THE ULTIMATE 20 REASONS WHY YOU NEED SEO

You have heard about SEO and you are very much aware that it works really well for online businesses. But do you know why?

As a Digital Marketing agency, we have seen many of our clients struggling to convince their internal managers and CEOs about the value of optimizing for search engines, and getting them to expand their marketing budgets for SEO. Most often, the reason why SEO doesn’t work is because the company invested too little time, money, or resource into it.

This is why we wanted to adress some of these issues, beginning with the most compelling reasons why buying SEO is such a good idea.

We wrote this blog entry to share with you the ultimate twenty reasons to invest in SEO. To help you understand why SEO is so powerful and spotlight the role it can play in your Digital marketing.

#1. SEO IS CRUCIAL ON YOUR MARKETING MIX

SEO is the master when it comes to pulling in prospects and boosting conversions, but SEO alone will not help you reach your highest marketing potential. Social media, branding and other marketing strategies will need to complement SEO, hence if you are responsible for the marketing of your business, your challenge is not picking one strategy or another, but to integrate SEO into your marketing mix.

Unifying strategies in Marketing is an excellent opportunity for the different marketing specialists to collaborate in leading a business manager towards the right mix of marketing services including SEO.

Marketers and SEO consultants must not be misleading about other specialties than their own, they need to help clients build the right foundation, mix and plan, and guide them to implement and manage the most cost effective strategies aligned with their overall business goals.

Digital Marketing agencies need to keep in mind that often clients are hiring their expertise because they don’t have it themselves; in these occasions they are unable to ask for the right offer. Instead of always “giving customers what they want”, it’s time to face the fact that, often, clients do not know how to select from the diverse options at their disposal.

#2. SEO TURNS THE SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR WEBSITE

Your website is your best sales representative, multitasking effectively, tackling thousands of prospects at once, and only limited by what you ask of it.

Search engine optimization brings high levels of attention to your website, generating the highest performance by giving it the right emphasis and focus in your marketing arsenal.

#3. SEO IS AN INVESTMENT, NOT A COST

Lifting your rank to the top 3 spots on the first page, where most clicks go, will provide a massive return on your investment into SEO.

A quick and simple calculation will show you how quickly you’ll earn back what you have invested into effective SEO by way of increased earnings.

#4. SEO PRICES ARE VARIABLE

Keyword analysis, link building and other SEO activities are customised and tailored differently for specific situations. Even amongst SEO providers, there is a wide range in quality. There are seasoned professionals and there are scammers, amateurs and ignorant practitioners.

As a specialised service, SEO involves a team of people working behind the scenes. Giving them a small budget is a very limiting factor and you cannot expect amazing results from their restrained effort.

If you are not yet convinced about the synergies involved, ask for an SEO pre-analysis, even if it means paying a fee for it.  That’s a safe investment and worth more if it convinces you about the real value in adopting an SEO strategy.

#5. SEO IS NOT EXPENSIVE

While comparing different Marketing agencies or SEO consultants, you might be tempted to pick the less expensive one, but it may actually be a good idea to pick the most expensive one!

As we were saying, SEO is not a cost, it’s an investment! If a SEO company charges you twice as much as the rest, you should look deeper into why they are so expensive. What makes them so confident?

This is where SEO pre-analysis can help. If it proves that your market is big enough to drive enough volume, the competition is weak enough for you to fight and win, and your experience with SEO consultants and SEO firms over time shows that you are getting a larger amount of targeted traffic from their efforts. If this traffic converts at a high rate into sales and profit, then the impact on your business from this SEO campaign will be remarakable.

Costly SEO is like buying a car. Why does a Ferrari cost more than other cars? There are many reasons, and similar ones apply to SEO. Your investment in expensive SEO providers will pay off. At first it might appear as a cost, but if they correctly guide you to the most profitable niches and avenues for wealth and profit, it will end up multiplying your investment.

