Even in today’s digital age, many companies and executives don’t know about that three-letter acronymn that makes all websites discoverable in search engines. Yes, SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. If you’re not familiar with SEO, then it’s recommended that you read some SEO frequently asked questions to help shed some light on the subject. Now, it’s true that SEO can and does increase sales overall. But that’s not — and shouldn’t be — its primary purpose. Instead, there are some important attributes of SEO that help businesses large or small become successful.
Brand Identity
Brand Identity has become a vastly important tool over the past decade or so. Companies have built entire identities around their brand. Popular brands such as Apple, Microsoft and T-Mobile have pushed their brand identities to reach their consumers. Their memorable campaigns have made their brands a staple in many households. While it’s not the only tool in the Brand Identity toolkit, SEO is nevertheless an important part of pushing brand identity and turning visitors into customers.
Online Awareness
Many business owners feel frustrated as their companies try to break past the first-page barrier in Google search results, especially when their competitors do better. Great SEO ensures you’re fighting a winning battle against your competitors. Doing everything just like your competitors can often net you nothing in return. SEO can help break the barrier down, letting you inside that seemingly exclusive club of high-rankers so that you can truly compete.
READ: Getting Your Small Business Website Professionally Designed
Visitor Volume
Closely tied with awareness is volume. SEO answers the following questions for you:
- How can a company get more unique visitors to its website?
- How does it get visitors to stay longer?
- How can companies get visitors to look through more pages without leaving (in other words, lower “bounce rate”)?
Higher Conversion Rates
After answering the questions listed in “Visitor Volume” above, it becomes clear that SEO also helps put the focus on conversion rates. This is quite possibly the most important term in the online business world for many top business executives. Conversion rates mean turning your visitors, clickers, browsers, and likers into buyers, and hopefully in most cases recurring customers. If your site is optimized for search engines correctly, conversion rates naturally build over time just as visitors do.
Return on Investment (ROI)
By realizing that optimizing for search engines is an investment and not just a one-off purchase, you’ll quickly realize that your business’s long-term potential and wellbeing can depend greatly on how your business website is structured. Whether it’s an e-commerce website where customers can purchase directly online or a website focusing on phone orders exclusively, another acronym becomes important to consider: ROI. Making the necessary investments at first means getting a return on that investment later on. Making your site easily visible in search engines ensures that you’ll get your ROI and then some, by focusing on the right searchers, clickers, visitors, and customers.
How has SEO helped your business? Do you have further questions about SEO? Let us know in the comments below!