February 17th 2017
5 REASONS WHY YOU NEED SEO IN YOUR MARKETING TOOL BELT
FIRST OF ALL, WHAT IS SEO?
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of affecting the visibility of your website on a search engine’s result page. Trying to make your website rank higher than others when something is searched for.
This article is targeted at beginners new to the concept of SEO and aims to promote SEO as an effective marketing strategy. Here’s a breakdown of the 5 reasons why YOU need SEO:
- SEO works!
- Attract potential customers with Local SEO!
- Get results fast with PPC!
- Make a start for free
- It’s easy to measure progress
SEO WORKS!
If that isn’t a big enough reason why you should consider SEO then I don’t know what is. It takes time and effort, but it works. When people search for something on the internet, over 90% only click on what is shown on the 1st results page. Your aim is to get your website on that page for your targeted keyword (what you want people to search for to find you). There’s a lot to do, but once you do it you will get a lot of web traffic, hopefully leading to leads and sales.
ATTRACT POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS WITH LOCAL SEO!
Local SEO is a must if you’re a small business who deals with locals. The aim with Local SEO is to make it easier to be found online by people nearby. If you search for restaurants near you on Google, the first thing you’ll see is a box with a list of nearby restaurants. That box answers your query so if you were interested, you would probably click on those restaurants instead of scrolling down. Now how many more locals are there searching for nearby restaurants, who would visit those same websites? That’s a lot of traffic. Imagine being on that list if you were a nearby restaurant, how much more business you would get?
GET RESULTS FAST WITH PPC
SEO can take months to take considerable effect. That’s where Pay Per Click (PPC) comes in. PPC isn’t SEO, it’s SEA (Search Engine Advertising) but I believe it’s something you should look into if you want results fast. With PPC you can choose which keywords you want to rank high for, but for a price. Each click costs money. Depending on the keyword you want a PPC ad in, each click could be less than a pound to more than £30. You can set a daily budget for each keyword so you’re not spending more than you want.
MAKE A START FOR FREE
There are many free beginner guides out there but I believe the best is ‘The Beginners Guide to SEO’ by Moz. This guide goes through everything you need to know to start. Basic SEO will put you ahead of competitors who haven’t optimised their website, but it won’t take you far. Keep in mind that you will probably need to hire an SEO specialist in the future, as SEO is tough and time-consuming so you need someone with a lot of experience to take full potential and make the most out of it.
IT’S EASY TO MEASURE PROGRESS
Progress can be measured easily since there are many key performance indicators. There are many tools out there but your best friend is Google Analytics (GA). GA will allow you to easily measure your total number of sessions, page views and users on your site, how much time they spend on each page, where they came from, what is their age, gender and a lot more. Oh, and it’s free.
SEO is an effective area of marketing, an area you need to cover and get down ASAP. The internet is the number one source of information for over 3 billion people worldwide. Make yourself stand out with SEO.