SEO is the fastest-adopted digital marketing strategy! There are many benefits and advantages that businesses gain from SEO.
Among the top advantages, you can’t forget to mention that businesses love it because it’s low-cost, long-lasting, and helps you build your brand making your website credible and trustworthy!
But how does all of this happen?
We have discussed how SEO works in digital marketing. Today, let’s explore how SEO turns your website into the finest lead magnet.
SEO (search engine optimization) means optimizing your website for search engines so that it appears on the first page (ideally top 3 positions) for your targeted keywords.
For instance, if you are running a SaaS company and want to appear for “SaaS for business” on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., you optimize your website for those keywords. In this way, you compete with millions of other webpages to rank on the first page.
But why would search engines choose your website to appear on the first page?
They do so if you have the best website and highly relevant, quality content compared to all others. That’s what you do with SEO.
If you consider it from another angle, when you work on SEO, you are essentially improving your website to boost its position on search engines. This way, SEO enhances your website’s search engine results pages (SERPs) rankings and makes you credible or drives organic traffic to your website.
Now, let’s explore how all this happens. What exactly SEO does do with your website? What are the areas where SEO improvements can boost your rankings on search engines like Google and Bing?
Here we go!
On this page
User experience (UX):
When it comes to search engine optimization, user experience is at the top of the list. Google and all other search engines prioritize a great user experience on your website, so they have very strict guidelines about it.
In fact, user experience (UX) is one of the factors that helps search engines assess the quality of a website. For instance, if a user can’t easily find information and bounces back to another website, it indicates something is wrong with your website, and you need to improve it.
Why would search engines care about your website when they have millions of other options?
That’s why UX should be your topmost priority in SEO.
The question is, what constitutes a great UX?
Here are the areas to focus on for your website.
Web design:
When a user lands on your website, what is their first impression of your brand or business? How do they perceive it?
It all depends on the user interface (UI).
Your typography, colors, consistency, fonts, menu, and navigation all fall under UI.
So, while designing your website, which certainly falls under website development, you should focus on all these factors.
Especially for a business website where your primary goal is conversions, if you don’t have a great UI that leads to a great UX, the conversions will be negligible.
And if your traffic is not converting, why should you care about SEO?
Information:
A great UX doesn’t just entail a great UI; it means, along with a great UI, having the right information in the right place.
For instance, when a prospect visits your website, they prioritize finding three things: your Contact Us page, About Us page, and pricing page, as well as add to cart or buy buttons.
All of these pages and buttons should be easily accessible to the user so that they can navigate and make decisions quickly.
If they can easily find this information, they will find you transparent and more likely to convert.
Mobile-friendliness:
According to research, over 55% of users come from mobile. That’s a huge number that’s why search engines like Google want websites to be mobile-friendly to secure some good positions.
Another research by Google suggests that when users visit business websites on mobile, 92% of them take action.
So, businesses must focus on the mobile-friendliness of their websites.
Fortunately, having a mobile-friendly website is a top priority in SEO. So, you can say that if you are working on SEO, it’s a must-have to ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
Website speed:
Website speed is a confirmed ranking factor. Google announced in 2010 that website speed has a great impact on user experience and it reduces operating costs, that’s why they have included website speed in the ranking factors.
Google gives an unfair advantage to websites that load in under 2.5 seconds compared to those that don’t.
I have experienced its impact multiple times in the last two years, and I can assure you that it has a significant effect on rankings, especially for shopping websites.
Google also offers a tool to measure webpage speed. This tool also measures other relevant factors, and Google refers to all of them as “core web vitals.”
When working on SEO, your priority should be to improve your website speed to secure top positions. At least, we prioritize it in our agency.
If you check out the top websites or even Sturdy Business, you will realize that our websites often load in or around 1 second.
Frankly speaking, achieving this speed requires a lot of effort. Some SEO experts may believe that website speed isn’t a significant ranking factor, but in my experience, for a shopping website, you can’t be on the first page without great speed.
Quality information:
None of the search engines would want to rank a website on the first page if the given information is incorrect or cannot help users solve their problems.
Regardless of having a great design, rocket speed, or meeting all other factors, if you don’t have quality content, you can’t outrank your competitors.
So, while working on SEO, prioritizing the quality of content is essential. In this way, SEO improves the content on your website.
That’s why, when working on my blogs or a client’s site, I have very strict quality guidelines. I don’t just focus on delivery or getting it done; I want to ensure that it’s going to be a great piece, it’s valuable and it will drive return on investments (ROI).
That’s something you can’t expect from many other agencies.
For instance, many other SEO agencies, as I often observe, may advise you to add more content and edit it after a few months to a year.
This is a waste of resources because without great content, it won’t rank easily, and rewriting it later means it will cost you more than creating quality content in the first place.
Check out our SEO packages.
Targetted traffic:
You should never run any SEO campaign without conducting audience research. Here is why:
SEO is basically targeting the right audience on the search engines to drive traffic to your website. How would you target your audience when you don’t know them?
That’s why, when starting SEO, you build an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), research your audience, identify their pain points, and then target that audience on search engines like Google using appropriate keyword research.
At least, we follow this approach for our clients and our own blogs. It’s the best strategy that makes SEO cost-effective in the long run.
This means that with SEO, you’re targeting the exact audience on your website that actually meets your requirements. In this way, SEO helps you improve your website to target the audience effectively, rather than attracting useless traffic that wastes your resources.
SEO drives organic traffic to your website:
As discussed earlier, SEO drives organic traffic to your website. Through SEO efforts, your website ranks on Google and other search engines, enabling you to target the right audience and generate organic, free traffic.
In this way, SEO improves your website’s search rankings and increases traffic.
Builds trust and credibility:
Just imagine, you receive a cold email or come across a new service on social media. What’s the first thing you do to assess their credibility?
You either check out their website design or search for their name on Google.
If the website doesn’t have the right design or the brand doesn’t secure top positions on Google for your brand name, you are less likely to trust them! Isn’t it so?
That’s what may happen with your website.
With SEO, as you enhance design and secure top positions, it means that SEO enhances website credibility and builds trust.
You become a more reliable resource or brand to your targeted audience, and this can increase the conversion rate.