Many brands and busi­ness­es know (or think they know) that they need SEO for their dig­i­tal prop­er­ties, and the ben­e­fits they will get from that SEO work being imple­ment­ed on their behalf.

SEO will cer­tain­ly improve a website’s over­all search­a­bil­i­ty and vis­i­bil­i­ty, but what oth­er real val­ue does it offer? Why is SEO so important?

These 12 rea­sons should offer some clar­i­ty, regard­less of the indus­try or busi­ness size, as to why busi­ness­es need SEO to take their brand to the next level.

1. Organic Search Is Most Often the Primary Source of Website Traffic

Organ­ic search is a huge part of most business’s web­site per­for­mance, as well as a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of the buy­er fun­nel and ulti­mate­ly get­ting users to com­plete a con­ver­sion or engagement.

As mar­keters know, Google owns a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er por­tion of the search mar­ket than com­peti­tors like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yan­dex, Duck­Duck­Go, and the many, many others.

That’s not to say that all search engines don’t con­tribute to a brand’s vis­i­bil­i­ty — they do — it’s just that Google owns about 75 per­cent of the over­all search mar­ket. It’s the clear-cut leader and thus its guide­lines are impor­tant to follow.

But the remain­ing 25 per­cent of the mar­ket owned by oth­er engines is obvi­ous­ly valu­able to brands, too.

Google, being the most vis­it­ed web­site in the world (as well as specif­i­cal­ly in the Unit­ed States), also hap­pens to be the most pop­u­lar email provider in the world (with more than 1 bil­lion users). Not to men­tion YouTube is the sec­ond biggest search engine.

We know that a clear major­i­ty of the world that has access to the inter­net is vis­it­ing Google at least once a day to get information.

Being high­ly vis­i­ble as a trust­ed resource by Google and oth­er search engines is always going to work in a brand’s favor. Qual­i­ty SEO and a high-qual­i­ty web­site takes brands there.

2. SEO Builds Trust & Credibility

The goal of any expe­ri­enced SEO is to estab­lish a strong foun­da­tion for a beau­ti­ful web­site with a clean, effec­tive user expe­ri­ence that is eas­i­ly dis­cov­er­able in search with thanks to the trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the brand and its dig­i­tal properties.

Many ele­ments go into estab­lish­ing author­i­ty regard­ing search engines like Google. In addi­tion to the fac­tors men­tioned above, author­i­ty is accrued over time as a result of ele­ments like:

  • Qual­i­ty back­link profiles.
  • Pos­i­tive user behavior.
  • Machine-learn­ing signals.
  • Opti­mized on-page ele­ments and con­tent.

But estab­lish­ing that author­i­ty will do more for a brand than most, if not all, oth­er dig­i­tal opti­miza­tions. Prob­lem is, it’s impos­si­ble to build trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty overnight — just like real life. Author­i­ty is earned and built over time.

Estab­lish­ing a brand as an author­i­ty takes patience, effort, and com­mit­ment, but also relies on offer­ing a valu­able, qual­i­ty prod­uct or ser­vice that allows cus­tomers to trust a brand.

3. Good SEO Also Means a Better User Experience

Every­one wants bet­ter organ­ic rank­ings and max­i­mum vis­i­bil­i­ty. Few real­ize that opti­mal user expe­ri­ence is a big part of get­ting there.

Google has learned how to inter­pret a favor­able or unfa­vor­able user expe­ri­ence, and a pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence has become a piv­otal ele­ment to a website’s success.

Cus­tomers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a prob­lem. And per­for­mance will suffer.

A clear exam­ple of build­ing a strong user expe­ri­ence is how Google has become more and more of an answer engine offer­ing the sought-after data direct­ly on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for users.

The inten­tion of that is offer­ing users the infor­ma­tion they are look­ing for in few­er clicks, quick­ly and easily.

Qual­i­ty SEO incor­po­rates a pos­i­tive user expe­ri­ence, lever­ag­ing it to work in a brand’s favor.

4. Local SEO Means Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions

With the rise and grow­ing dom­i­na­tion of mobile traf­fic, local search has become a fun­da­men­tal part of small- and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es’ success.

Local SEO aims at opti­miz­ing your dig­i­tal prop­er­ties for a spe­cif­ic vicin­i­ty, so peo­ple can find you quick­ly and eas­i­ly, putting them one step clos­er to a transaction.

Local opti­miza­tions focus on spe­cif­ic towns, cities, regions, and even states, to estab­lish a viable medi­um for a brand’s mes­sag­ing on a local level.

SEO pros do this by opti­miz­ing the brand’s web­site and its con­tent, includ­ing local cita­tions and back­links, as well as local list­ings rel­e­vant to the loca­tion and busi­ness sec­tor a brand belongs to.

To pro­mote engage­ment on the local lev­el, SEO pros should opti­mize a brand’s Knowl­edge Graph pan­el, its Google My Busi­ness list­ing, and its social media pro­files as a start.

There should also be a strong empha­sis on user reviews on Google, as well as oth­er reviews sites like Yelp, Home Advi­sor, and Angie’s List (among oth­ers), depend­ing on the industry.

5. SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle

Cus­tomers do their research. That’s one of the biggest advan­tages of the inter­net from a buy­er perspective.

Using SEO tac­tics to relay your mes­sag­ing for good deals, ground­break­ing prod­ucts and/or ser­vices, and the impor­tance and depend­abil­i­ty of what you offer cus­tomers will be a game changer.

