Benefits of Search Engine Optimization

When we want something, what’s the first thing we do? Google it. Whether it’s answers, solutions, or products, the launch pad is search.

And because we all do this, we all know SEO is valuable for businesses.

So we reached out to our expert SEO community to get their take on the benefits of search engine optimization. Keep reading to hear what they had to say.

Want to see the benefits of search engine optimization in action? Then watch this blog SEO video to showing how to quickly optimize posts for driving search engine traffic.

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Increases Site Traffic

You have to fill the top of the funnel to start generating customers. And this is where SEO comes into play. Kenneth Burke from Text Request shares one of the top benefits of search engine optimization here.

It’s all about creating value and getting in front of people.

Every day, your target customers are searching online for answers to their questions. Search engine optimization gives you the chance to answer those questions.

As you create content and tailor your site to your audience’s needs, more and more people will find you. You start to answer more and more of their questions and provide solutions to more and more of their problems. You prove your company value before they’ve even swiped a card. Which makes people more likely to work with you. This approach inevitably brings you more customers and helps establish your business as an expert over the competition. That’s invaluable.

Improves Conversion Rates

High-quality visitors means high conversion rates for your site. David Mulqueen from Odd Dog Media shares a case study on the benefits of SEO for his clients below.

We’ve been developing an SEO campaign for a client of ours that has over 2,000 locations for the last 9 months. During that time period, we’ve seen conversion rates spike 4x higher from our local campaign than site averages, and despite only being the number four source of traffic, it’s the number two source of conversions.

As Google continuously makes changes to provide relevant, local results, you can see that people are trusting of these search results and as a result, we’re seeing higher conversion rates.

Builds Brand Authority

Why do users click top search engine results? Because high SEO rank is associated with a trusted brand. Here’s Christian Karasiewicz from Social Chefs on a major benefit of search engine optimization.

As a digital marketer, one of the main benefits I see is that SEO builds brand authority. Businesses have a goldmine of information available that they can write about and optimize for search engines. This can include questions they receive from customers at events or tradeshows, calls and emails from customers, and so on. Rather than repeat the same answers each time for your customers, businesses can turn them into blog posts that they optimize.

This gives you a quick means for customer response – you just send them a link to the article. This will strengthen your relationship with customers. If you optimize the content properly, you can also use it to bring in new customers as well!

The more you write about the issues your customers are having, the more you can build your brand authority. Over time, your business can become the definitive resource in your industry, serving existing customers and building a funnel of new prospects.

Generates Leads

When a searcher clicks your result and finds exactly what they’re looking for, your chances of generating a lead skyrocket. Jacob Dayan from Community Tax knows all about this.

We’re not an e-commerce business, but we depend on online traffic as a pipeline of new customer prospects. Some of these we can get from PPC campaigns and other paid media, but there is no substitute for having your website appear near the top of the organic rankings for relevant search queries.

You can get there by publishing good content, engaging in outreach and doing all the right on-page and technical SEO, but you have to sustain these efforts to keep pace with your competitors and search engine updates. We get a lot of our new clients from organic search result traffic, so there’s no question SEO is worth our time.

Drives High-Quality Visitors

What makes organic traffic valuable is the nature of the visitor. This is because visitors are searching for specific results that your business caters too. Kara Carpenter from Medology shares more on this below.

SEO is a great way for business owners to attract new customers and generate quality conversions. Let’s say you have a crane business. There’s a difference between a potential customer that wants a spare part and a potential customer that will order 50 cranes annually bringing in millions in revenue.

Good SEO is the bridge that connects businesses with their ideal customers. You can accomplish this by laying a strong foundation of valuable keyword targets from the get-go. Perform competitor research and ask business owners the right questions to uncover insights about the demographics of their customers. This will position the SEO to drive long-term valuable traffic for your business.

High ROI

Return on investment plays a major role in our digital marketing efforts. We want the best bang for our buck. And SEO is one tactic that delivers on ROI. Brandon Seymour from Beymour SEO shares his insights here.

SEO is the most cost-effective way for businesses to put themselves in front of potential customers searching online. When you use paid platforms like AdWords, you get precisely what you pay for. Obviously, you can optimize campaigns to lower cost-per-click and improve ROI, but you’ll always have pay to play.

SEO is a longer term investment, so the results have a better long-term value. Although SEO isn’t a one-time deal, the ROI tends to be much higher than other marketing channels. For that reason, if businesses are working on limited marketing budgets, it would be wise to focus the majority of your efforts on SEO and organic search visibility.