14 Benefits of SEO for your website

SEO helps to make your website more searchable and visible to people who are looking for your products/services or information online.
There are multiple benefits of SEO but some experts may tell you that it takes time to reach that level where we can reap the benefits of SEO and it takes a lot of effort and time therefore not worth it.

To some extent that is true because SEO takes time but we should also consider the value aka return on investment from it.

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation may need time investment but the traffic and conversion you get are almost free, unlike paid advertisements where you are paying Search Engines or Social Media to drive that traffic. 

Optimising your website for Search engines is not that easy as it may sound. It requires a certain level of skills and expertise. It’s a part of Digital Marketing. Well, that is another topic I’ll cover in another article. Let’s concentrate on the reasons why you need SEO for your website.

• It is a part of your marketing:

Search engine optimisation should be part of your marketing mix. We need to understand that it is the marketing that first came into existence before SEO or digital marketing. 

So you need to have a good understanding of marketing first. SEO alone cannot take you to that level, there are other marketing activities that are to be carried out together to actually reap the benefits. 

I suggest you first build a marketing plan. This is a crucial part, therefore, avoid making any blunder. If you are yourself not capable of making a solid plan then consider hiring an agency or expert in your domain. 

You should have a long term as well as short term marketing plan in which you have to include your SEO activities. 

In this plan, you need to make a good marketing funnel. Funnel building is also an important part of your SEO in which you’re driving your traffic in a specific path. 

Search Engine Optimisation is not just about optimising your website and building links to rank in SERPs, it is a part of marketing strategy with a set goal. Enhancing your overall marketing efforts is one of the biggest benefits of SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation significantly boosts your overall marketing efforts.

• SEO builds trust in your website & business:

Think like this as your shop. If you make your shop more visible to people by relocating it to a crowded place then it will automatically attract more customers hence building trust among people. 

Same goes with an online business. If you manage to rank your website on popular terms relevant to your website then it will build trust. This is one of the greatest benefits of SEO that you cannot avoid. 

Websites that do not rank on the first page of SERPs are like non-existence to visitors. 

We trust those websites more that are ranking on top of our searches. 

So, it is advisable to make your website visible by practising ethical SEO. There are more ways to build trust like customer reviews, guarantee, etc. but I’m keeping them for another post. 

• Free Traffic that you can leverage:

This is one of the biggest advantages for which businesses are ready to go any extent. You can get free traffic that means you’re not paying Google or any other search engine to get that traffic. The main source of this traffic is organic results. 

I’ve done SEO for our clients and now they are getting traffic and at least 10% of the traffic is converting in just 5 months.

But the question is how to leverage that traffic? Some of the ways are:

1. Capturing their Emails: You can capture and list the emails of your traffic in exchange for some free information or value. This way you can upsell something to that traffic with email marketing. It is possible that you lose that traffic with some new algorithm rules but the email list can always help your business grow.
2. Adsense: This is mostly helpful for those who are running blogs and want to earn from visitors. You can put Ads on your website and earn from clicks. This is a good earning source for many bloggers.
3. Affiliate: You can leverage that free traffic by earning affiliate commissions. This is a business model where you can put links of a third party website on your own site and earn an affiliate commission. The money in this is comparatively more than AdSense. 

You can leverage this free traffic for branding and online selling. If you can practice SEO in a proper way then the traffic flow is almost constant. 

• You can beat your competitors:

It is often seen that businesses cannot compete with other businesses due to lack of funds or any other reason offline. However, this is not the case with online marketing. You can beat your competitors online to make your website above them to drive that traffic that your competitors enjoy. 

This is actually a strategy of SEO. There are many tools available (both free & paid) that you can use to check the SEO efforts of your competitor’s websites. 

This is not unethical in any way and is absolutely ethical. But you cannot steal your competitor’s content because that is plagiarism and must be avoided. 

What are some of the things that you need to check in your competitor websites:

1. Keywords: What are the keywords that they are ranking. List them down and select those that you think that your website can rank.
2. Content: Check their content. If you are trying to rank your blog then make sure to write more and in-depth than your competitor’s post.
3. Site Structure: Know the User Experience of your competitor’s website. UX plays an important role in SEO works. Try to provide a better user experience to make loyal customers or visitors.
4. Their marketing style: It is crucial to get an overall view of their marketing style. You can do better and effective marketing if you know how your competitor’s marketing style and work.
5. Technical SEO: Know how their anchor text and internal linking are can make you adjust your own SEO better. 

There are many factors involved in technical SEO. So, I recommend you to check my other blog posts to get a better idea on this subject.

Other factors like backlinks, site structure, social media also play important roles that you need to know and include them to beat your competitor’s websites. 

• It is never too late:

If you’re thinking that you are too late and your competitors are light years ahead of you then my friend, let me clarify that SEO is never too late. Doesn’t matter how competitive the market is or how competitive your products or service is, there is always an opportunity in online marketing. 

Suppose you have a fashion store in LA and there are hundreds or thousands of other stores selling almost the same stuff that you are selling so the competition is obviously high. 

