Part 3 of 3
Your Customers DEMAND your Presence
It’s 2022 folks….not only do you NEED a website, you also need a virtual brand that is consistent in its appearance and messaging across search, social and other industry channels online.
New data suggests that 8/10 purchases (including offline) BEGIN with an online search. And because Google owns over 70% of that market share that’s where your customers are likely looking for you.
Type in your main keyword in Google….if you don’t show up in the top 3 slots you are missing out on up to 61% of the search traffic for your brand. YES, THAT IS 61%.
People are lazy. So much so that the first 3 positions in Google get over 61% of traffic. And if you’re NOT on page #1, you’re losing out of 90%+ of traffic.
This is not only costly in terms of direct revenue loss from potential sales conversions, but you are losing brand awareness and market share to COMPETITORS. Competitors that now have more sales, more revenue, and are better positioned than you to push you out of business.
SEO Allows you to Double or Triple Down
Content produced for search engine optimization can be multi-purposed across multiple media channels in part or in whole.
You can use article snippets to tease blog posts across social media, via email marketing, on forums, or other publications.
Additionally, good content will be proactively shared by other readers to their audiences, expanding your reach even farther, growing brand/product awareness, naturally building backlinks, and driving direct visitors to your pages.
Over time this content will rank for long-tail keywords, provide Google with fresh “food” to ingest, indicating to the search engines that your site is up to date and relevant to readers, and help establish your company as an industry leader or knowledge resource for your niche.
The Ultimate SEO Trust & Credibility Factor
In a world scorned by scammers, con artists, and general scum, establishing trust and credibility is crucial to winning over new customers. This is especially true for those customers who have never even heard of you.
Ranking high in the SERPS is a lesser considered aspect of “trust and credibility,” but is indeed a key factor in influencing a consumer or customer’s decision to visit your site and buy from you.
If you rank high in Google, in a consumer’s mind, you ARE trustworthy simply because Google “says you are” by placing your site above the competition.
We have to bear in mind that the public at large does not understand how SEO works. To them, if Google places your site in the top three organic positions, then you MUST be the best.
Other often overlooked opportunities to build trust organically include consumer reviews on other websites, ranking your own “PR” content on separate domains, and so on.
For example, if your business URL is www.RedWidgets.com you might opt to also set up www.RedWidgetsReviewed.com and write a business profile piece on your site positioning you as a leader in the industry, highlighting any awards or commendations, and any positive consumer reviews you’ve received over the years.
The Hidden Driving Force Behind Offline Sales
From time to time we hear from the “brick and mortar” folks that their Google rankings don’t really matter much because they don’t actually sell anything online.
On the surface, this would seem to make sense. However, consumer data on purchase behavior tells a different tale. A Nielsen study found that over 86% of consumers use the Internet to find local businesses before driving to, and physically purchasing items or services in-store.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you, local searches for products and services on average convert at multiples MUCH higher than generic searches. This is primarily due to the urgency factor of many of these searches. For example, if you need a dress locally that means you likely don’t want to wait or don’t have time to wait for shipping and you need to find and purchase that item for an event, say, this weekend. Or if you are looking up local plumbers or auto mechanics it’s likely that you need something repaired as soon as possible.
The Hidden Gems
Perhaps you already employ PPC campaigns or other display ads as part of your marketing mix. Likely to begin this process you built up a list of keywords using some third-party tool (or just using your noggin).
This list was then used as keywords to place bids on. If a Googler searched for those keywords your ad showed up. If they clicked on that ad, you paid the CPC cost of that click.
But what you may not be aware of is that CPC/PPC search traffic only accounts for about 15% of the average SEM marketing budget and only about 25% of the traffic.
Search traffic is like an iceberg, with all the primary (most often thought of) and obvious keywords on the surface. Meanwhile, the LONGTAIL combinations that actual customers use to search for your products lie beneath the surface.
Quality articles of 1000-2000 words in length tend to hit keyword combinations that come about naturally in the process of thought and those that are often absent from your PPC campaigns.
Google also intelligently uses related “concepts” and sub-topics within your article to extrapolate other key search phrases that may not even be present on your pages but relevant to other “hidden” searches by users.
In this way, quality content curated for SEO can uncover keywords and combinations that are searched for in droves by users of your products/services….and as you know, long-tail keywords are laser-focused, intent-driven and convert at much higher rates than their more generic counterparts.
As such, ranking for a number of long-tail keywords generating a cumulative total of 1000 searches a month is often much more valuable than ranking for a generic keyword totaling 5000 searches a month.
It’s all About User Intent in 2022
In 2020-2022 web search is all about matching Googler’s with the intent behind their search. Much of this is accomplished with Rankbrain, a machine learning algorithm that is placed on top of Google’s core algo.
Why is this important? Well, by Google getting better at matching users with EXACTLY what they were looking for, be it an informational or commercial search, conversion rates and page engagement for organic searches have gone thru the roof!
While other forms of marketing and advertising are “intrusive”, interrupting the user experience with a “sales pitch”, organic results meet the audience halfway with a targeted and relevant message that delivers value and appeals to their interests.
A quality SEO strategy will cover content across all types of intent including:
- Informational
- Research
- Transactional
- Commercial
- And more
And by doing so, your web traffic from organic search will have a higher conversion potential than most other traffic sources.
Guide to Why you Need SEO Part 1
Guide to Why you Need SEO Part 2
About Salterra Digital Services
Salterra was started in 2011 by Terry and Elisabeth Samuels; nothing fancy and nothing pretentious. Quality work at a fair price. Starting with a web design focus, they both quickly learned that while having an amazing website to highlight your business is a great start, marketing is intrinsically foundational for our clients. When several clients were not seeing results through the search efforts of other companies, Terry took it to the next level. While digging into SEO and marketing, he found something he was very passionate about. His inner geek pushed him to focus solely on the data and analytics side of the business while Elisabeth built on her creative and visual strength and expanded the design side. In the industry, it is not always common to have both designers and digital marketing so closely connected, but to them it made perfect sense. Salterra’s World Headquarters is in Tempe Arizona
Terry and Elisabeth are the Hosts of Roundtable SEO Mastermind Series and SEO Spring Training Conference.
