7 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO
As a business owner, if you know about Digital Marketing, you probably know that you need SEO for your website.
The primary reason you want SEO is to rank on the first page of google. You also know that if your site is ranking on the first page in Google, then it is worth investing in SEO.
SEO is worth and will always be.
But ranking on the first page is not the only benefit SEO brings for you to take SEO seriously. SEO will improve your website’s overall visibility as it will start appearing in Google searches, but there are other fundamental values that SEO offers.
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In this article, I will clarify to business owners why you need SEO rather than paid ads for your business.
How using SEO, you can take your brand to the next level with SEO. This is regardless of the industry you belong to or the size of your business.
1: The Ad Costs are Increasing
Facebook ad costs and Google pay-per-click cost has doubled in the last few years. The cost to acquire a lead through Facebook and Google ads has increased tremendously. The cost has been increasing every year. If you run an ad for INR 10 a click last year, it is at least INR 20 a click now.
2: The Quality of Leads is decreasing
Even though the lead acquisition cost has increased, the lead quality has decreased. With the increased cost, one would have expected to get quality leads and convert them into buyers.
But that’s not the case anymore. Paid ad campaigns are now not as profitable as before.
I am seeing a marked decrease in the quality of leads I get from the paid ads campaigns I run for my customers.
What is the reason?
This is because your buyers are saturated with ads. They see several ads every day in your business category, and they are not just clicking on your ads but also your competitors.
Audiences are now Smarter than before. They aren’t clicking ads or filling out the lead forms like earlier. Some are using ad blockers and other tools to block the ads. They are more worried about their privacy.
In the past, buyers have clicked on ads with tall claims, but when they transacted with them, they had a bad experience. So customers have changed their perception of the ads and don’t trust their ads.
3: You are approaching it Wrong
Are you approaching your paid ad campaigns as your sales/conversion drivers?
Are you running your ad campaigns such that you want to convert your cold or first-time audience into leads or customers?
I’m sure many are doing this. What was the result of those campaigns? The answer, in all probability, is – Low response.
The response is low because you cannot convert someone who knows very little about you or your business and try to convert them into your customer with one single ad.
Conversions no longer happen like that. It happens in stages over an extended buying cycle.
4: SEO has a positive impact on the Buying Cycle
The buying cycle starts with awareness. A buyer who is facing a problem has to know about your solution. Then he should know how your solution can solve his problem, how it will benefit him, and why he should buy it from you instead of all other competitors.
A lot happens when the buyer realizes he has a problem, searches the internet, finds you and decides to purchase your solution to fix his problem.
This is called a buyer’s journey or buying cycle. You can no longer transform the customer with just one ad.
Let’s assume you are running a paid ads campaign for your product or service on Google. If your ad landing page is good, you may get 1% or 2% of direct conversions, which will directly come to you.
It means that 98% of those who clicked your ads left without taking action.
You can still retarget them with more ads and increase your conversion rate by another 3%. Still, it leaves 95% of your visitors out. If you have the best ad copy and a highly effective sales copy, you could get 10% of your audience to convert.
Even then, 90% of your audiences are not opting for you. That’s where most of your paid ad campaigns end. You cannot keep repeating your campaigns and retargeting your leaked customers until they convert. The cost of such repeat ads and retargeting is too high. Isn’t it?
SEO solves this problem.
5: SEO Means Increased Traffic, Engagement & Conversions
Customers do their research. That’s one of the most significant advantages of the internet from a buyer’s perspective.
Use this to your advantage. First, create relevant content to attract visitors to your website, engage them at different stages of the funnel, and finally convert them.
Get a good SEO agency or SEO expert who will work and create great content. Creating great content is mostly a one-time effort.
After that, you need to add more juice (relevancy) to the content consistently to retain its position at the top of the search results.
Then you build content for all the stages of the buyer’s journey and implement it on your website. People at this particular stage can find the content through search engines, visit it, consume it and then a few of them will become your sales lead.
These leads can come back anytime again for more content, check out your product or service offerings, and eventually become your customers.
All this will happen without you doing anything.
No sequential ads and no retargeting ad campaigns are required. No repeated ad money to be spent. Isn’t it great?
6: SEO Builds Trust & Credibility
Since the audience has found your website via search engines, he trusts it more because he understands it takes a lot of work to rank at the top of the search results. Running the ads is much more straightforward for any seller he pays to get the buyer’s attention.
A lead acquired with a search result is much better than one obtained with ads. These leads will convert to a buyer faster than the ad route lead because the buyer takes all the actions here without any external push. He has taken all the action himself.
And the best part is you’ll keep getting website visitors forever unless you stop updating your content. In that case, someone else will outrank you. If you update your content regularly, you can rank for more keywords spanning different stages of your customer journey.
That is how SEO is much more powerful and valuable than ever in these times, significantly when the ad costs are rising while the ad trust is decreasing.
7: SEO Brings New Opportunities to Light
Applying quality SEO to your business means submersing an SEO expert along with you and your brand. He has to understand your passion for the business and brand truly.
The better he understands your business, the more opportunities he will find with SEO for your business to thrive.
High-quality SEO will always discover new opportunities for your business. The better a customer’s need is understood, the more product or services you can offer and thrive. You can leverage these opportunities and outshine your competitors with an early mover advantage.
Conclusion:
Implementing strong, quality SEO on a brand’s website with relevant content will always benefit that business and its marketing efforts.
SEO with buyer-specific content is the “new age” marketing technique. It’s critical to a brand’s growth today, especially as competition continues to increase and grow.
