How SEO Can Help Your Business Grow

Promoting a new or established business  can be a daunting challenge. But with the help of the internet and digital marketing strategies, you have a chance to get in front of potential customers and leads online.

As a business owner there are many buzz words that you may hear about marketing but it is difficult to know which ones can work for your business and how to leverage different strategies.

This article is going to explore the buzzword,  “SEO” and will talk about how SEO, when done correctly, can help your business grow.

But first… we need to understand the background of SEO.

What is SEO?

SEO, also known as search engine optimization is the process of creating and optimizing content around common search terms used in search engines such as Google.

After creating the content which may be in the form of blog posts, videos, images, etc, you need to optimize it so that when there are related searches in search engines, the content that you produced shows up as a search result.

Following, people have the opportunity to click on your content within search engines and therefore have an opportunity to come to your website and become familiar with your brand, products and services.

In the example below, I created content around the search term, “how to generate roofing leads.” The content is in the from of a blog post on Optin Digital. Currently, the page is ranking in Google on the 4th page so my next goal is to increase its ranking for this search query.

Following, once anyone searches for this query in Google and clicks on this link, they will be redirected to my website and will have the opportunity to become familiar with my brand, Optin Digital. This is the general strategy behind search engine optimization and it can be a great tool to help build your brand and generate leads for your business.

How SEO Helps In Marketing

So, imagine that you are producing helpful relevant content on a regular schedule related to searches around the products or services that your business offers. After your content begins to rank in search engines, you will start generating free traffic to your website.

Following, you will need to have a way to engage with your audience once they come to a blog post or somewhere on your site so that you can build trust. If done correctly, this will allow you to engage with website visitors and have multiple digital touch-points.

Additionally, you need to think about why you want someone to come to your website and more importantly what action you want people to take once they are on your website. Some actions may include, making a purchase, giving you their email address, visiting a particular page, calling you, filling out a contact form, chatting with a sales representative, etc.

Otherwise, if you do not have a way to engage with people or you do not have a clear action that you want people to take on your website then there is no point to implementing an SEO strategy or bringing traffic to your website.

Website visitors are only valuable if they take an action or if you are able to get their contact information to follow-up with them, otherwise they leave your website and they may never interact with your business again.

How To Measure SEO Growth?

Regardless of what methods you are using to grow website traffic, you need to be able to measure the growth. While there are many different tools that you can use to measure website traffic, we like to use Google Analytics. This is a free software tool made by Google that allows you to insert code into your website and then you can track a variety of website metrics.

This tool can connect with another tool called, Google Search Console (also free) which can tell you important information about how different pages on your website are ranking in the Google search engine and most importantly which pages people are clicking on that come to your website.

For example, based on the image below, I can see that the blog post, “How To Generate Leads Online” has been viewed 16 times in the Google search engine and has been clicked on once in the last 30 days. Although, that page is not generating traffic, I can see how it is ranking and other important metrics.

It is also important to note that all of the traffic below is strictly from Google. It does not include other traffic sources.

SEO Versus Other Website Traffic Strategies

Regardless of what business you are in, if you have a website, then you need website traffic. Search engine optimization is not the only method to get traffic to your website but it is a free strategy and should be part of your long-term traffic strategy.

Otherwise, if you do not have website traffic from search engines, then you will have to rely on other website traffic generating methods which may include, social media marketing (SEM), guest posting on other sites, website mentions or paid advertising. While these methods may produce results for your business and it is good to diversify your traffic sources, it is important to not ignore SEO.

How Do I Grow My Business With SEO?

If you want to get started, then you should start with reviewing our blog post on, “how to generate leads online.” This post goes into much more detail about your website and other important factors that need to be addressed before diving into SEO.

Following, the next step is to think about common questions that you receive from customers regarding your products and services. This is a great start as you can answer common questions and reference the article when you receive the same question in the future from prospective customers.

Even if you are unsure about the technical side of SEO, I suggest that you focus on producing content that is easily digestible and relevant to your customer base. There is no harm in producing helpful content, even if it takes a bit of time for that content to rank in search engines.

Alright, now it is your turn to take your new found SEO knowledge and turn it into action!