Better search engine rankings help you…
1. Generate new business.
Potential customers - both B2C and B2B - seek much of their information about products/services online. If you’re not found online, your company doesn’t have a direct line to new business.
Ranking at the top of search engine results is a built-in marketing channel right there on the Internet, yours for the taking. Think about it: there are already people ‘googling’ to find the kind of product/service you sell! This is new business for the taking!
New business can come in more than one form:beat
- Direct selling online: This is more of an issue if you are B2C. Obviously, if your website offers e-commerce, you need to drive as much traffic as possible there for those shopping carts to fill up!
- Influence buyers via web research : This is particularly true for B2B, a sector that doesn’t tend to buy online, but uses the web a great deal for research.
2. Save money.
Maybe you’re spending quite a bit on Google AdWords to drive traffic to your website. Buying keywords is not a bad idea, but it shouldn’t be the only - or even the leading - way you get visitors.
Paid traffic never sticks around your website the way that “organic” traffic does (organic means visitors who choose to come to your site). And sticking around is what it’s all about around; they’ll read more pages, email requests for more info, download pdfs, watch videos, etc.
There’s not much point in getting found online if the visitor sees only one page and then leaves - which is often the case with paid traffic generated by AdWords campaigns.
3. Beat the competition.
Search engine optimization is not yet widely embraced by the business world, especially in the B2B market. This is very good news for you! Your SEO practices will move you right to the front of the pack (that is, to Page #1 in Google’s search result pages) - well before any of your competitors get there!
4. Justify the spend.
A large range of web monitoring tools (many of them free) let you measure, precisely, the return on your investment in SEO. Traffic, page views, downloads, RSS subscribers - all are quantifiable. There are even ways to assess the level of engagement of your website visitors… How easily, and specifically, can you measure the ROI of magazine ads or other traditional forms of marketing?
