Let’s start by dispelling a myth: SEO doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s say this: every business should be investing in SEO in at least some capacity.
The reality is, SEO is a cost-effective way to build your brand online. ‘Cost-effective’ may be relative depending on the size of your business, but the bottom line is businesses should be taking steps toward realizing the full potential of their SEO presence.
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Here are four reasons why.
1. SEO Builds a Firm Foundation of Content for You to Work with
The basis of search engine optimization is content. Blog posts, landing page content, meta tags and descriptions all play an important role in your search engine ranking. Google changes its algorithm again and again, but good content continually remains important to the ranking factors.
Content serves two purposes. One, it builds up your SEO ranking and makes it more likely that you’ll be on the first page. Two, content makes for a better way to engage with your target audience. This is one reason every business should choose to invest in SEO - it gets the ball rolling on good content!
2. SEO Helps You Get to Know Your Target Audience & Market with Good Research
SEO starts with keyword research -- identifying a handful of relevant business terms and building out a longer, specific list of keywords that your target audience is most likely interested in. This research process helps inform your SEO process, like which blog posts to write or meta tags to focus on. But that’s not the only benefit.
SEO keyword research will help you actually understand your target audience and your target market. You’ll see what people are searching for, how they are searching, and what problems you can start to solve for them.
3. SEO Translates Into a Better, More Organic Reach
One of the major elements of good SEO is building backlinks - posting content to other high-quality websites and blogs with links leading back to your own business site. The idea is to provide unique, helpful information while also increasing the number of positive backlinks to your site.
Backlinking has an additional benefit: organic reach. If you include a link building campaign in your SEO efforts, you’ll start to see visitors from the websites that you’re posting to. It’s this kind of organic reach that can help build your business in a sustainable way.
High-quality backlinks are also another important ranking factor in organic search. The more sites linking back to your site and vouching for your domain helps indicate to Google and other search engines that your site is relevant and authoritative in that space. This will ultimately reflect in the search engine results pages with increased rankings.
4. SEO is Simply a Better Return on Investment
SEO is not just a good marketing idea, it’s a cost-effective marketing approach. In fact, many professionals agree that SEO provides a better ROI than PPC, social media marketing, or paying for email leads.
The cost of SEO can range dramatically - some businesses choose to outsource the entire process and others go the DIY route. When you’re just getting started, using some free search engine optimization tools will help you get a better understanding of the process and your capacity for it. From there you can decide which route you want to go.
Brooklin Nash writes about the latest tools and small business trends for TrustRadius. When he’s not writing, you can find him reading YA dystopian fiction (with guilty pleasure) and cooking.
