Being Smart with SEO

Running a business can be a massive undertaking. You have to stay on top of everything, from inventories to employee management to customer service, among an endless list of other things. With such a full plate, it can be easy to overlook what is often the most vital aspect of staying afloat: marketing.

The market has changed over the past 15 years, though, and traditional marketing methods no longer have the impact they once did. These days, consumers find what they are looking for through search engines like Google. This site has grown immensely in popularity, to the point where a two minute disruption in service makes national news, or a change in the logo, referred to as a doodle, gets global attention. The first doodle was posted in 1998, and depicted the Burning Man, the namesake for the infamous Nevada festival. The owners posted it to let their employees know where they would be for a while.

There are over 100 billion searches conducted online each month. This is how 58 percent of consumers find the product they are looking for, which is far more prevalent than the 24 percent that visit company websites or the 18 percent that investigate through social media platforms. Also, most users never look past the first page of results. It may seem like the best solution is to buy a spot in the sponsored results, but 70 to 80 percent of users ignore these completely.

In order to get on the first page with an organic link, consider search engine optimization, or SEO. This involves locating key search terms associated with your business and incorporating them into a series of regularly updated blogs and articles that get posted to your site, pushing you up in the Google rankings. Seo is the most effective marketing tool today, offering a close rate of 14.6 percent, which is far more substantial than the 1.7 percent you get from traditional outbound leads.

In order to continue running your business, you need customers. In order to get a steady stream of new customers, you need to keep up with modern marketing trends. SEO is proven to be more effective than any other means today, so give it a shot.