Are you wondering what the real benefits of SEO are over other digital marketing channels? Can somebody please explain what all the fuss is about? Scratching your head as why you should bother with an SEO strategy? Let us set the record straight and show you why SEO should be central to any high-level digital marketing strategy. Hold on to your seats as you discover our top 10 benefits to SEO.
Consistent Traffic
SEO offers you the ability to pull in traffic even when you’re not running any ads. That’s right, if you have a search engine optimized page, you can be confident that it will provide you with traffic relevant to your chosen topic consistently. Some maintenance is needed, and the page will benefit from updating and improving as time goes on. However, once it’s been created and the content has been written, it’s there forever. This will let you pull in traffic even while you sleep.
No Ad Spend
With paid search, the clue is in the name. You must pay for it. For businesses that are just starting off, it can be quite scary not knowing what kind of ad spend you need to generate sales. A PPC-only approach can be very expensive and rip through your cash in no time.
There is a time and place for Google AdSense, Facebook Ads, and all the other types of paid advertising. However, we at Fat Fish Marketing believe a baseline of strong SEO traffic is at the root of a successful business in the long term.
Huge Potential Source of New Users
For most businesses, organic search traffic (traffic brought in through SEO) is one of the main sources of new users to a website. If your website does not benefit from SEO driven traffic, you are missing out on a huge potential pool of new customers to your business. This traffic is not just one part of the funnel either but can be anything from top-of-funnel to customers ready to buy.
Higher Click-Through-Rate than Paid Ads
Despite paid search results appearing above organic search results in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), organic results account for 85% of clicks! Furthermore, it was reported that 71.33% of all searches result in an organic page 1 click. Therefore, ranking in the top 10 of organic search results is pivotal in getting people to click through to your site.
If you’re truly looking to achieve a significant share for a given keyword’s search traffic, SEO is not only recommended but absolutely necessary.
Great for Branding
Imagine this situation. You’re running an e-commerce business selling a particular niche jewellery collection. Let’s say it’s animal jewellery, who doesn’t love an elephant pendant? What if you crop up on the first page of a Google search for the search term “Best Animal Jewellery UK,” and also “What To Look Out For When Buying Animal Necklaces,” and also “Silver Elephant Pendant.”
It’s pretty easy to imagine someone interested in buying an animal necklace searching for these terms, and low and behold, you appear Every. Single. Time. Where do you think they’re likely to go for their beloved elephant pendant, eh?
Easy To Expand into Different Markets
If you’re looking to take your website globally and expand into international markets, SEO is an amazing way to immediately generate some traffic to your new site.
Consider if you owned a UK e-commerce store and were looking to move into the US. You could quite easily duplicate your .co.uk site and set up a .com site in no time. However, all that work you put into your amazing Google Ads campaign would have to be set up again. Not the same for SEO. With the help of some hreflang tags and the changing of a few Ss to Zs, you can immediately make use of your UK search authority in the US. Then you can start bringing relevant traffic to your store with the same great content you used in the UK.
Compliments Content Marketing Efforts
If you’re running any kind of content marketing activity, then you already have everything you need in place to start benefiting from SEO. If your content is relevant and value-adding to a search engine user, then you can start driving organic traffic to that page.
You can then use a free tool like Google Search Console to see what keywords your traffic is ranking for. Then you can start to tailor your existing content to better meet the keyword search term that your content is drawing into your website.
Compliments PPC Campaigns
We mentioned earlier in Benefit 2 one of the advantages of organic traffic over paid search traffic, namely, no ad spend. However, SEO and PPC work even better when used in unison. Imagine a situation where you occupy the top Google Ad ranking and the top organic search ranking. This will make an incredible difference to your Click Through Rate (CTR) – the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it.
Furthermore, PPC and SEO work brilliantly together if you’re adopting an aggressive growth strategy. Good SEO reduces your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), which means you can operate a higher CPA strategy in your PPC marketing. This allows you to capture more of the market from would-be competitors.
Critical for Local Businesses
Big national and global businesses can benefit hugely from SEO. However, the impact it can have on local businesses is perhaps even more influential. Local SEO is one of the best ways for local businesses to reach new customers in their given area. Furthermore, it can be quite easy to rank for local keyword search terms, such as “Personal Trainers in Leicester” with a little tailored content.
Learn more about Local SEO vs Global SEO and Local Landing Pages.
Great SEO = Great UX
Over the last decade, search engines’ algorithms have become more and more sophisticated. No longer do “black hat” SEO efforts catapult your website to the top of the Google search results. In fact, SEO has become more closely associated with good User Experience (UX) design.
Learn more about designing an eCommerce store.
I guarantee that your website will rise higher in the ranks if you provide an excellent user experience for the customer. Not only does this mean your rise higher up the search engines, but you will also benefit from higher conversion rates due to your impeccable UX.
Should the Benefits of SEO Make It an Essential Part of your Marketing Strategy?
By now, you should understand how important SEO can be to any online business. But should you take the time to invest time and resources in your SEO strategies?
Well, that depends on one question: Do you want your online business to last? It’s that simple. If you do not employ a strategy to capture organic traffic, you are relying on paid search advertising. While this can work for you in the short term, ask yourself these three questions:
What happens when more companies arise and start to compete with you for these terms?
What happens when your CPA becomes so high that your margins are non-existent?
What happens when a competitor who is performing SEO is generating free traffic to their website is able to offer lower prices?
What Should I Do About It?
If you’re now convinced of the power of SEO, you should start to work on optimizing your website right away! If you’re not sure where to start, head to our in-depth SEO for Dummies guide to discover how. Alternatively, if you want the comprehensive guide, signup for our newsletter and receive our 10-step guide to SEO Success.
