When someone is looking for a new service or product, the first thing they do is ‘Google’ it. This is why modern marketing is highly focused on online marketing and especially search engine optimization (SEO). To succeed in modern business SEO can offer the competitive advantage you need to grow your business.
SEO refers to finding ways to optimize your website so that search engines promote you and send more organic (non-paid) traffic to your site. If you want to learn more about what SEO is, check out the Beginners guide to improving search engine optimization (SEO).
Once you know what SEO is, the next step is to find out how you can use it to grow your business?
SEO can build brand awareness
While SEO is mostly used to generate organic traffic to your website, it is also a powerful, and often overlooked, tool to increase brand awareness. The closer your site appears to the #1 spot in search engine results, the more potential customers are exposed to your brand. Ranking on Google’s first page ensures a gain in brand visibility, authority and engagement, which creates greater connections with consumers.
Your brand image is a reflection of how your users feel about you and by aligning your keyword strategy with your brand strategy, SEO can shape brand perception. Instead of trying to sell customers with ads, optimize your content for keywords and SEO inbound marketing will draw organic customers to your site by providing them with exactly the information they are looking for.
Achieve better conversion rates with SEO
Websites that are easy to read and display properly on all types of devices are more likely to attract and hold visitors’ attention. Enticing visitors should be your objective, because it will lead to higher conversion rates. A conversion rate is the ratio of defined actions compared to the actual number of visitors to the website, multiplied by 100. For example, if you receive 1,000 visitors to your website, and 10 action it would be: 10 actions / 1,000 visitors * 100 = 1.0 percent.
According to Wordstream & WebFx across various industries, a good conversion rate is above 10%, with some achieving an average of 11.45%. Earning a good conversion rate places your company in the top 10% of global advertisers, which makes your conversion rate two to five times better than the average conversion rate.
Other than providing dynamic content, one way to improve conversion rates is to use long-tail keywords to direct users to content they are looking for and improve your rankings. Most people are searching for specific things. For example, if you are a nail salon, you’re not going to start targeting the keyword ‘manicure’. This is a short-tail keyword and WAY too broad with too much competition. You would try the more achievable long-tail keyword of ‘acrylic manicure in Montreal’.
Improve customer satisfaction with a more user-friendly website
Search engine algorithms focus on giving user-friendly websites higher rankings. Factors that can affect user experience include how quickly your website loads, how easy it is to navigate, and whether your site is ‘mobile friendly’. Even a few second delay in page response (how quickly your site loads) can result in a 7 to 10% reduction in customer conversions.
SEO can improve user experience and create a smoother, seamless experience. Sites with a clean, uncluttered and well-designed layout will attract more visitors and entice them to stay longer, which in turn decreases bounce rates (less people leaving your site), increases page views (they look at more things on your site) and increases conversion rates (more purchases or requests for information).
Your site speed must ensure you site is not sluggish and you need to optimize for mobile platforms. Once that is done you will want to focus on content. Good relevant content is a game changer for SEO. Make sure it’s immediately clear to visitors what you offer and who the company is. Use a lot of headings to improve readability and make sure you include your keywords in your headings. Crawlers like headings!
Update local SEO to get more local business
Approximately 46% of searches on Google are of a local nature. This is increasing the use of local SEO strategies, to increase search visibility for local businesses by providing located based results based.
Local SEO increases online visibility by interested local searchers… this translates into leads, sales and in-store traffic since 50% of searchers visit businesses within 24 hours of a local search. It’s simple to get started. Claim you free Google My Business listing and your business will appear in search results when a user searches for your company name, location, information, or relevant local keywords on Google and in Google Maps. You can also further optimize your Google My Business listing.
Build customer trust through SEO
Solving customers’ pressing issues makes customers happier. It also makes search engines happier to promote your site because they love to provide users with high quality, useful information.
As part of your SEO strategy, think about incorporating customer reviews. Consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. You don’t want to provide quality content, implement SEO tactics and increase visibility only to have a poor star rating on reviews. Like it or not your star rating generated by reviews is a factor consumers use to judge a business. Don’t just confine your reviews to Google, check out popular sites like Yelp, Facebook and niche business review sites. Ask customers to place reviews on these sites too. Most review sites have the added bonus of links back to your site which helps drive traffic to your site and improves your online authority.
Key takeaways
Most people don’t realize the impact SEO can have on your product, brand and company. SEO can grow your business. Your site should be easy to find, provide value to the reader, offer relevant content that addresses users’ needs. Optimizing your search engine efforts doesn’t have to be difficult and can help you rank better and increase customer conversions and lifetime value.
Want to learn more about SEO?
Check out these easy ways to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for beginners
Check out these 7 Simple and free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools
