As a business owner, SEO can deliver lucrative returns for even a modest outlay. Every website can be optimised to target whatever search phrases or keywords you desire. How soon you begin to see big gains depends on the amount of money you’re willing to spend, the amount of time you’re willing to invest and the level of existing competition for the search phrases you wish to target. Before committing to an SEO campaign, it’s important that you have a grasp of the approximate cost and timeline required to achieve your business goals.
Unlike Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising such as Google AdWords where the positive effects only last for as long as you’re paying for it, the rewards of SEO are ongoing. A highly ranked search term located in the top 5 for example, is likely to remain in and around that position for some time, allowing you to reap the continued benefits that it brings to your business.
It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to target consumers in your own town, city, state, country or beyond, with search engine optimisation it is possible to get your brand recognised in any part of the world you desire. This is a boon for smaller businesses who are able to tap into overseas markets simply by effectively promoting themselves online.
The higher your business is ranked for important keywords, the more traffic they will generate to your site. More traffic equates to a greater opportunity for sales leads and conversions.
Creating high quality, high-ranking web content that is geared towards specific search terms helps to establish trust with visitors and prospective clients alike, convincing them that your business is an authority on a particular subject. This in turn makes them more inclined to purchase your products or seek out your business services.
When you correctly optimise pages on your website to target specific search phrases, it ensures that only relevant visitors will ever visit those particular pages from a search engine. This improves the chances of obtaining sales leads. This is known as inbound marketing and is far more profitable than outbound marketing methods such as cold calling, email campaigns or traditional mediums such as television, where only a small percentage of the targeted audience is receptive to what you’re selling.
Tracking the performance of SEO campaigns is easy and allows you to quickly identify important aspects of your campaign, such as:
Beyond this, it is possible to obtain metrics for almost every facet of your website, imaginable.
The ultimate goal of SEO isn’t to simply increase the number of visitors to your site. It’s to secure you more business and earn you more money. Maximising leads and conversions doesn’t just mean high quality content that is well optimised for search engines. There’s an old saying that says “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”. Engaging, well-written articles and page content that captivates your audience has less value to users if the overall presentation of your website is underwhelming.
The fact is, the majority of people who visit your site aren’t going to become willing customers simply from what they’ve read on a single page of your website. They’re going to explore the rest of your site in an effort to determine if you are worth doing business with. SEO companies understand the important role that good web design and organisation plays in converting ordinary visitors into paying customers.
When you begin working with an SEO company, they will advise you on changes that should be made to the site and how best to structure it to ensure maximum effectiveness. A well-structured website also makes it easier for search engine bots to crawl your website and analyse the changes you’ve made to it.
