Why your website needs SEO? Internet users worldwide are reliant on search engines to direct them to the information, goods, and services they need. Whether or not they find your site isn’t up to the search engine though, it’s little more than the middle man. Ensuring potential customers are able to find your website requires you to employ digital marketing strategies, namely SEO (‘search engine optimization’). But in order to understand why your website needs search engine optimization, we’ll first need to understand what SEO is.
SEO Simplified
At first glance, ‘SEO’ looks like the name of a daytime network TV crime drama. While that’s hardly the case (Get it? Case?) the two aren’t all that different. Crime dramas are all about finding clues, solving the mystery, and catching the bad guy. SEO on the other hand is all about helping people find the information they need to solve problems in their own daily lives.
Let’s be honest here, we’ve all looked up an embarrassing or silly question online because we didn’t feel comfortable asking a warm body or we don’t know anyone who might have those answers for us. The hard part is knowing the right words to punch in to find the information we need, so we often opt for vague phrases.
Concerned your rash is from poison oak? Odds are you’ll type something like ‘what does poison oak rash look like’ instead of ‘how to identify a rash received by coming into contact with poison oak’. The words are simple, the phrases are succinct, and often smaller words like ‘a’ are omitted. SEO analyzes which keywords are most commonly used, giving you the info you need to direct people to your website.
Reason 1: People Are Already Interested
Superbowl ads and late-night infomercials are notorious for being comical, witty, and over the top. Above all these ads are memorable. They excel at hooking the viewers and convincing them they need whatever product or service is being advertised using a creative visual medium. Online marketing, in regards to search engines, is the exact opposite. Search engines are all text-based and you can’t present your site to a mass audience, rather people come to you instead.
Counterintuitive as it may sound, that’s actually a good thing! Unlike mass advertising, this makes it much easier to reach your target audience. Think about it- if someone has come to your site odds are they want to be there. They already know what they’re looking for. Your site needs to hook people to stay, but not necessarily convince them to be there. They make the decision themselves. But they don’t have that opportunity if you don’t appear in search engine results. Using search engine optimization increases your odds of bringing in people who already need what you have to offer.
Reason 2: Your Traffic is Increased
Using SEO strategies not only directs your target market to your site, it will bring you more traffic period. Better yet, you won’t have to bother with paying for ads to appear on the first SERP (search engine results page). The reason? People are more likely to check out the results on the first page alone. Search engine optimization helps you smash your way to the top of the search results at no cost to you, increasing your organic traffic in the process.
Reason 3: Establish a Local, Physical Presence
Not all businesses are entirely reliant on the internet to connect with customers and make sales. Often sites are used to connect a business with people who are in need of something nearby. If you want to make this happen you’ll need to work with a local website developer.
Contrary to what it may suggest the name doesn’t refer to your physical location, but rather hosting your website’s files on your computer rather than an external location (such as a hosting company server). The local website designer approach feeds into local SEO. Local SEO is meant to promote a company’s physical location to people who are looking for something in their area. If you want to appear on a SERP when someone looks for a business ‘near me’ local SEO, which relies on local development, can make it happen.
Reason 4: Establish a Long Distance, Digital Presence
Aside from local optimization, you can use SEO to expand your presence to an international scale. Google has over 3.5 billion searches every day, which leads to over 1.2 trillion over the course of a year. These statistics are global, mind you. As you scale your business SEO makes it easier to smash your way into foreign markets, giving you a leg up over your competitors. If you’re hoping to get in on the global action SEO is the way to go! Ready to go toe-to-toe with your .ca and .uk competitors?
Reason 5: You Offer a Better User Experience
Nobody wants to deal with clickbait, and the moment people realize they’ve fallen for it they’re quick to hit the X. SEO ensures you offer relevant content, and relevant content increases the odds of conversion. Combine that with a user-friendly site, like one that works well on mobile and is easy to navigate, and your customers are sure to have a smashing good time.
Are you ready to up your SEO game? Contact us and we’ll show you how to smash it one keyword at a time!
