Search engine optimization or SEO is a very important part of internet marketing. In fact, there are many businesses that have been built entirely with that as their focus. So why is every expert so interested in SEO? What is the value in it as an internet marketing strategy?
1. It Delivers An Abundance Of Residual Traffic For Free
The first benefit that comes to mind whenever we think SEO is the volume of traffic a site stands to gain. There are sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors from search engines on a monthly basis. To give you a good idea of how much this means to a business, let us assume that the average PPC bid for the top three spots for keywords in this niche is $1.50…
A site that gets 250 thousand visitors from search engines on a monthly basis saves 250,000 X $1.50 = $375,000 monthly or $4.5 million per annum!
Yes, I know they would have spent quite a sum to get their SEO right and they might have invested over a number of months. I know they’ll still pay a good chunk to a good SEO firm just to maintain their position.
However, can you take away from the fact that such numbers justify whatever amount they’ve spent on SEO (Especially when even the most expensive SEO companies will only command fees that are less than 10% of the amount that would have been spent paying for such a high volume of visitors)?
A business without the right volume of traffic is a dying business. Just imagine what you can do if you can command the right audience and you’ll see the wisdom in getting your SEO right.
2. Builds Your Credibility And Pre-eminence
There are companies that have huge marketing budgets. They can buy any volume of traffic they need. However, there’s something they can’t buy just like that: Credibility and pre-eminence…
The government has made it compulsory for search engines to label adverts accordingly. Go to Google, for example, and you’ll see that they are placed in different areas of the search page and are labelled as “sponsored ads.”
People are generally conditioned to take adverts with a grain of salt. While PPC ads that appear on search results pages are targeted (because someone is actively searching for what is being offered), they are NOT usually the first places a regular searcher looks. Most searchers will only consider PPC ads if they don’t see what they are looking for in the editorial section.
And that’s just the small part: Adverts are treated as self-promotion while editorial results are treated as endorsements by Google. Believe it or NOT, many people rarely question something once they found it via a search on Google. Their conclusion is: If Google thinks this is the best page for my search then it has to be a credible source. This is even truer if they click to your page and meet top quality content (which is what you get with good SEO).
What do you think would happen to your business if the regulatory body in the industry lists it in its top ten? Treat a top ten ranking for your target keywords the same way. Getting high rankings builds your credibility. But that’s just the beginning…
People begin to see you as an authority if your site keeps appearing for most related searches. The more the number of search phrases you rank highly for, the more your authority grows — Your pre-eminence grows.
3. Helps With Reputation Management
Mudslinging and “demarketing” are things that few successful businesses are unaware of. An unscrupulous competitor or a customer from hell could decide to post negatively about you. And because people love to read gossip, you could see your business suffer due to unsubstantiated tweets and retweets.
How do you survive?
People who read such gossip might want to get more information about you and so they head over to a search engine. But guess what? When they get there and start their search, they see you ranking for top keywords. They visit your site and see you deliver top quality content. They see reviews from past customers. They taste the goodness of your business first-hand and…
They now have doubts about what was tweeted about you. But that’s NOT all…
A good SEO strategy takes social media into consideration. This means that you’ll have an army of followers (and defenders) on sites like Twitter. So when folks try to trash your business they are countered by people who you connected with as you were trying to optimize your business for top rankings. The result…
An effort to “demarket” you is nipped in the bud because you had a good SEO firm who went about the process the right way.
4. Improves Visitor Engagement
You can’t be talking about SEO without looking at how your visitors respond. Every SEO expert out there knows that a high bounce rate will make it very difficult for you to get those top rankings. Therefore, they’ll offer suggestions that will increase visitor engagement and reduce your bounce rate.
The more your visitors engage with your content the more they assimilate your messages. Is this NOT what you really set up your site to do in the first place?
But having highly engaged visitors starts a domino effect: They bookmark, share, like, tweet, retweet, reblog, pin and take every other social action we all love on our properties. Those in turn bring in new visitors, improve your rankings on search results pages and the process is repeated all over again — Helping you build perpetual traffic!
5. Increase Your Bottom Line
Well, you are NOT into this (I mean your business) just for the fun of it, are you? You are here to make profit. So SEO counts for nothing if it doesn’t increase your bottom line. How much more money do you stand to make with a good SEO campaign?
Your have zero recurrent costs when it comes to customer acquisition if you get all your traffic via organic search. So if you sell a $100 product and used to spend $25 per paying visitor then your profit was $75. However with free traffic your profit margin increases.
With a high profit margin you can afford to price your product more competitively. No one wants to pay more for the same product. You can afford to offer discounts that your competitors can’t even attempt.
You can invest more in other parts of your business. You can spend more money to build world-class support. You can invest more in research and development. Simply put: You can take your business to new heights faster if you have more funds available to you.