It will also undoubt­ed­ly impact the buy­ing cycle in a pos­i­tive way when done right.

Brands must be vis­i­ble in the places peo­ple need them for a wor­thy con­nec­tion to be made. Local SEO enhances that vis­i­bil­i­ty and lets poten­tial cus­tomers find the answers, and the busi­ness­es pro­vid­ing those answer.

6. SEO Best Practices Are Always Being Updated

It’s great to have SEO tac­tics imple­ment­ed on a brand’s web­site and across its dig­i­tal prop­er­ties, but if it’s a short-term engage­ment (bud­get con­straints, etc.) and the site isn’t re-eval­u­at­ed con­sis­tent­ly over time, it will reach a thresh­old where it can no longer improve because of oth­er hinderances.

The way the search world evolves, basi­cal­ly at the dis­cre­tion of Google, requires con­stant mon­i­tor­ing for changes to stay ahead of the com­pe­ti­tion and, hope­ful­ly, on Page 1.

Being proac­tive and mon­i­tor­ing for major algo­rithm changes is always going to ben­e­fit the brands doing so.

We know Google makes thou­sands of algo­rithm changes a year. Fall too far behind, and it will be extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to come back. SEO pros help to ensure that is avoided.

7. Understanding SEO Helps You Understand the Environment of the Web

With the always-chang­ing envi­ron­ment that is the World Wide Web, it can be a chal­lenge to stay on top of the changes as they take place.

But stay­ing on top of SEO includes being in the loop for the major changes tak­ing place for search.

Know­ing the envi­ron­ment of the Web, includ­ing tac­tics being used by oth­er local, com­pa­ra­ble busi­ness­es and com­peti­tors, will always be ben­e­fi­cial for those brands.

8. SEO Is Relatively Cheap

Sure, it costs mon­ey. All the best things do, right?

But SEO is rel­a­tive­ly cheap in the grand scheme of things, and the pay­off will most like­ly be con­sid­er­able in terms of a brand’s ben­e­fit and bot­tom line.

This isn’t a mar­ket­ing cost; this is a true busi­ness invest­ment. Good SEO imple­men­ta­tion will hold water for years to come. And, like most things in life, will only be bet­ter with the more atten­tion (and invest­ment) it gets.

9. It’s A Long-Term Strategy

SEO can (and hope­ful­ly does) have a notice­able impact with­in the first year of action being tak­en, and many of those actions will have an impact that lasts more than sev­er­al years.

As the mar­ket evolves, yes, it’s best to fol­low the trends and changes close­ly. But even a site that hasn’t had a boat­load of intense SEO rec­om­men­da­tions imple­ment­ed will improve from basic SEO best prac­tices being employed on an hon­est web­site with a decent user experience.

And the more SEO time, effort, and bud­get that is com­mit­ted to it, the bet­ter and longer a web­site stands to being a wor­thy con­tender in its market.

10. It’s Quantifiable

While SEO doesn’t offer the eas­i­er-to-cal­cu­late ROI like that of paid search, you can mea­sure almost any­thing with prop­er track­ing and analytics.

The big prob­lem is try­ing to con­nect the dots on the back end since there is no defin­i­tive way to under­stand the cor­re­la­tion between all actions taken.

Still, it is worth under­stand­ing how cer­tain actions are sup­posed to affect per­for­mance and growth, and hope­ful­ly they do.

Any good SEO is going to be aim­ing at those improve­ments, so con­nect­ing the dots should not be a challenge.

Brands also want to know and under­stand where they were, where they are, and where they’re going in terms of dig­i­tal per­for­mance, espe­cial­ly for SEO when they have a person/company that is being paid to exe­cute on its behalf.

There’s no bet­ter way to show the suc­cess of SEO, either. We all know the data nev­er lies.

11. SEO Brings New Opportunities to Light

High-qual­i­ty SEO will always find a means of dis­cov­er­ing and lever­ag­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to, not just be dis­cov­ered, but to shine.

Offer­ing qual­i­ty SEO to brands means sub­mers­ing an SEO team in every­thing that is that brand. It’s the only way to tru­ly mar­ket a brand with the pas­sion and under­stand­ing that brand’s stake­hold­ers have for it: becom­ing a stakeholder.

The bet­ter a brand is under­stood, the more oppor­tu­ni­ties will arise to help it thrive. The same can be said about SEO.

12. If You’re Not on Page 1, You’re Not Winning the Click

It’s no secret in the world of SEO that if you’re not on Page 1, you’re like­ly not killing the organ­ic search game.

A recent study shows that the first three organ­ic search rank­ing posi­tions result in near­ly 40 per­cent of all click-throughs, while up to 30 per­cent of all results on Page 1 and 2 don’t get clicked at all.

What’s this mean? Two things:

If you’re not on Page 1, you need to be.
There are still too many instances when a user types a search query and can’t find exact­ly what it’s look­ing for.

Conclusion

Imple­ment­ing strong, qual­i­ty SEO on a brand’s web­site and dig­i­tal prop­er­ties is always going to be ben­e­fi­cial to that brand and its mar­ket­ing efforts.

It’s con­sid­ered a “new age” mar­ket­ing tech­nique, but it’s crit­i­cal to a brand’s web pres­ence in this day and age, espe­cial­ly as avail­able data and rival­ing com­pe­ti­tion con­tin­ue to increase and grow.

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