#6. SEO IMPACTS THE RESEARCH-BUYING CYCLE

SEO plays a very relevant role in the research and buying cycle. It’s like a prospect magnet, attracting potential buyers to your website through critical and important keywords and phrases ranked high in search engines where searchers are already looking for information about them.

It’s about being where your customers are, and directing them towards the solutions you offer them.

SEO will increase your sales without proportionately increasing your marketing costs, thereby growing profits exponentially and over time. SEO can further all your business goals at a better ROI than most other comparable forms of online marketing because of this fundamental effect of better conversions and more sales at little incremental cost.

Don’t assume that people knows your brand and thinks you’re the best place to buy, consumers are constantly researching good deals, and doing comparison shopping.

#7. SEO IS AN IMPORTANT INGREDIENT

If you have invested a great amount of money on your new website or your new eCommerce, the last thing you want to listen from a consultant is that you need to invest even more money for it to be visible on search engines.

As SEO experts, we work for clients that have amazing websites and want SEO introduced on them. But we can’t do Magic, and unfortunately that is not the way it works. Taking SEO into consideration while planning your website structure, content management system (CMS), URL syntax, and Web design gives the best results for your business. It can help you map old URLs to new ones, tailor your landing pages to user intent, lead prospects along and preserve old rankings that may have taken you years to achieve.

You don’t prepare a cake and put all the sugar on top at the end. You mix the sugar and all the other ingredients first and while preparing it.

Hiring a SEO expert can help you even if you started in the wrong order, but it will take more time, more effort, more money, and major restructuring work to get the SEO right later on.

#8. YOUR CMS IS SEO FRIENDLY AND THAT’S GOOD, BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH

You might have been told by CMS provider that is SEO friendly and optimized, but it doesn´t mean all the work is done. So don’t be fooled. because that isn’t all the SEO you need. SEO is not only about code.

CMS code is just a small fraction of the whole. By providing the right framework for your site, an SEO friendly CMS can help. But it takes a lot more to dominate search engines. There are more than 200 ranking factors, and algorithms change every year.

Content is king and your CMS has not much to do with it.

SEO isn’t new, but many CEOs and managers haven’t formally been taughta about the importance of good SEO for any online business. It’s a highly technical and sophisticated marketing technology.

#9. SEO CAN, AND WILL MULTIPLY YOUR IMPACT

SEO is your digital calling card. It can multiply your impact massively by getting your website in front of targeted users.

There’s a good reason to handle it to professionals. They will ensure that your website reaches the right audience, and gets viewed by a wide segment of it, so that your digital visiting card is getting qualified leads and converting them into cash-spending customers.

By ignoring SEO, you are hiding your fancy new website from the public. A website that could have been viewed by thousands of your best prospects and ideal clients. A website that you’re now leaving for Google to rank at its will.

SEO will help people find your website.

Your website is the first point of contact with your audience. It generates leads, qualified prospects and attracts potential customers, but unless people can find it, your website is good for nothing. SEO plays an invaluable role here.

SEO is not only about ranking a site in search results, getting more clicks and views, or keeping bounce rates optimal. Modern, effective SEO needs to be rooted in the company’s goals and strategies.

#10. GOOD SEO INVOLVES FREE ADVERTISING

SEO allows you to decide how your business should be featured on search results. If thousands of your prospects are viewing “random text”, you’re missing out on a wonderful chance to get free advertising. It’s like leaving “lorem ipsum” text on your printed marketing materials!

If you don’t strategically craft your website’s title tags and meta descriptions, that’s what you’re permitting. And that’s not good for business at all. It

#11. SEO AND SOCIAL SHARING

SEO plays an important role in Social Media, because content shared by users on social networks is directly related to SEO specific parameters like title tags and meta descriptions.

Together with your marketing and communications department, an SEO expert can help you manage this process.

Through SEO you get to control what people read, think and do on social sites and spread through their networks.

#12. PROFESSIONAL SEO REQUIRES MORE THAN CODING SKILLS AND A SEO-FRIENDLY CMS

SEO involves marketing and communication, a deep understanding of the business and the ability to think outside the box, keeping focus overall goals and targets.

