Why Use SEO?

No matter how internet-savvy you might be, you’ll be forgiven for not knowing much, or anything, about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Whether your knowledge of SEO is non-existent, or you’ve been doing some yourself for your own business but are looking for some extra help from industry-experts to improve your website visibility, we want to help you understand what SEO is, why use SEO, and what results you can hope to achieve from a solid SEO strategy.

What is SEO?

SEO is a way to organically market your website, helping to improve website visibility, thereby showcasing your business to many potential customers. SEO uses a variety of tactics, such as writing regular content, making your website perform better and quicker, and building up links that go from other websites to yours. All of this lets search engines know that you are a strong contender within your industry. This, in turn, means you appear higher up in more searches, which promotes you to people searching for your products or services.

Why is SEO important?

It’s all very well and good understanding what SEO roughly is, but you’re asking why you should use it. Why use SEO? Because your competitors are. If they aren’t, then that’s an even better reason to use SEO, as you have an opportunity to steal that easy website visibility from them whilst they’re not looking. SEO is important because if there are two websites from two similar companies in the same area offering the same products or services, Google (and other search engines) have to pick one of them to show up at the top when people search for that service. Which they do – people search for products and services a lot.

So, if they have to pick someone, then it is important that they pick you. By using SEO to get you to the top position on that search results page, you have greatly improved website visibility and you’re around 35% more likely to be clicked on by a potential customer than others further down the results page. You’re also 100% more likely to be clicked on than someone who is not ranking at all because they’ve had no SEO work done to their website.

Once that customer is on your website, SEO does not stop there. An SEO agency or in-house team will also have made your website fast to load and user friendly. These things don’t just make a search engine prefer you – a user will prefer you, too. It’s this SEO work that makes it more likely that a visitor to your website will become a customer.SEO is important because having a website without SEO likely means you won’t be found online by those looking for your products and services, which means you lose out on potential customers and income, and your competitors gain lots of website traffic and customers instead. When you improve website visibility, you improve your exposure, and you have achieved organic marketing.

Advantages of SEO

The benefits of SEO include:

• • Improved website visibility on search engine results pages, meaning your brand is exposed to more potential customers
  • A faster website
  • A website with a better user experience
  • Regular content, which makes your brand more authoritative
  • Stronger directory listings due to off-site SEO strengthening your online reputation
  • SEO changes will make visitors to your website more likely to become customers

Why Use Local SEO?

Local SEO is a great way to organically market your business to customers in your area who are actively looking to buy the products or services you offer. By using a range of local ranking signals, a local SEO strategy will aim to organically rank you for your keywords in your area and increase your website traffic.

Local SEO has many similarities to general SEO, but it is more focused on building up your SEO ‘signals’ in your local community – and it is arguably more important. Local SEO is great organic marketing for people with small businesses that just service a local area. When you run a small, local business, it is crucial that you show up in things like the local maps on Google and other search engines, and that you’re listed on local directories. It’s crucial because, for local services, trust is important to the potential customer above anything else. You would not hire a plumber that you didn’t think you could trust in your house.

Local SEO will build up the brand authority and the trust in your business online, meaning people in your area are more likely to come to you rather than your competitor.  When someone asks me ‘why use SEO?’, the best reply I can think of is ‘why have a website?’ When you don’t use SEO on your site, you may as well have no website at all. Having a website with proper SEO implemented gives you an amazing opportunity to showcase your business to an incalculable number of potential customers.

You wouldn’t fill a shop with amazing products and great customer service staff but then not put it somewhere people can actually find it; if you don’t use SEO and don’t use local SEO, you’re hiding your business down a dark alleyway, off a street that no one goes down because it’s simply too far to walk – a street they don’t trust anyway because they don’t know what lurks down there.  Are you convinced? Think it’s about time you investigate using SEO for your company? Contact us today and we’ll come to visit you to explain why you should use SEO in your business, and exactly what bespoke SEO package will best suit your needs. Call us today on 0800 772 0650.