Why is SEO Important for Businesses? 11 Key Reasons
Over 90 percent of all internet searches happen through Google’s search engine or its subsidiary, YouTube.
If your business isn’t ranking at the top of Google search results, you need to improve your SEO strategy.
Why is SEO important for your business? Optimizing your site helps businesses improve their searchability, visibility, and much more. Tweaking or adding valuable content to your site also increases site traffic and helps with brand awareness.
Learn why SEO is important for business owners and how you can optimize your site for the best results.
What Is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. The goal of using SEO is to improve both the quality and quantity of traffic you get on your site.
You want to improve the number of organic search results you get. In short, an organic search is an unpaid search result (as opposed to a pay-per-click ad).
So, why should you care about making an SEO-friendly website?
1. Improves Your Organic Search Results
Websites that appear near the top of organic results have a lot of quality content relevant to the search query.
Since Google is picky about its results, only the highest quality content appears here. Many are probably considered “authority sites” or trusted sources of information.
32 percent of people click on the first result they see. The higher your website ranks, the better your visibility.
2. Reduces Bounce Rate
A bounce is when a user only visits one page on your site.
On a single-page website or a blog this isn’t a problem but what if you want to promote other areas of your site? A high bounce rate means web visitors aren’t seeing the other areas of your website (such as products and services pages.)
Make sure your website has a clear structure and if it doesn’t, improve your SEO by building one. This makes your site easier to use and navigate, which can cut back on your bounce rate. The longer you can keep users on your site, the more likely you are to get a conversion.
3. You Create Sharable Content
Improving your SEO by adding informative blog posts, graphics, or videos creates content perfect for social sharing.
69 percent of U.S. adults use Facebook, meaning you could reach a lot of people by promoting your website content on your Facebook business page. Instagram is also a good tool to promote visual content.
The more quality content you have, the more likely people are to share it which can lead to an increase in web traffic to your site.
4. Directs Visitors to Your Sales Funnel
Internal links direct a visitor and encourage them to take action. For example, you could link to a product page with an appropriate CTA (call to action).
Using this method you can lead your web visitors down a funnel and towards a conversion.
Blog posts are a great place to include both internal links and a CTA. This could be a link to a services page, another area of your site, or something similar. This also helps you to build site architecture.
5. You Establish Authority
If you want to establish authority, back up your claims with links to credible sources. These links are also called external links because they take the user to another domain.
Choose news sites, scientific research, and other trustworthy and relevant websites.
This is also a good opportunity to check out the highest-ranking authority websites and learn from them.
6. You Obtain Backlinks
The more you build up and optimize your website, the more likely you’ll be to obtain backlinks.
Backlinks or inbound links direct a web visitor from an outside site to your website. Backlinks from another credible site are a lot like a seal of approval.
Quality backlinks help build your reputation as a source of trustworthy information.
7. Increases Brand Awareness
The bigger your presence online, the more you increase your brand awareness. Since it’s hard to stand out online with so much competition, focus your efforts on local SEO when applicable.
Focusing on local SEO and using local keywords can help you stand out among even the fiercest competition.
8. You Create Trust
Establishing yourself as an authority in your field increases audience trust. People are more likely to listen to what you have to say and share your content which can lead to more backlinks.
You can build trust through SEO by using quality external links, backing up your claims with facts, and providing truthful and relevant content.
9. Generates More Leads
When done right, SEO can generate leads by encouraging web visitors to come back to your site and perform an action. The more quality content you have, the more likely your audience will stay engaged.
Once you have their interest, you can encourage them to subscribe to a newsletter or sign up for a service. One common SEO application method is to direct your web visitors to sign up with their email address to receive news or coupon codes.
10. You Can Measure Success
Although SEO takes time to see results, you can measure your success with quantifiable data.
SEO increases your visibility, which can lead to an increase in web traffic. You can also track your site’s performance and see how long users stay on certain pages.
As long as you understand the data, you can tweak your strategy to appeal to your audience even more.
Using an SEO company to optimize your site not only gives you more time to focus on other aspects of your business but they walk you through the data and what it means.
11. SEO Creates Long-Lasting Results
Once you start optimizing your site and creating valuable content, people will continue to revisit old pages and articles. Someone might share an infographic or blog post that you wrote years ago because it still contains relevant information.
The older your website and the more optimized content that you have, the more likely you are to stand out in the market.
Although SEO rules and trends keep changing, the effort you put in now will still help your website and your business thrive in the future.
Why Is SEO Important? Optimization Helps Your Business Grow
So, why is SEO important to businesses and why should you invest in an optimization strategy?
SEO needs to be a part of your marketing strategy because it improves the visibility of your company, encourages visitors to listen, and leads them to trust you and your brand. SEO helps your business grow and thrive online.
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