What is SEO and Why is it Important for Your Business? - VIP Marketing

If you were opening a new law or medical office, or for that matter a new furniture store or car dealership, you’d never launch it 20 miles from the nearest city.  You’d want to be where there’s lots of car and foot traffic—somewhere visible.  You’d know that your chances of success would drop dramatically if customers couldn’t find your new business.

And yet, every day, thousands of businesses launch new websites that get little or no internet traffic.  It’s not because their websites are unattractive or because their websites have weak navigation or cheesy photography.  It’s because the businesses which created those websites didn’t have a smart search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

WHAT EXACTLY IS SEO?

SEO refers to a group of strategies businesses use to get higher rankings for their websites from search engines. For example, if your auto dealership has a sound SEO strategy, one that includes keywords like “car dealerships near me” or “used cars North Charleston,” your website will be near the top of searches for those keywords.  That means increased visibility, more site traffic and more sales for your business.

This is how Search Engine Land describes SEO, and why it’s important for your business:

“SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.  All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads.”

WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?

The bottom line is that most consumers begin their search for products and services through search engines.  They click on both organic results and sponsored ads—which means your business needs a solid approach to both to maximize site traffic—but the heart of your search strategy is optimizing your website.  Without SEO, you substantially decrease the odds your business will be found—and that you’ll achieve your principal marketing goals.

Consider for example these SEO metrics from HubSpot:

• More than 60% of marketers say ramping up SEO is their number one marketing priority
• About 80% of internet searchers will only click on organic search results (meaning they never click on pay-per-click (PPC) ads
• SEO is almost 6X more effective (in generating site traffic and sales) than PPC
• Almost 75% of local searches resulted in a visit to a brick and mortar store within 5 miles of their search
• Almost 30% of local searches lead to a purchase from a local business

HOW CAN VIP MARKETING IMPROVE YOUR SEO AND TAKE YOUR BUSINESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL?

At VIP, our mission and ongoing commitment is to help our clients stand head and shoulders above the competition with best-practice marketing and advertising strategies.   We do that through a wide variety of marketing services. Our agency offers everything from planning and strategy to campaign execution and website design.  Designing effective SEO strategies is one of the many ways we help clients achieve their top marketing goals.

What that means for your business is the application of best practice SEO strategies to take your website higher in organic searches, increase traffic to your website and boost your profitability.  Those strategies include (but aren’t limited to) the following:

SEO STRATEGIES

1. Making sure your site is mobile-friendly:  As noted above, the most internet searches are done on mobile devices.  If your site isn’t optimized for those devices, you’ll rank lower in searches, and you’ll lose a lot of business.
2. Putting your business on top of local searches:  Most consumers look for products and services from local businesses. That means your business need to be prominent in those searches.  Things, like optimizing your Google My Business page (a free Google service that increases your visibility through Google searches and Google maps) and creating local keywords (for example, including “near me” with your keywords), will make sure local shoppers can find your store.
3. Leveraging search intent:  It’s not enough to know what keywords consumers use. Your keyword strategy also needs to know those consumers’ intentions whey they typed in those keywords.  For example, if someone types in “attorneys,” they might be looking for a lawyer, but they might also be thinking about a career in law.  A sound SEO strategy will capture search intent. This will increase the likelihood that the right people see your business. These are the ones who want to buy your products or use your services.
4. Creating valuable content:  The quality of the content you post is one of the top factors Google considers in ranking your website.  To achieve higher rankings, your content needs to provide useful, relevant information that consumers can use to answer their top questions and solve their most pressing problems.  Our expertise in content marketing will ensure the content you push is content that’s valuable and useful, building trust in your business and increasing your search rankings.
5. Building quality links to your website:  The quality and influence of the websites that link into your website is another factor search engines weigh to assign how high or low your site ranks.  By increasing the number of quality websites linking to yours, your business will achieve higher rankings in those search engines.

CONCLUSION

The “VIP” in our names stands for “VIP Marketing.”  It’s in our name, and it’s our continuing commitment to increase the reach and influence of your company.  Our goal is to your business to the next level with best-practice marketing and advertising practices.  One of the ways we do that is through the creation of solid SEO strategies.

To learn more about the ways our superior marketing and advertising services can polish your brand, increase your visibility and boost your profitability, email me at eric@heyimeric.com, call VIP at 843-760-0707, or visit our website to contact VIP Marketing today.