Importance of SEO
By now, almost every organization knows the importance of having a website. The world has turned more digital than what no one ever anticipated. It’s good bye to analogue marketing. However, since everyone organization has turned digital, the war now is on how to be visible in this digital world. Search engines are flooded with different websites and only those who can afford the fee (pay per click) appear on the 1st pages.
With SearchMedia’s SEO service one can afford to appear on the 1st pages of the main search engines without breaking the (already broken bank). Without SEO a website is s good as it doesn’t exist because no one knows it exists because they can’t find it on the main search engines.
When people search for your products and services, you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible, but the reasons for this are more than just because you want them to click through to your website. In fact, there is a certain amount of value in simply appearing in search results for terms directly related to your business. For instance, most searchers don’t just simply search once, click on some websites, and be done with it. Instead, they search, click on some websites, edit their search terms, search again, click on some websites, further hone their search terms, search again, and so on.
So what does this mean for your business? It means that if you can continually show in all these search results that you are gaining more and more mindshare with each potential customer. Chances are very good that they will eventually click through to your website, and since you continually displayed in all their search results, they will trust you that much more. This brings us to the next reason why SEO is important for your business.
Researchers make mental notes of the rankings for the terms they enter into Google and other search engines. They may not realize it, but they do.
And in the minds of consumers, your ranking is a vote of confidence — “Google says this business is relevant, so that must be the case.” This may sound a bit far-fetched, but let’s look at it like this: back in the golden age of the yellow pages, if you were looking for a plumber, did you feel more confident in calling the guy on the seventh page of the listings, or did you, like most people, start from the first page and work your way through?
Your customers may not admit it, but high search rankings makes you more credible in their eyes. So if you haven’t considered SEO here’s a list of some specific reasons why your organization should definitely consider investing in your organic SEO:
- It still works – First and foremost, the techniques employed to improve SEO still work. Even though data regarding organic traffic from Google was pulled fairly recently, the techniques themselves remain sound. Plenty of SEO case studies performed post-Hummingbird can verify this.
- It is not going to stop working any time soon – Based on the way search engines appear to be developing, it is not likely that SEO will cease to be effective any time in the foreseeable future. On some level, even audio and video searches ultimately depend on keywords the same as traditional text-based content; this link ensures the continued success of SEO techniques as long as it exists.
- It is cost-effective – Compared to the costs associated with other forms of online marketing such as PPC advertising, social media marketing, or purchasing leads for an email marketing program, SEO provides fairly good Return on Investment (ROI). While PPC may drive more revenue and social media may be more important for your image, your organic SEO in many ways remains a bedrock of your online presence.
- Search engines grabbing more market share – this is through directing more traffic to your website. Somewhere between 80-90% of customers now check online reviews prior to making a purchase, and this number is only expected to increase. It won’t be long before virtually everyone is searching for products and services online. Do you want them to be able to locate your business, or not? Without SearchMedia putting your organic SEO in place, people will have a very hard time finding you and will instead find your competitors.
- Rise of mobile bandwidth and local search optimization – Later this year, the amount of traffic delivered to mobile devices is expected to exceed that delivered to traditional desktop devices. With this dramatic explosion in mobile usage, a whole new world of effective SEO techniques have opened up for companies, such as local search optimization and SearchMedia will help you out with that.
- Not having a healthy content profile is damaging – With each and every update to its search algorithm, Google and other engines change the way they look at websites. Things which didn’t exist a few years ago, such as social media indicators, are now given fairly high importance in terms of their impact on your rankings. Not building a healthy content profile spread out months and years is potentially damaging to your business, as it is one of the factors Google evaluates when looking at your site.
- Your competitors are doing it – “Remember, SEO is a never-ending process,” “If you’re not moving forward and improving your position, you’re losing ground to a competitor who is. That’s a simple fact of how the process works.” Don’t let your competitors out manoeuvre you by ignoring this valuable tool for your business.
Investing in organic SEO is more important now than ever before, despite the current difficulty everyone finds themselves facing regarding the lack of organic keyword data and traffic. Your business definitely needs to have an SEO strategy in place if you are interested in succeeding in terms of online marketing; it remains one of the single most important components of any organization’s branding efforts and online presence and that’s the reason why SearchMedia is here, to make sure you are not left behind.
