7 incredible reasons why every Entrepreneur should embrace SEO
With advancement in technology, online business entrepreneurs now have better ways of boosting their businesses; a notable example is the invention and use of Search Engine Optimization. SEO can be defined as the process of maximizing the number of visitors to a particular website by ensuring that the site appears on the list of results by a search engine. Effective use of SEO bears great benefits to entrepreneurs, especially if used appropriately.
#1. Increasing organic traffic
This is a good indicator of future growth of an entrepreneur‘s business. Good services, products, or ideas tend to spread resulting in better search rankings due to inbound links and social signals. The need to secure funding is the major reason why entrepreneurs need to prove to investors the long-term viability of their company. An increase in organic search traffic is a major factor in establishing current trends as well as formation of future trends. As an entrepreneur in competition, to increase traffic, you need to edge your competitors by understanding their content. What are they missing? This way, you can formulate ways to be the best. To get started, especially if you are a new entrepreneur, simply create a spreadsheet with the following:
- The competitor’s name
- The keywords/topics you are targeting that they are also ranking for
- The content they have created that is currently ranking above yours or is in the top 10 on search engines.
- Note any key elements of the content such as videos, images, long-form content, and discussions on the post
With this information, you can better allocate the limited time and resources you have to create content that stands out in your niche.
#2. Social media marketing
With the current technology, social media marketing has been linked with search engine optimization (SEO). This helps in provision of social signals, which plays a critical role in organic search rankings. High rankings in organic search results drives more traffic to your site as well as social media channels, accelerating their growth. Note that nowadays, social media is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Entrepreneurs, take an example location as in Chicago, should therefore fortify their SEO campaigns with strong social media efforts
#3. Research of keyword
A good understanding of the keywords being used to find your website as an entrepreneur can inform your overall marketing strategies on different levels. Note that key word research is the most strategic way to get into the minds of your target market. Keyword research provides valuable insights into your customers’ minds, needs and questions, and can as well be used to optimize the copywriting on company website, blog, and landing pages. An SEO- professional’s high-quality keyword research informs and enables customer intelligence, optimizes content production and identifies goals and targets. These benefits ultimately lead to better content, high ranking on search engines and happier customers, hence leading to more traffic leads and sales.
#4. Building and maintaining Business reputation
Perfect business reputation is one of the most critical things to an entrepreneur. Reputation building and maintenance is all about dominating the first pages of search results for branded queries or those with your name. It is better as an entrepreneur to suppress negative information about your brand by proactively preventing it rather than reacting to it. Having the top search results for the branded queries is the most effective way to ensure that current and prospective clients get the best possible impression about your company when they search for your brand name or related key words.
#5. Establishing and Maintaining Trust
Trust is one of the key factors for success of any online business, especially for new businesses with no established brand name. Recent research has proven that users tend to trust more sites that rank well for keywords they are already searching for(according to a study reported at search engine land).Users, additionally, tend to click on the organic results as opposed to the paid research. For instance, according to Search Engine Watch, organic search rankings essentially win over 94% of the time, implying that if you can’t be easily found in organic search results, you can’t make up for it in paid search. Competitors who rank higher than you will be trusted more, hence attracting more customers. Note that high rankings in search engine can help a startup company to get to the top in the market easily.
#6. Competitive gamesmanship
This is a common character in entrepreneurs as it is a basic thing in any campaign. Being ahead of your competition in organic search is the key way to setting your business apart from the aspect of competition. With every step up the organic search ladder, a competitor must fall lower. Remember, in a crowded startup environment with many hungry entrepreneurs, commanding a lion’s share if possible is vital for the long-term success establishment.
#7. Long-term brand equity
For an entrepreneur, this should be the ultimate goal. For any business, SEO is the best long-term investment for a brand’s online marketing initiative. Simply think of it this way; SEO is like building equity in a property, a website is like real estate and SEM (PPC) is like renting a home! Now you can also think of this;
“For every pound you spend on SEO, you build up long-term value, just like paying mortgage when buying real-estate. In contrast, SEM is a lot like renting a house. You pay to rent ad space in order to get traffic now, delivering short-term benefits only, with no long-term benefits. It’s like paying rent for the short term benefit of living there now, but those pounds are not building you any sort of long-term equity in the house.”
Generally, SEO gives a strategic investment that is long term. Despite its importance, it does not lack its shortcomings. For instance, it is time consuming and requires many resources like copywriters, developers, designers and many more, in order to be successful. However, the long-term results are usually greater than short-term ad buys. SEO, with no doubt, is a valuable investment for you as an investor who may be looking to kick-start your business, build a sustainable business for long-term success as well as establish and maintain trust in your customers.