Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process through which the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results is achieved. (Organic traffic is any traffic that comes to your site purely through search results without payment for positioning). Search engines display organic search results based on how they rank the relevancy of a website to its target audience, which is normally defined by keywords. The higher the relevancy of the site, the higher the display position in search results.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is the process of marketing a website in search using payments to the search engine to achieve better visibility. Paid search results appear above or next to organic search results, depending on the search engine. These are displayed in order of value based on how much a company spends on paid ads run through the search engine’s paid ad platform, such as Google Adwords or Bing Ads.
Your company needs SEO. SEO can be one of the most critical elements behind your company strategy to increase customers, sales, and revenue. Whether or not your online presence delivers anything of value to your bottom line will depend on whether or not you are optimizing for search.
Why SEO? IT’S A GOOD INVESTMENT
Whether your customers are searching online for your company name and branded keywords, or looking for companies like yours to meet a product or service need, SEO is crucial for brand visibility. It’s not just your B2C markets; according to a HubSpot study, 71% of B2B researchers start with a generic search, so raising your rankings for multiple search terms can be extremely lucrative in terms of contacts made and contracts signed.
Just being “on Google” isn’t enough – your company needs to be in the top few organic results. According to a massive study done by SEO Moz in 2014 (which still holds true today), 71% of the clicks on search result pages happen in the organic search results on page 1, making organic search the leader for traffic to your website. About 46% of those clicks are on result positions 1 and 2. Less than 4% of people click through to page 2 of results.
In contrast, paid ads only get 10% of clicks overall – meaning far more people click on results low on page 1 rather than click an ad. This makes organic SEO a better long-term option than Google AdWords PPC campaigns.
SEO CAN REDUCE COSTS AND INCREASE ROI
Spreading advertising budgets across a broader range of channels can drop costs and increase returns. Adspend for PPC campaigns has a short-lived but immediate effect. SEO may require a lump sum capital expenditure followed by maintenance and expansion costs, and take longer to realize a return, but can create long lasting benefits which continue to grow stronger with time.
A PPC ad runs as long as you keep extending the length of the campaign and allocating funds. A top three Google organic result takes longer to achieve, but can reach a significantly broader audience and be retained once acquired, allowing marketing budgets to be rolled over to further acquisitions. Whether you decide to split your advertising budget to allow for SEO, or to add to your overall marketing budget to accommodate SEO, the long-term results will likely provide ample justification.
SEO CAMPAIGNS THRIVE ON BIG DATA
In an age of Big Data, finding ways to leverage information on a consumer base and convert window shoppers into repeat customers is many a CMO’s goal. Audience targeting and specialized messaging are fully supported by SEO campaigns, which can be built around available data to microsegment populations and attract extremely qualified leads. According to research by Smart Data Collective, big data plus expert SEO and comprehensive analytics allows you to build better customer models than ever.
Your competition is almost certainly taking advantage of SEO to boost their brand visibility. Adding SEO to your toolkit of marketing strategies can help you meet and exceed sales objectives, building a sustainable base of quality potential customers by generating additional traffic to your website and moving prospects down your sales funnel. Best of all, SEO allows you to add even more information to your data sets.
There are five steps to successful implementation of SEO companywide.
- An SEO audit treats your website like a business development tool, looking at everything from domain authority to bounce rates to keyword rankings. This assessment reveals what needs to be done to align it to your business objectives.
- SEO recommendations may range from a website redesign that can streamline your sales funnel, to content creation that can improve your search rankings and position your company as a thought leader in your industry.
- SEO implementation by a competent team kickstarts the actual process of improvement in reach, revenue, and retention.
- SEO analysis that measures the impact that SEO has on the company’s main objectives shows where progress is made and allows SEO to be tweaked for even more improvement. SEO can often lower Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and directly account for a high percentage of new business.
To recap, SEO driven marketing can deliver bigger and better long-term returns in both ROI and brand recognition than advertising-based campaigns. SMB, SME and large enterprises have determined that having a professional SEO firm at the helm can make this part of the process easier and more productive, as day to day business responsibilities preclude many high-level executives from exploring fresh new strategies to define their company online.