20 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEO [with Tips & Resources]

Search engine optimization (SEO) is probably the best place to spend your marketing budget. And we’re not just saying that because we’re a digital marketing agency. It’s just the facts:

• The number one organic result on the search engine results page (SERP) is 10 times more likely to receive a click than the number 10 spot.
• 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engine results. So if you’re not on the first page, your business doesn’t exist. 
• 51% of all web traffic comes from people looking for something in a search engine. That means using SEO to your advantage is the easiest way to reach most people online.

Still not convinced SEO is for your business? Here are 20 reasons why your business needs SEO. Each benefit comes with quick tips and resources on how to make the most of it.

For more help converting the right traffic, check out the following:

• Save Time with Our Top 5 Content Marketing Tips
• 10 Reasons Why Your SEO Traffic & Rankings Have Dropped
• 5 Ways to Get More Traffic and Leads With SEO
• 4 Reasons My SEO Needs Content Marketing

#1 SEO Makes Your Business Easy to Find

SEO aims to bring your webpage to the top of the first page of search results on Google or any other search engine. That way, when people ask their search engine about your product or service, your website and business will stand out. 

Tips/Resources

Target specific keywords associated with a search query your audience is looking up. 

For example, if you own a roofing company and people commonly search for “roofers in my area,” you would want to include similar phrasing (“as a roofer in the San Diego area…”) on your webpage. The more search queries you start ranking for, the more people will see your business. 

Get started with this beginner’s six-step guide on conducting keyword research.

#2 SEO Increases Sales

Yes, you read that right. SEO can actually increase sales. 

In fact, 70% of marketers say SEO is more effective at driving sales than paid advertising. A good SEO strategy will attract new leads that are more likely to convert, but how exactly do you get going?

Tips/Resources

A holistic SEO marketing strategy comes in handy here. Take B2B company Paystand, for instance—when the team paired their SEO efforts with a quality content marketing strategy, it boosted the business’ conversions by 52.46% and earned them 250+ new leads. 

Good SEO can only exist with quality content. Staying rooted in a content campaign designed to educate, nurture, and convert is critical.

#3 SEO Improves The User Experience

Users want to get the information they’re looking for quickly. So one way Google ranks your webpage is by determining how helpful and relevant it is for the user or the person with whom you want to do business. You won’t rank very high if your website isn’t easy to navigate. 

Tips / Resources

Ensuring your website is streamlined and straightforward is a great way to improve your ranking. In other words, you need conversion rate optimization (CRO). This strategy enhances SEO efforts by providing positive on-site experiences, which help boost conversions.

Some CRO best practices include: 

• Answering your customers’ questions in the first paragraph of your webpage. Your audience wants answers, not fluff. It’s essential to reduce distractions. 
• Improving page loading time. Forty percent of users abandon sites that take more than three seconds to load.
• Removing unnecessary form fields 

#4 SEO Is Easy to Measure

Quantifiable data is easy to find with SEO. You can measure critical metrics like keyword rankings, page rankings, traffic growth, and conversions. It’s simple to track how well your search engine rankings have improved. 

For example, through a quick search, you can see if you’ve gone from page four to the top of page one. 

Tips / Resources

Lean on trusted SEO analytic tools like: 

• Google Search Analytics / GA4
• Google Search Console 
• Moz Keyword Explorer

Check out this free digital marketing toolkit to ensure everything is in order.

#5 SEO Builds Brand Credibility

People tend to trust whatever search engines tell them (for better or worse). So when your website is at the top of Google, it shows that Google trusts you as an authoritative source and tells potential customers you’re a reputable business.

Tips / Resources

You can’t gain trust with keywords alone. You must create quality content that weaves in these keywords and provides value to the reader. And your customers won’t start trusting you overnight; good SEO takes time. Be sure to prioritize quality over quantity.

#6 SEO Complements Paid Advertising Efforts

Are you scratching your head over SEO vs. paid advertising? Here’s the thing—the best strategy is to pair these two tactics to get the best of both worlds. 

Here’s why: 

• With SEO, you have quality content you can use in your paid advertising efforts. 
• You can leverage organic search marketing to improve your paid ads. Alternatively, you can use paid marketing to enhance the reach of your organic efforts.

