An often forgotten about aspect of digital marketing is optimizing your website for search engines (SEO). It's easy to get caught up in the hype of Instagram, Facebook, and even Tik Tok advertising - while ignoring SEO. While social media should always be a part of your business's online strategy, for most businesses, your main return on investment (ROI) will come from SEO.
Now, if you are wondering what in the world SEO even is...here is a quick (and extremely simplistic) explanation:
Search engines try and match people who are searching for something with a website that has what they are looking for. The better your website is at providing information that matches with the person's search, the higher up the list of search results your website will be. The higher up the list you are, the more likely that person will click on your website. Now, there is A LOT more that goes into all this and it gets incredibly complex, but hopefully that sort of makes sense!
Back to the exiting stuff...
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Helps Your Business Organically
Depending on your business's size, you might not be able to afford a $1000+ per month Google Ads budget. And even if you can afford it, wouldn't it be nice to have potential customers find your business online without having to pay for the real estate at the top of a Google search? This is where SEO comes in!
Once a website has been professionally optimized for search engines (and yes, this takes more than clicking a few buttons), your website will begin showing up higher and more frequently in your potential customer's search results. You know what this means? It means that people who are already searching for a product or service you happen to sell...actually find you!
Crazy, I know!
And best of all, you didn't have to throw money at Google Ads to get in front of them. Your website showed up in their search just because it was properly optimized.
Does SEO Really Make A Big Difference?
Let's make a quick example to show the impact of SEO.
Imagine that you own a pizza restaurant and you are wondering why no one ever seems to come to your business. You decide to hop over onto your favourite search engine and type in "Pizza restaurant in ____ (your city)". After scrolling down page 1, page 2, and even page 3...you finally stumble upon your website hanging out on page 4! That means people looking for pizza in your area just saw dozens of other pizza restaurant's websites before ever laying eyes on your website.
Guess what? 99% of Google searchers will click on results before they ever get to the 2nd page. So what chance do you have of people finding your website on page 4? About 0%.
Now imagine that you went out and got an SEO expert to work their magic on your website and a few months later your business is now showing up as the 3rd result on the 1st page?!
Roughly 10% of people searching, will now be clicking on your website - instead of 0%. Let's say each day 1,000 people are typing that search into Google and 10% of them are now clicking on your website. You now have 100 potential customers checking out your business online, browsing your tasty pizza menu, and potentially clicking that "order now" button.
Hmm, how much is up to 100 additional customers per day worth to you vs 0 additional customers per day? Probably a lot!
Conclusion
Ignoring SEO is basically the equivalent of lighting money on fire. You may have a pretty website. You may have the best booking system ever. You may even have a website that sings to you when you visit it. But if it isn't showing up when potential customers are searching, you might as well have a great big bonfire and throw stacks of cash into it because you are throwing away business!
The sad truth of the matter is the majority of businesses out there are in this exact category. Don't be another one! Make SEO a priority and watch just how fast your business can grow!
Here's an actual email we got from one of our happy clients after helping them with SEO:
"Hi Michael, I've noticed a huge jump in our SEO! We are getting so many calls via organic clicks. Also, our rankings for Google Maps have increased significantly this month.
I just wanted to thank you for your efforts! I really appreciate it!"