Why seo is important

Why seo is important

12 Reasons why SEO is important

 

12 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely

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Many brands and businesses know (or think they know) that they need SEO for their digital properties, and the benefits they will get from that SEO work being implemented on their behalf.

SEO will certainly improve a website’s overall searchability and visibility, but what other real value does it offer? Why is SEO so important?

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These 12 reasons should offer some clarity, regardless of the industry or business size, as to why businesses need SEO to take their brand to the next level.

1. Organic Search Is Most Often the Primary Source of Website Traffic

Organic search is a huge part of most business’s website performance, as well as a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or engagement.

As marketers know, Google owns a significantly larger portion of the search market than competitors like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and the many, many others.

That’s not to say that all search engines don’t contribute to a brand’s visibility — they do — it’s just that Google owns about 75 percent of the overall search market. It’s the clear-cut leader and thus its guidelines are important to follow.

But the remaining 25 percent of the market owned by other engines is obviously valuable to brands, too.

Google, being the most visited website in the world (as well as specifically in the United States), also happens to be the most popular email provider in the world (with more than 1 billion users). Not to mention YouTube is the second biggest search engine.

We know that a clear majority of the world that has access to the internet is visiting Google at least once a day to get information.

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Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines is always going to work in a brand’s favor. Quality SEO and a high-quality websitetakes brands there.

2. SEO Builds Trust & Credibility

The goal of any experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a beautiful website with a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search with thanks to the trust and credibility of the brand and its digital properties.

Many elements go into establishing authority regarding search engines like Google. In addition to the factors mentioned above, authority is accrued over time as a result of elements like:

But establishing that authority will do more for a brand than most, if not all, other digital optimizations. Problem is, it’s impossible to build trust and credibility overnight — just like real life. Authority is earned and built over time.

Establishing a brand as an authority takes patience, effort, and commitment, but also relies on offering a valuable, quality product or service that allows customers to trust a brand.

3. Good SEO Also Means a Better User Experience

Everyone wants better organic rankings and maximum visibility. Few realize that optimal user experience is a big part of getting there.

Google has learned how to interpret a favorable or unfavorable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success.

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Customers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a problem. And performance will suffer.

A clear example of building a strong user experience is how Google has become more and more of an answer engine offering the sought-after data directly on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for users.

The intention of that is offering users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily.

Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience, leveraging it to work in a brand’s favor.

4. Local SEO Means Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions

With the rise and growing domination of mobile traffic, local search has become a fundamental part of small- and medium-sized businesses’ success.

Local SEO aims at optimizing your digital properties for a specific vicinity, so people can find you quickly and easily, putting them one step closer to a transaction.

Local optimizations focus on specific towns, cities, regions, and even states, to establish a viable medium for a brand’s messaging on a local level.

SEO pros do this by optimizing the brand’s website and its content, including local citations and backlinks, as well as local listings relevant to the location and business sector a brand belongs to.

To promote engagement on the local level, SEO pros should optimize a brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, its Google My Business listing, and its social media profiles as a start.

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There should also be a strong emphasis on user reviews on Google, as well as other reviews sites like Yelp, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List (among others), depending on the industry.

5. SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle

Customers do their research. That’s one of the biggest advantages of the internet from a buyer perspective.

Using SEO tactics to relay your messaging for good deals, groundbreaking products and/or services, and the importance and dependability of what you offer customers will be a game changer.

It will also undoubtedly impact the buying cycle in a positive way when done right.

Brands must be visible in the places people need them for a worthy connection to be made. Local SEO enhances that visibility and lets potential customers find the answers, and the businesses providing those answer.

6. SEO Best Practices Are Always Being Updated

It’s great to have SEO tactics implemented on a brand’s website and across its digital properties, but if it’s a short-term engagement (budget constraints, etc.) and the site isn’t re-evaluated consistently over time, it will reach a threshold where it can no longer improve because of other hinderances.

The way the search world evolves, basically at the discretion of Google, requires constant monitoring for changes to stay ahead of the competition and, hopefully, on Page 1.

