From a business perspective, the primary purpose of search engine optimisation (SEO) is to increase the visibility of a business’s website in the Search Engine listings. This is, in particular, for high yield search terms such as “(your industry) (your location)”, “best (your products or services)”, or “(your product/service)” vs “(a major competitor’s product/service).”
SEO is about competing for high yield search terms such as “(your industry) (your location)”, “best (your products or services)”, or “(your product/service)” vs “(a major competitor’s product/service).”
Considering the fact that websites have become the modern day equivalent of physical addresses, a visible website is a huge plus for your business. This is primarily because a well optimised site increases the chances of making new sales by acquiring new clients, infinitely. However, turning your business into a SEO success story is more complicated than in the case of obtaining a physical address for your enterprise. This is why you need to enlist the services of a content management expert or SEO consultant who is well versed in the various techniques that work to increase the visibility of your company’s website.
How a Search Engine Optimised Website Can Add Value to Your Business
A highly visible website can add the following benefits to your business:
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Improved customer service
Sometimes, SEO may feel like a tool used to gain new clients for the business. However, the tactics as well as terms applied – in this regard – can impact positively on the level of customer service. This is because it makes it possible for you to understand critical things about your existing customers by analyzing the keywords they use frequently to search for information. Critical details that you can acquire include your customers’ most important traits, how they use your services or products and the difficulties they are facing in using these products.
By learning about these details, you can better plan on how to address them on your website. This way, you can also save on time and money by allowing customers to find solutions to their queries or issues on your site – in a jiffy. You can also use this information to publicize your customer service methods on search results, which consequently make it simpler for clients to direct their queries at you and submit their complaints to you.
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Understanding buying habits of clients
Customers have fickle buying habits that are easily influenced by a wide range of factors, such as, changes in daily routine, global events as well as introduction of new products into the market. Understanding these buying habits is often a big challenge for most businesses. However, this ceases to be a problem with the use of SEO, through which you can analyse your website’s content, keywords as well as traffic. These components will provide you with statistics on what your customers are currently searching for as well as their preferences. Thanks to this information, you can tailor your delivery of products or services in accordance with your customer’s buying habits.
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Boost to offline marketing
The idea that the keywords used by customers in searching for information on the Internet are the same ones they use offline has not hit home for many businesses. The keywords you harness from your analysis of your SEO results should be incorporated in your offline marketing campaign. Apart from increasing the relevancy of this campaign, using these keywords cements the good relationship with your clients and captivates the attention of your potential customers.
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SEO guides product/service development
Changes in keywords and traffic patterns provide you with a crystal clear picture of the way your clients are using your products and services as well as their needs. These stats will also enlighten you on the biggest challenges preventing customers from savoring the benefits of your product or service. This information is a valuable guide in developing products and services that maximize the benefits while reducing the challenges customers face in using your product. For example, a company producing canned food can improve its product packaging to enable customers open the cans easier. By answering to this demand, you would have carved a new niche for yourself in the industry, consequently rising above the competition.
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Manage your reputation effectively
For the sake of your business, the last thing you need is a barrage of negative comments about your products or services on an online platform. This can turn into negative publicity since information on the Internet spreads like wild fire. Thank God for a solid SEO strategy as it can help you counter the negative publicity by burying all this irrelevant, damaging information. SEO also allows you to build a positive reputation in your industry by establishing your business as a credible authority on issues related to your sphere of operations. This is achieved via an effective content management strategy, which entails providing website visitors with high quality content that provides them with solutions to their queries or concerns.
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Increased Social Media visibility
Social media – the likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram – have become the go-to marketing platforms for businesses or organisations that wish to take their marketing campaigns to the next level. This is because social media have become social platforms of millions of people around the world who use them to communicate with each other. Integration of SEO and social media can boost your business two-fold by increasing the visibility of your business on both platforms. This is achievable by incorporating SEO best practices into your social media profiles and content, which entails being cognizant of the fact that social networks often use their users data to arrange search results after which they make content suggestions to their users. With the use of right keywords, your business’s profile on these networks might just become visible to millions of users around the world. Subsequently, the more people that view your profile, the higher the chances of more of them gaining an interest in your activities.
Signs that your SEO strategy is working
If you are applying a SEO strategy for the first time, it is understandable to feel apprehensive especially when the results are taking some time to manifest themselves. Undoubtedly, the effects of your SEO strategy will take some time to settle – a qualified SEO expert should be able to tell you this because it does not entail the use of black hat tactics that will incur harsh penalties from Google, Yahoo or Bing. With his assistance, you should be able to note the following tell-tale signs that your website is on the up:
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High page rank
Page ranking of your business’s website will be the chief way through which you determine whether the SEO strategy is working or not. As stated by Vendor Seek, business websites that appear in the top 5 positions of search results for the relevant keywords have subsequently attained visibility and are likely to attract a lot of traffic. This arises from the fact that those who use search engines have a tendency to click on websites that rank high on search results. To make your website’s content relate to the keywords, it is crucial to optimize the features, form, content as well as the meta-data, which will consequently attract the search engine algorithms.
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Time spent by visitors on website
The time spent by visitors on your website can also be an indicator of whether it is headed for success or not. Spending more time on the site is definitely a sign that the SEO strategy has proven effective. When you obtain the data on the same, you can use it for optimizing the content on your site and format it for simpler browsing experience for your readers. Ascertaining the effectiveness of the SEO strategy employed can also involve looking at the average time spent by visitor on various webpages of the site. This information will enlighten you on the relevance as well as the utility of these various sections.
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Number of page views
Pulling traffic to your website is never the sole metric that indicates your website’s progress as far as visibility is concerned. After all, people might be compelled to visit your website but would immediately depart when they discover that content is irrelevant to their informational needs. Visitors with high number of page views often show that there exists a high interest in what you are offering. This also provides insight into the exposure your website is presently getting.
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Inbound links to your website
Inbound links to your site – from external websites – can facilitate high-quality web traffic as well as increase a site’s rank on search engine results. This is because you have a great opportunity to net the readers who will visit these other sites because they can just click on the link, which will redirect them to your website. Assessing the number of external sites, which link to your website, will be able to tell whether the SEO strategy is on the right path. The more the number of these inbound links, the more chances you stand of gaining increased traffic – which is one element of a SEO success story.
A key component to harnessing the benefits of SEO is a qualified SEO professional who knows and applies white hat SEO tactics that guarantee positive results. With the proliferation of web experts claiming to be versed in SEO techniques, it is easy to fall prey to one of them if you do not understand how to tell a genuine one from the unscrupulous ones. A competent professional – apart from understanding the white hat techniques of SEO – should ideally be able to understand your needs and develop a SEO strategy customized to the same. With such an expert by your side, you are good to go.