You’ve probably already heard a lot about search engine optimisation (SEO). You’ve no doubt heard eager marketers and business owners crying from the rooftops about its importance and how you need to drop everything and invest in it immediately. You’ve also probably heard the sceptics and those who have invested in SEO to little avail complain about the investment for little reward. But here at Embryo Digital, we’re an award-winning Manchester SEO and digital marketing agency, and we know that SEO works. When done right, investing in an SEO campaign generates long term ROI, establishes your brand as an industry leader, brings relevant and targeted traffic into your sales funnel, and does so at relatively little cost. Not convinced? Let’s take a closer look at why exactly your business needs to start thinking about SEO in 2020.
1. Organic search is probably already your primary source of traffic – why not make the most of it?
Organic search is a huge part of website traffic in general – did you know there are over 40,000 searches made on Google every second, meaning there’s around 3.5 billion Google searches made every day? You have every reason to want to tap into this resource of visitors and users – especially when you can specifically target a relevant audience to your business.
Google is the most visited website in the world, dominating organic search with over 75 per cent of the overall search market. It’s also the most popular email provider and Youtube, which Google owns, is the second biggest search engine in the world. It’s not hard to see just how important Google is, and SEO is the practice of improving your Google presence with increased visibility and organic traffic results.
With a decent SEO campaign, you’ll not only see yourself begin to climb up through the Google rankings and receive more traffic, but you’ll also find yourself receiving more targeted and relevant traffic. SEO campaigns are based around targeting keywords and search terms relative to your business and location. Want to rank number one for ‘X business in Y location’? Investing in SEO is how to get there. A good campaign will position you at or near the top of Google and drive high-quality, relevant and convertible traffic into your sales funnel.
Being at the top of the search results is important – online searchers will in general consider the top results to be the most authoritative and expert sources. In fact, around 75% of searchers don’t even scroll beyond the first page of Google results. Being on the first page – and high on the first page – will see the traffic flowing onto your site increase.
2. Build your online brand presence, trust and authority
In the old days of SEO, the main aim was to figure out how Google’s algorithms function and to find ways around it that could essentially be exploited for an increase in visibility and traffic. Thankfully, things have moved a lot since Google was established, with Google itself implementing several significant updates to its algorithms in the last decade.
One thing that every good SEO knows and keeps in mind while working on a campaign is that Google’s number one goal is to serve users with the best quality content available. This means that a website’s user experience, expertise, authority and trust value have become an increasingly important part of SEO campaigns.
In 2020, investing in SEO means building a campaign that will establish a user-friendly, clean and efficient experience for your users online, building authority and trust while delivering a quality source of content. Any experienced SEO will put this at the heart of their campaign.
Of course, authority doesn’t come overnight and requires patience and commitment, but by employing an SEO to build quality backlinks, boost your website with quality content, optimise your webpages for a clean and enjoyable user experience, and more, you will begin to enjoy a more authoritative presence on Google and other search engines.
Not only does this mean that you’ll start ranking higher for priority search terms, but your website itself will instil more trust in users, leading to more conversions and better engagement. Continue with this strategy over time, and before you know it you’ll be enjoying a long term and powerful level of trust that establishes you as a leading authority in your industry – both in the eyes of Google and your users.
3. SEO is quantifiable, trackable and can prove ROI
Sick of investing in marketing without seeing clear and visible results? SEO is data-driven and can provide your business with a wealth of information that you can use to not just track results, but to also build branding strategies around, assess your most profitable channels, gain valuable information about your audience, and more.
With proper analytics and data tracking, any experienced SEO will be able to offer you ROI that is easy to calculate, incisive data analysis and strategising. SEO is about understanding the way that your website is currently interacting with your audience and the search engines in a way that allows you to understand how certain actions affect performance and growth – allowing you to make insightful decisions moving forward.
If you want a clear and understandable picture of where you were, where you are and where you’re heading when it comes to your digital presence and performance online, SEO can provide that picture. When it comes to proving ROI on your SEO campaign, it’s the very same data at play – after all, the data never lies and every SEO wants to prove that their campaign is working.
Compared to traditional marketing practices, SEO provides a wealth of information and ROI that older methods couldn’t possibly track. Take TV, radio and other offline media, for instance. Not only do these cost a great deal, but you’re getting little substantial data from them. How do you know how many people are seeing your advertising, and how many are actually acting upon it? With SEO, this data is all there for you to analyse in great and minute detail.
Not only do you benefit from a greater amount of data, but what do you think is more impactful: five thousand people seeing your ad on TV regardless of their interest in your product/service, or one thousand people visiting your site because they have intentionally searched for related terms and found you near the top of Google? SEO leads to a more relevant and targeted audience finding your site and engaging with your content.
4. Paid strategies can cost a lot – SEO is relatively cheap
Not every business has the resources to afford a huge paid search marketing campaign, on top of the management retainer for an expert to deliver the top results and ROI you’re looking for. You know what they say – slow and steady wins the race. While it may be true that paid search marketing is faster and deliver greater ROI more immediately, it not only costs more but also lacks the long-term foundation building that SEO gives you.
With a good SEO campaign, you’ll be investing in the strength of your business’s future and presence as an industry and brand authority – something you don’t get from paid search marketing. SEO is relatively cheap compared to other search marketing and sets you up for long term success and improvement. Good SEO implementation will continue to grow your business for years to come – and it gets better the more time and patience you put into it.
The money you save from other paid advertising can be invested in an SEO campaign that, while it may start slow, will pick up speed and continue to provide ROI the longer it goes on. Sure, SEO costs money and you may see only slight ROI for the first few months, but you need to consider SEO as an investment in your business, not just marketing. That’s because nothing provides the substantial long term benefits and ROI that SEO does – it can single-handedly establish you as an industry-leader and authoritative and trustworthy business for your customers. This leads us on to our last point…
5. SEO is a long-term strategy that will continue to provide results
Good SEO will provide noticeable and impressive results within the first year of the campaign. It might be slow going at first, but SEO snowballs and picks up momentum as it progresses. In fact, a lot of the things done in your first year of SEO will continue to be impactful for years to come, further cementing yourself and your place in Google’s search results.
The more time, budget, effort, commitment and patience you put into your SEO campaign, the better your results will be – and the longer that they will continue to be impactful. Ever seen someone try to reach number one on Google for a specific search term, spend two months working on it only to become frustrated, give up, and proclaim that ‘SEO doesn’t work’ or ‘SEO isn’t worth the cost’. It’s a guarantee that, if done right, SEO campaigns will eventually lead to impressive results that can change your business’s online performance.
Six to twelve months to see results might seem like a long time and a lot of time and resources for no immediate benefit, but your SEO campaign will establish your authority and position you as a leader in your field, leading to a rise up through the Google rankings that can last for years. SEO builds a platform for long term success.
Over time, you will find yourself ranking highly for important phrases and terms, you’ll benefit from a greater flow of relevant organic traffic that see you as trustworthy and expert, and your website will be in a better, more optimised position to engage these customers and entice them to convert with you.
