WHAT IS SEO AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

While most businesses have a website, 90% of them are merely providing basic and supplementary information without generating any leads. In this modern-day and age, having a website is an investment. The opportunity to fully leverage your online presence and get more traffic and prospects should not be wasted. 

 

Don’t assume that the developers of your website have done basic SEO for your website. Always ask. Even if basic SEO was done, it won’t automatically rank well. Here, we’ll explain the importance of SEO and how it will help your business scale, rank, grow and perform. 

 

WHAT IS SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves optimizing your website and its important pages to rank higher in search engines for your preferred keywords. So, if you’re a company manufacturing smartphones, you would want people who use Google to find you when they search for smartphones. 

 

The truth is that search engines don’t randomly pick websites and pages to rank based on keywords. There’s a lot of research, implementation, and strategizing involved because we’re talking about getting into the good books of search engines and letting them know that your website is absolutely relevant and rank-deserving to the keywords. 

SEO focuses on improving the organic ranking of your website which does not involve paid advertising and other forms of paid promotions. 

SEO Specialists practice optimizing not just your website but also each page for specific keywords so that you can leverage on a broader spectrum of choices. 

SEO IMPROVES VISIBILITY, BRANDING, AND EXPOSURE

When your website and pages rank well on important search engines like Google, it is a signal that you’re doing the right thing. Soon, other search engines (they may be smaller but they’re still relevant) may start picking up on these algorithmic cues. 

Websites that rank highly for competitive keywords naturally get a lot of eyeballs every month when visitors find it useful. When visitors spend more time browsing through your website (sessions), search engines send a signal back to google servers with the data, indicating the behaviour of your website visitors.

There are many other things that Google takes into account and it performs thousands of changes to its algorithm every month/year. Even experts are always on their toes looking out for the latest developments. 

So, if you have a website, optimizing with the latest updates about your business, and restrategizing is absolutely necessary. 

 

WHY SEO IS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

 

1 - SEO LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD FOR YOU AND BIGGER BRAND NAMES

In SEO, competition against giant corporations like Amazon, Nike, Lazada, or McDonald's is daunting for most websites. The good news is that, despite the odds, it is still very possible to outrank bigger brand names. SEO is NOT paid advertising, so it does not see things in dollar signs. 

Even if you’re trying to go against world-renowned brand names, transparency and relatability could deliver you the winning point. Good examples would be to focus on long-tail keywords, provide better customer interface, and be more proactive in engagement, consultation, and responsiveness. 

 

2 - 91% OF WEBSITES ARE INVISIBLE ON GOOGLE

Based on a study done by AHREF of nearly a billion web pages, more than 90% of web pages and sites are either not ranked at all on Google or they are nearly invisible to the search engine. Unless these websites go for paid advertising, they would acquire almost no natural new visitors from search engines. 

 

3 - CREATING BETTER USER EXPERIENCE FOR SITE VISITORS

Search engine optimization helps your website visitors navigate your website and find useful content more easily. It is quintessential because, after all the time you’ve put into producing high-quality content and optimizing your website’s on-page and off-page SEO, the effort enhances user experience. Your website should be seamless so that your website visitors can find relevant content and information easily. To search engines, the longer your website visitors remain on your website, the better you’ll rank.  

 

4 - BOOSTING YOUR COMPANY’S CREDIBILITY, BRAND, AND AUTHORITY

Marketing, SEO, content development, graphic design, and copywriting all work hand-in-hand to make your website work for you. It has helped the world of sales and marketing in the real world by and large. In real life, when a prospect is approached by a salesperson, they’ll browse through your website and social media links before speaking to a sales representative. The website is an important frontliner. It HAS to create a fortified front to create the right image and credibility, as well as improve your brand and authority.  

 

5 - STAYING AHEAD OF YOUR COMPETITORS 

On the internet, SEO is either a game or a straight-on battle. As you optimize your website, you’re not simply working to enhance its ranking, you’re also trying to get ahead of your competitors (as they are with you if you’re doing well on SERPs). If your website ranks first on the search engine ranking page, it will receive an average of 20.5% of the clicks. Consequently, there’s a 13.32% click-through rate for second and 13.14% for third placing.   

6 - THE CONSUMER-FIRST APPROACH OF MODERN-DAY SEO 

Search engines like Google aim to please consumers and their users. That is its ultimate goal and it determines how it ranks websites. SEO is important because there are too many algorithmic updates being rolled out throughout the year and we’d say these changes are/were made to improve visitor experiences. That is why the more appealing you are to your target audience, the better you’ll rank. Today, being mobile-friendly, easy usability, and website loading speed plays much more important roles in SEO than ever before. Because consumers care.

 

7. GOOD SEO IMPROVES ENGAGEMENT AND LOYALTY

After all the time, effort, and money poured into developing your website and pumping out content for on-page SEO, you want to improve branding, awareness, engagement, and loyalty. 

• The first goal is to bring about awareness. 
• The second goal is to impress your audience. 
• The third SEO goal is branding and conversion. 
• If it’s hit-and-miss, SEO will retarget the same potential leads and prospects through organic search results. 

 

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE FOR SEO TO WORK?

Google does not make its playbooks public although it has a very supportive and engaged community of search engine engineers, website developers, SEO specialists and consultants, as well as digital marketing agencies. 

It is generally accepted that SEO efforts will start to bear fruit somewhere between 3 to 12 months after a campaign is launched. Although it sounds like a long time, once you’re up there with the Galloping Giants, you’ll likely enjoy the fruits of your labour for a couple of years. The longer you work on it, continue to revamp, retarget, and build up content on the website, the longer you’ll enjoy being up there on the much-coveted spot. 

The truth is SEO is a long-term game plan. Unlike before, SEO is no longer about becoming a one-hit-wonder. The more time, money, and effort you pour into your website, the better the results. Once search engines detect that you’re no longer working on your website, on- or off-page, you’ll slide off (or disappear) from the ranking pages.

 

CONCLUSION

So, if you plan to put in some elbow grease on for the SEO of your website, make sure it has a long-term strategy and plan. Although considered ‘New Age Advertising’ for most brick-and-mortar businesses, it is now an inescapable part of your business’s growth trajectory. 

Without a doubt, Digital Marketing will only continue to grow in importance. 

You, as a business owner, should view digital marketing and SEO has an integral part of your business marketing plan because not only is it your business’s default frontliner, it has the capacity to attract, impress, and concert audiences from all around the world. 

However, the ball is in your court. 

It’s great if you have an in-house digital marketing and SEO team to help you gear up for an explosion of internet prominence but if you don’t, worry not because you can always hire an SEO consultant to help you optimize your website. 

 

In fact, RA Marketing is now offering a FREE SEO Audit of your website for all our first-time customers! Through the website audit and analysis, we’ll help you identify loopholes in your website’s structure, SEO-friendliness, and usability. With a laser-focused strategy, we’ll help you increase organic and paid traffic to your website organically with top-quality search engine optimization techniques. 

If you’re interested, all you need to do is to fill up the request form below and we’ll get back to you promptly.