For anyone not in the marketing or SEO industry, SEO can seem a little bit of a buzzword. You may be wondering “why is SEO important?” so I’m here to explain in simple terms why. If you understand the basic principles behind SEO practices, you’ll discover how they can help your business expand in the digital age.
What is SEO?
To understand why SEO is important you first need a basic understanding of what SEO is.
SEO is about helping Search Engines (SEs) understand your website and the content you’ve placed on it. SEO helps SEs determine whether they should present a website to its users. The practice of SEO is about making small modifications to your site that will improve your ranking with SEs. To find out more about what SEO is and how SEs work, see the main article, What is SEO?
Why is SEO Important?
From an overarching perspective, search engines run the world now. The majority of us in the UK will not go a day without googling something. So much so that ‘to google’ is a verb in the dictionary and has been since 2006. If you are a business that has information, goods or services that people want and that are available online, then you want people to find you. Search engine optimisation (SEO) allows businesses to appear higher up a search engine results page. This will make the web pages infinitely more likely to be visited by a customer who is searching for those goods or services. But SEO is more important than that initial look at the top of Google.
Improves Awareness and Visibility
The primary goal of SEO is to get your website to appear in the number one position for organic search results on a SE. To be shown at these positions, a website needs to rank for the word or phrase that a user searches for. The search engine results pages (SERPs) will display the websites they think are most relevant to the searcher’s queries. These results are a combination of all elements of good SEO such as keyword ranking, domain authority, site optimisations and the list goes on.
Although the goal is more about visibility, it should be remembered that there is a caveat to that. A website should only be presented in the number one slot to the right kinds of people at the right time. There is no point in being shown in the top position for a search term that is not relevant to your core goods and services or has a very low search volume.
By being shown on the first page of Google or another SE, you are improving your brand awareness and visibility. This is the first reason why SEO is important for your marketing strategy.
Gain Traffic to your Website
Once you have acquired a good position in a search engine, you can gain the next essential goal; traffic. Only 0.78% of Google searchers click on something from the second page so being on the first page is much more likely to gain you traffic. The majority of clicks go to the top three positions, but you can make that click more likely by using on-page optimisations. By creating titles and descriptions that entice the reader and answer the query they are searching for, they are more likely to click through.
Improves Engagement
Once you have gained an audience you need to make sure you keep them there. As above, this starts with ensuring that you are ranking for relevant information. There is no point in sending users to your site if they are not going to be interested in your product. But once you’ve got qualified people on your page, you need to keep them there. Keeping users on a website longer will increase the chance of them performing the action you want from them (buying something, contacting you etc.). User experience elements of SEO come in to play at this point; usability, design, site speed. This combines technical SEO and design-led SEO. Not only will these elements improve your ranking with SEs, but they will also increase your conversions with customers.
Builds Trust
Sometimes a user is not ready to make that final step but that doesn’t mean they won’t eventually. SEO is important because it can help you build long-term trust with your business. When web pages are designed well, present things customers want to read, show content that displays knowledge and expertise, it will build trust. Once you’ve created a relationship with a reader, you are more likely to convert them later on. This combines the SEO skills of on-page optimisation, content marketing and user experience design. SEO is important in this aspect because it’s about the long game. Of course, there is no quick way to build trust, it must be earned. SEO is the way to do that.
Why is Search Engine Optimisation Important? A Summary
Why is SEO important? Because it can be utilised to support the whole customer journey from Googling your goods all the way through to the purchase. It’s not just about ranking number one, SEO is about the full user journey.
SEO is important because it:
- Improves your brand visibility and awareness about your company
- Increases traffic to your site
- Helps you improve the user engagement of your site, which leads to conversions
- Builds long-term trust with uses, which also leads to conversions
SEO is essential for digital marketing in the 21st century. If you’d like to focus on your SEO strategy, get in touch with me today. Let’s grow your business together.