How can SEO benefit my business and increase sales?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming a crucial part of website design. It is a simple fact that search engines, especially Google, have a huge effect on the sales and visibility of any business. The higher up on a search page a business’s website appears, the more likely it is that people will click on it. SEO is meant to help move a business up in the search rankings. This goes way beyond online-only businesses and e-commerce.
Just about every business nowadays should have a Web presence- at the very least, a website and one or two social media profiles. These are important ways for potential customers to find the business. Many customers search the Internet to find a provider of a certain good or service and start with whichever results appear first on search pages. This is why the website is a crucial gateway to the business. If you do a significant proportion of your sales online, then you need to bring as many interested visitors to the website as possible. More visibility doesn’t just increase sales through more visitors making purchases- it also means that you will increase the odds that your visitors tell friends about your business, even if they don’t make a purchase themselves. Traffic is the lifeblood of online sales.
Even if your business is mostly a brick and mortar establishment, getting visitors to the website is an important part of sales. This is because the website will contain important information about your services, pricing, location, contact information, and similar data. Any customer that wants to buy from you would need this information anyway. The more people who see the website, the more potential customers you have who have all the information they need to find your business.
It might seem odd for a business with no online sales to have a robust website and Web presence, but it is becoming essential. If any of your customers search for your product online, and your competitors have websites while you do not, you are losing out on a whole segment of your market. On the other hand, having a search engine optimized site means that you will be the first choice for all customers who are looking online for a provider of your product.