Tips / Resources

Check out this nifty guide on paid search vs. organic search. SEO isn’t simply a lone wolf—it carries long-term and holistic benefits that can impact other areas of your marketing strategy.

So when you’re strategizing your SEO campaign, think about how the organic components can contribute to your paid efforts and vice versa. 

#7 SEO Increases Leads

You’ll quickly gain market share when you’re the first option on Google. As we mentioned earlier, 75% of people won’t even look past the first page of results. 

As far as your customers are concerned, those other websites and companies don’t exist. Your first-page ranking will rake in many leads.

Tips / Resources

When McCoy’s Knotty Alder Cabinets and Flooring crafted keyword-rich articles promoting featured snippet ranking, this visibility helped the business earn a 60% increase in lead generation. Read more about the strategy behind this win.

#8 SEO Helps Your Long-Term Marketing Strategy

Seeing results is essential for any marketing endeavor. You can expect impressive results from a well-executed SEO strategy, but it will take time—six to 12 months, to be exact. But this is far from a bad thing. 

Just as it takes a few months to get the ball rolling, it takes several years for those results to dissipate. So an SEO strategy that is constantly in motion will see excellent results for years.

Tips / Resources

Let’s take Roof Maxx, for example. As a Big Leap client for three years, our team has consistently managed and worked on driving momentum in their SEO campaign. 

This long-term campaign earned Roof Maxx a 6,268% increase in keyword rankings and 30+ leads each month.

#9 SEO Attracts More Social Media Followers

When visitors research your website, they’ll often click on links to your social media pages and give you a follow. Over 91% of marketers already optimize their social media profiles for SEO. 

Tips / Resources

Keep your social media channels updated, and provide a link to them on your website. Though social media doesn’t directly impact SEO, the content you share on your social channels helps put your brand in front of a larger audience.

Learn the six ways social media indirectly impacts SEO.

#10 SEO Keeps You Ahead of the Competition

Many companies today use SEO in their marketing strategy. If you aren’t using it, you’re likely to be crushed by your competitors’ commanding online presence. So if you can’t beat your competition, join them!

SEO is also an excellent way for smaller businesses to compete with larger corporations. Small business may lack the resources for paid ads, but they can invest in basic SEO to make a difference in their lead generation.

Tips / Resources

You can take many routes to complete a competitor analysis, but we’ve got a basic yet essential DIY guide. Download this guide to identify your strengths and weaknesses and carve out a customized plan to get ahead.

#11 SEO Is Cost-Effective

When correct strategies are in place, SEO is incredibly cost-effective. With paid search, you pay for every click, but with SEO, you put in the work and money early and slowly see the ROI from your efforts. 

Once you start ranking high via organic efforts, you won’t have to pay for anyone to see your pages—they’ll just come naturally.

Tips / Resources

When an eCommerce company invested in SEO, the team implemented the proper site and content adjustments. The results? A 225% increase in revenue. 

Read the business’ success story for the full scoop and inspiration. 

#12 SEO Improves Brand Awareness

People become more aware of your brand as you become increasingly easier to find online. This awareness is an essential step for your customers, as they’ll start associating your brand with a particular product they’re looking for. 

Tips / Resources

By applying critical SEO ranking factors, like quality backlinks and targeted content, a software company was able to improve its brand awareness in the following ways: 

• 188% increase in organic pageviews
• 146% increase in users

#13 SEO Provides Insights About Your Customers

With the analytics that come with SEO on Google and other search engines, you can learn a lot about your customers. 

You’re able to gain insights including: 

• Where customers reside
• How they found your website
• How long they stayed on the website
• What they searched for when they came to your website 

Tips / Resources

With the information above, tweak your SEO and marketing strategies to focus on channels from which most visitors are coming. 

#14 SEO Attracts Local Customers

One of the reasons why SEO is important for businesses is that it can target potential customers residing in specific service locations. 

Using local SEO or including the name of the area you service on your webpage (for example, “the Greater Chicago area”) can help customers find you more easily. Most searchers, 92% to be exact, will pick businesses on the first page of local search results. 

Targeting is particularly useful for smaller-to-medium-sized businesses with one or a handful of service locations. 

