Want to know all of the benefits of SEO?
This list of SEO benefits will blow your mind. You will be thankful you read this.
Every business needs to invest in search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website to maximize organic traffic from search engines. The leading search engines are Google, YouTube, Bing, and Yahoo.
This blog is a warning to everyone that does not have an effective SEO strategy. You are making a huge mistake by not leveraging all of the below SEO benefits.
You are losing money every day your website is not optimized in the search engines.
Here’s why.
1. There are people searching for your products or services on search engines
There are over 2 billion people online. 93% of online activities start on a search engine. There are 40,000 searches every second, and 3.5 billion searches per day. There are millions of opportunities for your business to become found on search engines. One of the most important benefits of SEO is that your customers are using search engines daily.
2. SEO pulls-in quality traffic
Traffic on search engines is the best traffic. Why? Because people are actually searching for the problem you solve. You can “pull” traffic to your business. You do not have to “push” out advertisements to persuade people to buy. Search traffic is already interested in your products and services. This is why the SEO industry is worth $65 billion.
3. SEO traffic is more likely to convert
SEO traffic is more likely to convert than other sources of traffic. In fact, search traffic has the best conversion rates for most websites. By positioning yourself on search engines, you are positioning your business to win more conversions.
4. SEO increases sales and leads
SEO is not a myth. You will increase your leads and sales if you offer a viable product or service. One small business generated over $103,510.98 worth of SEO results in just 5 months.
However, you must invest in the best SEO strategy. With a winning SEO campaign, your business will be on it’s way to higher conversions.
5. SEO can decrease your cost per acquisition
Another benefit of SEO is that it is “free”. It is far less expensive than advertising to acquire customers. The only costs in SEO are the costs to hire the best SEO company. Unless you have experience in website coding and Google algorithms, you will need an SEO firm or agency to grow your rankings and reap the benefits of SEO.
6. SEO does not involve any paid advertising
You do not have to advertise if you have strong SEO standings. You can increase your website traffic without having to pay per click. An effective SEO strategy can help you scale back your advertising dollars, and invest it in more efficient areas.
7. Top SEO rankings provides 24/7 promotion
SEO is 24/7. It does not sleep. Yes, that’s another one of the benefits of SEO. Your rankings do not disappear overnight. You can increase your website traffic all day, every day. Once you rank high in search engines, they will promote your business while you are sleeping.
8. SEO builds trust and credibility
People trust Google. They use it every day to find what they are looking for. By ranking high on search engines, your business will build trust and credibility with your audience. In fact, 37% of search engine clicks are on the first organic listing.
9. SEO is a long-term strategy
SEO is a long-term strategy. It can take 6-12 months to see optimal rankings. However, just as it takes time to move up the rankings, it takes time to move down the rankings. Once you are placed in top positions, you rarely move down. The only reason this would change is due to rising SEO competition or changes in Google algorithm.
10. SEO makes your customers more informed
Your customers are using search engines to research. They use their findings to help them make informed decisions on available options. High SEO rankings allows you to educate potential customers. This indirectly builds trust, but most importantly helps them make an informed decision.
11. SEO influences purchasing decisions
SEO significantly influences purchasing decisions. This is because of the developed trust and credibility mentioned in our prior points. Use SEO to improve your conversions by significantly influencing the purchasing decisions of those on the web.
12. SEO increases your brand awareness and equity
Conversions aside, SEO will also build your brand equity. In other words, SEO will help people become aware of your brand. Awareness is important because your website visitors may not always be ready to purchase. However, by being aware of your offerings, they may purchase in the near future.
13. SEO increases customer attribution or “touches”
While your awareness is increasing, SEO will simultaneously increase your customer attribution points. Attribution is the amount of times your audience sees your brand. The more times they see your business, the more likely they are to purchase from your business. Strong SEO rankings will help you dramatically increase your touch points with potential buyers.
14. SEO receives 90% more clicks than PPC
SEO trumps paid advertising. This is because organic SEO listings receive 90% of clicks. Many users of search engines tend to skip paid advertisements. This is most likely due to their trust in Google’s algorithm. By investing in SEO, you will likely gain more traffic than the advertisers on the same keywords.
15. SEO can increase your website referrals
One of the benefits of SEO is that it will increase your website referrals. You will gain more website referrals from search engines. In addition, your website visitors are likely to refer your website to their friends. A strong SEO presence will you grow referrals, literally and figuratively!
