Why Should You Care About SEO? Let’s Explore

• Do you know what keywords are driving traffic to your website? 
• Is your schema optimized for visibility in the local rankings? 
• How many backlinks on your website are harming your domain authority? 

If you’ve never worked with SEO services before, then a lot of the terminology can sound like a foreign language. While the benefits of effective SEO are diverse—and can often seem a little abstract—having an effective SEO strategy translates to higher visibility, better lead generation, and more conversions. 

To that end, let’s take a look at common elements of an SEO strategy, along with how they can dramatically increase your visibility when deployed effectively.

SEO Generates Higher Quality Traffic by Answering Questions

People come to search engines like Google with questions, and being able to effectively answer these questions is at the heart of any effective SEO strategy. Whether users are searching for things as vague as “waterproof men’s boots” or as specific as “fried avocado tacos gluten-free” and “personal injury lawyer denver co,” being in the first few results on Google comes with a massive boost in visibility.

At its core, SEO is designed around making sure that your site is as visible as possible to potential customers by tailoring its content around the algorithms Google uses to answer search queries. This is accomplished in a variety of different ways, such as adjusting your site’s layout to make landing pages more visible, writing blog content around relevant and trendy subjects, and designing the user journey through your site to be as intuitive as possible. 

Simply put, the goal of SEO is to make sure that as many people will see your site in their Google search results as possible, and it’s not hard to see the benefits. As these leads will be coming to you, they’re going to be naturally interested in whatever product, service, or content you provide. After all, very few people are going to search for something like “best spray to waterproof car” just because they’re curious—these searches represent very direct questions that you have a chance to answer first. 

The knowledge that a lead is coming to you because they’re already interested in your site allows you to engage your audience more tactically. If you know someone is visiting your blog because they’re curious about the benefits of electric cars—for example—then you’ve got a huge advantage in getting them to see why your specific electric cars are the best fit for them. Leads acquired and cultivated this way have a significantly higher chance of turning into conversions, all without requiring a costly sales department to engage them. 

SEO Is an Incredibly Cost-Effective Way to Build Brand Awareness

Even if customers aren’t completely ready to whip out the credit card when they visit your website, being visible on search engines allows you to better inform the conversation. If you’re the first site that someone visits while they’re doing research, then they’ll be using YOUR vocabulary to process any additional information they find after they’ve moved on. 

Being in the top results for Google searches also brings plenty of credibility to your brand. If you’re looking for a metric that really demonstrates how much, consider this: 

• Despite paid advertisements featuring higher up on search results, users are twice as likely to click on one of the top three organic website links shown in the results. After all, if they’re willing to scroll past advertisements that are custom-tailored to their searches, it stands to reason that they place value in these organic search results.

• Even if people aren’t clicking on your search results, they’re still coming to understand your brand as “the #2 result on Google” which is pure visibility and impressions which builds credibility. This is valuable because it communicates a certain weight to your brand that’s harder to replicate and different than just paid advertising. 

SEO Reporting Gives You Insights That You can Apply Elsewhere

A significant component of any robust SEO strategy is reporting. This means that SEO specialists are measuring the impact of their activities every month to both understand trends and to measure how effective their strategies have been over time. 

Regardless of what your business model looks like, there’s a ton of value in understanding how and why people are visiting your website. Are they primarily finding you by searching for your name, or one of the services you offer? Do people look for your location specifically, or do you benefit from a location that captures a lot of “near me”-esque searches? Understanding these things lets you make changes business-wide to better serve your customers. 

Additionally, effective SEO reporting allows you to understand consumer trends in a way that simply measuring foot traffic doesn’t. If there’s a sudden decrease in user searches for specific products, this information helps you avoid spending money on campaigns that just don’t have enough public interest to justify. Conversely, reading search trends in SEO reporting can let you stay ahead of the conversation by catering to new consumer behaviors as soon as they emerge.

Simply put, a good SEO strategy will also yield valuable insights as to who your customers are, what they’re looking for, and how they’re trying to find it. No matter what industry you work in, that’s useful to know. 

This list is by no means exhaustive, but these are some of the most prominent talking points in conversations about the value of SEO. Stay tuned for further blog discussions about what specific tools SEO specialists use, along with how you use SEO reporting to start generating visibility for your business.

In the meantime, contact PIN Business Network to learn how we use user data curated from a variety of different verticals to make informed, actionable SEO decisions.