Tips / Resources

By weaving in the appropriate local keywords and creating new citations and location pages, our Roofing Contractor Client amplified its visibility to potential customers residing in specific areas. 

This targeting earned Roofing Contractor Client a: 

• 1,308% increase in local keyword positions

• 301% increase in new users

#15 SEO Targets the Right Audience

With the proper research and keywords, SEO ensures people will see your product when they’re in the market for it.

Tips / Resources

Ensure you find and understand your target audience. Collecting this data will lay the groundwork for a strong SEO campaign. Ask the following: 

• Who is your ideal customer?
• What language/words do they use?
• What are their pain points and curiosities? 
• What are their buying and online habits?

#16 SEO Is Good PR

SEO is all about publicity. To rank high in search engines, you must use quality backlinks and have external websites link to your website. The way to do that is to prove your website is a reputable source worth linking to. Once other websites start to recognize you, customers will also have an easier time trusting you.

Tips / Resources

There is such a thing as a good and bad link. In the search engine world, you can separate the good and bad into two buckets: white-hat and black-hat link building. 

• White-hat link building: This is ethical link building. The best backlinks are earned naturally without your team having to ask. White-hat link building involves elevating the quality of your content, guest blogging for relevant sites, and more.
• Black-hat link building: It’s the exact opposite of white-hat link building. Black-hat leans on unethical tactics to get ahead of the SEO game. The site owner looks for shortcuts or loopholes like buying/selling links for ranking purposes and creating partner pages exclusively for cross-linking. 

Learn more from this complete guide on how to build links in 2023.

#17 SEO Makes Your Website Load Faster

Does your site take more than three seconds to load? If so, nearly 40 percent of visitors are likely leaving before they even see what you’re all about. 

Load time is often an overlooked factor in SEO ranking. Search engines aim to provide the best user experience for their customers, and a slow website frustrates an unsuspecting customer. 

Tips/Resources

Your customers want info, and they want it fast. If you make them wait, they’ll go looking elsewhere. Optimizing your website for increased speed improves your conversion rates.

To ensure your website’s performance is in good shape, lean on this 16-point site health checklist. It covers seven key areas (including site speed) to help you stay on Google’s good side.

#18 SEO Is Mobile-User Friendly

Since 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, search engines also consider mobile users for ranking. Leaning into a quality SEO strategy will encourage your team to provide a positive user experience wherever your audience resides. 

Tips / Resources

While many web hosts can automatically reformat your website for mobile users, some images and text may not format to your liking. Ensure your website navigates easily on your phone.

Begin by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test—a quick and easy tool that will let you know whether a site page is mobile-friendly. Look into the search engine’s guide on mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices for further guidance.

#19 SEO Focuses On Specifics

Because SEO lets you target specific keywords, you can hone in on the topics you want to use to reach your target audience. This focus can include a vicinity, a customer’s problem, and products providing solutions to those problems. 

Tips / Resources

Refrain from covering general topics on your website. Be specific enough to show your credibility and expertise on the subject. 

You can achieve specificity by focusing on user intent. For example, instead of targeting a general search term like notebook, dig deeper—does the user want a hardcover pocket notebook or a good deal on a MacBook Pro? 

Learn more from these seven latest SEO trends.

#20 SEO Eliminates Unnecessary Marketing Tactics

With the digital awareness coming from SEO, you can likely cut out other awareness campaigns from the budget. Things like flyers and posters at the rec center may draw a few eyeballs, but only if customers are looking for it. 

SEO puts your business at the center of attention right when the customer is seeking it. 

Tips / Resources

Make it a habit to look into your SEO analytics. Leaning on data will help your team stay focused and move money to the right places. 

If you need extra backup, use this nifty and free marketing budget calculator tool. 

Just input the following data: 

• The industry you’re in
• Your annual revenue
• How aggressive you’d like to be

The tool will crunch the numbers and deliver a suggested budget to match your criteria.

Get Started with Big Leap

We could go on, but these 20 reasons speak for themselves.

In today’s digital age, the best way to stand out is through SEO. With over 10 years of experience delivering quality SEO for businesses, Big Leap knows how to get your business the attention it deserves. Contact us today to get started with a customized SEO strategy.