Why Your Business Needs Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of getting traffic from a free, organic, editorial or natural search result on search engines. When you search into Google, Bing, or Yahoo (which are the three main search engines), you get a result, or a search query (what the user types in). Google, Bing or Yahoo will try and match the user’s description, keyword, question, image, or video query up with what that search engine thinks the user is trying to look for. These searches can come from websites, such as blogs run by individual people, business websites run by companies and organizations, institutional or governmental based websites, and lastly, informational ones, like Wikipedia.com, Encylopedia.com, or Ask.com, just to name a few of the popular ones.
What are the benefits of SEO?
- Increased Traffic: Allowing you to possibly reside within the first few result pages on the search engine. Ranking in these top positions on the first page is fairly important, most users never click through to the second or even third page in a search engine.
- Return on Investment (ROI): SEO provides quantifiable data and tracking metrics, so companies and organizations can set benchmarks against rankings, traffic, and conversions. No matter if you are a business or e-commerce platform, a well laid out SEO strategy can help attract and keep the right prospective customers where you want them to be for a longer period of time.
- Cost Effective: It is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. It allows us to target users who are already actively looking for your products or services online, or it can lead them to you if they are moving from an awareness stage in the buying process to a shop or buy mentality for a product or service.
- Increased Site Usability: Not only is it important for Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. to be able to easily maneuver (crawl) your site, it is increasingly important for the user to have a satisfactory experience on your site. By having links and pages laid out in a way that makes it easier to use, it means the customers will most likely stay on your site longer and find what they are looking for.
- Brand Awareness: Ranking within the top pages of the search engine means that your website can get more exposure. When you are on the first search results page for your specific keywords you have utilized on your website, it allows the users to associate the words to your products, services, or brands and can help create trust, as websites that are on the first page are seen as trustworthy sources.
Like what you read? For more information on how SEO could be beneficial to your website, or for a free SEO consultation, please contact us and we would be happy to help. We are proudly serving the Grand Rapids, Michigan and surrounding West Michigan areas.