Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Important For Your Business?

I get this question often, especially from small business owners who market to local residents. They are just not sure that catering to the search engines is going to bring them more business.

The answer is yes – definitely. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and all the other search engines drive billions of searchers to websites every month. In fact, there are more than 1.1 billion searches on Google alone each month. In that same month, 350 million people searched on Bing, 300 million on Yahoo, 245 million on Ask, 125 million on Aol….well, you get the picture. If you added up just the Top 10 Search Engines for the month of December 2015, you would see that more than 2.4 billion searches took place.

What do people search for on Google?

Anything and everything you can imagine, from hurricanes to hot movies, trendy makeup, Cecil the Lion and the newest emojis. Oh, and they are also searching for your products and services, too.

Do online searches result in sales?

They do, and they result in both online sales as well as brick & mortar sales. About 64% of in-store sales are influenced by digital interactions, according to a recent study on omnichannel retailing. And while e-commerce sales were projected to increase by nearly 14% this holiday season, online sales still only account for 9% of all purchasing behavior.

How Does SEO Fit Into Your Marketing Plan?

First, be sure that your website is optimized for mobile – both smartphones and tablets. The best way to do this is to have a website that is responsive, which mean that it will automatically adjust the pages to fit the user’s device. It is not just user convenience that makes this important – Google and other search engines value mobile friendly websites enough to penalize those that are not by dropping them lower in the search results.

Mobile is Changing Search Habits

More than half of all online searches are being done on a mobile device these days, and it is important that your website meets the needs of those customers. Your SEO efforts will need to address the changing way that customers are searching. For example, when searching for a new dog on a desktop, you might enter “boxer puppies” or “breeder for boxer puppies” in the search engine. But on a phone, you are likely to be talking out loud, so your search phrase will probably be something like “where is the nearest breeder for boxer dogs” or “find local dog breeders.”

By knowing the questions your customers are asking, and then answering them on your website, you will be creating informative and helpful content. You will improve your SEO and become more authoritative in the eyes of customers. If they can find the information they need on your website, they are more likely to buy from you – whether they are across the street or across the country.

Want to improve the SEO on your website?

Send an Email or call Deppe Communications at 904.524.0170 and we will get you started on improving your online search engine results today.