SEO, or "Search Engine Optimisation" in full, can be really quite magical for a business!
It was in my personal online blog, back in about 2012, when I learnt this for the first time...
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, I started getting a bunch of new traffic to my blog, which turned into more leads and sales for me. When I looked into where these were coming from, it turned out they were all coming from Google.
Somehow, the SEO gods had smiled upon me, and people were finding my blog from Google. What a marvellous and enviable position to be in!
But, SEO is shrouded in technical mystery. It's often renown for being complicated and confusing. So it often falls to the bottom of the heap in terms of a businesses priorities.
So, today I wanted to share more about why I believe it's well worth adding into your Business Growth Strategy…
First let's look at: What is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Search Engine Optimisation is making sure that your website is set up correctly, so that when people search for businesses like yours using things like Google or Bing, that they get matched with your business.
What difference can SEO make to your business?
Search engine traffic can make a MONUMENTAL difference to the amount of eyeballs your website gets.
For example - when was the last time you, yourself, looked at page 2 of the search results?
If you're anything like me, it happens very rarely! Let alone pages 3 onwards...
But, even if you are on page 1 – moving up into the top 3 spots, or, even moving from 3rd to 1st can make a huge difference.
Let’s look at a case study:
For the purpose of this illustration, I’ve intentionally used a low-volume keyword, to demonstrate the difference that even a few extra hits could make to your website.
The keyword (search term) we will use today is: “Flowers New Zealand”
Using Neil Patel’s Uber Suggest Tool I can see that there are approximately 480 searches in New Zealand for this search term and the value of paid cost per click is $3.24.
(BTW if you’ve never played with Uber Suggest – I highly recommend giving it a go!)
The top 3 website ranked for this search, at the time of writing, were:
The traffic these 3 websites get from this search, is distributed like so:
We can see by this example, that the number 1 website gets 3x the traffic of the number 3 position!
If our website was number 3, we would have 2 options to get more traffic than direct2florist (the number 1 spot):
We could pay for more traffic:
If we wanted to pay to improve our traffic by 100 hits for this search term per month (giving us the most traffic), it would cost 100 x $3.34 = $334 per month
OR
We could review our SEO and improve our ranking to try to get the number 1 position:
Over a year that could save us $4008
This is with a keyword without a high-volume of traffic picked at random. So, you can imagine how lucrative this could be with higher search volume terms!
What would a jump in organic traffic mean for your business?
Imagine if you could optimise your website to appear in more searches and not only an extra 100 visitors for free a month, but what about an extra 1,000, 5,000, 10,000 or more?
What would it mean to your business to have 10,000 more visitors to your virtual shop front.
10,000 new people knowing about your business would be powerful right?
How do you optimise your website for SEO?
You really have two options - try to learn yourself, or outsource it to an expert.
One of the things about SEO is that it's always changing. That's why these days I favour getting an expert to do it for you. Because unless you want to do SEO for a living, in which case it will be worth it to keep up to date with all the changes, then your time is best spent in your zone of genius.
But, even if you hire an expert, it pays to understand the basics, so that you know if you're getting looked after properly.
My friend Iona has this awesome free guide called "How to DIY your SEO in 10 Easy Steps" which will help you learn the basics quickly.
But, getting traffic from Search Engines is only step 1. To make sure you set yourself up for success, you should also consider:
How well does your website convert?
If you read my article ‘How to improve your website so it serves you in your business′ then you'll know that there are usually two different problems a website might be experiencing if it's not getting the results one would expect:
It usually has a traffic problem, or a conversion problem (and sometimes it might even have both).
Fixing the traffic problem (like by optimising your website for SEO) is only half of the battle. Once the traffic is there though, it needs to be able to convert.
I suggest some ways you can improve your conversions in this article here.
But, a great asset to your customer pathway, to help you boost conversions over time, is to create a Lead Magnet and having a box pop up when people are leaving, to encourage them to subscribe.
A Lead Magnet is some kind of free offer that people can get if they sign up with their email address.
It goes very well with SEO, because if people come via Search Engine traffic, but don't convert the first time (like most visitors won't), then it gives you a chance to carry on a conversation with them and build trust, via email.
For more information regarding Lead Magnets, I recommend this article: Lead Magnets, do you really need one? This will help you decide...
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About the author:
Kat Soper is the Founder and Head Trainer of The Helpful Academy Online Business School.
Kat is passionate about helping start-ups and small businesses succeed and achieve their business goals so that they can achieve the lifestyle they desire (and deserve).
Just checked out Uber suggest and don’t have the faintest idea what that all means. No wonder I keep procrastinating with SEO – just so confusing!