If you’re looking to start investing in marketing, you might have come across the term SEO before. This stands for search engine optimisation, and it’s a method to achieve more organic traffic from online search engines, such as Google and Bing.

There are numerous benefits of SEO and adding this channel to your marketing mix could have a significant impact to your bottom line. We’ve collated a couple of examples below, to highlight the true power of SEO.

More Site Conversions from Intent-Driven Traffic

The first (and biggest!) benefit of SEO is the fact that it can drive more targeted traffic to your website, and (better still!) those users have a higher chance of converting.

SEO involves ranking for specific terms that your audience are searching for online. By getting a placement right at the top of the search results (and we’re not talking about a paid listing!), you have a better chance of being clicked on by the user.

If you’re an ecommerce fashion brand and you’re ranking for “womens jeans”, then users searching this will be looking to purchase jeans, see your website, click on the search result, and hopefully, follow through with a purchase.

Ok, ok…we know there are other factors that go into it, but that’s the gist of it!

It’s important to point out that not all traffic will be high intent as a result of your SEO efforts and there may be some people that are just looking for answers to simple questions. However, as you’ll see in a second, these people have their uses too!

Greater Brand Awareness

One of the huge components that makes SEO such a great investment is the improved brand awareness.

As much as we like to think it will, not everything you rank for will lead to immediate conversions, however, it will likely lead to more conversions long term. Especially if you’re ranking for lots of helpful content that answers users’ questions.

By ranking for different long-tail search queries, you will increase the awareness of your website and therefore brand within the group of individuals asking those questions. If they repeatedly see your brand pop up, you’re more likely to stay top-of-mind and tip-of-tongue!

It’s Free Traffic (Once You Get Started)

Another huge benefit of implementing SEO into your mix is the tasty free traffic that comes along with it once you’re up and running.

Once your website starts to rank near the top of page one, it can be fairly easy to maintain. Unless of course you’re doing something horribly wrong, or Google just hates you.

At that point, you can afford to relax – just a little- on that page and watch the traffic and conversions roll in. With the odd content refresh and review, you should be cooking with gas.

By maintaining your position at the top, you’ll be capturing the demand of related/semantic searches. This is because Google can identify pages that satisfy the intent of multiple searches. So, you’ll also pick up free traffic from terms you didn’t intend to rank for!

How awesome is that?

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re ranking for the term “best dog food”. When ranking, there is a chance you might also rank for “best cheap dog food”, “best crunchy dog food”, “dog food reviews”, etc, etc. Does that make sense? (I don’t know why my mind went to dog food, but we’ll roll with it for now)

So, if you’re tired of spending money on paid ads, make a shift over to organic. We’re sure you’ll love it over here.

It Compliments PPC Campaigns

Well, actually, hold on a minute. I wouldn’t go ditching your PPC just yet! It can complement SEO in several ways if you know what you’re doing (like us).

In fact, PPC can fuel your SEO campaign. If you’re already running a paid campaign, you’ll be able to see terms that create conversions, opposed to just clicks. You can then position your SEO campaign to target these keywords and rank for them.

By having a top spot for these conversion-specific keywords, you can scale back the PPC and claim the clicks and conversions through your organic results. And just like that, you’ve improved your click-through rate and cut your marketing budget. Result!

You can also use PPC to target SEO terms that are just too damn competitive if you’ve got a low authority site. While the PPC campaign is ticking away in the background, you can focus efforts on low-competition terms (like long-tail!) and gain more real estate on Google.

Improved Website UX

SEO and UX go hand-in-hand. This is because SEO is largely to do with the user experience. Google has explicably said sites should focus on improving the user experience, so by doing so, you help your rankings and conversions.

SEO is largely to do with helping users find what they need as quickly and efficiently as possible. This includes both on individual pages and wider mega menus.

If you have a site structure that logically allows users to discover what they’re looking for, Google will favour you over the more complicated competition. The same goes for content! Google looks to see if you’re meeting the needs of the searcher, providing an answer to their query quickly.

As you see, Google is all about efficiency and speed.

Speaking of speed, site speed is a ranking factor for Google too. They want websites to be providing results without delays. Again, demonstrating their desire for UX-friendly sites.

Summing it up

SEO is a fantastic channel to start investing in if you haven’t started already. The benefits are plenty, you just need to know how to optimise your website and make sure you’re creating the right content.

Of course, we can help with that! If you need help with your existing SEO strategy or need us to devise and implement it, get in touch with us today on 0141 221 1825 or via our website.