In 2018, what does a new business need for success? Apart from great branding, marketing, and smart advertising strategies, most small businesses require a prominent online presence. Entrepreneurs are now more aware of the powers of search engine optimization than they ever were before. SEO is what keeps your online presence visible to the target users. There are over 200 different signals that Google considers before ranking a site. The top three ranking factors include page speed, link profile, and website content. Along with these the mobile readiness, page schema markup, domain and HTTPS are other factors that determine the performance of a site.
Several webmasters understand that they need to work on these aspects of their sites, but they do not comprehend the reason. When you run a business, you need to be very careful about budgeting your time and resources. So, we are about to give you ten critical reasons your website requires SEO right now.
1. Organic search is going to be your primary source of traffic
New website owners might not be aware, but there are several types of traffic your website experiences. Referrals, social media, email marketing, and paid search, do supply some visitors, but at the end of the day, the majority of your traffic comes from organic searches only. Organic traffic is when a user finds your website as a listed result on the SRL. Also, check the plagiarism before publishing the content on https://www.plagiarismsoftware.net/
Right now, Google owns over 75% of the search market. So, if your target users are using Google to look for businesses and services like yours, you have a good chance of gaining visibility from fine-tuning your Google SEO practices. Keeping an eye on the keyword trends that lead to your website will help you improve your organic search traffic. Since Google has become much better than before deciphering the user’s search intent, you are more likely to get relevant traffic through search.
2. Building credibility for your brand
The objective of an SEO campaign is to create a strong foundation of trust. Pleasing the search engine gods takes more than the pre-historic keyword stuffing and link farming now. According to a Google spokesperson, the only aim of the search engine is to make the web a user-friendly place. Therefore, to please Google, all you need to do is give your site a user-friendly makeover. User experience is the most significant signature of credibility for any business. You will need to invest in things like –
- Quality backlinks from authoritative sites
- Optimised on-page aspects
- Informative content with correct keyword density
These help in establishing an authority that will bring traffic, sales, and high conversion rates to a website.
3. Better UX
As we have stated before, Google has been thinking about UX more than it has ever before. By paying close attention to your website navigation options and information hierarchy, you should be able to elevate the UX. Most customers come with certain expectations, and they know what they want. Unless your website is ready to give them precisely that, it is going to be a big problem for everyone!
It will be easier for you to understand the transformation if you start seeing Google as an answer engine rather than a search engine. Moreover, people use voice assistants and smart devices everywhere. So not having answers to industry-specific questions can create strong doubts about the quality of service you promise.
4. Improving the local traffic
If you are operating out of Perth, Australia, you need to remain visible to the locality. What good will your increased visibility in Melbourne and Canberra do unless you retain the traffic from Perth and the surrounding areas? With the rise in mobile traffic, more people are looking for area-specific businesses.
Local Perth SEO takes care of all services that cater to area-specific audiences. Optimising for a local audience can mean becoming more visible to users of a town, district, city or state. So, if you are an HVAC maintenance service catering to houses in Perth, you need to become visible to the homeowners in that city looking for home HVAC maintenance experts right now!
5. Keeping your SEO tactics updated
The best SEO practices are always flexible and evolving. It is indeed rewarding to have SEO experts on your team, who can boost your visibility across multiple platforms. However, you must remember that you need to keep updating your website’s SEO tactics almost every two months to stay relevant to the current crowd.
Google makes close to 600 algorithm changes per year, if not more. So, there is a necessity for all websites to update their signaling factors as well. You need at least someone on your site design and development team to stay updated on the algorithm changes that happen every day. Moreover, Google releases significant algorithm updates that can change the way the crowd accesses your website.
7. It is quantifiable
While SEO is not entirely quantitative, the changes are not purely qualitative either. By now it is common knowledge that any changes in search engine optimization factors take two to three months to reflect. Depending on your current state of KPIs, it might even take longer.
There might not be a direct measurement system for SEO, but you can understand how your website performance has become better through KPIs or Key Performance Indicators. Some toolsets can monitor incoming traffic, organic traffic and referral traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates and the dwell time on each page. These metrics can determine how optimized your site becomes after you implement the fundamental changes.
8. It’s your ticket to SERP 1
It is no secret that the top 10 search results are stealing 92% of organic traffic. The ones on the second page have to share the leftovers, and the ones on the third may as well be standing on the event horizon. So, if you are not on page 1, you are not putting in enough effort.
You need to strengthen your SEO game to find a place in the #1 results page. Yes, it is not magic or a miracle. It does not happen overnight. You need to fine-tune your SEO signals including link profiles, keyword strategies, content quality, and business listings to become more visible to the organic crowd. That is what SEO is all about. It is about boosting your website to the first page in the most natural way possible.
9. Social media and SEO are best buddies
There is no truck between SEO and social media. High-ranking sites have prominent presences on social media platforms like Facebook. Irrespective of the social channel of your choice, you need to establish a two-way relationship between your brand’s SEO and social media.
Google does not mention this overtly, but social mentions also turn up as links on the SRL. Don’t believe us? Search for any famous lifestyle brand, designer, or celeb. You will find clickable links to their Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn on the first SERP. Managing social media presence does not take a lot of work, and you should try to optimize your presence there to see how high your traffic goes in the coming few months.
10. SEO for third-party directories
Apart from Google, other search engines and directories also require your attention. They might have to share about 8% of the organic search market, but they are essential too. Urbanspoon, Trip Advisor, and Zomato are some of the leading third-party directories that help users find the services they are looking for.
In most cases, listing on Google My Business and optimizing for the leading search engine is enough. However, if you want to outdo your competitors in every aspect of SEO, you might want to pay more attention to your business listings in places other than GMB.
11(Bonus). It is cheap!
As entrepreneurs, we love things that are cost-effective. We love them more when they are investments, rather than expenses. Therefore, there is no reason you should not try SEO. It is indeed cheap, and it is a long-term investment. Once you invest your time, effort and money in it, your website is bound to enjoy higher traffic and better conversion rates.
SEO can save you tons. Have you considered the cost of dedicated PPC campaigns? Surviving on the paid listing is going to be more expensive than SEO any day. All brands need to think about search engine optimization once in a while. Moreover, with more engagement and attention from the right audience, it is possible for a website to shorten the buying cycle.
One of the biggest motivators for working on your SEO is that your competitors are already working on it. Unless you want to give them an edge, you need to invest your time in auditing your site, finding the faux passes and fixing the errors. SEO for small businesses is a long-term, smart investment. It does seem daunting in the beginning since it is a highly intricate process. However, several professional teams exist, who can help you with your optimization needs.
