In our last post, I provided a detailed explanation of ‘What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).’ Now that you understand what SEO is, I think it is imperative that you understand why it is important. To do this, in this post I will discuss the five main benefits of SEO.

Quality of Traffic

One of the main purposes of any Internet marketing channel is to drive ‘quality traffic’ to your site that ultimately converts into customers. In our opinion, the traffic received from the major search engines is one of the most qualified avenues since the traffic is all pre-qualified.

For example, before coming to your site, a prospective customer decides to do a search for a product/service that relates to your business, connects to the Internet to find this information, goes to a search engine, types in certain keywords and ultimately chooses your website.  Based on each of these steps a customer takes before finding your site, we do not believe that you can obtain a more qualified visitor.

Measureable

One of the greatest benefits of Internet marketing is the fact that everything is measurable. By having the proper reporting system in place, you will be able to measure your return on investment (ROI) for each Internet marketing channel, as well as compare them against each other. In addition, you will be able to determine your exact ROI for each individual keyword from your SEO efforts. This reporting will provide the necessary information that you need to make intelligent business decisions that will ultimately maximize your ROI.

On Going Streams of Leads & Visitors

When building a house, it is important to build a strong foundation so the house doesn’t come crashing down. The same applies to optimizing your website. While it may take some time to build a strong, solid infrastructure, it is a critical step in order to continually perform in the major search engines. Once your website is properly optimized, you can expect an on-going stream of visitors and leads.

Low Capital Investment

Whether you are a small or large organization, you do not need a large amount of capital to run an SEO campaign. Since the major search engines do not charge you to have your site listed at the top of the natural results, the only cost is your time. With the proper allocation of time, you should be able to improve your position in the search engines and generate a substantial amount of traffic/leads through this channel.

We also highly recommend SEO for small businesses since it is one of the few avenues where they can have an advantage over larger organizations. The main reason is that there are generally fewer barriers (e.g. bureaucratica red tape) for them to implement changes relative to larger companies.

Don’t miss out on opportunities

Another big advantage to conducting an SEO campaign is that it helps reduce the chances of your potential customers finding your competition. For example, if a prospective customer does a search for a keyword that is related to your product or service, there is a high probability that the prospect is going to choose to do business with one of the top 10 companies listed. If you are not one of those companies then you are not only losing out on business, but you just helped increase your competitor’s market share. By getting your site ranked in the top 10 for your desired key phrases, you are occupying valuable real estate and removing one spot from your competition.

Now that we have explained what SEO is and why it is important, we will discuss the criteria the search engines use to determine the results/rankings for keyword queries.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 5:44 pm and is filed under Rise Interactive, SEM Tutorial, Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.