16. SEO is measurable
benefits of SEO rank
SEO is measurable. You can measure your conversions and the source of conversions. You can also measure the progression of your website rankings and organic traffic. With the right tools (or an SEO company), you will be able to measure which search keywords are the most valuable to your business.
17. SEO drives offline sales
Do your customers do research online before visiting your store? Of course they do! Because most people do their research online, SEO also drives offline sales. This is because they are using search engines to do their research, but may visit your store or make a phone call to actually buy your products. Therefore, SEO is a major contributor to driving offline sales.
18. SEO is more cost-effective than paid advertising
This is a no-brainer. SEO is more cost-effective than paid advertising. In fact, the average CPC (Cost Per Click) considering all the industries is $2.32. Why spend money for a page to be seen when you can work your way up in the organic search results by using effective SEO?
Once you rank high on search engines, you do not have to pay for clicks from search engines. And you will no longer have to worry about your PPC budget. Pause your PPC advertising campaigns and let #1 SEO rankings drive more results.
19. Your competitors are using SEO to grow
Kill or be killed. Your customers start their internet journey with a search. Your competitors are using search to grow their business. In fact based on a recent study, 61% of these marketers stated that optimizing their website is their top priority.
Sooner or later, if you are not using search to grow your business, you will not have a business!
20. SEO can give smaller businesses an edge on larger companies
If you operate a small business, you may find that it is tough to outspend larger competitors in AdWords. However, an effective SEO strategy may be your way to gain higher rankings. While larger companies rely on advertising, you can rely on a savvy SEO strategy to go in the back door to acquire customers.
21. SEO will help you gain market share
Gain market share by being first. If you are the first option, your customers will never know about the hundreds of alternatives. Unless, they scroll to page 10 of Google. However, we know that will not happen. Why? Because 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.
22. SEO will help you break into new markets
SEO will help you break into new markets. Once your website is optimized, you can begin to expand your website to target other keywords. The keywords you choose can be new products or services you could offer. You can count on the search engines to drive qualified traffic to your new offerings, helping you enter new markets.
23. SEO increases the value of your business
Another one of the most notable benefits of SEO is the fact that your business becomes more valuable as your SEO rankings rise. If you are in the market to sell your business, many buyers will find strong SEO rankings as a valuable intangible asset. This is likely because SEO rankings tend to hold its value and sustain over the years.
24. SEO integrates all of your online marketing activities
SEO is online marketing. All online marketing activities in some way can attribute to your SEO rankings. Web design, content marketing, social media marketing services, and online advertising influences SEO. When all activities are integrated, your SEO rankings.
25. SEO improves your overall marketing ROI
As previously stated, an integrated marketing campaign will influence SEO rankings. Not only does this influence your SEO rankings, but your overall ROI from all of your marketing activities will be higher.
According to latest studies conducted, it shows that organic traffic can result to more than 40% of business revenue. And also, local searches has over 18% of purchase made within that day. This will be explained in more detail in the next points below.
26. SEO is the best PR strategy
SEO is the new “PR” strategy. It makes PR make sense. In order to rank high in search engines, you must have quality backlinks. Backlinks are links from external websites that link to your website. The more you have, the more relevant your website is. The more relevant your website is, the higher you rank. Acquiring quality backlinks may require publicity. The more publicity you have, the more backlink opportunities you may have. The two works hand-in-hand.
27. SEO will increase your social media followers
SEO will add-on more social media followers. As your visitors are researching your website, they are likely to click your social media icons to follow you. An effective SEO campaign will generate thousands of website visitors, which you can expect to translate into a smaller percentage of followers.
28. SEO will increase your email newsletter subscribers
benefits of SEO increase email subscribers
One of the benefits of SEO that you probably want to achieve is increasing your email newsletter subscribers. If you have an email newsletter signup form on your website, you can expect more subscribers as your rankings rise. This is because you are gaining more traffic to your website, and more exposure. For optimal results, provide an incentive on your website for people who subscribes to your email newsletter.
29. SEO will increase your blog traffic
SEO will increase your blog traffic. As your website’s authority rises with search engines, a few things will happen. Your blog’s individual ranking in Google will rise. Your blog content is more likely to be found on Google. And lastly, you will likely gain more referral traffic from your website by promoting your blog throughout your website.
