If you’re looking for overnight growth or instant results…. search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t it. But that doesn’t make this slow-burn strategy any less valuable.
SEO is one of the most potent slow-burn strategies you can invest in because it generates organic, cost-effective results by putting your brand right in front of web visitors who are actively searching for it.
Just how important is SEO in today’s digital-first world?
- The first organic result that shows up in a Google search gets a full 5% of clicks. That means over one in four clicks go to this critical top-of-page-one spot, compared to just 2.5% for the 10th Google result.
- In 2022, US companies were expected to spend over $70 billion on SEO strategies.
- 49% of small businesses already invest in SEO services—and 31% plan to start investing in it soon.
While SEO won’t immediately revolutionize your revenue or have your phone ringing off the hook, when implemented correctly, it’s an advanced brand growth strategy that can pay off big time for years to come.
Here’s why:
- SEO offers compounding value
Paid media benefits your company as long as it’s running. But SEO efforts can drive a steady flow of interested traffic to your website for months or years—long after the initial work is complete. This set-it-and-forget-it kind of initiative allows companies to invest in SEO in strategic bursts, balancing creation with optimization.
New internet behaviors also add to the power of an SEO’d website. In 2022, 73% of Google search clicks directed to organic (aka, optimized!) website content. That’s a big jump from 65% in 2021. This trend suggests internet users are increasingly clicking on organic search results (rather than paid results) throughout their research and shopping processes—further increasing the ROI potential of the content you already have created!
- Search is recession-proof
Even when the economy is uncertain, consumers use search engines to learn, research, and compare. In fact, in 2022, overall search engine usage jumped by 20%.
Demand changes may tighten your budget for paid advertising or traditional marketing strategies in the short-term. But when you have optimized content available on the internet, continually building interest and brand awareness 24/7/365, those resources will keep directing visitors to your website no matter what the market (or your marketing budget) does.
- SEO reveals shopping trends in real-time
Curious which products and services your customers are most interested in? Search engine reports can tell you that—and much more.
Organic keyword data from tools like Google Trends reveals which questions and concerns internet users are searching right now. And studying your own website’s visitor analytics shows which pages on your site capture the most search traffic—and best engagement.
Together, search engine data and your website’s search reports offer interesting insights into exactly what your market wants, needs, and thinks about. This information can then be used to develop new SEO content or polish the pieces you already have published.
- Search-based strategies empower businesses to do more with less
SEO strategies can benefit your bottom line in two big ways—they have the potential to drive a significant boost in leads and sales for a comparatively small cost, and the more SEO efforts you invest in, the greater these efforts pay off.
Top-performing optimized ecommerce sites, for example, have been found to rank higher on Google for 20% more keywords per page this year than last year. And together, these highly ranking pages are bringing in a full 120% of the website traffic they generated last year.
Why the performance bump? Because a few highly ranking pieces of content don’t just drive extra traffic to those specific pages—they can boost the search ranking of your site overall. As you build the quality and quantity of your SEO content, every inch of your site benefits from the improvements.
Your perfect customers are searching for answers. SEO helps them find you.
We get it—tackling SEO on your own is a huge task. Between the shifting algorithms, complicated best practices, and deep keyword research, it’s hard to get found on Google.
At MediaSpark, we help small businesses across the country develop targeted, cost-effective SEO strategies for revenue-shifting results. From content creation and blog writing, to website polishes and analytics, we can optimize it all. Chat with our team to learn more about our data-backed strategies.
