Ever wondered what is the currency of the internet? That’s right, its exposure.
Businesses today are powered by seeking the attention of their respective audiences. That amounts to 1 formula:
If you want to drive sales, you need to be seen.
Today, an incredibly powerful tool in your arsenal to garner your target audience is SEO.
SEO is the “Word of Mouth” of the internet era. Except, far more scalable and hackable. SEO can fetch you a high ROI, when utilized right. Look around and you will find that any business determined to grow is pushing for better search engine ranking and harnessing the potential of SEO.
Let’s go ahead and unpack how SEO achieves that:
1. Generates leads
Suppose you have a website that is well-structured and provides substantial information. That’s great! But what is the value if no one relevant is there to access it? None at all. When someone is in 2 minds about buying a product/service, they hop online to do their research. When you have optimized your website for the right keywords, you are seizing the opportunity to be in the right place, at the right time.
The key here is to create content that is attractive not only to your visitors but also to the search engine spiders that scour the internet collecting and assessing information about your content and deciding how worth it is relaying.
When you create content that meets the SEO standards, you will climb right up the search ladder; scoring a better search engine ranking on the search results and accumulating clicks and targeted traffic.
2. Builds trust
Every relationship will begin with a customer having found you a credible source of value. If you provide the search user with the solution to their posed problem, in such a way that is not aggressive i.e. bombarding them with CTAs, you will have established a positive relation to your brand that will spike their interest in your products.
Coincidentally, there happens to be a strong belief among internet users that business on the first page of their search results is by default a credible one.
Know anyone that goes to the 2nd page of Google search results? Nobody.
Having that kind of authority in the digital space is indispensable.
3. Converts leads to customers
Once you have captured the customer into your virtual space and hooked them with value, now the door is open to engage with them on a transactional level. At this point in the customer journey, if you have struck all the right chords, the customer will engage and respond to your CTA.
SEO is such a popular method because it is not in your face. It works in silence.
A customer that is browsing the internet with their query is actively seeking a retailer’s offerings. It works quite in reverse to much of the outbound marketing practices that can, contrary to the intention, avert customers.
To reap all the great rewards of SEO today, set your strategy such that your content is in alignment with your business goals. Craft your content such that it meets the expectations of visitors and the search engine web crawlers mentioned earlier.
The online ecosystem is cutthroat – there is no question about it. Do not sleep on SEO! Put aside the need for instant gratification and invest into your search strategy. This will have you playing in the long haul and gives you the leg up to grow organically over other merchants, who have a clear deficit in their own visibility.
SEO creates awareness -> Awareness generates traffic -> Traffic brings in sales
Even then, sales bring about more visibility. When seen in this light, it is clear that the efforts put into optimization recuperate themselves in a sustainable manner. Rest assured, this positive feedback loop is one to invest in.
