Now more than ever we’re realising how important having a digital footprint is to our businesses, with COVID-19 forcing a lot of businesses to shut up shop completely.
Yes whilst a lot of businesses are having to close their doors, we’re seeing businesses actually thrive under the current circumstances, if the saying is true that digital is getting bigger and bigger, that is never more present than right now.
Of course, being able to run now depends entirely on your business model, being able to communicate with your customers is vital whether you’re currently operational or not at the current moment.
Now it is too late to make use of SEO during the current pandemic, but how good of an investment is it in the long run? In this article, I’m going to go over the benefits to your business by having an effective SEO campaign.
What Makes SEO Better Than Traditional Marketing?
With most marketing, you have to get in front of your target in the right mood, if you’re selling accountancy services, will they be in the mood reading the local newspaper? Are you intending to look for an accountant in there?
With SEO depending on the keyword you target, you know what mood they’re in. If they’re looking for accountancy services near them, they’re in the mood to buy or at least find out more information.
Of course, you can be more targetted than that with traditional marketing, but never as targetted as with SEO.
What Makes SEO A Good Investment?
Impressive ROI
The conversion rate with SEO is far higher than any other forms of digital and traditional marketing, we quickly covered it above. When you’re getting eyeballs on your business through SEO, they have already searched for your business or service.
SEO often gets compared with social media traffic, mostly because they’re the 2 biggest organic sources of traffic in the digital world. But this is where the similarities end, potential customers are very rarely searching to make business decisions on Facebook for example.
Long-Lasting Results
Although good SEO takes time, if done properly and without shady tactics, the results will last years to come.
Depending on the level of SEO you need, often times the work done today will last for years with general maintenance needed from then on. If you’re in a competitive consumer market, this will require more time and effort.
With advertising the moment you stop paying, the results stop. Although SEO doesn’t happen overnight, the results are not lost overnight (Unless you hire a shady practice and get a penalty from Google).
It’s Only Getting Bigger
Every year since the internet became mainstream SEO, and the business of search has grown. It shows no signs of slowing down. It is never too late to start doing optimisations on your business, but the sooner the better.
Credibility
There comes natural credibility with ranking higher on Google, people trust businesses that are ranked at the top.
Think about this in your daily life, when you ‘Google it’, do you trust the website at the top? Or do you look through the pages to find the source you deem the most credible?
So how do you find an SEO company that is going to do what they say they do? How can you be sure the company you’re doing business with knows how to actually rank websites?
How To Find A Reputable SEO Company
There are a few things you should see and check before you hire any business to work with you.
Past Results
Seems obvious? The amount of people that are working with companies and they have no idea if they can actually rank a website is quite frightening. Before you begin work with an SEO company ask to see some of the websites they’re CURRENTLY working on, not websites that worked on in the past.
If they’re a good company, this shouldn’t be a battle to get this, they should want to show off their results.
Testimonials
Pretty standard stuff, if people are happy to work with them, they will have reviews saying that. If they don’t you have to ask, what are they like to do business with?
Timezone
Hiring withing your timezone is important, also make sure they speak your language as a first language! The amount of people that trust their businesses brand with companies that have no roots in the same country is scary.
Things get lost in translation, accidents happen.
With SEO if you try to take shortcuts, you’re going to get a penalty. If the company would face no repercussions from failing your brand, how can you trust them to keep your best interests at heart?
