What is SEO in Marketing?

Often marketing agencies will assume that clients or prospective clients already understand what SEO in marketing is, and why it is of value. This is not the case though, to some, SEO is a complex process.

They know it is important for better business success, but are not sure how. With so many people doing more purchasing and information gathering online, and with the social media platforms that have billions of members, having a great web presence is important. That can be with your website and on other social platforms.

If you want to take advantage of all that traffic, you need to use SEO in your marketing strategy. Here is a look at what SEO is and what that means for all businesses.

Defining SEO

The letters SEO refer to Search Engine Optimization. All the major search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing have a process that determines what sites they choose to list, and in what order, when a search is made by a user.

There are paid for listings, and there are free listings. The paid appear at the top because they have paid to do so. They will have ‘Ad’ next to them.

You might also know free listings as;

• Organic

• Natural

• Editorial

The process of having your web pages understood, listed and ranked highly is essentially what SEO is. The aim for everyone being that when a search occurs that is relevant to their industry, they rank on the first page among the natural listings. Or even at number one! That is where the most traffic online is. People are more likely to come to visit your site if you are on top of the listings.

Why SEO is vital to any business with a website

Hopefully, at this point, you are a lot clearer on what SEO is, but how is it relevant to your business and your marketing strategy? Is it even relevant to your kind of business? Can you just do some promotions on social media platforms? These are some common questions website owners have so let’s try to answer them.

Three-quarters of the billions of people that daily search just Google alone, will click on one of the results on the first page. Most will click on one of the top five. Only about one-quarter of searchers will go to the second page.

Just think what that means for your business. If you make efforts for better optimization or even better have an expert take care of it for you, your website ranking will improve. The better you are ranked, the more traffic is likely to come to visit your site.

The more people that come to look at you, the more sales you are going to make. Even if a visit does not always equal a sale, that is still marketing and spreading brand awareness.

Here are some more SEO in marketing statistics that should interest any business or service provider with a website.

• 93% of people’s online efforts start with a search engine query.

• Three quarters of sales and services purchased online start with using a search engine.

• When you compare the costs of inbound leads to outbound (the former being when the customer or client contacts you and the latter being your business making sales calls to them), inbound costs your business over 60% less. When more people are finding you online and contacting you that is more inbound leads.

• Leads from SEO marketing have a much higher rate of closer than outbound sale calls have. The former is about 14%, the latter just under 2%.

You need to prove your relevance with a strong online presence. Search engines can only judge that by what you put out there.

Summary

SEO in marketing is not just for larger corporations or specific industries. Any business at any size can benefit from expert SEO help to boost their online presence. Your efforts should not just stop at optimizing your website. You need to have a presence elsewhere, on blogs, relevant forums, and social media platforms.

Your SEO marketing and social media efforts should be working together. Search engines will better understand and recognize your relevance as they see how your content is visited, shared and interacted with.

This post is penned by Mohit Jain who is the founder/owner of WhiteLinksSEO.com. The firm partners with SEO firms and small business owners in the US and Australia to deliver SEO services for clients.