Before discussing the role of SEO in online promotion, it is necessary to clarify that SEO is part of digital marketing, namely SEM (search engine marketing, along with contextual advertising). And especially in recent years, SEO has played an increasingly important role in the strategy of promoting brands that want to increase sales and revenues.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of facilitating the search for a web page, its easy scanning, and easy ranking by keywords of products and services. SEO specialists are engaged in attracting organic traffic and ranking in search engines, while digital marketing specialists monitor the entire online existence (company) that covers the SEO side.
The effect of SEO on the entire online marketing strategy, and the results of online promotion
- SEO has methods, principles, and tools that help create accessibility (on mobile devices, tablets, and other devices). – when customers are looking for certain products or services, SEO ensures that most potential customers get to your site and satisfy their needs on it.
- Improve the user experience – UX (user experience) and SEO are closely related. Namely, an SEO specialist is someone who raises alarms when the site has usability problems, namely: when contact forms are too complex and long, when certain buttons do not work, when the information architecture is poorly thought out, when the site is not loaded in certain browsers, etc. All these fixes help to improve the perception of visitors to our site.
- Improve the loading speed of the site – it’s probably no secret to you that the more difficult the site loads, the more money it loses. Statistics don’t forgive. World trends suggest that if your site loads for more than 4 seconds, 79% of visitors will never return to it.
- SEO provides the best website content. Yes, SEO and content marketing now go hand in hand more than ever. In fact, without good content on the website, it becomes absolutely difficult to get into the charts for business-related keywords.
- SEO provides qualified leads that can be converted using remarketing/retargeting. Did you know that every third user finds new brands through search engines? SEO can help you make yourself known to potential buyers when they are looking for your products or services themselves. Attracted to the site, these new users can be converted into subscribers to newsletters or social networks, and from there, make a few additional touches to the brand to gain trust and make a sale through email marketing and remarketing. Thus, the role of SEO is to attract quality traffic, which can then be transformed with a reliable digital promotion strategy.
- Increase brand trust: If Google believes in you, then you are trusted. This is believed by almost 74% of consumers who use search engines to search for information about local enterprises. Moreover, you should also know that every third search on your smartphone is performed before visiting the offline store.
Thus, the role of SEO is to increase the availability of the company for potential customers in search engines. SEO offers the opportunity to get a lot of free advertising if you comply with the quality standards set by search engines and if you spend time on the necessary optimization. In fact, you help your customers learn about your business among thousands of other companies.
However, mastering SEO and link building can be challenging and time-consuming. If you are not an expert in these areas, you might struggle to achieve the desired results. In such cases, hiring a professional can be a wise investment. Companies like Trophius specialize in SEO and link building, offering their expertise to enhance your online presence effectively. By working with professionals, you can ensure that your website meets all the necessary standards and attracts more potential customers, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
The changing role of SEO recently
In recent years, the use of SEO has become increasingly important for the overall success of digital marketing. But why?
- First of all, thanks to SEO optimization, you can make a portrait of your ideal client. The portrait is created with all the relevant information about how your customers move around the site, what pages they visit, what queries are written in Google to achieve certain goals, and how much time it spends on a particular page, etc.
- SEO optimization has a lower price than offline advertising – in SEO, you invest less than in street banners or advertising on television or radio. It has a slightly more sustainable cost and focuses only on better prospects. However, in SEO, compared to any other marketing channel, you can pay for website optimization only for keywords relevant to your business (whether for brand awareness, information, or transactional purposes).
- SEO optimization has a much lower amortized cost than advertising such as Google Ads – since those 6 months, SEO has begun to bring results that can be maintained even for years.
- Presence in search engines 24/7– compared to offline promotion, which catches the eye of the general public when they are on the streets or in stores, online promotion is non-stop. You can browse the site you are interested in at any time of the day or night.
The relationship between SEO and knowledge of consumer psychology
- Recently, SEO and neuromarketing have become more and more connected. Neuroscience can help increase interaction with website content by helping to create an intuitive website that is extremely easy to interact with.
- Another way we can reliably interact with our users is to use keywords. Long-tail keywords (keywords consisting of 3 or more words) determine the user’s behavior. In general, long-tail keywords have less competition and show a more specific search intent.
The connection between SEO and the online sales funnel
The sales funnel is a sequence of stages through which the visitor passes from the first interaction with the brand to becoming a buyer.
- Stage 1. Awareness. At the top of the sales funnel with the help of SEO you can help users realize the problem/need/pain, this is where you can try to attract your potential customers.
- Stage 2. Research – at this stage of the funnel, users begin to take seriously the purchase of something. The inclusion of detailed product descriptions or even blog posts aimed at relevant search queries can provide valuable content for users.
- Stage 3. Conversion. At the bottom of the funnel, you should make sure that buyers have everything they need to convert. These can be reviews, case studies or feedbacks. Statistics say that every day almost 80-90% of customers check online reviews before finally buying a product. All these elements, in fact, are also part of a well-thought-out SEO campaign.
Advice! Match the customer’s pain points with the keywords on the client’s path from the first interaction to decision-making. Thus, with the help of SEO you can find suitable keywords for any stage of the sales funnel.
Conclusion
Since customer behavior on the Internet has changed, search engines have also developed various policies. It is for this reason that there is no static SEO system that remains forever, because “SEO is an endless process.” But you need to really think about your target audience, their sympathies and dislikes, ease of use of the site and well-thought-out optimization plans.