As a business owner in today’s digital landscape, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) offers a multitude of benefits to help your business thrive in the ever-evolving online environment. We’ll explore the 15 best benefits of incorporating SEO into your marketing strategy for 2023.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is the process of making your website more visible to search engines like Google and Bing.
SEO can help you gain more traffic from organic search results. In other words, people looking for what your business offers are more likely to find your website if it’s been optimised for SEO. Only the largest, most profitable businesses can afford massive print, digital, and television marketing campaigns, however, SEO is inexpensive and effective (yes please)!
Top 15 SEO benefits
With the right SEO strategy, businesses can unlock a bunch of benefits that can drive their growth and success in the digital space. Incorporating SEO into your digital strategy can help increase your website’s visibility, attract relevant traffic, improve the user experience, establish credibility, and increase revenue, among other things.
1. Increased website traffic
By optimising your website for search engines, you can improve your visibility in search results, driving more organic traffic to your website.
When a user types a search query into a search engine, such as Google, the search engine returns a list of relevant websites/pages in the search results. If someone then clicks on one of the pages it counts as an organic user visiting that page. For example, if you searched “what are the benefits of SEO” and clicked on this blog, you would count as an organic user.
Google processes over 3.5 billion searches per day! And this is growing more and more every year. So it’s safe to say that there’s potential for a lot of people to see your website through search engines like Google. But, an analysis of searches on Google found that just 0.63% of people click on the second page of the search results. Which is why it’s so important to leverage the power of SEO. You want to make sure that your website is ranking on page 1 (at least) for different search queries to ensure you’re getting the most amount of organic traffic possible.
2. Improved user experience
SEO involves optimising various elements of your website, including its structure and content, to make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate, improving user experience (UX).
Although SEO is strongly focused on optimising the website for search engines so that you can rank higher in the search results. A byproduct of this is that users will find it much easier to navigate and engage with the site which will improve your UX.
3. Greater brand awareness
Do you want to establish yourself as a leader in your industry among a massive amount of competition? With such a dense competitive landscape for businesses, it can be challenging to stand out. Implementing a robust SEO strategy is an effective way to achieve this objective. By optimising your website to rank higher in search engine results, you can increase your brand’s visibility and establish yourself as the go-to for your audience.
4. Improved conversion rates
SEO can also help to improve conversion rates, which is the percentage of users who take a desired action on a website after they have clicked on a result in SERPs. A higher conversion rate means more users are taking the desired action, such as making a purchase, calling you, or signing up for a newsletter. SEO can help to improve conversion rates by making it easier for users to find the information they need on a website. Though, this starts to lean into the world of Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO), which is a whole other discussion.
5. Cost-effective marketing
SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy, as it allows businesses to target specific audiences and drive traffic to their website without relying on paid advertising. Whether you attempt to tackle SEO yourself or engage an SEO agency, it can be a lot more cost-effective than other marketing strategies out there.
6. Keeps you ahead of competitors
One aspect of a good SEO strategy is gaining insight into what your competitors are doing and what keywords they rank for. Tools like Semrush provides businesses with valuable competitive intelligence by showing which keywords their competitors are targeting and ranking for in the search results. It also shows which pages on their website are driving traffic. By analysing this data, you can gain insights into what your audience is searching for, identify opportunities and discover what your competitors are lacking. For example, you may notice they aren’t ranking for a keyword that you often hear used in your industry, this would be a perfect keyword to target.
7. Long-term sustainable results
If your SEO is done right, it can continue to deliver results for months or even years after implementation. Now, this does depend on how long you were implementing it for, how much was done, and a range of other factors. But generally speaking, if done correctly, SEO is a long-term strategy that can sustain results for your business for years to come.
Paid advertising strategies act much like a billboard, your ad goes up and you get traffic and eyes on your brand. Once that ad comes down, so does the traffic. SEO, although sometimes taking longer to see results, will often retain those results and can’t just be ‘turned off’.
8. Reduced bounce rates
Bounce rate is a metric used in web analytics that measures the percentage of users who leave a website after viewing only one page, without interacting with any other pages on the website.
SEO can help reduce bounce rates by improving the relevance and quality of your website’s content, making it more likely that users will stay on the website for longer periods of time and engage with other parts of the site.
