SEO is important for more research and visibility, but it offers more real value than that. I want to show you the best 12 reasons why businesses need SEO to take their branding to the next level in 2021.
Many brands and companies know (or think they know) that they need SEO for their digital properties and the benefits they will get from this SEO work done on their behalf.
SEO will definitely improve a website's overall search and visibility, but what value does it really provide? Why is SEO so important?
Regardless of industry or company size, these 12 reasons should provide some clarity as to why businesses need SEO to take their brand to the next level.
Organic search is often the main source of traffic to a website
A typical search is an important part of most businesses' website performance, as well as an important part of the customer funnel, and ultimately entices users to complete a conversion or collaboration.
As marketers know, Google owns a significantly higher share of the search market than competitors such as Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and many, many others.
This is not to say that not all search engines contribute to brand awareness - they do - Google alone owns about 75% of the entire search market. It is an unambiguous leader, so it is important to follow its guidelines.
The remaining 25% of the market owned by other engines is clearly also valuable to brands.
Google, the most visited website in the world (and especially in the US), is also the most popular email provider in the world (with over a billion users). Not to mention that YouTube is the second largest search engine.
We know that the vast majority of the world has access to the Internet and visits Google at least once a day for information.
If you are highly recognized by Google and other search engines as a trusted source, you will always work for the benefit of the brand. Quality SEO and a quality website bring brands there.
SEO builds trust and credibility
The goal of any experienced SEO is to build a solid foundation for a wonderful website with a clean and effective user experience that is easy to find while searching, thanks to the trust and credibility of the brand and its digital features.
Many elements play a role in building authority over search engines like Google. In addition to the factors listed above, authority is built over time due to elements such as:
- Quality feedback profiles.
- Positive user behavior.
- Machine learning signals.
- Optimized elements and content on the page.
But setting up this body will do more for the brand than most, if not all, of other digital optimizations. The problem is that it is impossible to build trust and credibility overnight, just like in real life. We earn and build authority over time.
Establishing a brand as an authority requires patience, commitment and dedication, and it also depends on offering a valuable quality product or service with which customers can trust the brand.
Good SEO also means a better user experience
Everyone wants better organic ranking and maximum visibility. Few people know that a great user experience is an important part of the journey.
Google has learned to interpret a good or bad user experience, and a positive user experience has become an important element of a site's success.
Customers know what they want. If they don't find it, there is a problem. And the performance will suffer.
A clear example of how to build a strong user experience is how Google has increasingly become an answering machine that provides users with the data they are looking for directly on SERPs (search engine results pages).
The goal is to quickly and easily provide users with the information they are looking for with fewer clicks.
SEO quality includes a positive user experience and takes advantage of it to work for the benefit of the brand.
Local SEO means increased engagement, traffic & conversions
With the growing dominance of mobile traffic, local search has become a key part of the success of small and medium-sized businesses.
Local SEO focuses on optimizing digital properties for a specific environment so that people can find you quickly and easily by being one step closer to the transaction. Local optimizations target specific cities, places, regions, and even countries to create a profitable medium for local brand communication.
SEO experts do this by optimizing site and brand content, including local citations and backlinks, and local lists that match the location and industry to which the brand belongs.
To encourage collaboration locally, optimization professionals should optimize the brand knowledge pane, Google My Business list, and social media profiles.
There should also be a strong emphasis on user reviews on Google, as well as other review sites such as Yelp, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List (depending on the industry, among others).
SEO Impacts the buying cycle
Customers do their research. This is one of the biggest benefits of the internet from a customer perspective.
Using SEO tactics to play your posts for bargains, innovative products and / or services, and the relevance and reliability of the offer to customers will change the game.
Undoubtedly, it will also have a positive impact on the buying cycle if done correctly.
Brands need to be visible where people need them to make a valuable link. Local SEO improves this visibility and allows potential customers to find answers and companies that offer those answers.
SEO Best practices are always being updated
It's great when we implement SEO tactics on a brand's website and its digital features, but when it comes to short-term engagement (budget constraints, etc) and the site isn't constantly re-evaluated over time, it will be in which other barriers can no longer improve.
The way the search world is evolving, essentially at the discretion of Google, requires constant monitoring of changes that will be ahead of the competition and hopefully on page 1.
Pro activity and monitoring of major algorithm changes will always benefit brands.
We know that Google makes thousands of algorithm changes every year. You stay too long and it becomes extremely difficult to return. SEO experts will help ensure that you avoid this.
SEO is relatively cheap
Of course it costs. They do the best things, right?
But SEO is relatively inexpensive on a large scale, and the payoff is likely to be significant in terms of brand benefits and perks.
