We’ve headlined this article ‘10 reasons why you need SEO’, because well, that works for SEO, but there are £106 billion very good reasons to make sure your SEO is on point.
That’s the pot of money UK consumers spent last year on online businesses with clothing and household goods the most popular retail items purchased through the internet.
In fact, more people are buying online than the old fashion way of buying in shopping centres and stores, a habit that is quite literally dying out, according to the latest figures by Statista.
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Even those who do enjoy a bit of physical shopping are hybrids, marrying their online shopping basket with the high street.
SEO is key to making sure you get a share of the pie. Where should you start? We phoned a friend, in this case, data experts at Manchester SEO agency Dark Horse to put us on the right track.
1. Beat your competitors
To give it it’s proper name, Search Engine Optimisation, is the art of making sure Google (and it is mostly Google, but the same tactics work for other browsers), chooses your company ahead of your competitors, so when consumers enter a search, you’re at the top of the fold and head of the queue. That’s why it is critical to make sure your SEO is working.
2. If you’re number one, your profits will rocket
The reason why SEO can be seen as something of a dark art, is that the algorithm that chooses which companies to pick and where to rank them is constantly changing, so you need to make sure your SEO strategy is up to date. When you do, you will reap the rewards. You want to be on page one of the rankings, and you should be aiming to be number one of page one. Why? Because that’s the business that consumers will choose first. Being number one will blow up your bottom line. That alone is a reason enough to invest in SEO.
3. Improve user experience and journey on your website
Good SEO will also make the user experience smoother because it means you can reach potential customers quickly as you rank for the keywords that prospects are searching for online
A good SEO strategy will also have feedback loops inbuilt so that tweaks are continually being made to how the website runs (this is known as technical SEO).
4. Keep more of your hard-earned profits
If your SEO is on point then customers will come directly to your website and that means you cut out third-party portals who sell your products. This means you can reduce reliance on ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon or NOTHS; which often take huge chunks of your profits.
5. Boost your public profile
We’ve touched on needing content, particularly digital PR, to boost your SEO and one great side effect is that your company profile will be increased. It means that you will not only be reaching new customers through clever digital PR and link building campaigns, but also enhancing your reputation while helping your business to move up the rankings.
6. Shows you mean business
By having a good ranking, you’re not only showing consumers you’re one of the best online retail companies but also your competitors. That’s great news as your audience will be looking for the best suppliers, recruiting or making business connections and hoping to attract investors. It will also help to warn off potential competitors and protect your business space, seeing your business terrifying the competition because you will have secured number one in the top spot in search.
7. Great for local targeting
SEO can be tailored to your local community if that’s what works best for your retail business. You can reach local people with local services and make a killing.
8. Be on the world stage
And conversely, good SEO can give you an international platform if you’re expanding or want to secure your place in the world. But you will need to work with experts who can secure a key word strategy in different languages and who have experience and allies in different territories.
9. See results in four months
It takes about three months to get your website up to speed for SEO, from an audit to technical SEO then agreeing a content and key word strategy that works and doesn’t blow the entire marketing budget. Then from month four you should start to reap the benefits of your new SEO strategy. But you do need to stay on top of it and the ever-changing algorithms.
10. You can’t afford not to
SEO is a fact of life, if you want to stay in the game (and in business) you’re going to need SEO. As we said earlier there’s £106 billion very good reasons to make sure you get it right!
