SEO – these three capital letters are so shrouded in mystery that many people consider them understandable only by a handful of highly-skilled specialists with almost esoteric knowledge and nearly inhumane capabilities. Well, that’s the legend, at the very least. The truth is much less complicated, much more mundane, and really easy to use to your benefit (though the part about highly-skilled specialists still applies). That’s why, in collaboration with Octamedia SEO Agency, we decided to tell you a bit more about the real SEO meaning, how SEO can help your business to grow and is it really worth to invest your money and time in SEO for business. Hop on, our journey begins!
Search Engine Optimization – what is it, and how does it work?
Judging from the fact that you’re here reading this, we may safely assume that you’ve already did some research about SEO in relevance to your business, but the results weren’t exactly… exact. You probably know already what SEO is – a process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to your website from search engines. This definition is all nice and fluffy, but it does not provide a good answer to the most fundamental question, which is…
…what does SEO do for a company, exactly?
If you’re wondering how SEO helps your business to grow and flourish, here’s more information on that. The main goal of SEO is to optimize your company’s website in order to improve its visibility in the search results for queries related to your business. And to do that for as many keywords (relevant ones, of course) as possible – but only those keywords that are actually used by your potential customers. Still, that’s only the beginning of SEO magic, and there are many other benefits to SEO as well. Let’s take a look at some of them.
1. SEO saves you money. And a lot of it, actually
How? It’s really simple – although SEO marketing seems to be quite a costly endeavor, at least initially, in the long run SEO costs you less and less while providing you with more and more benefits. To name a few most important ones: your website is better visible on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your brand becomes more recognizable, and you don’t have to spend huge amounts of money on PPC campaigns (Pay Per Click) to get customers.
2. SEO generates long-term traffic to your website
A constant (and consistent) flow of potential customers is what your business needs the most in order to run and thrive, isn’t it? Thanks to SEO, you will eventually get that traffic and with it will also come new customers, but you will have to wait some time for that to happen. Why? The answer is simple: SEO is not a magic spell or a miracle, it requires time to work. Take it slowly and steadily, and you will get results that last – the more time and effort invested in SEO, the better and greater the outcome.
3. SEO increases your company’s credibility
It is always nice to be considered reliable and trustworthy, and as it happens, the same applies to yours very website. But whether it’s about the real life or the Internet, authority (the REAL one) isn’t something you build up overnight. How can SEO help your business in this regard, you ask? Well, it’s all down to making your website visible high in the search engine results by making it user-friendly, full of useful, high-quality content and optimized both in terms of backlinks (links leading to your website from other trustworthy, thematically related websites) and frequent updates with the relevant information. The keyword here is “patience”.
4. SEO fixes your website
While this part of “SEO magic” may seem to you not really that important, in fact it is crucial: nowadays, people don’t like ugly websites, difficult to navigate menus or non-responsive web designs. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg: there’s an unpleasantly high probability that the structure of your website does not meet today’s standards, which in turn makes it basically forgotten by the search engine robots. Properly conducted Search Engine Optimization can fix this problem, making your site visible, recognized, happily crawled by the search engine robots and displayed to all those millions of internet users who aren’t your customers. Yet.
But SEO for small business isn’t necessary, right? Right!?
Wrong, actually. Absolutely, completely wrong. The truth is simple and brutal: EVERY modern business, no matter how large or small, needs to be known to its potential customers, unless we’re talking about the kind of business that lasts only for a few months before disappearing into thin air. Which, obviously, is NOT the one you decided to run.
When it comes to small businesses, the reality is even more cruel – the competition is usually rather high, the market is quite merciless and your share of the pie is definitely not as large as you would like it to be. Investment in SEO for small local business may in such circumstances be a real game-changer: every increase of visibility makes your business stronger and more profitable, and taking your business to the digital market is always the right decision in the XXI-st century.
To sum it up: Search Engine Optimization is your best friend in this era, so if you haven’t invested in SEO marketing as of yet, do not hesitate any longer even if your competition doesn’t seem to be concerned about that “fancy” SEO stuff. Let them do business their way and make their ignorance your bliss. Instead of asking yourself “what can SEO do for my business” just give it a try – you won’t be disappointed.
This article was written in collaboration with Maciej Cherubin from Octamedia SEO Agency.
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