Start-up businesses are becoming a huge trend nowadays. In the post-COVID era, more and more entrepreneurs are leaving their jobs to start a business on their own. However, the start-up process can be challenging if you don’t pick the right digital channels.
This is when SEO comes into play.
If you’re trying to grow a business, you’ve probably already heard about search engine optimization (SEO). You may be wondering if it’s worth a try. The simple answer to this question is “yes”. If you want to grow your business online, SEO should be a central component of your overall marketing strategy. Here’s why:
1. SEO increases your Digital Marketing ROI
Digital marketing is all about return on investment (ROI). When planning your marketing strategy, you should be thinking about techniques that will deliver the highest profit for your business. When it comes to ROI, you need to consider whether you’re getting more out of it (in a financial sense), than you’re putting in.
This is extremely important for start-ups, as they face big initial investments that must be capitalized on in the medium term.
ROI can be difficult to quantify, as SEO is a long-term strategy. However, the research is clear: search engine optimization is an effective way to increase your ROI. One reason for this is that people who find your business using search engines are actively looking for the information, products, or services you provide on your website.
There are roughly 3.8 million Google searches per minute, with 49% of people using Google to find new products to purchase. There’s the potential for a lot of traffic to your website if you rank for relevant and popular search terms in your niche.
2. It’s a great decision-making tool
The same data that helps a business understand customer behavior can be used for other critical startup actions. The information can be applied to an overall strategy that can be used to shape the decisions a founder makes, leading to successful launch and growth stages.
Once you figure out the consumer, you can decide how to convert them.
For example, if one keyword is doing really well, then you can create a keyword cluster out of terms that aren’t searched as much. This will help you enhance the power of the poor keywords while ranking consistently.
3. SEO helps you outrank your toughest competitors
When starting a brand new business, you face a big challenge when trying to outrank your closest competitors. However, with SEO, you can get a clear path on what actions should be taken to “steal” some of that traffic distribution in the short term.
Although many people consider SEO as part of their wider marketing strategy, few organizations give it the attention it deserves. Therefore, most businesses don’t receive the full benefit of an effective SEO strategy.
What if your competitors don’t rank in one of the top spots or feature on the first page for your niche’s popular keywords? Investing in SEO can help you accelerate your business’ growth and rank higher than those competitors. Even if your competitors do rank well, it’s possible to compete with them by creating a more effective and consistent strategy.
4. Brings you better quality clients
As mentioned earlier, people who find your website on search engines are actively looking for your content. This means that they tend to be more engaged and ready to convert as opposed to leads you have gained from elsewhere.
For example, when you target social media users, you’re interrupting another activity, which means you’re competing for their attention. Not only does this result in fewer visits to your website, but it also means they’re less likely to convert when they get there.
If your Social Media conversions are dropping check out this article.
5. SEO improves your brand awareness
One of the most common digital marketing myths is that building a large social media presence is the best way to build brand awareness. While social media can be a great way to get your brand seen, SEO is arguably a more effective way to improve brand awareness.
This relates back to our previous point. When people are searching for terms relevant to your industry and your business consistently appears in the search results, you’re building awareness in a way that bolsters your credibility. The importance of SEO for small businesses is also huge. According to stats shared by Go Gulf, 46% of all Google searches have local intent, and about 72% of consumers who look up businesses online end up visiting those they find within a five-mile radius.
A good search engine ranking is a mark of trust. When people see you featured consistently on the top websites, they quickly become aware of your organization as a brand they can trust.
As you develop your startup business plan, consider ways in which your product and your business activities can generate press by capturing the interest of relevant influencers. This includes content you might create, as well as publicity stunts and actions you might take that count as newsworthy.
It is also a good idea to leverage your business expertise (and any related expertise at your disposal), to become a trusted source for a journalist or reporter.
6. SEO promotes your company, without the need for ads
When you begin to see results from SEO, you see them all day, every day. Unlike advertisements, which only deliver results while they’re running (and costing you money); you get the results from SEO indefinitely. Once ranking, a piece of content will continue to deliver results to your business, without you doing anything. We think this is one of the most important aspects of SEO — one that sets it apart from many other digital marketing channels.
What do you think? Did you know about all these SEO perks? Leave us some feedback in the comments section!
