Why SEO is important for business
If you have a business with any sort of online presence, you’ve probably heard the term SEO. Maybe you even know that it’s short for search engine optimization. But what exactly is SEO?
And why is SEO important for business? Well, we’re going to deep dive into those exact questions in this blog post. Keep reading!
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of making your website more visible on search engines like Google. Done well, it can help you rank higher in search results when people search for things related to your business. Optimizing your website for SEO includes a lot of different moving parts like choosing the right keywords, improving site speed, and creating high quality content.
Why SEO is important for business
With the definition of SEO out of the way, let’s get into why it’s so important for business and why so many business owners swear by its benefits.
It can help you reach more people
One of the best ways to reach more people is to meet them where they are — on Google search. Every single day, Google gets over 8.5 billion searches worldwide. Chances are, plenty of these searches are directly tied to problems your business can solve.
But, it’s not really enough to just have a website and occasionally add some blogs to it, after all, 90% of web pages never get organic traffic.
The point of SEO is it helps guide the content you create so that you make it easy for search engines to find your content and rank it high on Google. And since 95% of search traffic goes to the first page of search results, ranking high on Google is a must.
It helps you reach the right people
Maybe even more important than reaching more people, SEO helps you reach the right people by driving targeted traffic to your website. This is mainly done through optimizing your website for different keywords, which make your site show up in search results for the terms that your potential customer is looking up on Google. By optimizing your site for keywords related to your offer, you can attract visitors who are interested in what you offer, which boosts your chances of making a sale.
Plus, SEO is all about understanding what users want when they search. By figuring out and targeting these needs, you can create content that directly answers their questions and needs. This not only bumps up your search rankings but also ensures that the traffic coming to your site is super relevant and more likely to stick around and engage with what you have to offer.
It helps you build trust
In order for someone to want to work with you or buy from you, they need to trust you. They need to trust that you can deliver what you’re selling. This is true for any kind of business, from photographers to agencies to e-commerce.
And building trust is hard, especially online. But you know what helps? Giving A LOT of free value to your audience.
Think about it — a social media agency could tell you, “oh, we know sooo much about social media so you should trust us” and you probably wouldn’t believe them. BUT, if you had a question about something related to social media, searched it on Google, found this agency, and loved their content, you’re going to trust them a lot more. AND if they have a whole library of content that you can use FOR FREE, even better.
It has a high ROI
According to a study by Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers say that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel. And while it’s difficult to say what the average ROI of SEO is, as every business and market is different, at least in ecommerce, the average ROI is thought to be between 700% and 900% if done right.
What does this tell us?
Well… that SEO is insanely cost effective. And it’s free to start out. All you need is a website, knowledge of SEO best practices, and time, and you can see results.
There are measurable results
Another reason why SEO is great for business (and why you should get on the SEO train) is because the results are measurable, allowing you to easily track and analyze the effectiveness of your strategy. You can monitor metrics like organic traffic, unique visitors, keyword rankings, conversion rates, all of which give you an incredible picture of what is working and what isn’t.
And you don’t need any special tools for this either, Google Search Console provides all of these insights for you.
It’s a sustainable, long-term strategy
Some people avoid SEO because it often takes longer to see results compared to other marketing strategies like paid ads. But in the long run, it’s way more sustainable.
Unlike Google paid search or Facebook ads, which get you quick wins but need constant spending, SEO takes a while to build up, but the results last longer. Your evergreen content can bring in leads for years if done right.
It’s also more sustainable than social media, which often requires daily updates and constant engagement to keep people interested. This doesn’t mean that social media and paid ads don’t have some benefits that SEO can’t bring you, but if you’re looking for sustainability, SEO wins every time.
How to get started with SEO
Now that you know why SEO is so important for business, here are three steps to get you started:
1. Do keyword research
If you want to do SEO effectively, you need to be doing keyword research. This is the process of finding and analyzing the words and phrases that people use when looking for information online.