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Being proactive and monitoring for major algorithm changes is always going to benefit the brands doing so.

We know Google makes thousands of algorithm changes a year. Fall too far behind, and it will be extremely difficult to come back. SEO pros help to ensure that is avoided.

7. Understanding SEO Helps You Understand the Environment of the Web

With the always-changing environment that is the World Wide Web, it can be a challenge to stay on top of the changes as they take place.

But staying on top of SEOincludes being in the loop for the major changes taking place for search.

Knowing the environment of the Web, including tactics being used by other local, comparable businesses and competitors, will always be beneficial for those brands.

8. SEO Is Relatively Cheap

Sure, it costs money. All the best things do, right?

But SEO is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things, and the payoff will most likely be considerable in terms of a brand’s benefit and bottom line.

This isn’t a marketing cost; this is a true business investment. Good SEO implementation will hold water for years to come. And, like most things in life, will only be better with the more attention (and investment) it gets.

9. It’s A Long-Term Strategy

SEO can (and hopefully does) have a noticeable impact within the first year of action being taken, and many of those actions will have an impact that lasts more than several years.

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As the market evolves, yes, it’s best to follow the trends and changes closely. But even a site that hasn’t had a boatload of intense SEO recommendations implemented will improve from basic SEO best practices being employed on an honest website with a decent user experience.

And the more SEO time, effort, and budget that is committed to it, the better and longer a website stands to being a worthy contender in its market.

10. It’s Quantifiable

While SEO doesn’t offer the easier-to-calculate ROI like that of paid search, you can measure almost anything with proper tracking and analytics.

The big problem is trying to connect the dots on the back end since there is no definitive way to understand the correlation between all actions taken.

Still, it is worth understanding how certain actions are supposed to affect performance and growth, and hopefully they do.

Any good SEO is going to be aiming at those improvements, so connecting the dots should not be a challenge.

Brands also want to know and understand where they were, where they are, and where they’re going in terms of digital performance, especially for SEO when they have a person/company that is being paid to execute on its behalf.

There’s no better way to show the success of SEO, either. We all know the data never lies.

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11. SEO Brings New Opportunities to Light

High-quality SEO will always find a means of discovering and leveraging new opportunities for brands to, not just be discovered, but to shine.

Offering quality SEO to brands means submersing an SEO team in everything that is that brand. It’s the only way to truly market a brand with the passion and understanding that brand’s stakeholders have for it: becoming a stakeholder.

The better a brand is understood, the more opportunities will arise to help it thrive. The same can be said about SEO.

12. If You’re Not on Page 1, You’re Not Winning the Click

It’s no secret in the world of SEO that if you’re not on Page 1, you’re likely not killing the organic search game.

A recent study shows that the first three organic search ranking positions result in nearly 40 percent of all click-throughs, while up to 30 percent of all results on Page 1 and 2 don’t get clicked at all.

What’s this mean? Two things:

  • If you’re not on Page 1, you need to be.
  • There are still too many instances when a user types a search query and can’t find exactly what it’s looking for.

Conclusion

Implementing strong, quality SEO on a brand’s website and digital properties is always going to be beneficial to that brand and its marketing efforts.

 

What is a keyword

What is a keyword

What is a keyword

What Are Keywords & How They Work in PPC

Smart recommendations to make Google Ads profitable

Opteo continuously monitors Google Ads accounts for statistically significant patterns. When something comes up, Opteo suggests an improvement backed up by real data. Opteo also helps monitor performance trends, track spending & get alerts when you need them.

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Keywords are the foundation for everything in PPC. Keywords are what you use to define where your ads should appear.

Without a solid understanding of what keywords are and how to use them effectively, you’ll never be successful with PPC.

Before getting started, it’s important to understand some of the terminologies in this guide.

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  • Search Term: The word or words a user types into Google when performing a search.
  • Keyword: A word, or a set of words, that you add to your Google Ads campaigns.
  • Keyword Match Type: A setting for your keywords that will determine the keyword’s reach.

Types of Keywords

When you think of keywords, it’s useful to understand what buckets the different keywords are in and how this sets them apart.

