Traffic generated through SEO is purely organic. Organic traffic is a term used to describe visitors which come to your website as a result of unpaid (organic) search result. Such visitors find your website when searching for certain terms or content on search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. They are not referred to by any website(s) neither do they pay for advert.
An organic traffic needs to be of quality. This means it needs to attract only visitors who are really interested in your products and/or services and will likely buy them. It will be pointless drawing millions of visitors looking for a hair salon into a website dealing with doctor appointment. The quantity of an organic traffic will refer to the number of quality visitors visiting your website or web page. The more visitors, the better.
How does SEO works?
The main goal of a search engine is to provide users with the best user experience. This means the result obtained through search engine results pages (SERPs) needs to be relevant to the user and also of quality. To achieve this, a search engine sends out crawlers to scan the internet and gather all the possible information they can find. The information gathered is then brought back to the search engine which uses it to build an index. This index is then fed through an algorithm which will try to understand what your website is about, how relevant it is, how easy it is to navigate and read, how user friendly it is, how fast and secured it is etc. Based on this, your website will be reward with a position or ranking on search engine results pages for a given search term, phrase or keyword. This ranking will not change except if there is a competitor which does better than you or if there is a change in Google or other search engines algorithm.
Why is SEO Important
The first go to place when looking for an information, product or service is a search engine such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. Therefore, majority of online traffic is driven by search engines. This is where your potential customers go to on a daily basis. Why then pay for advert through social media or other platforms. Paid advert is short term and cost lots of money. Again many people these days don’t like clicking on advertising links.
Below however are the advantages of using SEO:
- Since majority of traffics come from search engines, you will be able to reach more engaging and potential customers when using SEO. Therefore SEO will increase lead generation and conversion. This means more sales.
- When done correctly, SEO will continue to pay off dividend over time. It is a long-term investment.
- SEO increases your visibility online. The more people see your website when searching for given information, product or service, the more trustworthy and credible your brand will appear. This influences purchasing decision.
- SEO is free meaning you can do it yourself if you have experience in web development and understands Google algorithms. Alternatively you can pay a SEO firm or agency to do it for you. You only need to pay for SEO only once but the benefits will be for a lifetime. This is cheaper and more effective than spending on paid adverts on a regular basis.
SEO create brand awareness. Even if people don’t buy any of your product or service, they become aware of your existence and will find or refer you at the appointed time.
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- Most big companies rely on paid advert to drive sales. However, as a small business this option may not be favorable for you but with a savvy SEO strategy you can gain an advantage over bigger competitors.
- SEO brings lots of traffic or website visitors most of which will likely translate into social media follows or subscribers. Therefore SEO increases your social media followers as well as membership or newsletter subscribers.
Read More: The 3 Types of SEO that will Drive Results for your Business
- SEO improves your website safety and security. This protects your visitors’ information and keeps them away from hackers, fraudsters or viruses.
- A proper SEO strategy will increase “click through rate (CTR)” and will also make visitors spend more time on your website. The higher your CTR and the more time visitors spend on your website, the greater your ranking. This is because to search engines, if visitors or customers spend a lot of time on your website then, the content is likely of quality.
- SEO improves the speed of your website. The faster your website, the better your user experience. Nobody likes a slow loading website.
- SEO makes your website mobile friendly. More than 50% of internet users are mobile. It is therefore a good practice to optimize your website for mobile usability. Some websites look very beautiful on desktop but you will cry when you see them on a mobile phone.
- Whatever you are doing is not new under the sun. It is likely that there are millions of other websites doing the same thing. How will customers find you? Not to worry because with SEO you will stand out of the crowd.
How long does it take for SEO to pay off?
There are several factors affecting SEO including age of your website or domain authority. Therefore, you cannot come in today and expect to beat a competitor that has been in existence for more than 10 years. You need time as well as a proper strategy even for search engines to trust you in the first place. Therefore, SEO is a slow process and can take several months (at least 6 months) of hard work for one to start seeing results or pay off. It a long-term investment and requires patience. However, once results start to show, the payoff can be huge. The good thing is you won’t need to be spending on paid advert anymore especially if the SEO strategy used was well implemented.