Visibility Is Key: How Can Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Help Your Business

Search Engine Optimisation has a whole host of benefits for your business, having the impact to improve the online visibility of your business so that you hopefully get a higher amount of visitors, either to your website or to your physical business location. Search engine optimisation can also boost the credibility of your business by showing your business higher up in the search results, additionally through setting up a Google My Business account your business page shown on Google shows previous customer reviews; so if your business offers a good level of service your reviews will show this and encourage future customers to check out your business. One thing to note this that SEO is not a quick fix for your business, it can take some time to see results.   

SEO Boosts The Visibility Of Your Website

Sites that rank higher on the search engine results page (SERP) are seen by a higher number of users compared to other websites further down in the search results. In fact, over 60% of web traffic goes to websites that feature within the top 5 search results on a search engine results page. Meaning if your website is not currently in this catchment you are missing out on a significant amount of traffic. 

Boosts The Credibility Of Your Business

Sites that rank higher up on the search engine result page (SERP) are generally seen as more trustworthy by internet users. They are more likely to trust the content they see on your website and are therefore more likely to perform a desired action such as buying a product on your website, signing up for an email newsletter or donating money. Ensuring that your website is user-friendly, has quality content and has relevant keywords are all things that can improve your website's search engine ranking. 

It is worth mentioning that not every business or website is trustworthy or credible, some may try to deceive you by offering a promise of a certain result or payment by a particular day but then fail to perform these actions. This of course has always happened, taking out credit insurance can protect you against businesses not paying you what is owed. Providing you with breathing space instead of worrying about how to plug the financial gap left by the non-payment of one of your stakeholders.  

SEO Does Not Cost Anything

Unlike pay per click (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO) doesn’t cost anything. Search engine optimisation helps you promote useful content to find customers organically, you just need to ensure that you have quality, user-focused content on your website. You can take inspiration from competitors within your field to understand the content they are putting out online, using this you can take the best things they are doing and incorporate it into your own content. 

SEO Supports Content Marketing

By creating quality user-focused content your website will become a better source of information and will become more trustworthy at the same time. Both human internet users and Googlebot crawlers that scan websites for content will hold your website in higher regard, possibly leading to your website appearing higher in the search results, making your website available to more people because of the user-friendliness of your content. Within the content of your website, you can also include internal links which allow you to expand on ideas and take website users to different parts of your website by clicking on a hyperlink. This is particularly useful if you have content on your website that somebody who has never heard of you or what you do before starts reading an article, but finds some of the terminology difficult to understand. If you have strategically placed keywords in your content they will be able to click on complex words and be brought to a more simplistic explainer page on your website.  

SEO Maximises The Effectiveness Of Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns

Having both paid ads running and a good organic website ranking can really signal to internet users that your business is a trustworthy and credible business. Alongside the additional benefit of your website being more visible to internet users viewing the search engine results page (SERP), which will translate to more website visitors which can help you achieve your business objectives. 

SEO Helps You Rank Better In Local Searches

If you own a business that mainly serves your local area, using SEO can help you more effectively reach people who perform local searches in your area on their mobile devices. Searches such as “hairdressers near me” are becoming more common which is why your business needs to be on top of this trend to ensure that your business is shown in a prominent position on the search results when people make such searches.  

Showing further up in the search results can lead to a higher footfall in your business leading to increased sales. If you have not already done so you should register your business with a Google My Business account, you can add all the relevant information about your business such as opening times, location, phone number and the services you provide. Additionally, users can leave reviews about your business on your Google My Business page which can lead to a higher level of business credibility, if you provide a good service that is!

You Get Quantifiable Results

Platforms such as Google Analytics can help you track the effectiveness of your SEO efforts, you can learn about the keywords that users found your website through, where you can find similar keywords so that you can further increase website visitors. You can also find new keywords for your website to rank for using Google Ads, where you can type in a keyword and Google will show you other keywords that are relevant to that keyword; you will be shown how many people are searching for those keywords, and the level of competition that each keyword has in relation to your competition.  

Improves User Engagement

SEO helps you bring in traffic to your website that is more qualified, meaning that the internet users who land on your page will be more interested in the content on your website; which can only translate to a higher level of user satisfaction as users will have (hopefully) found what they are looking for on your website. Leading to a higher proportion of your website traffic performing desired actions such as purchasing products, signing up for email newsletters or donating money.

Conclusion

Search engine optimisation can be a powerful tool to get more engagement from potential customers, both online and offline; you as a business owner can easily track the progress of your efforts and there is the added benefit of SEO being free of charge!