For companies looking to bring more traffic to their website and spread awareness about their brand, working with a full service SEO agency is the best move. SEO companies work with your business to create a marketing strategy that directs your target audience to your business online, creating organic traffic and interest on your site.
Online marketing is an extremely effective tool for growing your business because it utilizes the number of people that turn to the internet to find local businesses and guides the user experience to your company. Our Houston SEO experts work with a wide range of businesses, combining web development, social media marketing, graphic design, and SEO campaigns.
Listed below are 12 major ways your business can benefit from SEO:
- Organic Search is Most Often the Primary Source of Website Traffic
Organic search is a massive part of most businesses’ website performance and a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or engagement.
As marketers know, Google owns a significantly larger portion of the search market than competitors like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and many, many others.
That’s not to say that all search engines don’t contribute to a brand’s visibility – they do. It’s just that Google owns a considerable portion of the overall search market.
Nevertheless, it’s a clear-cut leader, and thus its guidelines are important to follow.
But the remaining part of the market owned by other engines is valuable to brands, too. This is especially true for brands in niche verticals where voice, visual and vertical search engines play an essential role.
Google, being the most visited website in the world (and specifically in the United States), also happens to be the most popular email provider globally with more than 1 billion users.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine and over 2 billion people access it at least once a month.
We know that a clear majority of the world with access to the internet is visiting Google at least once a day to get information.
Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines will always work in a brand’s favor. Quality SEO and a high-quality website take brands there.
- SEO Builds Trust & Credibility
The goal of any experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a beautiful website with a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search, thanks to the trust and credibility of the brand and its digital properties.
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Many elements go into establishing authority regarding search engines like Google.
In addition to the factors mentioned above, authority is accrued over time as a result of aspects like:
- Natural links.
- Positive user behavior.
- Machine-learning signals.
- Optimized on-page elements and content.
But establishing that authority will do more for a brand than most, if not all, other digital optimizations.
The problem is, it’s impossible to build trust and credibility overnight – just like in real life. Authority is earned and built over time.
Establishing a brand as an authority takes patience, effort, and commitment and relies on offering a valuable, quality product or service that allows customers to trust a brand.
- SEO is the Best Way to Understand the Voice of the Consumer
From understanding macro market shifts to understanding consumer intent in granular detail, SEO tells us what customers want and need.
It does this in many ways:
- Search query data.
- SERP analysis.
- Analytics data and AI insights.
- Good SEO Also Means a Better User Experience
User experience has become every marketer’s number one priority. Everyone wants better organic rankings and maximum visibility. However, few realize that optimal user experience is a big part of getting there.
Google has learned how to interpret a good or unfavorable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success.
Google’s Page Experience Update is something that marketers in all industries will need to adhere to and is part of their longstanding focus on the customer experience.
Customers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a problem. And performance will suffer.
A clear example of building a solid user experience is how Google has become more and more of an answer engine offering the sought-after data directly on the SERPs (search engine results pages).
The intention is to offer users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily.
Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience, leveraging it to work in a brand’s favor.
- Local SEO Means Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions
With the rise and growing domination of mobile traffic, local search has become a fundamental part of small- and medium-sized businesses’ success.
Local optimizations focus on specific neighborhoods, towns, cities, regions, and even states to establish a viable medium for a brand’s messaging on a local level.
SEO pros do this by optimizing the brand’s website and its content, including local citations and backlinks, as well as regional listings relevant to the location and business sector a brand belongs to.
To promote engagement locally, SEO pros should optimize a brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, its Google My Business listing, and its social media profiles as a start.
There should also be a strong emphasis on user reviews on Google, as well as other reviews sites like Yelp, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List (among others), depending on the industry.
- SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle
Research is becoming a critical element of SEO, and the importance of real-time research is growing.
Using SEO tactics to relay your messaging for good deals, ground-breaking products and services, and the importance and dependability of what you offer customers will be a game-changer.
It will also undoubtedly positively impact the buying cycle when done right.
Brands must be visible in the places people need them for a worthy connection to be made. Local SEO enhances that visibility and lets potential customers find the answers and the businesses providing those answers.
- SEO is Constantly Improving and Best Practices are Always Being Updated
It’s great to have SEO tactics implemented on a brand’s website and across its digital properties. Still, if it’s a short-term engagement (budget constraints, etc.) and the site isn’t re-evaluated consistently over time, it will reach a threshold where it can no longer improve because of other hindrances.
The way the search world evolves (basically at the discretion of Google) requires constant monitoring for changes to stay ahead of the competition and, hopefully, on Page 1.
Being proactive and monitoring for significant algorithm changes is always going to benefit the brands doing so.
We know Google makes thousands of algorithm changes a year. Fall too far behind, and it will be tough to come back.
- Understanding SEO Helps You Understand the Environment of the Web
With the always-changing environment that is the World Wide Web, it can be a challenge to stay on top of the changes as they take place.
But staying on top of SEO includes being in the loop for the major changes taking place for search.
Knowing the environment of the web, including tactics being used by other local, comparable businesses and competitors, will always be beneficial for those brands.
- SEO is Relatively Cheap and Very Cost-Effective
Sure, it costs money. But all the best things do, right?
SEO is relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things, and the payoff will most likely be considerable in terms of a brand’s benefit to the bottom line.
This isn’t a marketing cost; this is an actual business investment.
Exemplary SEO implementation will hold water for years to come. And, like most things in life, it will only be better with the more attention (and investment) it gets.
- SEO is PR
SEO helps build long-term equity for your brand. A good ranking and a favorable placement help elevate your brand’s profile.
People search for news and related items, and having a good SEO and PR strategy means your brand will be seen.
Having a good user experience on your website means your messages will be heard, and your products or service sell.
SEO is no longer a siloed channel, so integrating with content and PR helps with brand reach and awareness alongside other results.
- It’s a Long-Term Strategy
SEO can (and hopefully does) have a noticeable impact within the first year of action being taken, and many of those actions will have an effect that lasts more than several years.
As the market evolves, yes, it’s best to follow the trends and changes closely.
But even a site that hasn’t had a boatload of intense SEO recommendations implemented will improve from basic SEO best practices being employed on an honest website with a decent user experience.
And the more SEO time, effort, and budget committed to it, the better and longer a website stands to be a worthy contender in its market.
- It’s Quantifiable
SEO is quantifiable.
While SEO doesn’t offer the same easy-to-calculate ROI as paid search, you can measure almost anything with proper tracking and analytics.
The big problem is trying to connect the dots on the back end since there is no definitive way to understand the correlation between all actions.
Still, it is worth understanding how specific actions are supposed to affect performance and growth, and hopefully, they do.
Any good SEO will aim at those improvements, so connecting the dots should not be a challenge.
Brands also want to know and understand where they were, where they are, and where they’re going in terms of digital performance, especially for SEO when they have a person/company being paid to execute on its behalf.
There’s no better way to show the success of SEO, either. But, of course, we all know the data never lies.
Houston SEO Experts
Stop missing out on potential customers and become a force within your industry! From excellent web design and social media management to Google Business Listing optimization and a weekly-updated blog, the team at Houston Small Business Marketing is here to help you get to the next level. Grow your business when you expand your reach online. If you are tired of giving away potential customers to your competitors, contact us today!
We dedicate ourselves to working closely with business owners to come up with a marketing plan that helps them succeed. We provide each customer with a free consultation for your website and social media to let you know how you can improve your placement online and grow your engagement with local potential customers looking for your services. Contact us today to learn more about the services we offer.
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