These are no marketing costs, it is a real business investment. Good SEO performance will hold up for years to come. Like most things in life, it will improve with more thought (and investment).
Understanding SEO helps you understand the environment of the web
With the ever-changing environment that is the World Wide Web, it’s hard to keep up with the changes that are happening.
But following SEO also means being aware of the major changes that are happening in search.
Knowledge of the online environment, including tactics used by other local and similar businesses and competitors, will always be beneficial to these brands.
SEO brings new opportunities to light
Quality SEO will always find a way to discover and take advantage of new opportunities for brands to not only discover but also shine.
Offering quality SEO brands means that the SEO team is immersed in all that a brand is. This is the only way to truly market a brand with the passion and understanding that stakeholders have for it: become a stakeholder.
The better the understanding of a brand, the greater the chances of it thriving. The same can be said of SEO.
It’s quantifiable
Although SEO does not offer the easiest ROI to calculate as with paid search, you can measure almost anything with proper tracking and analytics.
The big problem is the connection of the dots on the back because there is no definitive way to understand the correlation between all the actions performed.
However, it is worth understanding how certain actions can affect and hopefully performance and growth. Any good SEO will focus on these improvements, so linking dots should not be a challenge.
Brands also want to know and understand where they have been, where they are and where they are going in terms of digital performance, especially for SEO, if they have a person / company paid to act on their behalf.
There is also no better way to show the success of SEO. We all know that data never lies.
It’s a long-term strategy
SEO can (and hopefully) has a noticeable effect in the first year of action taken and many of these actions will have an effect that lasts for more than a few years.
As the market develops, it is best to monitor trends and changes closely. But even a website that hasn't had a lot of intensive SEO advice will be improved by the basic SEO best practices used on an honest website with decent user experience. And the more time, effort, and budget required for SEO, the better and longer the site is a worthy candidate in its market.
If you’re not on page 1, you’re not winning the click
In the world of SEO, it's no secret that if you're not on page 1, you probably won't be killing an organic search game.
A recent survey found that the top three organic search positions represent nearly 40% of all clicks, while up to 30% of all results on pages 1 and 2 are non-clicks.
What does it mean? Two things:
1) If you're not on page 1, it’s not okay, you should be there.
2) There are still too many cases where a user enters a query and does not find exactly what they are looking for.
Conclusion
Implementing strong, high-quality SEO on a brand website and digital features will always be beneficial to that brand and its marketing efforts.
It is considered a "new age" marketing technique, but it is crucial to a brand's online presence today, especially as the data available and competition continues to increase and grow.
Do you need an SEO?
What is an SEO?
SEO can mean "search engine optimizer" or "search engine optimization". Choosing to hire an SEO or not is a very important decision for your business, it can improve your site and save time, but it can also damage your site and reputation. Be sure to research the potential benefits and harm that an irresponsible SEO can cause to your site. Many SEOs and other consultants and agencies provide useful services to website owners, including:
- Evaluating the content or structure of your site
- SEO training
- Search by keywords
- Content development
- Managing online business development campaigns
- Expertise in specific markets and regions
- Technical tips for website development: e.g. redirects, use of JavaScript error pages, Hosting.
Advertising with Google does not affect the presence of your site in our search results. Google never accepts money for inclusion or ranking of sites in our search results, nor does it cost anything if they appear in organic search results. Free resources like the Search Console, the official Webmaster Center blog, and our discussion forum can give you a lot of information on how to optimize your site for organic search.
Choosing an SEO
If you are considering hiring an SEO, do it ASAP. This is a great time to rent if you are considering overhauling your website or planning to launch a new one. This way, you and your SEO can ensure that your site is designed from the bottom up to be search engine compatible. However, good SEO can also help improve an existing website.
Make an appointment to implement the recommended changes. Implementing SEO recommended changes takes time and effort, if you don't take the time to make these changes, it's not worth hiring an expert.
Talk to your potential SEO. Some helpful SEO questions are:
- Can you show me examples of your previous work and share some success stories?
- What experience do you have in developing international websites?
- Do you follow Google's webmaster guidelines?
- What results do you expect and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
- What Are Your Main SEO Techniques?
- What are your experiences in my industry?
- What experience do you have in my city/country?
- Do you provide online marketing services or tips to complement your business with organic search?
- How long have you been around?
- How can I expect to communicate with you?
- Would you like to share the changes to my site with me and provide detailed information about your recommendations and justification?
Make sure SEO is of interest to you and your business. If they’re not interested, find someone who is. An SEO should ask questions such as:
- How does your business make money and how can search results help you?
- Who are your customers?
- Who are your competitors?
- What other advertising channels do you use?
- What makes your business or service unique and valuable to customers?