30. SEO improves your website’s click-through-rate
High SEO rankings will improve your website’s click-through-rate. Or, vice versa. You must have a high click-through-rate to improve your SEO. Click-through-rate is the amount of people who click your website divided by the amount of people you reached.
31. SEO improves your website’s time-on-site
As your click-through-rate rises, your website’s time-on-site will likely increase as well. This is how long your website visitors are staying on your website. The longer your visitors stay on your website, the more likely they are to buy. Additionally, it will boost your SEO rankings as well.
32. SEO improves the safety and security of your website
SEO will force you make your website safe and secure. This will protect your website visitors from viruses and fraud. Simultaneously, it will boost your rankings as secure websites will significantly influence your SEO rankings.
33. SEO improves the speed of your website
As you are working on growing your website’s SEO, you will improve the speed of your site. High-speed websites will help you offer the best user experience to your visitors. In addition, high SEO rankings will also correspond with higher-speed websites.
34. SEO will improve the user experience of your website
As you can tell from the last few points, SEO will improve the overall user experience of your website. It is important that you keep in mind that Google’s goal is to provide relevance to their users. To rank high in Google, your website must be relevant. In order to be relevant, you will have to offer a great user experience
35. SEO is growing
SEO spending is forecasted to increase to $80 billion by 2020. SEO spending is likely to be higher than online advertising spending. SEO is growing for one reason. It works. Your business has an opportunity to jump on the SEO bandwagon before it becomes too saturated.
36. SEO is mobile
Mobile is the future of online. And, 50% of all Internet users are mobile. This is likely to continue to increase. By optimizing your website for SEO, you are also preparing yourself for the next generation of marketing. Your website must be mobile-friendly. And, search engines will favor your website for optimizing your site for mobile.
37. SEO will help you stand out
There are 250 million websites on the Internet. The average person will never know what most of the Internet has to offer. Higher SEO rankings will help you stand out from the millions of other websites.
38. SEO is laser-targeted
SEO is keyword-based. This means that listings appear based on the keywords people search for. The advantage here is for you to reach people who are looking for exactly what your business offers. The keyword targeting ability of SEO is one of the primarily reasons why it delivers the most qualified traffic to your website.
39. SEO traffic is the real deal
SEO traffic is the real deal. The people visiting your website are not coming for fun. They are in actionable pain. They have real problems. They are looking for answers, and they clicked your website because they think you can find it with your business. And this is one of the benefits of SEO. As long as you add value, and understand your customers, you will have much success with SEO.
40. SEO rankings last forever
Okay, not really. But honestly, it is extremely hard to screw up SEO rankings. You will likely remain in top positions, unless you use black-hat SEO practices. Black-hat SEO practices consist of frowned-upon tactics to trick search engines to rank your website. However, you are not going to have to worry about this. Why? Because you are going to use a trusted SEO company. Once you attain top placement, it is time to celebrate! Or, begin expanding to other keywords.
41. SEO can eliminate cold-calling and other traditional strategies
Tired of passing out flyers? Tired of advertising in magazines and not seeing results? Tired of cold calling people and bothering people who will never want to buy from you? If your answer is yes, invest in SEO.
42. SEO can double, triple, or quadruple your business
SEO can literally double, triple, or quadruple your business. SEO exposes you to the entire market of individuals searching for you. You can expand in more cities, states, nations, or other parts of the world with an effective SEO strategy. The world becomes your marketplace with an effective SEO strategy.
43. SEO can help you attract talent
SEO can help you attract talent. People looking for work also start their journey on Google. You can optimize your website to rank on Google for the positions you are hiring for. Avoid recruiting fees and acquisition costs by investing into a SEO strategy.
44. SEO is Affordable
SEO is more affordable than advertising to increase your conversions. SEO pricing typically ranges from $800-$2000 per month. However, the return is invaluable. Once you rank #1 on Google, your website will receive thousands of free hits to your website.
45. SEO is the smartest marketing investment you can make
The benefits of SEO are endless. SEO is the smartest marketing investment you can make. It is a long-term asset to your business. It generates traffic, leads, and sales. It does not require any advertising. Your customers are searching on it right now. And, one of your competitors are growing your business significantly from it. If you want to grow your business without cold calling, networking, or other forms of “push” advertising, invest into a SEO campaign today.
After recently launching a new Interest Targeting option for LinkedIn ads, which is based on the content people engage with on the platform, LinkedIn is now broadening its ad targeting toolset even further, with the addition of three new options to help hone in on your specific target audience.
