Search engine optimization or SEO as it is popularly referred to plays a crucial role in digital marketing.
The truth is that when done right, SEO can be one of the most effective sources of free traffic to your business.
Look at it this way: search engines are the most common solutions to the everyday problems of most people.
Billions of people make searches on search engines daily. In fact, it won’t be wrong to say that people prefer to search for answers on search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing rather than asking someone close to them.
The answers people receive on these search engines become solutions to their problems. For instance, someone searching for a vet nearby will surely be interested in other products after receiving a favorable answer from the search engine.
Thus, it is a no-brainer that digital marketers explore search engine optimization as a viable form of digital marketing.
Digital Marketing
Digital or online marketing is that aspect of marketing that involves using the internet and other internet-based technology to promote or advertise products and services.
Digital marketing is very wide and employs an array of several strategies. Some strategies of digital marketing are social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), direct email marketing, content marketing, content automation, e-commerce marketing, social media optimization, display advertising, e-book, search engine marketing, influencer marketing, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, etc.
Digital marketing evolved and developed with the advancement of digital devices and the internet.
Over time, the internet has evolved and developed such that the whole world has metamorphosed into a global village. We are in closer proximity to each other than ever before.
You can interact with anybody from any corner of the world with just a click of a screen. Buying and selling have also been made easier, you can buy products that are thousands of miles away from you. Yet, you are assured that it will arrive at your doorstep on a specified date.
Physical advertisement thus suffered a decline and started to lose its pull whereas digital marketing started to climb up. All these innovations and development has made the digital platform an attractive and effective place to market and advertise products and services.
Importance of Digital Marketing
The importance of digital marketing is quite clear due to the platform it operates on: the internet. It is of great importance and offers a lot of benefits to businesses and companies alike. Some of its benefits include:
Internet Rave
No matter the product or service you offer, you are more likely to find your customers online than in any other place. This is due to the internet rave that exists in the present world today.
Reports have shown that there are more than 4.2 billion on the internet today. This means that there are tons of potential customers on the internet.
The number of searches on the internet every day is also numerous. People are looking to the internet to answer their questions.
Looking for a salon nearby, you check the web. There is a constant and never-ending search for information every day on the internet.
Direct Communication with Customers or Clients
Unlike the traditional mode of advertising, digital marketing affords you the opportunity of communicating personally with your clients.
When using television, radio, or physical ads to market, it is one-way communication. Digital marketing on the other hand allows you to interact with your customers.
You can listen to their questions or concerns about your product or service. This helps you find ways on how to improve the quality of your product or service.
With digital marketing, you can also create personalized ads for a particular category of people. This strategy is very effective in that it focuses on the customers thus giving them a feeling of importance.
Customers want to experience a feeling of importance. They don’t want to feel as if they just help to make up the numbers.
A personalized ad would not only attract customers to your product or service but also keeps them docked.
Faster and Effective Means of Advertising
The internet never sleeps, there is never a time that the internet is devoid of people on it.
Thus, there is an assurance that your ads will be seen by potential customers irrespective of the day or time they are on the internet.
You also need not be available every time, your web page will take care of the needs of your customers.
Digital marketing is also faster than other means of marketing. For instance, the time taken to create a TV ad, multiple digital ads could have been created. Yet, digital ads have the possibility of getting more visibility than TV ads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization is a strategy used to boost a website’s visibility on the internet. Specifically, it’s a process through which specific website pages are ranked for specific keywords. This in turn boosts the marketing reach of such websites.
The way SEO works is unique. When you search for something on the internet, do you ever wonder about the process it goes through before it brings back results that help answer your question?
Search engines such as Google, Bing, etc have crawlers. These crawlers peruse the internet searching website pages for information.
After searching, it gathers the information and puts everything in an index. So when you search for a keyword in a search engine, the index contains relevant web pages that would respond to that keyword.
However, these web pages are usually ranked according to certain factors which are crucial in search engine optimization.
The optimization in search engine optimization is thus the steps website owners take to ensure their web pages rank high when searches are made in search engines.
Search engine optimization leverages the algorithm of search engines and aims to improve a web page ranking on the search engine result page. This way, the traffic driven to the web page increases.
However, SEO is more than just driving traffic to a web page. The traffic driven to the page must also be of immense quality, that is, to attract customers who are willing to buy products or services on offer.