And there are essentially two parts to a keyword research strategy that is going to be helpful for your business — finding keywords that your target audience is searching for in your niche AND choosing keywords that you can actually rank for. Keyword tools like Ubersuggest and Ahrefs do a lot of the work for you, and you can also check out some other articles on topics related to SEO here.
2. Use keywords in your content
Once you’ve chosen your keywords, you need to use them throughout your website content to help them rank high in the search results for these keywords.
Start with creating blogs around each of the keywords you choose, one blog per keyword. For more help on how to do this, check out this blog on how to write an SEO blog.
And blogs aren’t the only things that are searchable on your website. So are your staple web pages like your Homepage, About page, and Service/Product pages. There are plenty of people who are searching for the exact services or products you are offering on Google, which means you should aim to be meeting them at the top of their search results when they do.
For example, if you’re a wedding photographer in St. Louis, there are people every day searching for your exact service (the keyword “wedding photographer st louis” alone has more than 800 monthly searches according to Ubersuggest). Imagine how powerful it could be if pages on your website are able to rank high for some of those keywords? You’d have clients at your doorstep!
3. Build links pointing to your website
Google wants to push great content that is trustworthy to their users.
How do they figure out what’s good and trustworthy? Well, they look at how many backlinks (links from other sites pointing to your site) your website has. Of course, this is just one factor that determines your rankings, but it’s a pretty important one. While the best way to gain backlinks is simply to write content that people naturally want to link to, there are a lot of ways to go about getting more backlinks a little quicker.
Here’s a guide to doing this from Backlinko.
SEO best practices
While keyword research, creating content, and building backlinks are a great place to start with SEO, there are a few best practices to keep in mind if you want to take it a step further and take advantage of all SEO has to offer.
Use images for SEO
When creating content, make sure to break it up with images. Not only does this make the reading experience nicer for your readers (you know, the whole “a picture is worth a thousand words” thing?), it also gives you a chance to optimize your images and graphics for SEO, and rank on Image search. It’s also important for Google to use descriptive alt text so it can understand what the image is about.
Link your content together
By linking your content together, you create a network of related articles that help search engines understand your site’s structure. It also improves user experience by guiding visitors to related content and helps you increase the amount of time people stay on your site (due to your awesome content), which Google will take into account in your rankings.
Optimize your page speed
Slow-loading pages can frustrate visitors and lead to higher bounce rates. Let’s get real — if this page had taken three seconds to load, you probably would have gone to another source! We all do it! And since search engines also use page speed as a ranking factor, optimizing your site for speed is important.
Link your sources
Outbound links to high-quality, relevant sites show search engines that your content is well-researched and valuable, which helps with SEO. It’s also just good practice to give the sources for your content credit.
Keyword placement
Finding the right keywords is important, but where you put them in your content is just as crucial. Include your primary keyword in strategic spots like the title, meta description, headings, and the first paragraph. Sprinkle related keywords and variations naturally throughout the text to avoid keyword stuffing, which can hurt your rankings (Google doesn’t like when people do that, and will put the hammer down on content that does). Check out this blog for a full guide on keyword placement for SEO.
Priority #1: Create good, useful content
Google prioritizes useful content that is created for people. So while all these tips for optimizing for SEO are important, and can help your content rank higher, at the end of the day, the priority should always be to create useful, unique content that is helpful for your target audience.
Focus on addressing the needs of your audience, answering their questions, and providing real value. When your content genuinely helps people, it naturally attracts more visitors, keeps them engaged, and encourages them to share it.
This not only improves your SEO but also builds trust and credibility with your audience. Remember, great content is the foundation of effective SEO!
Final thoughts
Doing SEO well can truly transform your business into one where aligned clients and customers come to you, not the other way around. Hopefully, this blog post has helped you understand the value of SEO and why it might be time to take advantage of it. If you need more help with this, check out more articles on topics related to SEO and how you can use it for your business.
