As of this writing, the exact number of websites was 1,235,539,531 and rising by the millisecond. Statistically, there are likely hundreds of thousands of websites competing in your business category.
You want your most motivated buyers to find you at the moment that they’re ready to buy. So how can you compete with all that traffic? Search engine optimization (SEO) is a range of strategies and tactics to make you rank more highly in search results and is a tool to make those instant connections.
So what are the benefits of SEO?
Cost efficiency
If you buy an ad on Google, you pay every time someone clicks on it, whether they buy from you or not. But with organic (unpaid) site traffic gained through effective SEO, you don’t pay any more even if you get millions of clicks.
Higher return on investment
With digital ads, the average conversion rate is 2%. With strategic SEO, the average conversion rate is 4%, and you don’t pay for all those clicks. If there are a thousand searches a day for your products or services, that’s roughly 40 leads a day you didn’t get yesterday, and it repeats every day!
Trust
People trust that the first organic listing in Google is a reputable company, perhaps the best in category. They also tend to believe that the top search results contain the most reliable information. After all, why else would they show up at the top? With SEO, you can claim that spot and become the person to beat.
If your SEO is good enough that your top tier listing includes a display of subpages right in the search results, you can gain credibility and visibility that no ad can top.
Long-lasting results
Optimized pages remain optimized. You can continue to rank highly or optimized keywords for years after your investment into SEO. Depending on how thorough the optimizations and how motivated your competitors, your rank could theoretically be maintained forever.
Connect with self-identified customers
Search engines report that when it comes to internet searches, 50-60% of clicks go to the first result. 91% of searchers don’t go past page one of search results. Make sure you are on that first page, and then fight your way to the #1 spot!
Consumers spend more time online than ever before. If someone types in the name of your product or service, you want them to find you. Make sure you have a strategy so that they do!
Learn about how we approach SEO.