The types of keywords include:

  • Branded keywords include company names (e.g., Amazon, Target).
  • Generic keywords typically cover ambiguous keywords, and can also be referred to as short tail keywords (e.g., “running shoes,” “plumbing,” “towing”). The gist of a generic keyword is that we don’t understand their intent yet. There is nothing in the search that shows us whether this person is looking to buy a pair of shoes, or if they are just searching for different kinds of shoes.
  • Transactional keywords are keywords that have both a strong and weak purchase intent. As long as there is some purchase intent, then you can label a keyword a commercial keyword. This is everything from “Nike running shoes” to “plumbing services.”
  • Locational keywords cover everything that’s related to a location and are very powerful for location-based companies. Often these are your typical home services. It can be a city name (e.g., “towing company San Francisco”) or an actual request to show ads that have companies “near me” (e.g., “towing company near me”).
  • Long-tail keywords cover keywords that consist of more than 3-4 words (e.g., “Nike running shoes for marathon”). They are typically highly transactional meaning they have higher conversion rates than the other keyword types.
  • Informational keywords cover keywords where people are simply looking for information. This can be anything from “Sears store directions” to “how to get rid of a wart.” You would rarely use info-keywords for Google Ads.
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Quick note: The buckets above are not either or. Just because a keyword is “long” doesn’t mean it can’t also be a branded or an info-keyword.

Keywords Across the Buyer’s Journey

The type of key term a person uses in their search often reflects where they are in their buyer’s journey.

It’s important to note, however, that it’s impossible to know exactly where in the buyer’s journey someone is solely based on what keyword they use, but it can be a strong indicator.

Consider the following chart as a gliding transition rather than hard limits:

Keywords Across the Buyer’s Journey

Core Keywords vs. Qualifiers & Modifiers

When you work with keywords in PPC, it’s very helpful to know the difference between a core keyword and a keyword qualifier/modifier.

I should note that this is not official terminology.

  • Core keyword: This is like the main keyword (e.g., “plumbing” or “running shoes”).
  • Keyword qualifier/modifier: Searchers will often add qualifiers or modifiers (e.g. “cheap,” “near me,” or “marathon”).
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The reason why it’s important to understand the difference between core keywords and qualifiers/modifiers is that if you only have one core keyword in your account you’ll end up paying a lot per click and have a very narrow reach.

If you’re a plumbing company, and you have following keywords, you’re essentially just bidding for one core keyword:

  • Plumbing services
  • Plumbing contractor
  • Plumbing company
  • Nearest plumbing company

For the beginner in PPC, these all appear to be four different keywords. However, if you look closely then they’re all the same keyword (plumbing).

Instead, you need to remember to continue to find new core keywords across the entire spectrum:

  • Leaky pipes
  • Gutter repair
  • Broken water pipes
  • Water heater repair
  • Waste disposal installation

You should still have all of the keywords that I listed to being with, it’s just important you don’t get stuck with the same keyword.

Keywords Aren’t Exact

One of the biggest “aha” moments you’ll have as a beginner in PPC is when you find out that when it comes to keywords, what you see is never what you get.

As I’ll highlight in the match type section below, just because you use the keyword “Nike trail running shoes,” it doesn’t mean your ads will only appear when someone search for “Nike trail running shoes.”

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The reason is rather ingenious, and insane, on Google’s behalf. Because not even experts would be able to cover all searches with keywords if every single keyword should exactly matching a search.

Keyword Match Types

One of the first things you need to understand about keywords is that there are different match types.

Depending on what match type your keyword is in, it will behave differently.

This is one of the unknown “hacks” that people who’ve worked in PPC for any time take for granted.

There are four different match types. The difference between the match types come down to how much you want each match type to be expanded.

Broad Match

To add a keyword in broad match, just add it as is: running shoes

Broad match keywords are like shooting a shotgun. You choose the overall area you want to target (the keyword), but Google can expand your keyword, sometimes to completely different searches than you anticipated.

