The Real Benefits of SEO in 2020
Now two decades into the 21st century, business owners around the world have certainly become well aware of the importance of Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. Properly done, an effective SEO campaign can make a huge difference in the amount of exposure, and the number of sales, any business attains in today’s competitive environment.
But other than visibility and an improvement in search rankings, what benefits can a good SEO campaign bring to you and your company?
Regardless of the size of your business, or what industry it’s a part of, a properly utilized SEO campaign can make a world of difference.
Building Trust & Credibility
This is one of the most important factors that can arise from a sound SEO strategy, but it doesn’t happen overnight.
Building trust and credibility via SEO takes a good deal of time and patience, but it’s certainly worth it in the end.
This takes a firm commitment from the company and its employees and/or contractors, as well as a reliance on offering a quality product or service that will resonate with customers.
Elements that go into building credibility and authority for a website include quality backlink profiles, optimized on-page content, a user friendly experience and positive user behavior, among others.
Staying Current With Best Practice
Quality SEO tactics are great, but they won’t do you a lot of good in the long term if your site isn’t
constantly re-evaluated and updated. If it’s not, it will eventually reach a threshold where it will no longer be ranking as high as it did.
If you want to remain on Page 1 for any number of terms, you’re going to need to be constantly working to stay ahead of the competition.
Algorithm changes are a way of life these days, with Google making thousands of changes every year. If you can’t or won’t keep up, you’re going to have a hard time catching up in the future.
Hiring an SEO professional to remain on top of this is in any company’s best interests.
Developing a Long Term Strategy
A good SEO plan will have a noticeable impact within a few months of implementation, and many actions taken today have the potential for lasting several years.
But that’s not to say all of them will. As the market and business environment changes, you’ll want to follow the trends and make changes and/or improvements regularly.
The more time and effort you put into your SEO strategy, the longer your website will be a viable player in the marketplace.
SEO is Quantifiable
SEO results may be a little more difficult to quantify than paid searches are, simply because of all the different moving pieces.
But proper tracking and analytics can go a long way to determining just how
effective your strategy is.
Several SEO related actions will affect the performance and growth of your website and company, so it’s in your best interest to connect the dots in whatever ways you can.
Companies want to understand where they are and where they’re going in terms of their SEO and overall website strength, and there’s no better way to determine this than via the data.
People and reports can lie, but the data never does!
User Experience Matters (UX)
All companies today seek better organic rankings and maximum visibility, but not everyone realizes that optimizing a user’s experience on your site is a big part of making that happen.
Google knows these days how to tell the difference between a favorable and an unfavorable user experience, and the former have become pivotal to the overall success and credibility of a website.
Customers generally have a good idea what they’re looking for before they even turn on their computers or mobile devices. And if they can’t find it on your site, they’ll quickly leave and begin looking
elsewhere.
If enough visitors do that, the performance of your site is going to suffer.
One way to build a stronger user experience is by providing desired data directly on the search engine results pages, with the intention that this will give users what they’re looking for much quicker and with fewer clicks of the mouse.
Optimizing For the Buyer
It’s very easy for customers to find what they’re looking for online these days. In fact, many times the information finds them before they even search for it, via targeted advertising.
But using SEO tactics to tell customers about new products or services, good deals and amazing offers will undoubtedly impact the buying cycle in a positive way.
You need to be visible in the appropriate places in order for a positive and lasting connection to be made.
A solid SEO strategy enhances that visibility and allows potential customers an effective way of finding the answers they seek, as well as businesses like yours that can provide them.
Solid Business Investment
Solid and effective SEO campaigns are about much more than marketing, think of them as true business investments that will increase in value over time.
The goal is to make the payoff as positive as possible, especially in the long term, as it relates to the company’s bottom line.
Of course, it costs money – all business investments do. But SEO is relatively cheap when you look at the big picture, so it’s best to remember that it’s an investment that will bear a good amount of fruit over the long term.
And like most things in life, the more attention you pay your SEO efforts, the more effective it’s going to be. Spend a good amount of time and effort in giving your company or brand the best possible online presence, and it will pay dividends over the life of the campaign.
