By now, you’ve most likely heard the term SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), or have heard someone in your company mention it in passing. As a business owner, it’s a hard term to ignore these days especially, with longer and more specific searches occurring more and more frequently. If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything it’s that you shouldn’t eat bats, but you definitely should invest in digital. Your investment in digital marketing can come in the form of an updated version of your website, upping your game on social media, or investing in SEO, so that people – your customers – know you’re alive and providing what they’re looking for.
Deciding whether or not your business needs SEO comes down to these 3 simple questions.
#1 Is your target audience searching for what you have to offer online?
If you answered yes, then SEO is something that you should be looking into. This can be quickly done by simply typing into Google the service or product that you offer in order to find out how many results there are for those search terms. Now, if your business operates within a very specific niche, say with government bodies, only then you may not need an extensive SEO campaign. However, if these organisations go to search for you and you aren’t even appearing in the top spot for your business name, then how credible do you look?
#2 Are your competitors showing up for searches related to what you’re offering?
Who wants their competitors to acquire all of the profits? Not me…and I’m assuming not you. I know we want everyone to succeed and be happy–that’s beautiful, but at the end of the day, you need to feed your family. Plus, healthy competition is better for customers–more options, better pricing and it keeps your business honest (yay capitalism!). I say these things, but in your head (and in mine), we all wish we could have a monopoly on what we offer–we’re only human.
#3 Will your business actually benefit from utilising SEO?
This, again, goes back to whether your audience is using search engines to find services or products related to your business. If they are, the odds are quite high that they are wanting what you provide, but can’t find what you’re offering, so they are finding it elsewhere. I like to suggest that companies begin with Paid Advertising so that while SEO is being worked on, the business can start getting in front of its competitors right away and begin making revenue.
Once your business starts to appear in top placements for search terms related to your business, then you can ease back on the Google or social media ads spend. This, of course, will be data-driven. My statistics professor would be so proud right now. He always said, “Never make hasty decisions without checking the data.”– an extremely important point for well, life. If data shows that more revenue or leads are coming through organically rather than through paid platforms, then you can decrease or stop the paid advertising campaign altogether. Securing top placements for keywords shows potential customers that your services or products are trustworthy, and in turn are more likely to spend through this pathway than through your ads.
If you’ve read this and are now a bit more interested in SEO or, you’re sceptical and want more answers to more questions, I’ll be more than happy to discuss further with you, as long as you provide the coffee, jk. Here is some more insight into Google search statistics from Wordstream, if you’re curious about general search data in the meantime.
Give us a shout here at Adcreators and we’ll figure out what’s right for your business.
