In many instances small and mid sized business owners are not 100% sure that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the right solution for the online marketing needs, when in fact, there are very few instances where SEO is not a crucial and central part of an online marketing strategy.
The point of Search Engine Optimization since “day one” is to increase sales by obtaining qualified business leads from Internet search engines. Achieving this goal is possible with almost any business of any size. And, while Search Engine Optimization is a complex, evolving issue and requires tons and tons of work, every business Owner, President, CEO or CMO must recognize that without an organized SEO campaign in place, you will fade off the map, lose sales to competitors and bleed the value of your brand over time. You will spend tons of money on traditional media buys and find it ever so difficult to track and tie sales to those sources. To ignore SEO in its traditional and new evolving forms is to deny your company and its employees the opportunity to succeed online in the long-term.
Long Tail So what are some of the basic reasons for which business owners and senior managers should take a closer look at Search Engine Optimization?
Obtain Increased and Higher Quality Sales – just as you begin to optimize your website, long tail search volumes will improve. Over the long term, with a lot of hard work, you can achieve significant positions on the major search engines leading to positive, bottom line results:
Your website will perform better and receive more traffic shortly after you begin to implement standard optimization tactics. This is not to say that if you sell mortgages (a competitive area), you can optimize for “mortgages” and on day #2 of your work going live on your site, you’ll have more traffic. BUT, if you begin to work on your niche and provide more and more relevant information to your users and to the search engines in a clear, concise manner, you’ll grow your traffic from the outset of your program.
A lot of businesses are locally based and rely on foot traffic for customers to be within a short drive of their office or retail location. Search engines offer a plethora of local search features, and strategies for local search abound. If you leverage these local search tools and local search strategies properly, you are sure to increase your sales.
With a solid SEO program in place, you will cater to all major crawler-based search engines. So, not only will you receive exposure on Google (at some point) but also on Yahoo and MSN – and several other outlets. Once you optimize your site for organic search, the 3 major engines will pick up your site and run with it over time