Impact of Internet Marketing in Business
Internet marketing is the fastest growing trend today and has made marketing even easier for marketers. Alex Trengove says, ”as the world becomes ever more connected, web centric keeping up with developments and trends is vital for marketers trying to reach new audiences – who are more discerning, fragmented and cynical than ever,” says the Online marketing guru. Technology and software are changing at a fast pace that it seems almost impossible to keep up with trends. Products and services are now evolving and adapting to the online/internet sphere. The web is constantly shifting, ever growing and ever changing – everything is transitory.
Internet marketing often called online marketing or eMarketing,” is essentially any marketing activity that is conducted online through the use of internet technologies,” says a media specialist. He further states that,”it comprises not only advertising that is shown on websites, but also other kinds of online activities like email and social networking,”. Every aspect of internet marketing is digital, meaning that it is electronic information that is transmitted on a computer, mobile or similar device, though naturally it can tie in with traditional offline advertising and sales too.
Internet marketing has three cornerstone principles:
1. Immediacy: The web is ever dynamic and online audiences, whose attention spans are short, expect on-the-minute updates and information. To keep the attention and favour of this group, you must respond to online messages and interact with communities and customers promptly.
2. Personalization: Customers online are no longer faceless members of a broad target audience – they are people who want to be addressed personally. Use the wealth of personal information available online to your benefit by targeting the relevant people personally and specifically.
3. Relevance: Communication online must be interesting, engaging, and relevant to the reader, otherwise it will simply be ignored. With all the information that is competing for your audience’s attention, you must find a way to stand out and connect to your readers. The best way to do this is by giving them exactly what they want.
Throughout its history, the internet has reinvented itself many times and the changes are far from being over. The current web is dominated by cooperation, sharing, personal entertainment and socializing. Anna Malczky a media specialist says,” it is platform for both entertainment and work an essential tool for virtually every business and the go-to repository for all forms of media culture products,” she elaborates. People of all ages, gender are spending a lot of time online and are turning to the internet for better services, convenience and life-enhancing tools. Just think how people use online banking, web communities, online shopping that cross all boundaries, updates, social networks, instant news and any of the dozens of other things that the web makes possible.
In 2010 was the first year where online advertising spend overtook the amount of money spent on newspaper advertising in the South Africa. It was the same year that online readership overtook traditional newspaper readership, which illustrates just how large an impact the internet has had on the marketing and advertising industry.
Online equivalents of traditional techniques
Physical office > Website. Think of your website as the public face of your company. Where before customers would visit or phone your office to find out about your products or to make business arrangements, this can now all be done on the official website. A website can offer additional features, like useful resources, online shopping and customer support.
Direct postal mail > Email. Email is the targeted, personalized equivalent of traditional posted direct mail. It has several advantages. Firstly, it is much easier for the client to act on the information if you include a link or a fill-in form for a competition. Secondly, it is easy for the customer to opt out of the advertising, making it less intrusive – or they can share it further if they find the content useful. Thirdly, it is much easier to construct a specifically targeted list online, due to the wide availability of demographic information. Finally, email marketing is cheaper and quicker, since there is no printing or posting involved – which also makes following up and answering questions easy.
Traditional advertising > Online advertising. Print, radio and television advertising usually requires a large investment upfront for creation, and a second large sum for placement. Online advertising carries a much lower risk, since it can be fully controlled, changed, retracted and modified at any time. The more targeted the advert, the more likely you are to generate qualified leads and higher returns.
Surveys, polls and market research > Web analytics. The traditional way of measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign was to take survey and polls of consumers and to measure the effect on the company’s income; both quite blunt and subjective measures. Web analytics are very different – they allow absolute and precise measurement of every activity that your marketing material is involved in, giving you the best picture of what works.
Traditional PR > Web PR. Traditional PR usually happens behind closed doors, as individual problems and complaints can be dealt with in private, or on the large scale, through impersonal broadcast media. On the web, PR takes on an entirely different dimension, because anyone can read what others are saying about your company. If the message is bad, a substantial crisis can occur. Brand management and PR are incredibly important on the web, because even one dissident voice can have a marked effect.
Word of mouth > Viral. Traditional marketing relies heavily on word of mouth to spread slogans, brand names and recommendations, and the web is no different. However, online word of mouth has the tendency to spread virally, as each agent is linked to exponentially increasing numbers of people down the line. If every Facebook user has an average of 100 friends, then every profile is just two steps away from 1 million others. Figures of this scale indicate just why ideas can spread virally on the web.
