Why is SEO important for business? What does SEO stand for in business? We hear these questions and similar ones time and time again.
Over the years since the first search engine was invented, SEO (search engine optimization) has been praised, misinterpreted, overly simplified and even occasionally stigmatized. So much so, that even the most savvy business owners do not fully grasp the importance of seo for business.
While a lot of people still think of SEO as some kind of hocus-pocus, those, who properly work SEO into their online marketing strategy, enjoy such benefits of SEO for business as increase in traffic and conversions, visibility, credibility, brand awareness and better understanding of the customer behavior.
Trusting SEO techniques and tried-and-tested practices, especially if they are not the generic ones, but customized specifically for your particular business, brings qualified leads and happy and returning customers to all types of businesses, from small local companies to huge international enterprises.
If you continue reading you will find the detailed answers to such questions as “Precisely why is SEO important for business?” and “How does SEO help business grow?”, “Why is local SEO good for small businesses?”, “Why is SEO important to B2B” etc.
You will clearly see the benefits of SEO for your business and even get some useful SEO tips and recommendations for the type of business you already run, or just plan on launching.
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SEO for Business: The Most Effective Way to Drive Highly Converting Traffic to Your Website
Traffic is one of the first advantages of SEO for business that comes to mind for most people. Traffic delivers leads, your potential customers. And the reason they find you – is because they are searching for services or products that you offer. If your page is optimized for instance for “IT Services” keywords, then the only way the user will find you is if they actually search for “IT Services”.
Put simply: would you rather set up a brick-and-mortar store on a back alley on an abandoned island or on a busy high street in a big city? SEO is what brings your virtual storefront to the Fifth Avenue of the Internet – first page of Google search results. Yes, being on this virtual Fifth Avenue doesn’t necessarily mean all the traffic that goes through your business will convert into actual money. But chances are – most of the passers-by will eventually become paying customers. That is, if you use SEO techniques and proper marketing strategy to interest the leads, make them stay on your business website and eventually convert into loyal customers that bring in more sales and new leads.
And the beauty of well done SEO is – your business gets quality leads, these people are likely to convert because they were searching for an offer like yours, they already have a need in products or services similar to yours. So if you can make your offer more interesting than the average competitor… Well, you get the picture.
This number of specialists cannot be wrong.
Visibility, credibility and brand awareness are vital to any business
70-80% of search engine users are only focusing on the organic results. This means that people do not want to click on the paid ads at the top of the search results, they want the organic results that come below the ads. In fact, according to New Media Campaigns, provided in the same marketing statistics report – organic is around 5.66 times better than paid search ads.
Ranking higher in organic search results establishes your brand credibility in the eyes of your potential customers, it signals to them that you are the best in your industry, not simply the one who paid for an ad. Do you even remember the last time you yourself actually went as far as the second page of SERP (search engine results page)?
Here’s an interesting graphic from Advanced Web Ranking for you:
See how Click Through Rate drops by position? Quite dramatic, if you ask us.
Moreover – Google, and other search engines along with it, take CTR (Click Through Rate) into account when ranking the web pages. Simply put – Google is likely to place a page with higher CTR at the top of the SERP because it will recognize such a page as more valuable to the searchers.
Getting to the top organic search positions for the keywords relevant to your business is virtually impossible without proper strategy, that is SEO, both on-site and off-site. This process will take time and effort, but while you are climbing to the top of SERP you slowly, but steadily, build brand awareness and get your potential customers’ trust.
Understanding your customers is crucial both for serving the existing ones best, and for finding new ones
Another benefit of SEO for business we’ve mentioned in the beginning is better understanding of the customer behavior. SEO comes hand in hand with trackable and clear results. Tracking every aspect of your website performance, traffic statistics, conversion rates and other results of your SEO efforts, allows you to clearly see what your customers need and look for, how they behave and why.
Thus you get an opportunity to analyze your work and adapt your strategy accordingly. And what’s more important – create a flawless user experience. Why do we mention user experience here at all, isn’t it a part of design?
The thing is – the Internet evolves very fast, how we use it changes rapidly. For instance – very recently mobile use outnumbered desktop for the first time.
Google has predicted this quite some time ago and has already updated the algorithm to ignore unresponsive websites in the mobile SERPs, and just a few months ago they rolled out mobile-first indexing.
So if your online presence is not responsive you are likely losing quite a bit of potential leads and your actual customers as well. This is just one example of how user experience affects traffic and ROI, which are, after all, the ultimate SEO goals.