Not everyone can do this, and for this reason, finding a competent SEO expert might be a challenging task.

Handing over your site’s SEO to an internal Web developer or designer may not be a good option. Even though Web developers and designers are learning every time more about SEO, it’s a mistake to make SEO secondary and implement it by following instructions you might have learnt on a blog entry or at a seminar.

#13. SEO BUILDS TRUST

Your website’s titles and meta description tags are extremely important to strengthen your brand, helping you communicate a marketing message that is aligned with your strategic business goals.

Everybody “Googles” everything. Being on top of the SERPs boosts your trust and credibility.

The main goal is that when users are searching critical and relevant keywords/phrases for your business, they should find you at the top of the search results.

You must get inside the heads of your prospects. Speak their language. Feel their pain. Present them with a solution. Once you do, you will enhance your trust and credibility with your audience.

If your website doesn’t appear on the first page of Google results for your business critical keywords and phrases, you have a problem!

#14. SEO IMPROVES YOUR BRANDING

SEO can help you accelerating your branding campaign and make you memorable.

The more users visit your site and get familiar with your business, the higher are the chances that they visit you again and tell other people about you. SEO is an effective way to make this happen by ranking your website high and attracting web traffic.

#15. SEO IS A STRATEGY THAT WORKS LONG TERM

Good SEO can last long and keep your website on the front page of search results for years. Even after finishing your SEO work, your website can still rank high on your chosen keywords. However, it is better to continue with the services of an SEO expert or in-house team, or you will be putting in risk your great search ranking position.

SEO can be effective also in the short term and help businesses who need instant results. But SEO has a very important advantage over other marketing with a ‘short term’ focus:

It’s a continuous process. It will need constant tweaks, reviews and shifts to keep it moving in the right direction, so that it continues to deliver stellar results.

#16. SEO CAN BOOST OFFLINE SALES TOO

A very high percentage of sales offline are driven by online research. According to one of Nielsen‘s studies, 86% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses from which to buy offline.

This is the main reason why offline businesses should never ignore online marketing, and also why SEO becomes a crucial component of every offline company’s digital marketing strategy.

Your website acts as a 24/7 sales representative, open night and day to deliver qualified leads to your business.

#17. ONLY GOOD SEO WILL ATTRACT TRAFFIC WITH HIGH CONVERSION POTENTIAL

Web traffic from a good SEO campaign has a very high conversion potential.

By addressing your audience’s concerns and problems, build trust, and convincing prospects that your company is the best option for them, you can enjoy a high rate conversion of visitor to sales, this is why having an insightful SEO consultant can generate huge returns on your marketing budget spent on optimisation.

#18. SEO IS MEASURABLE

All elements of your SEO can be measured, evaluated and corrected.

By monitoring and measuring continuously, you can find out your return on every euro invested in SEO.

#19. GOOD SEO CAN BEAT PAID TRAFFIC

An exclusive focus on PPC ignores the large not visible component of the iceberg that is formed by search traffic.

SEO drives 75% of search traffic while PPC provides barely 25% but earns 80% of the Marketing Budget. If dominating the source of one-quarter of overall traffic gives you such excellent rewards, how much better will they get when you also control the rest?

#20. YOUR SEO EXPERT CAN BECOME YOUR BUSINESS WEAPON

Your SEO provider can:

• Find keywords and niches with great ROI where your business can make money easily
• Carry out market research and competitive analysis
• Help you build content to pull in traffic
• Run in-depth analyses of your business competitors, study their strategy, etc.
• Test your strategies against your competition
• Show you if the strategy is ineffective

This will save you money and time wasted in pursuing ownership of keywords or niches, leaving you to focus energy on more profitable areas. A good market pre-analysis can be priceless to the right company or business.

You can avoid wasting time and money chasing after the wrong targets, like more traffic that won’t convert, or higher rankings that don’t deliver the right prospects. Guesswork can lead to painful and costly surprises. SEO strategy eliminates these surprises and provides constant, reliable results.