SEO or search engine optimisation is the practice of improving a website’s ranking in search results. A website’s SEO performance can be assessed using various online tools or paid services.
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SEO has become popular among websites to improve organic visibility, increase targeted traffic from search engines, and build trust with internet users. It’s not surprising then that nearly half of all digital marketers are using it as their primary digital marketing strategy. However, not many people know the exact benefits of SEO to small-medium-sized enterprises and startups in particular. Below we list 5 reasons why you need to start investing more time into your SEO strategy if you haven’t done so already.
SEO Is Mandatory For Any Website
Any business that wants to succeed in the digital world will need to undertake an SEO strategy. As a matter of fact, SEO is obligatory if you want to be visible on the internet. If you don’t have a website and are planning to start an online business, you’re out of luck. The fact that most search engines treat websites now as an index of the internet is a big reason why SEO is mandatory. The engines use your website as the primary source of information when a customer searches for a product or service. If your website is not among the first few that are featured, then the customer will most likely never find you.
Google Is The Dominant Search Engine
Google is the dominant search engine in the world. This is because it has nearly 50% market share. The second most searched engine is Bing with almost 26% of the share. Yahoo, AOL, and other smaller engines are also used by millions of internet users. The sheer volume of internet users has given these engines tremendous power. They determine what websites appear in the SERPs. They decide which ads are shown to users. And last but not least, they decide where the websites are available to be accessed.
It Improves User experience and Brand recognition
Google optimizes websites based on a number of factors. One of the most important of these factors is user experience. The more relevant content your visitors get, the more likely they are to stay on your website. Achieving this, however, requires hiring professionals with a lot of experience in SEO. After all, no one can be a pro at everything. SEO is the practice of optimising websites to receive the best organic search engine rankings. You’re likely to notice an improvement in user experience and in your brand recognition too. This is because SEO helps you climb to the top of search engine rankings and become more visible to internet users.
Google Ads is a Great source of Traffic for Startups
Startups are supposed to be building a product people want. And the best way to build a product people want is to first decide what you want to offer. Choosing your target audience and the product you want to sell is the first step in this process. In choosing your product, you also need to choose a target audience. You can’t choose a broad audience because it’ll be hard to reach them all. Instead, you should target a specific niche. You can then use SEO to reach your target audience. After all, it’s much easier to rank for a specific topic than for a broad one. Startups can benefit from SEO not just because they own a product but also because they don’t have much budget for marketing. SEO is affordable and can be done manually.
There Are Various Consequences of Poor SEO
Failing to improve your SEO can have many consequences for your business. First, you will lose out on potential customers and revenue. Second, you will also lose out on visibility in SERPs and in the eyes of internet users. This means that you’ll have a harder time getting people to find your website and visit it. The worst thing that can happen to you is that you’ll be blacklisted by the search engines. This means that you won’t appear in the first few pages of SERPs and that no one will be able to find your website. The final consequence of poor SEO is that your website will get penalised by Google. This means that it will be penalised by the search engine and it will bring down the rankings of other websites too.
Conclusion
SEO is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. It helps boost traffic to your website and improves the search engine ranking of your website. Poor SEO can lead to your website being completely removed from the internet, which is a terrible fate to befall a business. The best way to start improving your SEO is to start building your website. While you can obviously build a website, it’s often a good idea to use an SEO-friendly theme so that you can quickly add content and build a strong foundation for your website. If you’ve been using SEO as an afterthought, you should start investing more time into your SEO strategy. You’ll be glad you did.