Every business wants outstanding organic ranking, visibility and all the perks that come with those. Flawless user experience has quite a lot to do with getting there; and quality SEO helps create, incorporate and leverage it to work in your favor.
Is SEO important for every business?
Now that we have established at least some understanding of the importance of SEO to a business you might still have questions like these: Is SEO important to every business? Do you need to invest in SEO even if your business is not actually done online?
The simple answers are: yes and yes, you do. But let’s expand a bit.
Our approach to SEO, the techniques we use and goals we focus on largely depend on type of business, size of business and industry, or niche, your business is in.
The importance of SEO for small business
There’s over 30 million small businesses in the US. But the studies show that over 20% of those will fail in their first year in business, over 30% will die out in their second year of business, and of those who survived the first two years 50% are likely to fail in their fifth year running. And if you think that you dodged a bullet on you 6th year, well… another 70% will go out of business after 10 years on the market.
Meanwhile, only about 64% of small businesses have an online presence. Which looks like lost opportunities if we remember that over 90% of all the online experiences start with a search via Google or other search engines. But if you do have a small business website these stats simply mean less competition and more opportunities for you.
Importance of SEO for small business is quite serious. You see, when you are running a small operation you have to compete furiously not only with other small businesses, but with corporations as well. The first ones might be older, more reputable and better trusted by customers with marketing budgets and vast reach.
SEO tips for small businesses
There are universal optimization tactics every small business should implement if it aims at online success, no matter what industry the business is in. Here’s just a couple of SEO tips for a small business owner:
How much does SEO cost for small business?
SEO is a very cost-effective way for a small business to reach its goals more efficiently and stay among those 30% of small businesses that eventually thrive. Average cost of SEO for small business will vary from company to company and will depend on what goals you want to reach and what tactics are going to be implemented. If you want a more definite answer – Get a quote
We adapt our strategies to client’s goals, budget and preferences. We work to get results and grow your business and revenue. Therefore we can work with your budget and increase our efforts gradually as your revenue grows.
Why is SEO important for local business?
Out of all searches on Google 46% are local, out of those local results 92% of searchers picked businesses found on the first page of SERPs and averagely 70% of customers choose a store based on the information they found online.
And here’s a great insight for you – only about 54% of local stores have claimed their local listing on Google. This is one of the top reasons why local SEO is awesome to get new customers. And why local SEO for small business works so well, you simply have far less competition if you properly use the tools and tactics to your advantage.
Local SEO, as any other branch of SEO, entails both on-page and off-page activities.
SEO tips for local business
In case you still wonder – the quite obvious answer is: SEO is important to all sizes of businesses, and if you do your business locally then local SEO is what you have to invest in, if you want to outperform the competition.
How much will local SEO cost you?
As with everything in life – the price depends on a lot of factors. If you only want to get your business to the Local 3 Pack and have already done your on-site optimization yourself it will be one sum. If you want an SEO specialist to do it all and monitor the SEO strategy throughout the lifetime of your project it will be an entirely different sum. Good news is – we can come up with an SEO solution for every budget. So let’s chat about your small business.
Why is SEO important for national business?
SEO for national or international businesses depends on the niche and the industry, making it crucial for any strategy to be customly developed for each company to avoid unnecessary costs and efforts. However, there are certain tips that are applicable to most businesses targeting one country, more than one country, or certain languages globally.
National SEO differences with local in the ways used to reach the ultimate goals. Where there’s local citations, structured data and Google My Business profile in local SEO, there’s wider and more generic keywords targeted, more focus on branding, and proper link-building in national SEO.
Do I need local SEO to do national SEO?
If you have this question then your business probably has a number of brick-and-mortar locations across the country. We would suggest combining local and national SEO approaches and use them both to leverage maximum results.
When national SEO is better than local?
National SEO is the best solution for a business that operates online and is not tied to any physical location within one country and/or language. Those businesses that operate internationally will need to incorporate multilingual & international SEO.
If you are not sure if you should focus on local SEO or national – send us a message, we will tailor the best SEO approach for your particular business.
Tips for a national SEO campaign
The importance of SEO for mid to large enterprises
In our rapidly moving world online market is evolving very fast. Large scale companies often find themselves lost when it comes to reaching the modern audience. You have to be flexible and open to change, the size and structure of big companies often plays against them.
