Top Five Benefits of SEO for Business

We live in a digital world.

That much has been true for the best part of 20 years now, and it has never been more important for businesses to focus on their digital output than it is right now.

We’ll get onto the benefits of SEO for business over other digital marketing practices shortly, but firstly, it’s time to discuss the basics.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. In its most simplistic form, it is the method used to increase the amount of traffic through to a website through organic search engine results.

It really is that simple, on the face of it anyway. Behind the scenes, there’s a lot that goes into SEO. Allow us to explain.

How SEO Works

Whichever search engine you use, websites with high-quality SEO will rank at the top of them. Bing, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo – they all have their own algorithms that determine how well a page ranks.

However, we’ll focus on the mother of all search engines – Google. After all, any product that has become a verb in its own right deserves our full attention. We’ve all said it, “I’ll Google it for you.”

How many times a day do you type a search term into Google? The ‘Big G’ processes over 3.5 billion searches per day, with the average person performing between three and four searches each day.

However, have you ever stopped to think about exactly how a particular web page made it to the top of Google’s search results?

In essence, Google has a particularly intelligent ‘crawler’ that gathers information from all the different corners of the Internet. We won’t get too technical on it, but these crawlers go out in search of authoritative web pages on a certain topic. The more boxes a page ticks in their authority search, the higher up on Google it will appear.

For example, a quick search of Google for the term “how much do banks spend on marketing”, and you’ll find our recent blog post at the very top. That’s because our team of copywriters brilliantly collaborated with our SEO department in a bid to dominate that search term. Make no mistake; we have all the tools available to us to repeat that success for your business.

A little tip – gone are the days of simply stuffing relevant keywords onto your page as much as possible. There was once a time when that would work. However, Google has become hugely intellectual in its advanced years, and will not only spot what is commonly known as ‘keyword stuffing’, but will penalise a website for doing so. Once penalised by Google, it is very difficult to rank well again in the future. So be careful of that.

Benefits of SEO for Business: Our Top 5 Tips

If you have taken your business online, well done, you’ve already taken the first step. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for? Once people get wind of a service or product, the first thing they tend to do is research on the Internet. If your business isn’t on the World Wide Web, you’re already facing an uphill struggle.

Without further ado, let’s get down to how your business can take advantage of search engine optimisation. We managed to drag our SEO Manager, Oskar Nowik, away from his hectic schedule of dominating search engine pages to give his top five benefits of SEO for business.

Organic Traffic Converts Like a Dream

There is no doubting that paid advertising has its benefits. We discussed as much in our recent blog explaining how PPC works.

However, the clear advantage that SEO has over paid traffic, is that it converts so much better. Instead of interrupting people on the internet with pop ups or ads, SEO works because you are putting yourself in front of people who were already searching for your product or service.

For instance, if somebody has searched on Google for ‘best Manchester tattoo parlours’ and come across a tattoo business at the top of their search results, you have put yourself in the best possible position for that person to convert. In fact, a recent study by Sistrix found that the average clickrate for the first position in Google is 28.5%. Not bad at all considering that SEO can be performed on a budget, if not for no cost at all.

SEO is More Affordable Than Paid Advertising

While we’re on the subject of cost, let’s discuss how much more affordable SEO is than paid advertising.

Consider SEO as similar to planting seeds in a garden. You plant the seeds now in the hope that they grow into beautiful trees in the future. The same can be said for SEO. Sure, paid advertising may return more immediate results, but it is much more costly to do so.

In industries such as legal, gambling, finance and health, the cost per click in a PPC campaign is particularly high, meaning that paid advertising can potentially require quite a budget.

You’ll need no such budget for an SEO campaign, which we’re sure will be music to your ears.

Longevity

Did you like the tree analogy? To expand, top-quality SEO work will pay off for years to come. Once you rank your content, you don’t need to pay anything to keep it at the top of Google. Sounds like a winner, right?

Paid media is, in theory, artificially inflated growth. Bidding for a spot on the first page of Google can be extremely expensive, but if it works, the short-term benefits can be huge. If you’re running a short campaign and want results fast, this technique can be extremely effective. However, once you stop paying, you won’t find yourself on the first page of Google for very long.

The same cannot be said for SEO. Good things come to those who wait, after all? With a well thought out SEO strategy, you can expect to see positive results in the first six months. The beauty of SEO is that once a page ranks well, it is there to stay. You can afford to allocate time and resource elsewhere, safe in the knowledge that the SEO work you have already put in will continue working away without your input.

Huge Audience Building Potential

For those businesses with a big budget, you can scale your SEO efforts with a national campaign and target an array of keywords. With this method, the potential of building an audience with SEO is huge.

We discussed the possibilities of ranking for the ‘best Manchester tattoo parlours’, which is an ideal method for local business.

But what if your business is on a national scale? Perhaps your business sells gym equipment throughout the UK. That is just one example, but for any product or service that is available throughout all of the UK, a national campaign will almost certainly be the best approach.

In theory, any e-commerce store would be better focusing on national SEO, while our Mancunian tattooist would be best served with a local SEO campaign.

With quality content, a national SEO campaign can acquire a massive audience.

SEO Isn’t Going Anywhere

At the risk of sounding like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Wolf of Wall Street, SEO isn’t, erm, going anywhere.

We’ve seen the likes of MySpace and Vine come and go, but we’re sure you don’t need us to tell you that Google isn’t at risk of facing the same fate.

It has been around for well over 20 years, and its popularity and importance continues to grow year on year.

In reality, Google has become much more than a tech company. It is now a global commodity that is used in all corners of the planet.

With this in mind, if you can put your business at the top of Google, you put yourself out there in front of the entire world.

Feeling pumped? Good, let’s do this!

ActiveWin and SEO: A Match Made in Heaven

We hope that we have sold the benefits of SEO for your business as passionately as we intended to. Our SEO team truly believe in the work that they do, and their enthusiasm is easily portrayed in their campaigns.

We are experts in SEO and our record speaks for itself. Whether your business is local or national, we have the tools to put you in front of an audience that are searching for your very service or product.