Digital marketing is all about spreading awareness, driving traffic and attracting leads to grow your business using various channels like search engines, social media platforms, emails and more.
According to 60% of marketers, SEO drives the highest quality leads, and growing an organic presence is a top priority for 61% of companies. So, yes, SEO is a crucial component of your digital marketing strategy.
But let’s take a deeper dive into why digital marketing is incomplete without SEO.
What is SEO and why is it a critical digital marketing channel?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and science of making your website and its content attractive to search engines like Google.
Google is one of the biggest sources of traffic for all websites. As the first five organic results account for 67.60% of all the clicks on the search engine results page (SERP), it is paramount to optimize your website to rank higher on Google.
You can use Google Search Console to determine how your website’s various pages currently rank on Google.
Let’s look into some concrete reasons why SEO is pivotal when it comes to your digital marketing strategy.
SEO drives traffic long-term
SEO can drive 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media, but it takes time. Despite an edge over other digital marketing channels, SEO requires a lot of patience. According to Forbes, SEO takes a minimum of 4-6 months of consistent and high-quality optimization efforts to start seeing results.
Still, the results after six months are modest compared to what you can see after a year. Put simply, SEO is a long-term game that has the power to drive snowballing traffic and leads to your business website for years.
SEO is cost-effective
SEO helps you target visitors looking for the products/services and content that you offer. Other marketing channels like TVC’s, billboards and commercials do not target niche audiences. On the other hand, SEO is more reliable and cost-effective because you don’t spend money on targeting large sets of people who are probably not even interested in your product. Instead, your website and content are optimized for a predetermined audience and keywords they are searching for.
Moreover, other marketing channels are heavy on your pockets and do not assure you results. Whereas, SEO really works.
Read this article to get your SEO game right.
SEO helps elevate the mobile experience
Smartphones are becoming increasingly mainstream. Mobile devices generate over 55% of web traffic globally. Mobile optimization is a key SEO strategy that brands like H&M and Nike use to make their user experience near-flawless.
But what is mobile optimization, exactly?
Mobile optimization helps enhance the users’ browsing experience to spend more time and learn more about your products and services more effectively.
You can also focus your SEO efforts on a local audience if you’re a local business. As per research by Think with Google, “Where to buy” + “near me” mobile queries have grown by over 200% from 2017-2019. So, investing in local SEO and earning Google My Business reviews can greatly boost your visibility for local search queries, and generate more local traffic and in-store footfalls.
SEO affects consumer behavior and purchase patterns
When it comes to making a purchasing decision, consumers are very knowledgeable, resourceful and smart. Consumers scour reviews, community forums, search engines and social media platforms to learn more about different products/services before making a decision.
SEO can help you build trust and credibility
Ranking high in Google search implies that your brand is authoritative and credible. SEO helps build trust because only a well-optimized website with quality content can rank high organically.
Unlike other digital marketing channels like PPC, organic SEO does not require brands to pay search engines to appear at the top of the SERP.
Moreover, SEO elevates your brand’s user experience. When more people click on your website and learn about your products or services by reading high-quality, data-backed content, you gain their trust.
A well-designed, optimized website speaks volumes about your brand’s trustworthiness. According to a survey conducted by the University of Surrey, people form 75% of their judgment on a website’s credibility purely on its aesthetics.
Hence, improving your SEO can help your brand win trust and credibility.
SEO is quantifiable
It is easy to measure several SEO KPIs like traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate and more. Reports from tools like Google Analytics help assess your SEO efforts and their effectiveness.
You can also find in-depth data on your visitors and their customer journey to tailor your overall digital marketing strategy.
SEO can help you stay ahead of your competitors
Staying at par with other players in the market is essential to surviving the cut-throat competition existing in every industry.
Studying your competition’s SEO efforts can help you decode, reverse engineer, and improve upon these tactics for your own SEO strategy. Successful competitive analysis helps steal your competitors’ traffic and generate more leads.
Conclusion
All in all, SEO is amongst the most benefitting digital marketing channels. It can bring traffic, elevate user experience, affect consumer behavior and build your brand’s credibility and niche authority. Given its overall impact on your business, SEO must be a key element of your digital marketing strategy.
The opinions expressed here by Guest Contributors are their own, not those of Rise Marketing.