Small and mid sized business owners are not 100% sure that Search Engine Optimization (SEP) is the right solution or key for their online marketing needs, when in fact, there are very few instances where SEO is not a crucial and central part of an online marketing strategy.
Since “day one”, the point of SEO was to increase sales by obtaining qualified business leads from Internet search engines. Achieving this goal is possible with almost any business of any size. And, while SEO is a complex, evolving issue and requires tons and tons of work, every business Owner, President, CEO or CMO must recognize that without an organized SEO campaign in place, you will fade off the map, lose sales to competitors and bleed the value of your brand over time. You will spend tons of money on traditional media buys and find it ever so difficult to track and tie sales to those sources. To ignore SEO in its traditional and new evolving forms is to deny your company and its employees the opportunity to succeed online in the long-term.
So what are some of the basic reasons for which business owners and senior managers should take a closer look at SEO?
Obtain Increased and Higher Quality Sales – just as you begin to optimize your website, long tail search volumes will improve. Over the long term, with a lot of hard work, you can achieve significant positions on the major search engines leading to positive, bottom line results:
- • Your website will perform better and receive more traffic shortly after you begin to implement standard optimization tactics. This is not to say that if you sell mortgages (a competitive area), you can optimize for “mortgages” and on day #2 of your work going live on your site, you’ll have more traffic. BUT, if you begin to work on your niche and provide more and more relevant information to your users and to the search engines in a clear, concise manner, you’ll grow your traffic from the outset of your program.
- A lot of businesses are locally based and rely on foot traffic for customers to be within a short drive of their office or retail location. Search engines offer a plethora of local search features, and strategies for local search abound. If you leverage these local search tools and local search strategies properly, you are sure to increase your sales.
Increased Search Engine Visibility – Spread your wings!
- With a solid SEO program in place, you will cater to all major crawler-based search engines. So, not only will you receive exposure on Google (at some point) but also on Yahoo and MSN – and several other outlets. Once you optimize your site for organic search, the 3 major engines will pick up your site and run with it over time.
- As opposed to Push marketing SEO is “PULL Marketing” The quality of a lead that find you through search is very high. When someone searches your keywords and finds you, there is a darn good chance that they are going to be a solid new business lead. When a searcher finds you, they have INTENT. They pulled themselves right to you for a reason; they are looking for what you have. This is just the opposite of PUSH marketing – direct mail, outdoor advertising, TV, radio and other media mediums.
Brand Recognition – small businesses may not have large budgets for major branding. However, strong niche oriented organic search results can lead to your brand being associated with that niche over time. Your brand awareness and brand recall strength will increase as time goes on.
- Your company’s name becomes associated with specific keywords that are embedded in a customer’s mind.
- Control the terms that you associate with your products, services and brands.
- Impression on customers over your competitors – control your messaging with your landing pages.
- • The impression that you make on search results in crucial. To correlate this to a more human level let me ask this: If you went to a business networking event (Search Engine) where you might see a prospective client (Searcher), would you arrive at the event in tattered clothing, hide under a table or hang out in the bathroom for the entire event? Probably not. I’d suggest you’d opt for the former and likely network, move around the room, show your face and be found. This is the same as a search engine. Why hide? Why show up to a business event in dirty tattered clothing? If you poked your head out for the one good lead at the event, would you shake that person’s hand take their business card and hand them a Post it Note with your company’s name and your contact information scribbled on it? Probably not. This is the same thing as ignoring what is returned in search queries about your products and services. That is, poor page descriptions and poor landing pages make a really bad first impression – don’t let this happen to you! Many companies have neglected page links that are in search results which do not make for a strong impression on their prospects. Have you ever searched and get results and click through and you suddenly waiting for a .pdf to download? As a business owner, you must begin to recognize that this is no longer good enough. You get one chance to make a first impression, so don’t hand someone a Post-It with your name scribbled on it. Make a clear, positive impression. Proper optimization can help you with this.
Enhanced Credibility and Legitimacy – Has anyone ever said to you: “I searched your company’s name, but I could not find you.” Have you ever searched for a company by their name (no matter how unique) and you cannot find them? Is that frustrating? Does that make you think less of that company? For me, it does. Some points to remember are:
- Search Engine’s organic / natural results are viewed as authority referrals.
o Google Trust Factor: Some studies suggest that a referral from a friend exponentially increases the probability of closing a sale. Think of leads that come through search as referrals from trusted a friend. Think: “Google is my friend; Google is my brother referring his friends to me!” People trust search engines, especially Google’s authority. Take advantage of the trust factor to build your sales and qualified business leads. Google is viewed as everyone’s trusted friend who makes a referral – what Google says goes. Please don’t deny this fact.
o Each day, journalists go online and search for experts in subjects that they are covering. Can’t afford a high end PR agency? Optimize your site for your niche and be found for interviews in your subject, product and / or service area. Show the world you’re an expert and they’ll come to you for commentary.
