The New Year has started and businesses are looking to improve on last year’s performance. Because of this, I would expect that for many of you ‘to start doing SEO’ or ‘hiring an SEO Expert’ will be at the top of the list! It is time to face reality. In 2019 SEO is not a ‘nice to have’! It is a necessity if you are hoping to compete with other businesses similar to yourself. It is surprising how many business owners still haven’t added SEO to their marketing strategies. In most cases, this is due to a lack of knowledge about SEO or worry about the cost of it. Still, others feel that it is too time-consuming and would add too much to the workload to be worth the bother.
It is true that SEO is not plain sailing but I plan to give you 5 very good reasons why you should be implementing it in 2019.
No 1 SEO gets you to where your customers are!
You have probably realised at this stage that traditional advertising is not working as well as it used to. Television is no good as people are inclined to record their favourite shows and fast forward through the adverts. Newspapers are not selling as many copies and there are so many adverts that people just blank them all out. Even passing a large billboard on the side of the road makes almost no impression on most of us. Advertising has become a ‘white noise’ that we just ignore!
This is why you have to be at the top of the search engines when they are actively looking for something. People are using search engines to find what they want. It is only natural really. The number of people who don’t have smartphones is very small! I know the first thing I do when looking for a product is to search online. I want the best product at the best price. Before buying, I normally research a product, especially if it is quite expensive. I will often search for reviews of the product and the business.
Everybody knows somebody who shops online now. The amount spent online is increasing by BILLIONS every year. I understand that the internet has destroyed the way people shop for businesses, but these businesses need to move with the times or be left behind.
So What Should Your Marketer be Doing?
This is why as your business’s marketer you need to have your business visible to where your customers are – on Google. More than that, you need to be ranking on the 1st page for your products and services. Ignoring SEO in 2019 is like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand. The problem is still there and getting worse all the time.
How SEO works is rather simple. If your website is seen by someone searching for what you offer they will visit your website. The more visitors you get, the more conversions (sales) you will make and thus the more money you will make. If you have no visitors to your website you will make no sales.
49% of consumers admit to relying entirely on online-search for the purchase decisions with a further 19% saying it definitely affects their decisions. This is according to the Forrester Consumer Technographics research report in 2017.
Is this helping you to see the importance of SEO to your business?
No 2 SEO is More Affordable than PPC
As stated many business owners don’t use SEO due to the ‘cost factor’. Others go the PPC route. They see it as costing less due to the immediate results.
To be perfectly truthful both SEO and PPC will cost you money. At the start, SEO can actually be considered to be more expensive than PPC as you won’t see any returns until you have moved up in the search rankings. But the fact is that SEO has more long term value whereas the benefits from PPC are gone as soon as your budget is. It should also be noted that organic traffic gets far more searches than PPC. A lot of people ignore the ads, considering them a kind of spam.
Additionally, the sum of money you will be spending on a PPC campaign will vary depending on your industry and the level of competitiveness. It will be quite expensive to get at the top of the ranking ads for high volume keywords. Even within an industry, there can be massive differences in the cost of various keywords. Here is a blog with some of the most expensive keywords in Ireland – https://www.glowmetrics.com/blog/expensive-google-adwords-keywords-ireland/.
€177.96 per click was the highest found. As you can see it wouldn’t take long to burn through the average advertising budget at that price. It only makes sense to do your keyword research and calculate what it is going to cost to run a reasonable campaign before you start.
To calculate your costs there is an easy to use formula
Cost per click * clicks per months = monthly cost of the keyword.
Remember you are not going to convert every click so you will need to average out conversion profits and remove the costs of the Adwords and see if you are still making a profit. This is where many companies get caught out.
We are not putting PPC down. Run by a PPC expert or as part of a properly planned SEO campaign, it can work very well. It has been found though that companies who use a more rounded SEO approach see a much higher rate of return for their investment.
No 3 SEO Can Help Build Your Brand
It is very unlikely that a customer will be typing your brand name when looking for services or products you supply unless you are a company like Microsoft. Much more likely they will search for products or services that you and your competitors sell. This means, of course, that you want your name to appear as high as possible in the rankings.
While searchers don’t realise they are doing it, they do tend very strongly to choose the top ranking websites first, and only afterward might they check out lower ranking ones. This is because they associate higher rankings with a better result for their search. Google has been trying to do with its search algorithm and people are inclined to trust the results. This is the reason you need SEO to push you up the rankings so that your brand receives a higher level of trust from your potential customers.
I think it is very fair to say that in 2019 SEO is vitally important for raising your brand awareness. We know that the majority of shoppers research products online before buying and they tend to buy brands they have seen online. If they haven’t seen yours then your brand is unknown to them and therefore less desirable. Alternatively, if your web pages keep showing they are more inclined to remember you and search for your particular website in the future.
No 4 How SEO influences almost Every Sector of your Business
Many people believe that SEO is only about the rankings. This is not true. SEO influences so many sectors of your business. If you reread the previous part you will see that a massive part of SEO is about building brand awareness. All of those reviews you find online are related to someone’s SEO and while they do help rankings they have a large impact on how people view your brand.
97% of people read reviews for everything from coffee pots to what the hotel is like that they are thinking of booking. As long as there is a large selection of reviews they are inclined to trust them.
So not only will good SEO improve your rankings but also improve your brand awareness and reputation. This doesn’t happen overnight but with guidance, you can learn to manage these reviews to improve both your reputation and rankings.
Sales will definitely be affected by SEO. You can expect your number of sales or qualified leads to dramatically increase once your SEO plan is up to speed.
NewsCreed reported that 57% of B2B marketers stated that SEO has a very large impact on lead generation.
Another area that will be affected is your social media. With more people visiting your site you should find your content being shared more often. This will also help to spread awareness about your products and services.
No 5 How a Good SEO Expert Makes for Better Websites
It is not a well-known fact but an SEO expert spends a lot of their time improving the website they are working to promote. To get to the top of Google’s rankings you have to be prepared to follow their guidelines. And yes, they have loads of them. Better page speed, ease of use on PC and mobile, security, how your content reads and how relevant it is and the list goes on. An SEO expert has to consider all these things. As a result, the website owner normally has a much improved user-friendly website that loads quickly and is easy to navigate. Sounds great and for the website owner, it is!
For the normal website owner doing all of this takes more time than they have to spare. This is why they hire SEO staff or SEO companies to carry the load.
What about the costs of hiring an Expert SEO Specialist?
At No1 SEO Ireland we always recommend looking at your present advertising budget and acknowledge what aspects are dead money. One of our clients stopped advertising in wedding magazines. They were getting little or no return from them while it was costing several thousand per annum. This money now runs their SEO campaign and its ROI is vastly superior to any other advertising they use.
In Conclusion
The 5 reasons above should more than convince you of the need for your company to have an SEO plan in 2019. There are so many benefits to your brand and your sales. SEO gives you the chance to grow your business on a year in year out basis. Don’t miss out on the opportunities it provides.
If you would like a no-obligation chat about any aspect of SEO please feel free to
call us at 089 479 9227 or use our contact form.
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