When founders and site owners first start thinking about SEO, they tend to focus on one goal: getting ranked on Google's first page.
While rankings are a crucial measure to monitor, it's important to remember that SEO serves a much larger purpose. At the end of the day, SEO is meant to drive more traffic to your website.
1. Increase traffic to your site
This is the most common reason why many entrepreneurs begin with SEO. After all, higher search rankings have the potential to generate thousands upon thousands of additional site visitors without the need for ongoing investment.
As a result, many site owners who merely want to get the most traffic to their site focus on high-volume keywords. They like to target broad-reaching short-tail keywords like "ice cream" or "digital advertising."
We'd be remiss if we said this was a good strategy. Most startups and small site owners will struggle to rank for these wide terms, especially if their domain authority (DA) score is low and their brand recognition is poor.
2. Generate more organic leads
This may sound similar to the purpose stated above, but there is a subtle difference: when striving for more leads via SEO, you will be attempting to engage customers who are likely to purchase from a company comparable to yours.
The importance of search intent is highlighted, and it may be tempting to target more middle-of-the-funnel or bottom-of-the-funnel keywords. Consider the terms "top digital advertising agency" and "digital advertising."
That being said, the buyer journey (or marketing funnel) is no longer linear, especially in B2B marketing. Your customers are jumping from website to website and device to device. Even if people arrive at your site via an ad or blog promoting your service, they may have numerous interactions (such as an email, event, or another ad) before taking any significant action.
3. Improve your branding
If you're a Nike, everyone knows your brand name. People will simply type "Nike" into their search engine to find your store or goods.
However, if you are an SMB or a freshly founded firm, you will still need to build your brand. Fortunately, SEO can assist you in realising your objective. In some ways, you may augment your advertising and sales methods by targeting more branded keywords (terms or phrases that incorporate your brand name) early on.
4. Provider better customer service
SEO can be beneficial to both your customers and strangers to your brand. It's not commonplace for SaaS consumers to Google questions they have while using a platform, for example. Sixty-seven percent of those polled prefer self-service to speaking with a company professional.
A notable example is Amazon's open forum for marketplace vendors. Sellers are frequently inquiring about how to use Seller Central, the platform for managing all of your Amazon listings. They're also researching Amazon best practises. Amazon launched this forum in response, where vendors may connect with one another and occasionally hear from Amazon itself.
5. Go head-to-head with competitors
One of the best aspects of SEO is that it is a low-cost technique to outrank your competition. Neither Google nor its users care if your firm is older or larger than another in the SERPs. They are concerned with relevance, accuracy, and trustworthiness. (This is why Google created the E-A-T criteria.)
With SEO, many Davids have defeated Goliaths. To achieve this for yourself, you need have a clear grasp of the highest value you can offer your online audience—both in terms of knowledge and product.
In addition, set some time to conduct a thorough SEO competitive analysis. Examine your top business competitors' online rankings.