BACKSEO: Why You Shouldn’t Be Neglecting It
When you think about reaching an audience, what immediately comes to mind?
For the people running today’s modern businesses, the answer is likely to be social media.
No doubt, social media is a powerful tool when it comes to getting word out about your brand, product, or service, but when combined with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) activities, allows you to capitalise on opportunities to drive traffic, deliver conversions, and generate long-term ROI for your business.
In fact, research conducted by content marketing platform Shareaholic, revealed that search delivered 34.8% of site visits compared to 25.6% for social in 2017. And, according to Pingup, 93% of customers begin their buyer’s journey with search engines, with Google owning the largest market share for search.
Yet, with only 44% of businesses investing in SEO as part of their digital marketing strategy, more than half of businesses are losing out on the opportunity to widen and reach their audience.
If you are the 44% who see the value, kudos to you. But if you happen to be in the majority, you’ve come to right place. Here are four reasons why SEO is key to digital success.
Search Is Still King
When you consider the fact that Google – the search engine giant preferred by 90% of global users – receives approximately 63,000 searches per second and gets 79% of all searches across the globe, you will start to see why having your website rank high on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) can help you establish a better digital footprint and increase brand visibility.
So, why is it important to be on the first page of the SERP?
Being on the first page of the SERP adds credibility to your brand and positions it as an industry leader. It also creates a strong trust signal among your audience which encourages them to click into your website.
This is backed up by statistics that show that the average traffic share generated by sites that sit on top of the Google results page amounts to a whopping 91.5%. Further, according to statistics published Advanced Web Ranking in 2015, the first result on a Google results page enjoys 34.6% click-through rate on desktop and 31.35% on mobile.
Free Traffic
Here’s the truth: online users ignore paid ads.
A lot of users still prefer organic search results for their content consumption. That means SEO is still your biggest source of free traffic and free brand visibility.
With SEO, you don’t need to bid for your website ranking. You don’t even need to pay for every click that your site gets.
If you’re not yet sold on SEO, then get this:
61% of digital marketers believe that improving their SEO strategies and growing their organic presence is their top inbound marketing priority. These businesses are investing in SEO not only to bring in more traffic, but to bring in more conversions.
And if that’s not enough, a research conducted by Mashable in 2015 revealed that Google gets over 100 billion searches every single month, imagine that number today.
Simply put, when it comes to lead generation cost efficiency, nothing beats SEO.
Quality Leads And Better Conversions
Traffic that you get through SEO almost always ends up as a quality lead.
Why? Because visitors who land on your website are all looking for a solution. But they are not just looking for answers to their problems, they want trustworthy solutions and they want them fast – so you can forget about getting them to browse through pages upon pages of search results.
By having your ‘solution’ appear as a top search result, you’re ticking all those boxes resulting in free traffic and quality leads. Add to that, 40% of revenue is earned through organic traffic and 39% of buyers on the internet are “convinced” to buy after seeing a relevant search. That’s unbeatable ROI.
This means that every visitor to your website can possibly purchase. You just need to put in a little more effort to ‘’switch on’’ their buyer instincts. Utilising good link-building strategies and pinpointing the best long-tail and short-tail keywords pays off too.
Health Indicator
Finally, one of the biggest reasons why you should not neglect SEO, is that it is your most reliable online health indicator. Ranking poorly on search engines is good indicator of issues that require immediate attention and action.
Is your website mobile friendly? Or maybe long load times are causing visitors to drop off. In fact, a study showed that 53% of users leave your site, if it does not load within two seconds. Google also recently deployed algorithmic changes that rank fast and mobile-friendly websites better.
However, if you’ve established that those are not the pain points for your visitors, then perhaps it is the content that needs reviewing. Either way, SEO should not be neglected.