Then there’s the issue with the huge number of pages an enterprise business website might have, and the complex website structures catering to a wide range of locations and languages is if one of the challenges for Enterprise SEO.
Optimizing a huge number of pages according to SEO guidelines requires the right level of skill, dedication and experience. With various established entreprise companies reporting loss in revenue, it becomes evident that even the large players need to stay up-to-date with today’s best practices. Bringing the on-page SEO up to date might be just the right thing that’ll extend the reach and increase the revenue.
How enterprise SEO will help your company?
How much does enterprise SEO cost?
Enterprise-level SEO services prices completely depend on the website, its current condition and requirements. Perhaps you have great online presence for certain segment of your website, and lack in one or two niches that you specialize in. Or you might have a huge website which is out-of-date, not optimized and have never really done any search engine optimization work. Therefore each client needs an individual approach with custom-tailored strategy. The costs will depend on the amount of work the SEO specialists will need to do.
So, if you are interested in an enterprise SEO campaign built for your company, simply request a quote.
The importance of SEO for B2B companies
Why do B2B companies need SEO? Well, 71% of B2B researchers start the research with a generic online search, while 77% of B2B buyers say they will consider speaking to a salesperson only after they do their own research online. B2B influencers on average do 12 searches before they visit a specific business website.
Importance of SEO for B2B is quite significant these days. Researches show that more and more decision makers in B2B are millennials, and millenials rely on online research far more than the previous generations. The online world evolves rapidly, and no business can survive without evolving with it.
SEO tips for b2b companies
Price of SEO for B2B
SEO b2b spend often is the drawback that holds many companies back. But the truth is – SEO is one of the very few sustainable options for a b2b company to create an interest for the target audience, generate leads and increase conversions.
The importance of SEO for eCommerce
Why do eCommerce websites need SEO, is SEO necessary for an eCommerce site? The simple answer is – absolutely. To illustrate the importance of SEO in eCommerce let’s just look at a few numbers again: 67% of millennials say they prefer online shopping to brick-and-mortar stores. 62% of people will consult a search engine to research a product they want to buy, as opposed to only 29% willing to talk to a salesperson about it, 43% of all traffic to eCommerce websites is organic Google search traffic and the top 5 results of SERPs get 67% of all the clicks.
These are just a few of the reasons your eCommerce site needs SEO services. It’s a tough and long road to get to those top 5 positions with a well executed SEO campaign in motion, it is virtually impossible to get there without SEO, no matter how awesome the products you sell are. How long it takes SEO to get traffic to your eCommerce project depends on many factors, but you can expect to see results within 3-6 months. But remember – SEO results grow over time. The sooner you start the sooner you’ll see results.
How does SEO help eCommerce?
Here’s a devastating number for you to consider – Amazon dominates the US online sales with 34% of the market owned by the online retail giant, it is expected to grow to 50% by 2021.
You can not hope to become a new Amazon, you are simply too late to the party. But with good SEO campaign by your side you can get your piece of pie by helping the consumers make better decisions, giving them a way to find your awesome products and providing them with something good to share with their friends and family. With SEO and modern marketing you can create an eCommerce business with a human face, something easier to relate to than a giant like Amazon.
Best SEO tips for eCommerce sites
How much does monthly eCommerce SEO cost?
The question of price is an important one, especially if you run a new online store that does not deliver much revenue yet. An average SEO cost can go from nothing if you content yourself with limited on-site optimization done, to thousands per month if you unfold a huge SEO campaign for a large ecommerce store. What it does cost to do SEO on a new eCommerce website is effort and lots of research, and it all eventually pays off in conversions.
If you want to know an exact sum to do SEO for your particular project – get a free quote, we can come up with a perfect SEO solution for every budget.
Industry Specific SEO Expertise
Reasons why SEO is important for business are quite extensive, the approach to SEO is quite important too. No two SEO campaigns are exactly the same. Well, they shouldn’t be. Every business falls into a niche, or industry if you will. And every industry has its own target audience and its own terminology, its specific goals and, most importantly, its specific ranking factors. How SEO helps your business largely depends on how well the SEO specialist is familiar with your industry.
Properly executed SEO entails an extensive industry research that helps find where the prospective customers tend to gather to exchange opinions on a business, where they are more likely to look for reviews, what keywords are they going to use to look for a product or service, what specific options and features might they be interested in. This is what industry specific SEO expertise is meant for.
Trusting SEO experts who have had their fair share of experience in your niche or industry will deliver the results much sooner.