First of all, give yourself a hand — you run your own business.
You’ve hired the right people, you’ve read all of the books on success, you may have even started advertising. But how do you know your advertising is reaching people? There are 2 billion websites after all — how are you to direct people to yours?
SEO is the answer.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a wonderful way to get your business into the minds of the world. Setting yourself SEO goals and reaching them can help you gain tons of traction on your website, and turn that traction into customers.
This article will walk you through seven benefits that good SEO can provide to your business.
User Experience
User experience — as the name implies – is the experience your site provides your customers. Your website isn’t just a little page on a corner of the internet; it’s a whole multi-media funhouse. Assailing your customer’s senses with video, audio, pictorial, and graphic content will enhance their user experience and keep them coming back for more.
A good user experience will lead to more clicks on your site, and more clicks on your site mean more business. Getting the right people to your site is extremely important in the crafting of a good user experience — which is one of the most important parts of SEO.
Brand Credibility
SEO not only provides help for those who make use of the spirit of entrepreneurship, but it also works like American ingenuity in miniature. The more people who are going to your site, the higher-rated your site will be on search engines.
Getting on the first page, in the first five — or heck, even the number one spot on a search engine — will provide your brand with credibility. People will see your name first, and know that other satisfied customers went to you. If you want to be the top dog in your industry, get going on your SEO strategy.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness refers to the visibility your brand has to people. Sure, you may get a stray customer here and there who stumbles on your website and buys something, but this isn’t a lasting strategy for building a business.
To build a good business and make money, you’re going to want people to remember you. Getting one of the top slots in search engines will do great to increase your brand awareness — people won’t be able to miss you.
Clickthrough rates are a fickle enterprise, decreasing significantly every rank down you go. The higher you get, the more people you’ll get to your site.
More Leads
More clicks also mean more leads.
Business has changed in the 21st century; people no longer need to live near you and walk by to see that your business is around. People send out feelers for requests, and whoever gets to them first gets the customer. You can’t let the customer come to you, you have to come to your customer.
If you’re jumping up to your customers, right up to the first page, they’re more likely to pick you. The first step to closing a deal is to get people to know about the deal in the first place.
The more people who visit your multi-media funhouse, the more prospects that you’re going to have.
More Closing
… and the more prospects that you have, the more you’re going to close.
Brand awareness, leads, and conversions all work together. If you get a higher SEO, more people are going to wind up on your website, more people are going to trust your website, and more people are going to buy on your website.
The internet is a sea of content. Customers aren’t always paying attention enough to spy on every great brand, and they’re far too jaded to trust every “great brand” they spy. You need to use every weapon you can get your hands on to wrangle their attention and trust.
Securing a spot on that first page of results is blisteringly crucial, and will turn any mediocre business into a massive success.
In-Person Customers
But the train of success doesn’t stop there — it rolls on off the internet as well. If you build up good brand awareness, good brand credibility, and, a knack for closing the deal, you’re going to get customers showing up at your in-person store whether you like it or not (you probably do).
If you think of the “internet’ as different from the “real world” — it’s time to readjust your thinking. The internet is an enhancement of the “real world” that links everybody together — there’s a reason why it’s called the web.
The fact of the matter is, people are busy, they’re tired, they want a reason to like you. If they trust you, they’re going to show up in your in-person store over someone else’s store because they don’t want to put in the effort to figure out of another store is good. And if we’re being honest, that other store most likely won’t convince them all that well.
Crush the Competition
The result of the following six items on the list is that you get out way ahead of your competition. If you focus on your SEO, others in your niche will not be able to keep up. The competitive spirit inside of you will greatly enjoy watching your name rise up the search engine results while your competitors go down.
Set SEO Goals
SEO matters. In a world where attention spans are short and trust is expensive, you need to do all you can to gain customers. Setting yourself SEO goals is one of your best options.
Once you know how it can improve your user experience, build your brand credibility, increase your brand awareness, generate more leads, bring in more closing, attract in-person customers, and crush the competition, you can start building up the SEO reputation of your dreams.
