The Importance of Your Website's SEO Rankings

There are over 3.5 billion searches daily on Google and each of those searches can have millions of results. Unfortunately, only a handful of results are visible to the user and the rest are virtually non-existent because they're on the second page of the result's page. The odds of a user to click on the site at the bottom of the first page is 100 to one and that increases exponentially for those sites that are in the subsequent pages. The job of the search engine is to show to the user the most relevant, useful, and well-recognized contents among the multitude of websites on the internet. This is where SEO comes in, it helps you make your website and its contents rise above the myriad and place it at the top of the result's first page.

SEO is composed of a number of elements and uses them strategically to make your website more visible. Once you understand how these work you will begin to appreciate why SEO is important. It is common for businesses to promote their site locally and gain more traffic from a specific location. Once you have a target location you can begin to create a strategy around that and raise awareness for your brand. There are also those businesses that seek to gain international recognition which requires other strands of SEO like International SEO that are harder to master as it requires having had exposure to working in large international web projects. There are great guides out there like this one by David Carralon. It considers geographical locations and languages along with your business goals, agility, infrastructure, resources, and many more. This type of SEO addresses the question of how to make your website and brand recognizable in different countries.

1. Visibility

This is one and the primary objectives of an SEO strategy - increased visibility. This means that your website will be easy to find for prospects looking for something related to what you're offering. Having a good ranking directly affects your visibility. This accounts for your rate on a results page or Search Engine Result Page (SERP) in which the higher you are in the rankings the more likely prospects will click and go to your website. This is a result of an effective SEO strategy, which gives you better exposure and when you realize that less than a quarter of users go past the first page the more you'll appreciate the importance of your SEO.

2. Traffic

Having great visibility correlates with increased traffic to your website, which is the goal of having strong recognition in the online platform. I mentioned above that for every search the search engine can churn out a million websites that may have what the user is looking for. But less than a quarter goes past the first page and 80% only clicks the top five listings of the first page. This leaves you in a "do or die" scenario when you're looking to up your traffic. So if you want to get more people visiting your site, then you need to start working your ranking, to get you on the top listing of relevant searches users key in.

3. Helps Convert Leads to Sales

Efficiently ranking your site will help with prospects with specific queries just as you talk with clients that are looking for something. This will then make you appear to be with them as they address their questions, which will make your brand imprinted on their minds.

4. Authority

Authority in SEO is a novel concept that is making search engines consider when trying to rank the results for a query and in turn becomes an important aspect for you. It refers to the site's content quality, trustworthiness, importance, and a little bit of value. The more you gain authority the higher you'll find yourself in the SERP. This will also help you gain the confidence of your prospects as they'll trust in the value of your content.

5. Enhanced Visitor Experience

One part of improving your SEO, aside from generating valuable content, is optimizing how your site is structured with on-page optimization. This will consequently improve your site's usability by creating a seamless and friendly environment for your user. A good environment and a well-structured site will have an impact on the user's experience which will make your site attractive and appealing.

One example is making your site responsive - that is making it accessible and easy across different devices from computers to mobile devices. Developing a sound site will increase your loading speed and reduce the bounce speed. This will promote your site into attracting more users. More than half of all consumers expect the page to load in under 2 seconds and each lag time after that will diminish your conversion rate.

6. Stay Competitive

It's important to understand that all businesses in your niche are aiming to be on top of a Google SERP, so if it's not you that's there then it's somebody else offering similar products or services. This leaves you at a disadvantage in terms of generating leads and conversions. Being competitive includes your site's visibility for people searching for things related to you. And as mentioned above having the right visibility is the key to generating more leads and conversion which basically is a building block for growth and sustainability.

7. Growth

Ultimately, all businesses, be it an online store or a blog, are expected to grow and get to the next level. SEO is an essential part of that directive as it will help you develop stronger relationships with your users, improve user experience, drive more traffic, gain a competitive edge over competitors, increase your sales with conversions and nurture the trust of repeat customers. All this begins when your prospects gain awareness of your brand and start to trust you.

SEO consists of complex activities and strategic planning that utilizes different techniques and practices. These practices are continuously evolving along with the consumer's behavior and preferences. Together with advancing technologies that come out into the market, the algorithm for search engines also copes with the changes. There is no way around it, SEO is still the biggest factor when it comes to improving your rankings.

Businesses benefit from SEO in a number of ways this includes awareness, increased traffic, customer experience, and conversions. This is the reason why digital marketers must have a strong understanding of what SEO is. This knowledge will help them achieve their goals and objectives using the most innovative and ground-breaking practices out there.