It is quite possible that many of them have their own website and are selling online. So, you may think that it is next to impossible to compete with them online. But this is actually not true, the reason is that it doesn’t matter how good their website is or how good their backlinks are, you can manage to steal their traffic with a proper SEO strategy. 

There are always opportunities out there in this online world. So, here in this scenario, you need to find out their weaknesses. It is possible that they are not very regular in updating their website according to the latest algorithm or maybe their websites aren’t modern looking or their copy is not that engaging. 

You need to find out these things and work immediately. SEO takes time investment so I recommend you to start from today. 

Turn your competitor’s weakness into your strength and beat them online. 

• You can understand your customers well:

SEO is a process that helps you to understand your visitors or customers well and serve them better. To perform SEO, you have to know their intentions because without knowing their intentions you cannot turn your visitors into loyal customers.

Keyword research is an important part and if you can use them properly can add benefits. For that, you have to have a good understanding of your visitors and build a strong avatar. You cannot just target anyone rather target those that are looking for your products or services and are interested. 

Add content to your website according to your visitor’s interest. Then measure and get a deep understanding of your visitor’s behaviour. 

This process helps to make the necessary changes according to the taste and preference of your customers. 

• Investing in SEO is cheaper than Paid Media:

Paid media used to be cheaper a decade ago. Now to advertise on Google and Facebook, you have to keep aside a good amount of your marketing budget. 

But SEO is cheaper than these paid advertising options. There are websites that are optimised well and ranking organically and getting traffic without investing a single penny. In paid ads like PPC, one single click may cost you more than 10 dollars. 

However, the main advantage of paid ads is that you can get instant and relevant traffic. So I can say that if you want to sell your products/services through your website, consider both SEO and paid advertising options together. 

• Organic Search Is The Primary Traffic Source:

Google processes 40,000 searches each second and most of them go for organic results. So, you can imagine the opportunity. Leverage this organic traffic to grow your business online. You can always dominate your niche with a proper SEO plan or strategy. Believe me, the sky’s the limit. 

• It is limitless:

There is no limitation in SEO means you can build as many links as possible for you or provide the best well-researched content for your visitors. 

But it is always recommended to practice white hat SEO techniques to avoid search engine penalties (these are penalties from search engines like Google who don’t obey their guidelines).

I’ve included this as benefits of SEO because there is no limitation, you can increase the traffic flow and make more conversion, all it depends on the work you put in.

• It increases social sharing:

Content is the king is a popular term famous among online marketers. It is true and you can increase your social sharing and branding by putting the best content on your website. 

Visitors would love to share your post on social media like Facebook if you can put interesting or informative content. 

But you may think that how this is relevant to SEO. Well, SEO can help your website be more visible thus more visitors among whom some of them will do social sharing. Add social sharing buttons to make this process easier for your visitors. 

• You can show your expertise:

One of the key benefits of SEO is that you can show your skills or expertise in certain areas. Like if you’re a professional and the best programming tutor in your area. You have a website to show your skills but no one is visiting your website. 

There are students who need your service but due to non-exposure, you are invisible to them. So, here in this situation, SEO comes to your rescue. Just having a cool website isn’t enough. Optimise your website for a better ranking in search engine results to get enough exposure to your target audience.   

• SEO can be measured:

Unlike traditional marketing, online marketing is measurable. This is one of many benefits of SEO. As I’ve earlier stated that SEO is a part of digital marketing, it can be measured. You can set targets like relevant traffic, bounce rate, popular keywords in your domain and optimise your website accordingly. 

You can keep track of your organic traffic with the help of tools like Google Analytics, Bing Analytics, Search Console, Omniture, etc. You can have a good understanding of your customer requirement with metrics available in these tools. The best part is that most of these tools are free. 

• Continues improvement can grow your traffic:

Search engine optimisation is not a one-day activity, you have to put continuous efforts to keep your ranking constant or to get a higher rank. 

This is a continuous process and you have to keep improving to grow your traffic. Like if you’re running a blog but you’re not regularly posting articles then the chances are you will lose your traffic. 

You are not alone in this game, do not forget your competitors who may not stop putting efforts to drive your traffic to their own websites. 

SEO, if continuously practised can increase your traffic and your authority in your domain. For better performance, choose your niche and build trust and authority.  

• You can outsource SEO service:

SEO is a tedious job and requires certain skill sets that are to be developed. So, if you’re busy running a business, it becomes more difficult for you. In this case, I’d suggest you outsource this to a reputed and well-trusted agency who have resources and a proven result. 

It is an easy task to outsource your SEO work and you can keep track of the results like traffic and ranking. In this way, you can leverage resources like skills and also don’t have to worry about hiring a team that saves you a lot of money.

There are multiple benefits of SEO that I haven’t listed in this single article so to know more about them, read my other articles posted in this blog.

Bonus tip: 

Choosing keywords that are highly competitive can be a big mistake in SEO. Choose long-tail keywords that are easy to rank in a short period of time.

Conclusion:

Search Engine Optimisation is still a very powerful way and it doesn’t matter how many paid media come into existence, SEO will always be preferred. There are giant companies that are still dependent on SEO for their primary source of business online. A proper strategy and implementing that can grow a business rapidly.