Marketers and business owners use digital marketing strategies to showcase their products or services to potential customers who may convert in future.
SEO is a crucial element for any successful digital marketing campaign because it brings organic traffic to your website.
It has a higher conversion rate compared to other digital marketing channels since your website visitors are actively seeking the information, products or services that you offer.
We’ve compiled a list of 7 major advantages that clearly highlights the importance of SEO in digital marketing.
Let’s dive in to explore them in detail.
What is SEO?
SEO, expanded as Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing websites to rank higher in organic search results.
In a more elaborate way, we can define it as convincing the search engines such as Google, Bing etc. to recommend your website content as the best answer to the user’s relevant queries in the search engine.
Let’s make it clear with some real-life examples:
What would you do if you want to get some information that you need?
How do you look for a nearby restaurant for dinner while you’re travelling somewhere?
What would you do if you want to buy a new mobile and are not sure which model to buy?
How would you find the recipe for a new dish which you want to prepare for your loved ones on a very special day?
Like most people, you’ll simply search on Google for “restaurants near me”, “best mobile phones under 20000” or “Indian-style chicken recipes”.
You’ll be furnished with a huge no. of results scattered across different pages. You’d scroll through these results and click on the one that seems relevant to you.
In 99% of the cases, you’ll find your best-suited answer from the first few results on the first page itself.
Like you almost all the people who use search engines would get answers to their queries from the first few results themselves.
So it’s clearly evident that if you want anyone to reach your website by clicking on any search engine results, you should be visible to them in the first few results or on the first page.
The results or web pages that you see ranking on the first page of Google weren’t placed there accidentally. They’re there because Google considers them the best answer to the user’s query.
Google uses several factors to consider any website and its content to rank in its search results. By implementing these factors we will make our website ready for Google to rank higher in search engine results, which is called SEO.
Now, let’s move on to see the importance of SEO in digital marketing.
Advantages of SEO
Increases Your Website Traffic
One of the major benefits of SEO is that it drives traffic to your website.
There will be many users who need your products, services or any information you could provide.
But how can they discover you? Or how can you find them?
SEO is the most affordable and efficient option for this compared to the others.
By utilising the SEO techniques on your website, Google will feature your site as one of the best options to consume what they want.
Brings in Quality Traffic
Unlike the other advertising methods that use outbound strategies to reach their customers without knowing if they’re interested or not, SEO strategies are purely inbound. This means that you’re appearing to your audience whenever they’re searching for you.
Since they’re coming to your website organically, there’s a high chance that they’ll convert to your customers. So you’ll get the maximum benefits from the traffic driven to your website.
SEO Improves Your Website Ranking
Another advantage of SEO is that it improves your website’s ranking.
By making the best use of On-Page, Off-Page and Technical SEO techniques to optimise your website, you can achieve higher rankings in the search engine results.
As said earlier, ranking higher helps to drive more traffic to your website.
Top rankings generated through the other paid methods will end once you stop the payment. But the rankings acquired from SEO can be retained for a long time by consistently optimizing your website, which clearly highlights the importance of SEO in digital marketing compared to others.
Cheaper than the Other Methods
There’ll be some initial investment involved in SEO for purchasing good hosting and tools, creating high-quality content etc. It can be in terms of time and money if you’re hiring any professionals or agencies for it.
Once your website gains ranking, it can retain its position without incurring ongoing costs except for some periodic updates.
In contrast, PPC ads demand constant investment as you have to pay for each click on your ad. Also, the costs can escalate rapidly depending on the competition in your industry. Additionally, the major disadvantage is that the moment you stop funding the ads, your visibility disappears.
Based on the above, it’s obvious that SEO is more cost-effective than the other methods.
Has a Higher CTR (Click-through-rate) than Paid Ads
Another benefit of SEO is that it tends to have a higher CTR (click-through rate) than paid ads.
Even though paid results are shown above organic results, most users tend to click on organic results avoiding the paid ones. This is because users perceive organic results as more reliable than PPC ads.
Moreover, SEO focuses mainly on optimising the content to match the search intent of the user. When a user performs a search and finds an organic result that is relevant to his query, he’s more likely to click on it than a paid result that might not perfectly satisfy his need.
Builds Authority among the Users
When your content ranks at the top of the search engine results, it brings a feeling of trust and credibility to the users who’re searching. This helps your website to build authority among the users.
Provides a Better User Experience
User experience is a key factor that Google and other search engines consider for websites to rank. So one of the major advantages of SEO is that we can optimise our website for a positive user experience. This can be achieved by writing quality content, adding images, improving readability, increasing page loading speed, making it mobile-friendly etc.
This helps in keeping the users engaged with your content.
Final Thought – The Importance of SEO in Digital Marketing
The primary objective of any marketing campaign is to get noticed by potential customers. By implementing effective SEO strategies you can achieve this and additionally, you’ll be able to demonstrate your expertise, authority and trustworthiness with your content.
With countless websites being launched every minute and competing for attention, SEO is the best way to make your brand a success and stay ahead of your competitors.