Check your SEO’s credentials. Ask previous clients if they thought their SEO provided a useful service, was easy to work with and it brought positive results.
Request a technical and research audit of your site to determine what they think needs to be done, why, and what the expected outcome should be. You will probably have to pay for it. You will probably need to give them read-only access to your site in the Search Console. (Don’t give them access to writing at this stage.) Your future SEO should be able to give you realistic estimates of improvements and an assessment of the work involved. If they guarantee that their changes will put you first in the search results, find someone else.
Decide if you want to hire.
Precautions
While SEOs can provide valuable services to clients, some unethical SEOs have black-eyed the industry by using overly aggressive marketing efforts and looking for unfair ways to manipulate search engine results. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site's presence on Google or even removal from our index.
Once your SEO has developed a set of recommendations for your site, ask them to validate them from a trusted source, such as a Search Console page, a webmaster blog post, or a Google-approved response to a web forum, guardians.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
A common scam is creating "shadow" domains that direct users to a site with misleading conversions. These shadow domains are often owned by an SEO who claims to act on behalf of the client. However, if the relationship weakens, SEO can direct the domain to another website or even to the domain of a competitor. When this happens, the client is paid to develop a competitive website that is wholly owned by the SEO.
Another illegal practice is to publish a “door” page with keywords anywhere on a customer’s website. SEO promises to make the site more relevant for more issues. This in itself is wrong, as individual pages are rarely relevant to a wide variety of keywords. More insidiously, however, these door pages often also contain hidden links to other SEO clients. Such gateways drain the popularity of links to the site and direct it to SEO and other clients, which may include sites with controversial or illegal content.
Last but not least, avoid interfering with linking programs, such as buying links from other sites, to improve your ranking. This violates Google's quality guidelines and may result in manual action against part or all of the site, adversely affecting its ranking.
If you feel that you were deceived by an SEO in some way, you may want to report it.
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about misleading or unfair trade practices. To file a complaint, please go to: http://www.ftc.gov/ and click "File a Complaint Online", call 1-877-FTC-HELP or write to: Federal Trade Commission, CRC-240, Washington, DC 20580.
If the complaint is about a non-US company, file it at http://www.econsumer.gov/.
Useful guidelines:
Beware of SEO companies and online consultants or agencies that suddenly send you emails
Surprisingly, just Google also received the following emails:
“Dear Google,
Visiting your site I noticed that you aren’t in most of the major search engines and directories... "
Maintain the same skepticism about the unsolicited research emails you use for diet pills overnight or the demands to remit money from ousted dictators.
No one can guarantee position no. 1 on Google
Beware of SEOs that claim to provide rankings, claim to have a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “statement of advantage” on Google. There is no priority sending for Google. In fact, the only way to send a site directly to Google is through our URL page or by submitting a Sitemap, and you can do it yourself for free.
Be careful if the company is secretive or does not want to explain clearly what it is planning
If something is unclear, ask for clarification. If SEO creates misleading content on your behalf, such as port pages or returnable domains, we can completely remove your site from Google's index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of all the companies you hire, so it's best to make sure you know exactly how they want to "help" you. If the SEO can access the server via FTP, they should be willing to explain any changes they make to your site.
You should never link to SEO
Try to avoid SEOs that promote the power of "free for all" links, link popularity schemes, or submit your site to thousands of search engines.
These are usually useless exercises that will not affect your ranking in major search engine results, at least not in a way that you would likely consider positive.
Choose wisely
While considering opting for SEO, you may want to research on the industry. Google is an option, of course. While Google doesn't comment on some companies, we've come across companies called SEOs who follow practices that clearly go beyond accepted business conduct. Watch out.
Make sure you understand where the money is going
While Google never sells better rankings in search results, many other search engines combine pay-per-inclusion or pay-per-click results with regular web search results.
Some SEOs promise to rank you high in search engines, but instead of being among the search results, they put you in the ads section. Some SEOs will even change their bid prices on an ongoing basis to create the illusion of “checking” other search engines and entering the desired site. These scams will not work with Google, as their ads are clearly marked and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you are considering what the costs are for permanent inclusion and which ones apply to temporary ads.
What other things to look out for?
There are some warning signs that you may be dealing with SEO scammers. It’s far from an exhaustive list, so trust your gut when in doubt. In any case, please leave your SEO if:
- He owns shadow domains
- Post links to other customers on the door
- Offers selling keywords in the address bar
- It does not differentiate between actual search results and ads displayed on search results pages
- Provides ranking, but only on long and fuzzy keywords
- Works with multiple nicknames or fake WHOIS information
- Collects traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware or virtual software
- Removed domains from Google index or not listed in Google itself.