The three new options being launched are ‘lookalike audiences’, ‘audience templates’, and the addition of Microsoft Bing search data to beef up interest targeting. Here’s how each will work.
Lookalike Audiences
Digiday reported back in January that LinkedIn was working on its own variation of Lookalike Audiences, and now, LinkedIn has officially confirmed the addition.
As per LinkedIn:
“LinkedIn’s lookalike audiences combine the traits of your ideal customer with our rich member and company data to help you market to new professional audiences similar to your existing customers, website visitors and target accounts. Since these members are already on LinkedIn, they’re in the right professional mindset to engage and respond to your brand.”
Similar to how the process works on other platforms, Lookalike Audiences will enable you to upload an email list from your CRM, for example, or a list of people who have visited your website, then LinkedIn’s system will match those details against its database to come up with a new audience of users who share similar traits.
Lookalike audiences have proven highly effective on other platforms, taking some of the effort out of identifying and focusing on the right audience. If the system is able to detect relevant, similar traits, this can be a great way of reaching new people who are likely to be interested in your offerings.
This may actually be even more potent on LinkedIn, as it will be able to detect new user segments based on job title and position information, which could help ensure you get your ads in front of the exact right decision makers, and capitalize on industry trends and shifts.
LinkedIn says that the option has proven effective in its initial trials:
“Customers in our pilot were able to improve their campaign reach by 5-10x while still reaching the kind of high-quality audiences that matter most to their organizations.”
This could become a key consideration for all LinkedIn ad campaigns.
Audience Templates
Audience Templates, meanwhile, aim to make it easier for people who are less certain about their target market, or have less training data to go on, to reach relevant users on the platform.
As you can see here, the Audience Templates option – shown on the right of the screenshot – will enable advertisers to search for a market segment that relates to their offering. You just enter in the type of people you’re trying to reach and LinkedIn will provide a match based on its system detail.
At this stage, there are around 20 predefined B2B audiences to choose from, though LinkedIn notes that is expanding.
It’s taken a while, but Facebook is now rolling out its promised ‘time spent’ dashboard within its main app, enabling users to track the time they’re active on Facebook each day, and set prompts to limit their use.
As you can see from the above screenshots, the new dashboard is available within the functions listing, and through it, you can see your total time spent, set daily reminders, and change your settings to make better use of your time.
The options are very similar to what Instagram launched last week, which are part of the broader ‘digital wellbeing’ push within tech circles that’s been initiated in response to a range of reports about the potential negatives of overuse of digital platforms.
Facebook itself commissioned a report which found that passive engagement on social can lead to negative mental health impacts. That finding puts Facebook, as a business, in a tough position – on one hand, it needs to make you come back to the platform and use it as much as possible to boost its usage stats (and attract more ad dollars), but on the other, there are user welfare concerns with the same.
In this respect, Facebook’s new tracking tools seem somewhat like a red flag being waved by a matador – yes, they seek to address the core issue, but not really.
As noted by Techcrunch:
“Facebook and Instagram’s versions are particularly toothless. There are no options to force you to ease off your usage, just a quick daily limit notification to dismiss. iOS 12’s Screen Time at least delivery’s a weekly usage report by default so the feature finds you even if you don’t go looking for it. And Android’s new Digital Wellbeing dashboard is by far the most powerful, graying out app icons and requiring you to dig into your settings to unlock apps once you hit your daily limit.”
Really, the apps themselves are not responsible for how you use your time – if you choose to spend your free hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, that’s up to you. The providers can give you access to tools to highlight the potential problems with this, but they can’t necessarily enforce any ‘rules’ around use. It is possible that they could do more, as TechCrunch notes, and Facebook could also provide more insight into how, specifically, you’re spending your time in its apps, which may help to guide your usage. But the tracking dashboards are, looking at the other side of the argument, at least a first step.
So long as people go looking for them. Will you check out your Facebook usage stats?
I’m willing to bet the majority of users of both apps won’t bother – because who wants to know how much time you’ve wasted? Who wants to be shown the hours they could have spent doing something more productive? Hence, the red flag analogy – yes, Facebook is providing tools to help, but really, they’re somewhat meaningless in the broader scheme. You’ll keep on using Facebook and Instagram the same way regardless.