Types of SEO
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO deals with the optimization of keywords, headings and meta tags, on your web page. .
When done right, this increases the chances of your web page ranking on the search engine results page.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO unlike on-page SEO deals with steps taken outside your web page and website which helps boost your rankings on the search engine results page.
It is building a relationship with other websites which help to promote your website. You can get backlinks from authoritative websites to boost your site’s authority and relevance on the search engine result page
Technical SEO
Search engines have technical requirements which a website must meet before it can be ranked high on the search engine results page.
These requirements consist of factors such as rendering, crawling, indexing, security, mobile-friendliness, site speed, etc.
Search engines need to be able to crawl, render and index the web pages on your website. To rank high on search engine results pages, technical SEO is also important.
Importance of SEO to Digital Marketing
Digital marketing entails advertising on the internet and other digital devices. SEO is all about increased visibility on the internet.
Putting these two in context, it is easy to see that SEO greatly complements digital marketing. SEO will help expand the visibility and reach of digital marketing.
The goal of digital marketing is to develop strategies that would get your products and services to a wide range of people and also appeal to them.
The first step which is to get to the customers is the job of SEO. When potential clients are perusing the internet for a particular product or service. It is of immense benefit that your web page be among the list on the first page of results shown.
If your webpage is not ranked among the first number of pages, potential customers can’t find your page and patronize you.
However, where your web page is ranked around the top in the search engine results page, the odds of potential customers clicking your link and even buying your products and services are vastly increased.
Benefits of SEO to Digital Marketing
Search engine optimization is of immense benefit to digital marketing. Some of the specific benefits of SEO to your overall digital marketing campaign include:
Increased visibility and awareness
The first step in marketing is awareness, getting potential customers aware of your existence.
Even if they are not ready to patronize you currently, the fact that they are aware of your existence bodes well for you. Visibility brings about awareness and SEO offers increased visibility.
By increasing the number of visitors on your web page, your products and services become more visible to people.
Increased sales
The end goal of digital marketing is to convert visibility and awareness into sales and patronage. If people are just clicking and viewing the web page without interacting or purchasing the product, it is a failed product.
With SEO, you can get visibility from potential customers who are in dire need of your product or service. They are the ones searching for you, so the likelihood of them purchasing from you when they find you are quite high.
Reports have shown that about seventy-eight percent of searches have resulted in purchases. This is a very healthy number which indicates the importance of Search engine optimization.
Web Traffic
One of the main things SEO aims to achieve is to increase the quantity of traffic on a website. An increase in traffic is achieved by an increase in visibility and ranking.
Almost thirty-three percent of clicks go to the top-ranking page on the search engine result page. The next five ranked pages get about seventy-five percent clicks.
This means that the majority of internet visibility if not all is gotten by the top six ranked web pages. To expand your customer reach, you have to ensure you break into the top five ranked pages.
This is possible only with effective SEO strategies.
Business Growth
A business that does not aim to grow has already failed without even starting. With SEO, you can be sure of setting and achieving your business goals.
SEO can help you break a lot of ground in your business, you can even build a global brand for your business. You need not confine yourself to only your locality or country.
SEO helps you to grow your business and expand your client and customer reach. The more people patronize your business, the further it grows and expands. This means increased sales and an increased customer base.
Local Businesses
SEO offers immense benefits for local businesses. It is quite difficult for local businesses to compete with their bigger counterparts.
However, with SEO, local businesses can get across easily to those near them. By optimizing their business on the map pack, they can be easily seen by potential customers who stay within their vicinity.
This way, any search which involves their location would see such business among the top-ranked pages in the search engine results page.
In A Nutshell
Digital marketing has proven to be an effective marketing strategy particularly with the importance the internet and other digital devices hold today.
You can reach out to anybody in the world by just showcasing your products and services on the internet.
Factor in the effect of search engine optimization, marketing takes on a whole new look. You can now expand the reach and visibility of your business and brand thousands of miles around you.
Digital marketing and SEO offer a whole new insight into the world of marketing. It affords you the opportunity of building an international brand for your business. You need not be restricted by TV and radio Ads anymore.
Develop an effective digital marketing strategy with search engine optimization plans and watch your brand skyrocket.