Investment in your Domain Name
- Your investment in SEO is an investment in the value of your domain name and your website as a whole. It not only adds up in product and service sales numbers, but as you build links to your site, those links retain a certain value over time – they transfer strength and power to your domain.
Competitive Edge and Research Advantage
- In the USA, we operate in a capitalist society and system – based on competing to win in pretty much every facet of life (some will say I have this wrong, but that’s okay). This applies to marketing and marketing online. We really are in the mode of Survival of the fittest “The end justifies the means”. Optimization and Online Marketing is not a game of chance – it simply is not. You will not succeed without strategy, adaptation, knowledge, tactics and sweat – you simply will not. You will be swallowed by your competition if you do not have a gameplan – SEO is part of that gameplan.
- A solid optimization plan can help you succeed and sows the seeds for your company to grow over the long term. You may be behind now, but once you start, every little raise in ranks, one more long-tail term covered, one more referral from a major search engine counts for your business. I have seen this first hand, how the right referral from a search engine can keep a small business busy for a long, long time.
- Good search optimization can put you in the driver’s seat with your competition. Competitors who see you succeed and beat them out in major search, may in turn bow down to you and want to strike deal with you in any number of business negotiations. Or, you may one day say – hey, I have too much new business coming to me on the web, can you handle my overflow for me and I’ll take a cut????
- Being found in the top ranks of Google or other search engines for your top keywords can impress your business prospects. It can establish you as a leader in your area of expertise. So, not only bring you more qualified business leads, but it influences the buying process such that – as opposed to a competitor who may be ranking lower. So your prospects may say: “you’re beating them at search, so you must be more knowledgeable and have better products or services.” Don’t bank on this concept, but it’s just one more ancillary benefit to a solid SEO program.
- When you begin to play in SEO and watch your site statistics you learn more about your clients, prospective clients, their behavior and what they are looking for. Some companies are even rolling out new products based on the search terms from which visitors are arriving at their websites. With increased exposure as a result of SEO, you’ll glean information about the marketplace that you can then turn around and use for your competitive advantage. You’ll see holes and unique areas to exploit in the market place. So, make sure that you are tracking your stats and reviewing them regularly.
Ad Spend predictability and High Return on Investment (ROI). Optimization has more predictable long term costs and ROI metrics as compared to other components of marketing strategies.
- If you are a small or mid-sized business you have unique and or relatively distinguishable products and services from other companies in your industry. Establish your niche. When you present this information properly to users and search engines, it’s likely that you’ll find savings in obtaining leads from the internet. With organic optimization, your content, based on your niche, will begin to do the work for you.
- Once you are ranking for your keywords you can continue to mount on those existing rankings. You can produce content about your unique service or product to pull the visitors to you organically.
- ROI from SEO can be significantly higher than other forms of advertising and direct marketing. I’ve seen ROI on SEO programs at over 400% (many cases much higher, some lower). And, though I am a big fan of Pay Per Click and paid search advertising, SEO has been known to put PPC to shame – and that’s an understatement. But overall – search is the more important point, so whether its SEO or PPC, both can be managed to a great ROI, well beyond other forms of advertising and marketing.
Passive Business Development – “What are you talking about – Passive Biz Dev?”
- The great part about organic optimization is that once you are ranking well, in most cases, you can hit a plateau and build on that — so long as your industry is not too competitive. Though everyone’s plateau is different, from 1st page, Top 5, Top 3 or even #1!, once you’ve attained it, it is easier to continue on building your program to higher levels – adding keywords to your program and expanding out from the rankings that you have established to that point becomes an easier task – not simple, just slightly easier. You must continue to invest in your optimization in some fashion, but your overall investment can be tempered. Organic rankings help build traffic from other long-tail (more specific) terms and you site gains more and more momentum. This in turn allows you to draw down some of your time, or ramp it up if you so choose. In some cases, once you hit a certain level of optimization, your site can remain relatively competitive (depending on your industry) and you can watch the new business leads come in while you sit on cruise control.
- One way that this works is if you are indeed ranking for various keywords – offsite, external, in-bounds links will come to you naturally over time. Internet users, publishers and bloggers in your space may pick up on your site and link to it for factual information.
There are many drivers and justifications for a business to implement SEO and Search programs. For me, the most compelling reason is the increase in qualified business leads and accordant sales that come as a result of good SEO work.
I’m sure that there are more reasons not listed above. Now ready to hear your feedback!