9. Website analytics
A good SEO strategy will include the use of web analytics tracking tools on your website such as Google Analytics. This will allow you to understand how your website is performing. Key metrics you can measure with analytics tools include how many users are visiting your site, where they’re coming from, what device they’re using, what gender they are, if they’ve visited your site before, how long they spend on the site, if they end up calling you or purchasing a product, and this is only just scraping the surface of what these tools can do.
These valuable insights on user behaviour will help you make informed decisions about your marketing strategy (not just the SEO component).
10. Amplify the success of other marketing channels/strategies
A well-executed SEO campaign can assist other marketing strategies and their results.
As mentioned, SEO involves generating high-quality content and optimising pages for keywords (or search queries). Due to this, SEO can improve the quality score of your PPC campaigns, resulting in better ad positioning and lower costs per click. By optimising landing pages for SEO, businesses can improve ad relevance and user experience, leading to higher click-through rates and better ad performance.
SEO can support your social media strategy, by developing strong content on the site that can be used throughout your social media as well. Identifying what your audience is searching and looking for through SEO keyword research will also allow you to align a similar strategy on social media.
SEO can help businesses improve their local search visibility through platforms like Google Business Profile and directories, making it easier for local customers to find their business online.
Sometimes off-page SEO is referred to as a type of digital PR. When acquiring backlinks, one strategy that is commonly used is getting featured on other websites such as news sites, that then link back to your website.
SEO can work hand-in-hand with other marketing strategies such as PPC advertising, social media, content marketing, local optimisation, public relations, and so on. By implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy, businesses can support and enhance their overall marketing efforts and drive growth.
11. Improved click-through rates
CTR is the percentage of users who click on a result on the search engine results page. A higher CTR means that more users are clicking on a website’s result, which can lead to increased traffic. SEO can also help to improve the click-through rate (CTR) of a website by making sure you rank for relevant search terms and also optimising your meta titles and descriptions to grab the attention of your users and get the clicks. There’s also a thing called schema markup that allows you to have other features in the search engine results page that will grab the attention of users.
12. It’s 24/7 advertising
Unlike types of paid advertising, which can disappear when you run out of budget for the month. With unique and optimised content, your business can continue to benefit from SEO 24/7.
This allows you to cater to your customer’s needs at all times, ensuring that your business remains visible and competitive in the market.
13. Allows you to target the entire marketing funnel
Different parts of your SEO strategy should be targeting different parts of the marketing funnel.
At the top of the funnel, SEO can target users who are not yet aware of your brand or the products/services you offer. This can be done by creating informational content and targeting keywords at the top of the funnel, such as problems the user may have that your product or service would solve, an example for us at Five by Five would be someone searching “I need more website visitors”.
In the middle of the funnel, users are considering different options and weighing the pros and cons of different brands and products/services. SEO can target these users by optimising or creating content for product or service-related keywords and by creating informative and persuasive content that highlights the values of their products/service e.g. “Is SEO worth it?”.
At the bottom of the funnel, users are ready to make a purchase or take action. SEO can target these users by optimising or creating content to target transactional keywords and by using clear calls-to-action that guide users towards a conversion. An example of this would be someone searching directly for your product or service, or a slight iteration of it e.g. “SEO agency”.
14. SEO improves website speed
Website speed has always been known as an important ranking signal for search engines like Google. Any experienced SEO agency will have a big focus on this and ensure your website feels smooth when loading and navigating. This not only helps your rankings but will have a significant impact on users’ experience with your website and brand.
15. Increased revenue
The end goal of most marketing campaigns is more revenue for the business. This isn’t different with SEO. Increasing traffic, UX, CTR, conversion rates, and so on, ultimately leads to more enquiries, purchases, sign-ups, or whatever your goal is.
Leverage the benefits of SEO
So if you’re looking to drive more traffic to your site, SEO is the way to go. Just be sure to check out our SEO guide before getting started so you can optimise your site the right way. Alternatively, If you’re not sure where to start with your SEO strategy, don’t worry, Five by Five can help you leverage the benefits of SEO. We’re a full-service digital marketing agency that specialises in SEO that really works. Fill out our Digital Strategy Scorecard today or book a discovery call to start your SEO journey.
