resources and money to grow in competitive industries dominated by big players.

You might want to spend on paid search advertising to compete with them but you should know that those bigger organizations will have a higher budget.

The best way to compete with them is by implementing effective SEO strategies. Large organizations often rely on paid advertising as they have sufficient marketing budget to spend. Don’t get disheartened if you’re having difficulties in attaining market share within your industry.

Just focus on SEO in improving your online presence and acquire customers.

A business in a specific industry can gain market share by being first. If you’re visible to your potential customers as the first option, they will not look further for other alternatives. Unless they are not happy with your products or services.

If you’re offering the best products or services for your customers, you don’t have to fear losing out to your competitors. Being on the first page of search engines will encourage visitors to choose you over your competitors on the 2nd or 3rd page.

According to Hubspot, 75% of search engine users never scroll past the first page of search results.

SEO Increases Your Business Value

The value of your business tends to increase when you rank higher on search engines for buyer intent keywords and phrases. It shows that your business is getting valuable monetizable traffic. The value of traffic is always determined by how much businesses are paying for those keywords for paid advertising. For example, check out the value of traffic Amazon is generating:

The organic traffic cost of Amazon is at $693.5 million and the paid traffic cost is only $40.5 million. The organic traffic cost is 17X higher than paid traffic cost.

If you have plans to sell your business in the future, you can include search engine rankings as an intangible asset. Just focus on maintaining your search rankings and your business will continuously improve in terms of value.

SEO improves your marketing ROI

SEO is a digital marketing strategy. But, there are other elements like web design and content marketing influence SEO success. All the activities need to be integrated to improve your SEO rankings.

Organic traffic from search engines often contributes to more than 40% of business revenue. On the other hand, local searches account for 18% of the overall purchase. When your SEO improves your overall marketing ROI will increase as well.

SEO offers the best PR strategy

Link Building strategy helps to attract quality backlinks for your website. Backlinks are links that you receive from other relevant websites. When other sites related to your niche mentions you on their website, search engines find your site to be valuable. The more relevant links you attract, the higher your search engine rankings.

That’s why SEO is regarded as an online “PR” strategy.

Usually, you need to spend on social media advertising to improve your social media penetration. As your audience is searching for your brand name in search engines, they will also click on social media accounts that appear on the search engine result pages. On the other hand, implementing an effective SEO strategy drives thousands of visitors to your website. When you publish your social media icons on your website, a fraction of those visitors will start following your social media accounts.

SEO increases your email subscribers

Most of your visitors do not purchase your products or services the first time they land on your website. You probably want to encourage them to sign up for your email newsletter. By implementing an email newsletter sign up form on your website, you can increase your email subscribers as your search traffic increase. When your email subscribers increase, you can educate them and provide incentives to encourage your subscribers to make repetitive purchases.

SEO is the best source of traffic if you’re looking to build your email list. This is because the majority of the visitors land on your site from search engine due to their intent to find valuable information from your website. They are hungry for more information which will lead them to email newsletter signup.

SEO Increases Traffic to Your Blog Posts

SEO will increase traffic to your blog posts. Most businesses focus on ranking their homepage for multiple keywords.

I often suggest businesses have a separate blog and consistently publish evergreen contents that add value to their visitors. When your site’s overall ranking improves, the ranking for your individual blog posts increases as well. You will be ranking for a large pool of keywords related to your niche.

From visitor’s point of view, their trust increases for your business as you are providing the best content within your industry. Moreover, when your individual content starts ranking on search engines, more websites would want to use your blog post as a reference and include your link in their website.

SEO improves your site’s CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

Don’t think that getting #1 position on search engines will improve Click Through Rate. The CTR of your site relies on your headline and meta description. The result with relevant and attractive headlines and meta descriptions tends to achieve higher CTR. But you need to be on the first page of the search result pages before focusing on other elements that influence the CTR.

So, SEO indirectly improves your site’s CTR. The main focus is to position your site on search result pages.

SEO Improves Site Loading Speed

I don’t mean that SEO improves your site’s loading speed. But your site’s loading speed is an important Google ranking factor that influences search engine rankings. Other than search ranking, page loading speed will reduce your bounce rate.

According to recent studies, 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. So, following the right SEO strategy, you will increase your site loading speed which influences the quality of traffic and conversion rate.

SEO Improves UX Of Your Website

Looking at the previous benefits, you should understand that those benefits will help you improve the user experience of your website. Search engines are doing everything to provide their users with the best relevant results for their search. It is important to keep your website relevant to search engines.

Providing the best user experience will encourage visitors to stay more on your website and look for other valuable information the site has to offer.

These are the elements that influence the UX of your website:

Navigation
Site structure
Page loading speed
Website responsiveness
Mobile-friendliness

SEO Ranking Lasts For A Long-Time

SEO ranking does not last forever. As Google makes thousands of changes to its search algorithm, you might see a fluctuation in your search rankings. If you use white hat SEO methods, it is extremely hard to influence your rankings.

To get short-term results, some agencies and consultants tend to use Blackhat (illegal) SEO methods. You might get quick results from this method but it is extremely hard to sustain it. So, make sure to hire the right agency or consultant that adheres to search engine rules and regulations in increasing search rankings. Look at the long-term results you want.

SEO Can Improve Your Business 10X Or More

SEO has the ability to scale your business 10X or more. SEO provides great exposure to hundreds to millions of people interested in your products or services. If you’re just operating in a specific city, you can easily expand to other cities or even go global. SEO will help you reach the global market in the most cost-effective way rather than having a need to build physical stores all around the world.

SEO Helps To Attract Talented Employees

You can attract top talents with SEO. Job seekers often start their job search with search engines. You can publish career opportunities on your website and you will have visibility for your career page on search engines. People visiting your page might also help to refer the right talents for the published positions.

SEO Is The Best Digital Marketing Investment

I could go on listing more benefits of SEO. If you ask me, SEO is the best and smartest digital marketing investment you can make today for your business. The search engine rankings you’re working hard to achieve could become a long-term asset for your business. Search Engine Optimization generates traffic, leads, and sales. You don’t have to spend on paid ads unless you want instant results.