The mere concept of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) can sound scary to most businesses and there are a lot of opinions out there about whether it’s even worth the effort. But when you think about SEO as a way to help your customers learn about your brand and in turn, make a purchase, you’ll soon realise that SEO is worth it in the long run.
It’s also great for creating long-term brand awareness, expanding your target audiences and earning more revenue.
To that end, let’s look at 6 ways SEO can help your business and how you can implement them.
1. SEO boosts credibility
A site that is considered high quality, and by extension trustworthy, by search engines like Google, typically ranks highly in search results.
To reach this standard and possibly be seen on the first page of Google, spend time improving and adding content to your website by doing keyword research and adding these high-ranking pertinent keywords to that content, and increasing your site’s speed and reliability.
2. It doesn’t have to cost money
All you need is time, if you have it, to improve your SEO.
To make the most of your efforts, allocate some of your time to reviewing content found on other highly ranked websites within your niche and aim to write even better content than they do. Then share your well-written content on social media in order to spread the word and give your audience a chance to read it.
3. SEO goes hand in hand with content marketing
Original, well-written content and SEO go hand in hand. Let us explain.
By creating helpful and engaging content for visitors, your site begins the process of ranking better in the search results. That on its own goes a long way. But when you add SEO to the mix, it boosts it even further.
Just make sure that your content is high quality and optimised for keywords you want to rank for. Also, don’t forget to update your content regularly since search engines favour fresh forms of content over stale ones.
4. SEO compliments PPC campaigns
Unpaid marketing (SEO) and paid marketing (PPC) work really well together. This is because PPC helps your website to appear at the top of the paid search results, whereas SEO does the same for organic search results.
Essentially offering the best of both worlds and helping you to reach more people, while still looking credible.
5. It gives you a competitive advantage
Your competitors are most likely investing in SEO, which means you should too! Companies that invest heavily in SEO often outrank their competition and as a result, gain market share.
If you consider that the results on the first page of Google get over 90% of traffic, you can’t afford not to invest in optimising your site for search.
To start competing, first identify the competition and get to work analysing their strengths and weaknesses. Next, make sure that your site loads fast and is mobile-friendly. Then, create the best content possible and make sure that whoever reads it has the best user experience.
6. Reach more people
The amazing thing about SEO is that it helps you attract anyone with intent at any given point in time, no matter what stage of the funnel they’re in.
Targeting keywords as opposed to demographics (like with PPC or social media advertising) means you can attract more prospects who might be interested in doing business with you.
When implementing SEO tactics, make a list of keywords that you’d like to rank for. Then use keyword research tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to expand the list. Lastly, do competitive research to refine your list by identifying who your competitors are and which keywords they are ranking for, this can also be done with Ahrefs or SEMRush.
You can also look at where they have backlinks and then use this information to put together a superior SEO strategy.
Final thoughts
If done well, SEO will lead to long-term, exponential growth for your business. Brands that invest in SEO, in the long run, are able to build credibility, trust with audiences and much more. Making it is a pivotal part of any content marketing strategy.
