Any company today needs every advantage on their side. That’s why you should be fully aware of what SEO – search engine optimization – can do for you. No, it’s not a “magic bullet” solution (and anyone who makes you extravagant promises probably is not following the rules – and is using “black hat” SEO that will quickly get you and your company into trouble). But “white hat” (good) SEO can deliver highly effective results and is used by large, small and everything in-between sized companies to grow their businesses.

Let’s talk about how SEO is actually your salesforce, working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and not even taking a coffee break!

SEO Attracts Traffic to Your Website

This is the top reason companies use SEO. Because it helps bring customers right to your door. It’s one of the simplest ways to do so. Now there’s a wide number of companies on the web, more than ever before. SEO can put you head and shoulders above the competition, giving you a chance to stand out from the rest, so you get noticed quickly. Then the customer calls you and not “the other guys.”

A well-optimized website helps customers find you – Ten or fifteen years ago, it was considered rather unique for a company to have a website. Today, if you want to be in business, having a company site is a vital necessity. But that’s just not enough – you’ve got to be found by your potential customers too!

SEO helps the search engines connect with your website and all of its pages, so they know that your site offers relevant and valuable information. Therefore, when a customer does a search for a local hair salon or a pediatrician, your site will quickly come up within their search results.

A Mobile Friendly Site is an SEO One

More customers will get to know you if you have a mobile friendly website – Over the past five years, this has become quite important. Most customers are no longer searching the ‘net via their desktop computers. Instead, they are using cellphones or tablets while on-the-go. Perhaps they are coming straight from work or they are already running errands.

When your website isn’t mobile friendly, a cellphone or a tablet simply isn’t capable of “reading” the information properly. It’s going to be very troublesome for any potential customer to try to search through your site! Some pages may not even open. They may not be able to look at some sections on pages.

It’s easy to check if your website is mobile friendly, just look up your website on your own cellphone or tablet. If you can see it easily AND navigate through it – then you’re okay! If not, talk to your web designer pronto, as this will greatly improve your SEO and help customers get to know your business.

Social Media Marketing is Important For SEO

It’s a fact: there are more people who have Facebook accounts than toothbrushes. Yuck! But it does make you realize just how many people are out there, using the web to discover products & services. Now, we know this icky fact probably is tempting you to want to hand out toothbrushes just about everywhere you go. We also hope it has you stop and think about how many people there are out on the World Wide Web that want to connect with your business. Social media marketing is worth the investment and is very important for SEO too, so consider signing up for the social media networks that are best for your niche industry.

Search Engines Like Quality & Valuable Content

Search engines will consider your website valuable content and prioritize your site. You want to come up in the 1st 3 pages of a search engine’s search results. SEO can do that for you. If you are going on vacation and search for “Pet friendly hotels near Disneyworld” then we know you’re probably going to only focus on the first few pages of this search.

The average that most people do is the 1st 3 pages. So it is critical that your business comes up within the 1st 3 pages of a search result for your main keyword phrases, that someone would use to search for your business. When SEO is implemented for your business, this greatly increases your chances of coming up higher in a search engine’s rankings. Yes, you can go from page 16 to page 2!

Your Website Should Be Easy to Navigate

A website that is easy to navigate helps with your SEO too. While this may sound a bit dull, this actually helps to sell your products and services to your customers. Why? Because if customers can’t FIND anything on your website easily, once they’ve landed on it, then they are going to get frustrated and bounce (leave). Talk to your web designer or webmaster about how to create a high quality site navigation, so it is simple to find your way around your website. No customer should have to search and browse around your website for a long time in order to find what they need.

SEO is your budget-friendly “promotional” choice. Just about every business puts money into advertising and promotions, to help attract new business. Today, you get the highest ROI when you consider SEO. Realize that the majority of your new customers are going to find you through your website. So when you invest in SEO, to be sure that website is easily found by customers and also the search engines, this can only help you to make money.

As your company & website grow and change, your SEO can too. Search engine optimization is fluid, you don’t just do it once. One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to “do SEO” once and consider themselves done with it. SEO is something you maintain at your website, as if you were caring for a pet or a plant. Regular SEO will help search engines continue to find your website, so that customers also discover it as well.

Your Competitors Are Doing SEO

Remember: your competition knows about SEO & uses it. Now SEO is no secret, it’s been around for a while. Not every company knows about it, but quite a lot of them do. The ones that use it realize it helps to bring customers to their door, so they keep using it. If you don’t use SEO, realize that your competition is going to. There are many websites on the ‘net and you want to be sure you come up quickly in the search results. Search engine optimization can help you with that. So beat out your competition & use SEO!

Customers no longer open a phone book to find what they need. Instead, they turn to the World Wide Web. Will they easily find your company? While the phone company still sends out a phone book, you may have noticed that it gets smaller with every passing year. Most of us don’t even bother to open it anymore. Some don’t even keep it, they recycle it!

When you need to find a product or service, you simply turn to your cellphone and search for a new lawn care company or a real estate agent or whatever type of company you might need at this time. Be sure that your company is easily noticed on the World Wide Web – if you don’t have the time to do all these optimizations, hire an SEO Specialist and put SEO to work for you each day!