Benefits of SEO
Okay, so the most obvious benefit of Search Engine Optimization is that you get high results, and therefore lots of traffic from the search engines, and if your savvy enough, social media as well.
For most business owners, that’s all they need to know.
But wait, there are a LOT more benefits that lay a little beneath the service.
For example, there is the fact that offline media drives a large percentage of search traffic.
Meaning that when a consumer sees that ad on TV, hears that ad on radio etc., a large portion will then go to their favorite search engine (close to 80% choose Google) and then search for the business name, or the industry and or mix of the industry paired with their geographic location. (Raleigh pool dealers)
Why?
Because:
1. They forgot the business name, but remember a few details of the offer.
2. The ad peaked their interest, now they are researching the overall market to see what other deals are out there.
3. People trust organic search engine results and want to ‘make sure’ before they make contact.
So, if you outrank your competition in the search engines for your business and geographic keywords (AC Repair Raleigh, NC) then the user will think you are ‘better’ than your competition.
So when your competition runs ads on the TV and/or Radio, and a certain percentage of those who hear the ad search online and then see your site, and the search engine ranks you higher, who are they going to call?
So, not only is Search Engine Optimization shown to compliment offline marketing, but it also helps snag it from your competition.
That’s powerful.
Another benefit of organic Search Engine Optimization, is how it can seriously reduce your cost if you are running a campaign on Google Adwords.
In Google’s pay per click model, advertisers undergo what is known as a Quality Score. This means that Google’s advertising system as well as human editors go through each page being advertised on their network and rate their quality.
Along with bid price and click-through-rates, a sites’ quality score has the most to do with how much an advertiser pays per click.
If Google sees your site as very relevant for their organic results, they are going to see your site as very relevant for your paid ads as well, and this will lower the amount they charge you for every click.
This one simple fact has saved savvy Adwords advertisers millions, and has put some uninformed advertisers out of business since they instituted their “Quality Scoring” guidelines.
Another correlation between organic search results and Adwords PPC cost-reduction, is that once a site gets top listings in Google for a particular keyword, they can cut out having to buy traffic for that keyword entirely.
While we will get further into this in the Adwords section, the fact remains that SEO helps save you money regardless of the advertisng medium.
I’m going to coin a term here called “Hangover ROI“.
Hangover ROI means that even months after you have paid the fee for search engine optimization, when you are no longer paying for it, you are still getting all of the benefits and the traffic.
While it is completely within reason to calculate your return on investment only while you are currently having someone do professional SEO on your site, the traffic, and sales will continue (not indefinitely, but for quite some time) after you have finished your contract. In this fashion, your return on investment grows every month until you srat to naturally drop back in the results.