Today, SEO is like a buzzword. The online world of entrepreneurs and business owners are always sweating over to find a way to get this game right. And why not? The right SEO strategy can truly be a game changer. It can indeed have a transformative effect on a business and help them fulfil a bunch of their growth goals. Do you know that 50 percent of marketers believe SEO to be the only effective marketing strategy out there? Such is the power of search engine optimization.
2020 has been a tumultuous year for many enterprises. As the pandemic shook the global economy, many brick and mortar businesses were forced to close down. Fortunately, the situation for digital marketers has not been as bad. However, it, in no way means that they have not been affected. Thousands of online businesses today are saddled with a sense of uncertainty that only sound marketing strategies can solve.
The pandemic has completed dismantled the sense of predictability among people. In such a scenario, people crave some semblance of certainty. Therefore, the best route for success for businesses today depends to a large extent on their capacity to build trust with their audience. Search engine optimization is a crucial strategy that enables businesses to do exactly that.
What’s more, this strategy is ideal for the current scenario where most people are staying within the four walls of their home.
SEO Sows a Seed of Trust
At the core of search engine optimization lies trustworthiness. People conducting Google search are looking for something they can trust. They unconsciously desire to get reliable and correct information. It is the reason behind the introduction of E-A-T quality rater guidelines by Google, which ensures that the content of any website is marked by expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Following from above if your webpage is among the first that shows up in search results, you become more trustworthy in the eyes of consumers. Customers cannot rely on any brand. They can only rely on those in which they trust. Hence, implementing an SEO strategy means that you are taking a step towards sharing content that users can completely trust.
Conducting Search in the Absence of Search Engine Optimization
Without this optimization, users will keep looking for those websites where they can find answers to their questions. One thing is for sure. It would take a person double or triple the amount of time it takes now to find reliable sources of information.
Today, people can get what they want online in a few seconds mainly because of SEO. Suffice to say that without it, neither businesses nor their prospective customers can ever connect with each other.
Imparting a Semblance of Certainty during Uncertainty
A recent report shows that more than 40 percent of revenue accrues from organic traffic. Organic traffic refers to the traffic you get when your site appears on the search results of the user. Over 40 percent revenue means that you can be earning around half of your total earnings just from your organic site visitors and a large chunk of these visitors visit your site because you have invested in a solid SEO strategy.
It can thus be concluded that it is a smart investment that can tremendously pay off in the long run. If you maintain an effective search ranking, it will not only increase your audience base, but will also enhance your brand image.
Is It Really Important for Every Kind of Business?
Enterprises that have little to no competition might think that there’s no need for them to get the hang of SEO like others do. However, this is the wrong line of thinking. Irrespective of a business having competition or not, SEO is crucial.
The bottom line is that if you have an online presence, like a website, you need to invest in SEO. You cannot predict when a new competitor crops up or the way your loyal customers may respond to a product of yours. A business can never be sure of its profits as they are never linear. However, what you can control is how well you rank on SERPS or search engine result pages. It directly means that you have the ability to control your organic traffic, which will affect your sales and leads.
It is rightly said that the only thing that is permanent is change. You cannot control your profits or revenues, but you can always have a control over your visibility through SEO.
The Importance of Remaining Accountable
Now that you know the abounding significance of SEO for the success of your business, it would automatically make sense to invest your time and budget in maintaining an SEO plan. But in doing so, you need to become certain that this investment is yielding you the results you want.
Enter SEO tools. Search engine optimization is effective because you can practically track almost everything involved in it. SEO metrics provide you with meaningful insights into the way your organic search technique is performing. Not only this, it also gives you information to formulate new techniques and improve any existing strategies.
Every business owner, regardless of the size of their business has a website that attracts people from all over the world. But not all of them are the customers. Some of them have the potential to become your customers while others are mere visitors. But did you know that you can convert anyone who visits your site into a prospective customer when you use the right Google metrics? When it comes to these metrics, knowledge is power. By knowing about the right metrics, you will be better placed to enhance the retention and conversion of your web page visitors.
Reasons to Use SEO Tools
- Make your SEO strategy strong by decoding your competitor’s strategy. Tools like Raven Tools and SEMrush enable you to find out how your competitors are utilizing search engine optimization technique. Using them you can also discover the source of their backlinks and the way their content is progressing in different platforms.
- Various tools help you to see the backlink profile of your competitor. You can find out the websites where their backlinks come from, the anchor text, and the authority. Next, just set up your own plan to reach out to those exact same websites and generate links for your own one.
- Many seasoned SEO strategists find themselves at a dead end when they it comes to generating keyword opportunities. If you are trying to build content, but are not sure about the keywords that you can rank for, you can use various tools like SEMrush. Start updating your blogs and web pages with new content in seconds with thousands of keyword ideas from these tools.
- Detailed SEO audits can help you figure out a pattern and discover various shortcomings with your website. Unfortunately, they are not time and cost efficient, especially when you do it manually. Here again, tools can come to your aid. You can instantly identify issues like orphaned pages, missing meta descriptions or page titles, broken links, bad page depth, sever errors and more with tools like Screaming Frog and Majestic.
- Discovering the right keywords is often a complicated process. you need to identify those terms that have a good search volume but also have low competition. You also need to find out the intention of users for finding a specific piece of information. SEO tools enable you to determine keywords that you can use in a variety of content. You can use them to find keywords for which your site is ranking but you can do with a bit of optimization. You can also find keywords for which you do not want your site to rank. Practically everything is possible with the usage of the right tools.
- Apart from rankings, some other metrics include primarily conversions and organic traffic. These metrics can be difficult to calculate, but with the use of some SEO tools you can find out how your SEO strategy is performing. The KPIs or key performance indicators that you measure according to your objectives and business models consists of keyword ranking, number of backlinks, traffic, domain authority, form fills, sales, clicks, and social media comments. It is important to track progress through several metrics and over many platforms to become certain of receiving more traffic, one that is converting as well.
The Way Ahead
A sound SEO strategy enables users to connect with your brand and instils trust regarding your services. This industry is constantly developing, hence, you need to be updated on the latest trends to preserve your rankings, so that you can reach out to a greater audience. Setting the smart and measurable goals is certainly the most significant step you can take to optimize your business website. A few decades ago, a small-scale business could not keep up with a big company because of its limited marketing budget. This is no longer the situation anymore. SEO has made it possible for everyone to get an equal space in the web, while enhancing their reputation and credibility.