Reasons why your website should be SEO optimized

Posted on January 21, 2021

Reasons why your website should be SEO optimized

It is the goal for every business owner to get many customers and make more sales. In 21st century, we have seen massive growth in technology. The spread of the Internet access has been tremendous with now close to 4.66 billion (slightly over 59% of global population) being active Internet users. It’s therefore inevitable that every business should utilize the Internet and have an online presence in their marketing strategies.

The best way of establishing your business online presence is getting a website. A website is a very powerful marketing tool for your business if done right. With one, you can reach more people and turn them into customers. The first thing is to get people to visit your website, and then convert them into customers.

There are various digital marketing methods in which you can drive people into your website such as search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click ads, social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing and much more. In this article, we focus on search engine optimization. We will explore what search engine optimization is and the reasons why your website needs it for your business success.

What is search engine optimization?

You probably landed on this page as a result of a search you conducted on Google. Even if not so, you probably have googled for something today. Statistics show that over 3.5 billion Google searches are conducted daily. In fact, 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine. This means that for most people to get to a certain website, social media or even Gmail, they first search for it on Google and other search engines.

You may have noted that for every phrase you search, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of search results. Look for instance below the crazy number of results I got for the phrase "internet marketing". A whopping 2.9 billion results.

Search results for internet marketing

Another thing you might have noted is that Google(and other search engines) only show a total of about 10 organic (not paid for) search results per page. To view more after the 10th you have to click next. That means that to view the last result in the above search, you have to click next 295,000,000 times.

Be honest... How many times do you click next to view the second page of Google results when you conduct a search?

You probably don’t... And if you do it’s once in a blue moon.

Some people even make a joke that “the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google”.

Research shows that 75% of people never go past the first page on a Google search.

That means that if your website is not on the first page of Google you are losing 75% of potential customers. With such a stiff competition of millions of websites for the same space, you can guess that getting your site on the first-page isn’t a walk in the park. Websites don’t get there out of a mere coincidence or luck. A lot of effort is put into it.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of activities done within or outside a website with an aim of improving it’s rank on search engine results when people search for various keywords and phrases as a way of getting more traffic to the website.

The number 1 result in Google’s organic search results gets an average of 31.7% of the total clicks. The top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks. So the efforts should be to rank as high as possible.

The more keywords your website rank for, and the higher it rank, the more people will get to know and visit your website.

SEO process involves doing keyword research to find out which words and phrases your target audience is searching for and then optimizing them in your website content. Such places where these keywords can be optimized include the page title, headings, meta descriptions, paragraphs, image alt texts and names etc. Other ways include making your site secure(HTTPS), load faster, responsive, improving user experience, submitting an XML sitemap to Google and creating a backlink profile to your website among others. Seo is a process that takes time to yield measurable results.

Reasons why your website need SEO

Now that you understand what search engine optimization is, let’s jump into exploring the different ways it can be useful to your website and business:

1. Increased website traffic

As explained above, you have learnt that the primary goal for SEO is getting more traffic to your website. The more visitors there is on your website, the more people you have for converting into customers.

2. Helps target quality traffic

Unlike other marketing methods such as cold calling, spam emails, Television and radio ads, billboards etc that involve reaching out to consumers whether they want to hear from you or not, SEO is an inbound method that focuses on making it easy for your audience to find you when they want information.

With SEO you target the people who are already searching for the information you want them to see. It is a more customer-centric approach that is likely to generate more conversions.

3. Improved business credibility

Users have great trust in search engines. The fact that the top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks and that 75% of people never get past the first page of Google shows that the people trust Google(the same as for the other search engines). This shows that the people believe the top-most results are the most relevant and credible. If your website is ranked highly on search engines then it will gain more credibility.

In addition, SEO work involves a lot of content creation. When you create informative and valuable content, you have the opportunity to build trust and credibility with potential customers.

4. Improved user experience

Google’s goal is to provide the best possible results for their users. As a result, they have been updating their ranking algorithms to make sure that they’re directing users to sites with great user experience. Website usability, mobile-friendliness and faster loading speed now play a big role in ranking. When doing search engine optimization, SEO experts make huge efforts in streamlining the website’s user experience to ensure the website users get the best time while on the website.

5. It is a relatively cheaper means of marketing

The sole reason why your page appears high on search engine results is that the search engines’ algorithm deems it as relevant, valuable and worthy of directing their users to. Although initially when doing it yourself or hiring someone to do it you might have to spend some time and money, you don’t have to pay anything to the search engines for the rank. If SEO is done properly, the page can continue to rank at that position and attracting traffic to your site for months (or even years) after you publish it. You will be earning traffic without spending a cent.

6. Your customers are looking for you

Personally when I come across a new business that I might be interested in their products or services, I do a search on the Internet to learn more about them before making a purchase decision. This is the case with many others(85%). There are probably many other websites on the internet with information about your business. With SEO you can outrank all the other sites with your business information to ensure the people searching for your business get the correct and most appropriate information from you.

Conclusion

In this article you have learnt what SEO is and how important it is to your business and website. This list is not exhaustive; there are several other benefits of SEO. It is my hope that you have learnt something new and valuable. Should you be in need for the development of a business website or SEO services, you can count on us.