That’s not to denigrate Facebook for making the effort – and who knows, maybe they will prove beneficial, and will limit our time spent, and the negative impacts. But I wouldn’t count on it.
As you’re no doubt aware, Facebook Stories aren’t as popular as Instagram Stories, the most successful version of the format which Facebook copied from Snapchat (at least in western markets). But, even so, Facebook itself remains convinced that Stories is the format of the future, including on their main platform.
At their F8 developer conference earlier this year, several Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, noted that the Stories format is on track to overtake the News Feed as the most popular social sharing option, and that that will happen sometime this year.
Given that Instagram Stories is now at 400 million users, and WhatsApp ‘Status’ is up to 450 million, the growth of the option is clearly evident – but Facebook Stories, at 150 million daily actives, is still lagging behind.
But that slower rate of growth doesn’t appear to have dampened any enthusiasm for the potential of Facebook Stories in Menlo Park, with The Social Network releasing a new blog post promoting the potential of the format for businesses.
As noted by Facebook:
“The rise of stories is clear: people want fast, immersive and fun ways to share photos, videos and text with their friends and family – and stories offer just that. People use stories to share and discover content they’re interested in for movements as big as Pride and moments as small as the coffee they’re drinking. We designed stories on our platforms to fulfill people’s need to interact and share in engaging and playful ways on the vertical screen.”
I did laugh a little at the ‘we designed’ note – though probably not as funny to those at Snap Inc.
In the post, Facebook outlines the potential of Stories for brands, and their capacity to help marketers connect with their audiences, noting that a third of the most viewed stories on Instagram are from businesses.
But ads in Stories are where Facebook suggests there’s the most brand potential.
“Businesses are already seeing results using ads in Instagram Stories. For example, Tropicana ran video ads in Instagram Stories for its summertime product promotion campaign, achieving an 18-point lift in ad recall and 15-point lift in purchase intent among males. OpenTable used ads in Instagram Stories to drive online restaurant reservations, resulting in a 33% lower cost per reservation compared to other ad formats. And Overstock ran video ads in Instagram Stories to acquire new customers and increase sales, and generated an 18% higher return on ad spend and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition.”
Right now, however, you can’t run ads on Facebo
Just a week ago, Instagram launched its new video sharing platform ‘IGTV.’ Now the company is rolling out new features like group video chat, new camera effects with custom AR filters, and redesigned explore section. So, let’s tell you about them brief:
Instagram’s Video Chat: How to use it?
The video chat option is available in the Direct Messaging section. To start a one-on-one video call, open an existing message or start a new thread. Then tap the new camera icon at the top right.
You can also make a group video call with up to four persons by creating a group that includes the recipients you would like to chat with. While chatting, you can minimize the window to multitask on Instagram by viewing photos, sending texts on DM, or post stories.
The camera icon turns blue when a video chat goes active and for joining an ongoing conversation, just tap the blue camera icon. Tapping on the red phone icon will end the calls.
In case you want to prevent a user from video calling you, blocking them would do the trick. You can also choose to mute users if you do not wish to receive notifications from them.
Explore Section: What’s new? What’s changed?
Instagram gets millions of visitors each day who check out the Explore tab to discover interesting picture and motion content. Now the platform has made it easier to find out specific content by creating topic channels.
On opening the Explore tab, you will see a list of channels which will show contents of a specific genre. The first one is “For You” that offers curated posts based on your personal interests.
There are other topic channels such as Food, Humor, Fashion, Beauty, Art, etc., and a list of hashtags to explore more specific and trending content topics.
In case you want to remove a channel from the list, just tap and hold the channel and select ‘Mute’ from the popup menu. It will stop showing content from that specific channel, and you can unmute it at any time by visiting the end of the list.
New Camera Effects
Another interesting update is the custom AR filters for Stories. For the first time, Instagram allowed third parties to create filters and they have been launched by celebrities Ariana Grande, Baby Ariel, YouTuber Liza Koshy, and famous channels like BuzzFeed and NBA.
These new Instagram filters can be used to augment a picture or selfie with objects and virtual effects. In case you come across a new AR filter being used on an image or video in other users’ stories, you will be offered an option to add it to your effects toolkit and try it out.
Instagram is also addressing the issue of online harassing and bullying on the platform by launching a new “bullying filter.” Based on machine learning tech, this filter will hide language that may seem offensive in nature.
CREDIT : FOSSBYTES