Even in this mobile-app-dominated world of internet browsing, around 68% of all online experience starts with search engines. Put together, Google search, Google maps, and Google images account for roughly 93% of all global traffic, which is why search engines (and Google in particular) are such a force to be reckoned with. For an aspiring business, getting a piece of this action could make a difference between stagnation and prosperity.
Getting yourself a great SERP will increase your credibility, appeal, and drastically increase your business’ performance online. Even those who are willing to do business with you offline are likely to start their interaction with your business in a digital world. They might check out your site in order to see what you have in store, or they might just look up your headquarters’ address via Google My Business.
With all of this in mind and without further ado, here’s how optimizing your SEO may help your business grow.
Boosting Your Online Visibility
Visibility increases the chance that you will be found by your audience on their own, which makes this method particularly effective. Seeing as how you’re not reaching out to them directly; your audience will not feel targeted. This helps lower their natural defense mechanisms and increases the chance that they’ll actually interact with your brand.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is the fact that visibility determines your trustworthiness. This is another psychological trick, seeing as how your SERP position helps determine your overall reputation. A page that is first listed will seem more credible than those below. In fact, about 34% of all people just click on the first result that they’re presented with.
No one knows about your great offer if they can’t find it. They say that the best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of Google search results. The origin of this joke comes from the fact that about 95% of all searches end up on page 1.
Overall, your visibility directly impacts the perceived value of your offer and the traffic that you receive. The higher you rank, the better.
Finding the Right Audience
In the previous section, we’ve mentioned the fact that your audience will not feel targeted by your SEO approach to digital marketing. Well, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t actually targeted. You see, the main point of SEO is not just to stir attention your way – it’s to stir the right type of audience in your direction.
The truth is that there are some people who won’t become your customers/followers/readers no matter what. For instance, as a business selling gardening equipment, you have zero appeal to people living in small apartments. Sure, they might read a particularly interesting piece on your blog but they’re never going to buy your lawnmower. The key objective of your SEO campaign is to find a way to reach out to your primary target audience and attract them in huge numbers.
Now, from the perspective of your on-site SEO, your chance to do this heavily depends on your ability to make great titles and structure your content properly. Appearing in google rich answers, having a great FAQ section that will appear in the snippet, and mastering the art of properly formatting your headings will do wonders here. According to experts behind a renowned Sydney SEO agency, giving your audience a chance to take a glimpse at your content may be just enough to capture their attention.
While it is true that the quality of your content depends on your creativity, a proper format will determine whether your target audience gives it a chance, to begin with.
Boosting Brand Awareness
Building brand awareness starts with brand recognition. You see, brand recognition is the ability of your target audience to recognize your brand. This can be done through advertising and promotional materials. However, in order to reach the level of brand awareness, you need to persuade your audience to invest more time and interest in your brand. In order to reach this level of immersion, you’ll have to heavily invest in your SEO.
Brand awareness is a concept that your audience will actually know what your brand is all about. This means understanding your USP (unique selling proposition), your corporate values, as well as your brand mission. The way to get there is to make your content marketing and your SEO work hand in hand.
As a result, this approach is also quite effective in boosting the overall value of your brand. Seeing as how it leads to a direct increase in one of your company’s most valuable assets, it’s a worthwhile investment with a great ROI.
Revamping Old Content
Repurposing old assets is the best way of optimizing the use of your assets. You see, algorithm changes and just because an old piece of content performed great back in the day, this doesn’t mean that these rules still apply. Fortunately for you, this is a huge opportunity.
Namely, in while re-optimizing is not a simple process, it’s a lot simpler than producing a new piece. After all, writing a blog post took, on average, 4 hours and 1 minute in 2021. No matter how hard this re-optimization gets, it’s still time-saving when compared to creating a new piece of content from scratch.
Also, when it comes to content, people need it to be recent, relevant, or, ideally, current. An impressive statistic loses its value if it’s from 7 years ago. Still, what do you do with this “outdated” stat? Well, one of the best ways to repurpose it is to keep it for the sake of historical comparison. This way, you’ve given it a new purpose, prevented something you’ve spent hours on writing from going to waste, and giving something unique to your audience.
Naturally, technical optimization, discovering broken links, and even on-page optimization are all quite necessary.
In Conclusion
Handling your SEO like a pro is one of the prerequisites to facilitating the growth of your enterprise. You see, your target audience looks at your industry through the lens of search engines – the bigger the shadow you make, the larger and more powerful they believe you are. By using SEO, you can dominate this global game of smoke and mirrors quite effortlessly.