What Is SEO & Why It’s Good For Your Business?
Have you ever been told you need to “SEO Your Site”?
With no idea what it means or how to begin?
That’s completely ok, most small business and more specifically service based local business are in the same situation. Trying to get new customers is hard enough and now people are telling you another marketing thing you should do.
Now if you don’t think SEO is important for your business or simply don’t know what it is, hopefully the following will help you.
Let’s start with the facts:
-72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within five miles. (WordStream, 2016)
-30% of mobile searches are related to a location. (Google, 2016)
-28% of searches for something nearby result in a purchase. (Google, 2016)
-Local searches lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores within one day. (Google, 2018)
-Nearly one-third of all mobile searches are location-based queries. (The SEM Post, 2016)
What this means is the potential revenue and new customers a business can gain get from search is tremendous.
Almost all business models will benefit from SEO.
Here’s a list of just a few:
Service Based Business
Offering services such as construction or consulting services.
Physical Location
People physically need to find your location to use your services. Dentists, Physiotherapists, and Mechanics would fall under this category.
Ecommerce
Self-Explanatory. You sell a product or service online.
Software
Your business offers software solutions that help solve issues. Great examples are CRM’s, Accounting programs etc.
Now… What is SEO?
SEO is the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears high on the list of results returned by a search engine. In its basic form it is Search Engine Optimization. Google and Bing are search engines, so it is the process of optimizing your website to show up higher in Google and Bing.
Why Is This Important to Making More Money in Your Business?
This is important because the way customers find businesses has completely changed. Ask yourself… if you were to look for a great massage therapist near where you live how would you go about finding them?
Google most of the time…or Bing (the other 16% of the time)
It’s simple.
Now optimizing is important because the amount of value on the first page is much greater than page 2. How often do you visit page 2?
In Fact:
- 91.5 percent: Is the average traffic share generated by the sites listed on the first Google search results page.(Chitika)
This means that if you’re on page 2, you don’t exist online.
Let’s dig further.
- 32.5 percent: Is the average traffic share the first Google organic search result gets. (Chitika)
Do you agree now the value in SEO?
The next question… how does it work?
Well Google and Bing amongst other search engines have what is known as an algorithm that they use to determine which websites show up where.
This algorithm uses 200 ranking factors in a big math formula that calculates which website best matches the query (what words you search with).
Don’t be overwhelmed… Some factors are much more important than others and have more direct impacts on your website’s rankings in Google.
Some of the most important factors include:
Direct website visits
Time on site
Pages per Session
Bounce rate
Total referring domains
~SEMrush 17 Most Prominent Ranking Factors
If you notice by the above 5 factors 4/5 are known as user behaviour metrics.
Google wants to give each person’s search request (Query) the highest quality result.
Why?
Because if Google didn’t focus on quality, why would anyone ever use it? The goal is to find what you’re looking for as fast as possible, so they do their best to give you just that.
Since Google can’t ask every single person how their experience is they have to rely on other signals. These are the ranking factors we were talking about.
Things like Time on Site.
In General if someone spend a lot of time on a website it’s a great indicator that they are interested in what they are reading or watching.
Bounce rate
Which is the percentage of people who click and leave the website. This typically happens when you realize the website you just clicked on is not what you are looking for.
Performing poorly in these areas in comparison to other businesses who compete for the same rankings will have your website rankings dropping very quickly.
We will go through the most important factors, how to measure them and how to improve them in upcoming content.
For now, it’s about grasping the overall understanding of SEO and how it works.
Proof is in the pudding
Let us continue with an interesting fact to prove this works.
Our latest Client JPS Furnace & Air Conditioning has seen an increase of website traffic of 180% in just 6 months. Not Coincidentally they have also seen sales growth over 172%.
SEO is a tedious long-term strategy but if done right, results in predictable long-term income.