Editorial Staff
There are millions of small businesses trying to vie for a place on the search engine listings. Yours may well be one of them. The very best way to ensure you are listed in a high ranking position (ideally on the top half of the first page) is to have an excellent and well thought out SEO strategy in place. The entire purpose of SEO – which stands for search engine optimization – is to position your site in the highest possible position on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Yet many businesses don’t take this into account. They know they need SEO, and they ensure there are certain keywords scattered around their site or that they link to other high-ranking websites, but they don’t do much more. The reality is that you need to think very carefully about your SEO if you want the best results; here are the reasons why.
The Purchasing Journey Starts On Search Engines
If you wait for potential customers to get to your site to start their purchasing journey, you’ll be too late. It all starts much earlier than this; it starts with their online searches. Even if they don’t know quite what they want, most of the time people will search for something and begin to narrow their results down once they get them. If your website is not ranked highly enough, it won’t feature in that shortlist.
This has become even more prevalent thanks to smartphones. Now a quick online search can be done at any time, and you need your site to be part of the results every time. If you want this to happen and make people aware of you right at the start of their purchasing journey, you’ll need to engage an SEO expert to ensure your site is seen, and ideally seen first.
SEO Traffic Is Easier To Convert
Just because people visit your site that doesn’t mean you are guaranteed a sale. In fact, studies show that 92 percent of people won’t buy on their first visit to a site; they just want to gain information and do research.
However, if you have a good SEO strategy in place, you’ll find it is easier to convert that traffic. SEO will give your potential customers the ability to trust your site (after all, if you’re at the top of the search engine results, you must be trustworthy – or at least, that’s how it seems) and therefore there is much more chance they will buy on their first visit rather than thinking about things and coming back another time (or going somewhere else entirely).
Everyone’s Doing It
Although going along with a trend is not usually the best way to grow a business, when it comes to SEO it is certainly something to consider. If your business rivals are using SEO to their advantage and reaping the benefits of it and you’re not, they are going to get customers who might otherwise have been yours. Even if you offer superior products, a better service, and fairer prices, if you’re invisible in terms of the search engine results, none of that will matter. You’ll need SEO to keep up with your competitors. This is also important if your competition isn’t utilizing SEO to its fullest. If you can then you’ll certainly be ranked higher than them in the results, and you’ll get more of the traffic and more of the sales. Either way, ensuring that you have good SEO because other people are doing it is a valid reason for getting started and contacting an expert today.