As an example, the broad match keyword “protein powder” can also show ads for searches like:

  • Protein supplement
  • Protein
  • Dietary supplements
  • Larger muscles

With broad match keywords, Google tries to show your ad when searchers look for relevant terms.

Broad Match Pros:

  • You can cover a lot of misspellings and keyword variations with a single keyword.
  • You’ll discover high-converting long tail keywords that you’d never thought of.
  • Broad Match keywords receive many more impressions/clicks than any other match type.
  • It can be extremely effective!
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Broad Match Cons:

  • Many searches/clicks = High costs.
  • High risk of losing money to irrelevant searches.
  • Hard to control, especially with single-worded keywords.

Broad Match Modified

To add a keyword in broad match modifier, add it with plus signs: +running +shoes

Broad Match Modifier Pros:

  • Much better control of which searches you want your ads to appear on.
  • Very good for finding new long tail keywords.
  • Your ads will still appear although the search phrase has an extra word or different word order.
  • Catches misspellings.

Broad Match Modifier Cons:

  • Lower search volume than with Broad Match.
  • Can still be expanded to seemingly irrelevant searches.
  • No easy way to create keywords in Broad Match Modifier.

Phrase Match

To add a keyword in phrase match, add it with quotation marks: “running shoes”

Phrase Match Pros:

  • Greater control on what queries you’ll be shown.
  • Very effective for sentences.
  • Effective for avoiding greater expansions.

Phrase Match Cons:

  • Reduced search volume.
  • Is a lot more restrictive than Broad Match Modifier with very few benefits.

Exact Match

To add a keyword in exact match, add it with brackets: [running shoes]

An exact match keyword is more or less that. Only search terms matching that almost exact keyword will trigger your ad to be shown.

Exact match keywords are like the snipers of the keyword match types. Precise, direct, and on point.

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Exact Match Pros:

  • You know exactly what search is used.
  • Perfect for controlling high-converting keywords.
  • What you see is what you get.

Exact Match Cons:

  • Much lower search volume for your keywords.
  • You can’t discover new keyword variations or long tail keywords.
  • You miss “one time searches”.

After you’ve fully mastered these, you can move on to an advanced match type that merges Phrase Match and Broad Match Modifier into a single keyword. To learn more, view the SEJ article: The Fifth Google Ads Match Type: Phrase Match Modifier

Which Match Type Should You Use?

When you first set up your campaign, I recommend you use Broad Match Modifier and Exact Match.

As you can see in my review of the four match types, each one catches different users; so in most cases, you will use them all in an effective Google Ads campaign.

The only but (and it’s a big but) is that you should wait with using broad match until you really know what you’re doing.

Your Google Ads performance can easily tank when you use broad match keywords without a specific strategy or workflow to optimize them.

Gradually, as your campaign gathers statistics, you might find that some of the match types for a particular keyword are not profitable, but others aren’t.

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For more practical uses for keyword match types, read this post on 6 Ways To Optimally Use Keyword Match Types for Google Ads Success.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are used to exclude your ads from showing on searches.

Let’s say you’re a plumbing company, then excluding searches for “jobs” or from cities you don’t service will help increase the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.

In the ecommerce space, let’s say you sell marathon running shoes, but not trail running shoes, you can exclude “trail” from triggering your ads.

This is powerful because you’re more or less paying the same for every click the same keyword generates. This means you can end up paying for clicks that aren’t as relevant for your business as you might have thought.

This is one of the main reasons why beginners can’t get Google Ads to perform.

You may think you have chosen the right keywords, written good ads, and are sending good traffic to a website. However, behind the keyword you often find your ads are triggered by search terms that aren’t as relevant as the keyword you added.

You can, and should, work with negative keywords in two capacities:

  • Before launching your campaigns
  • After launching your campaigns

When you’re done finding keywords for your campaign, spend at least half an hour to an hour Googling the keywords to see what pops up. Add any irrelevant terms you can find as negative keywords.

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You can take advantage of a ton of standard negative keyword lists.

After launching your campaigns, you should consistently review your Search Term report. This is where you can see exactly what search terms your searches triggered your ads.

 

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