Why is SEO Crucial for Enterprises?

Big brands and enterprises have already established their authority in the industry. So, they don’t need SEO, right?. It’s Wrong!
Search engine visibility is crucial for all brands, small or big. Why? SEO is long-lasting and yields the most ROI out of all marketing channels. Moreover, SEO is cheaper and adds credibility to your brand.
SEO is as important for enterprises as it is for small businesses. By the end of this post, you’ll understand why enterprises should not make the expensive mistake of ignoring SEO.
Let’s look at some important reasons why SEO is crucial for Enterprises.

1. SEO Yields the Maximum ROI

SEO is a long-term strategy. Unlike PPC, it is not a strategy that can get you results overnight. Even though SEO doesn’t give you instant gratification, it gives you the best ROI over time.
SEO can bring in 15 times more clicks than PPC. It is because, when your brand ranks organically on Google, it makes you look more credible than others. PPC listings on Google search results don’t get as many clicks as organic results. It is because users consider organic Google listings as more genuine and authentic.
It is no news that SEO takes time as compared to other marketing channels. It may take you at least six months to start showing up on the Google results page. But, the results are worth your efforts.
SEO is like a seed you plant today. To get the most fruitful results after two years, you need to nurture it consistently. Once you start ranking on top of the Google results page, you will see traffic soar. You’ll gain more inbound leads, and your brand authority will improve. These results will ultimately lead to maximum ROI for your business.
Moreover, as compared to other marketing channels, SEO is quite cheap. You only need to invest in creating consistent and good-quality content, on-page SEO, and link building. Compared to PPC, social media ads, and email marketing, investment in SEO will be less.

2. SEO Helps with User Experience

Have you noticed a common pattern in most of the SEO strategies and Google algorithms? I’m sure you have! All of them aim to provide the best possible experience for Google’s users.
Google’s success mainly attributes that it aims to add the utmost value to its users’ lives. Hence, if you align your brand’s goals with Google’s SEO goals, you are bound to focus more on user experience.
Here are a few SEO techniques that lead to a better user experience:

• Google stresses on mobile-friendliness and mobile-responsiveness. Both of these lead to a better user experience. It is because more than 50% of traffic comes from mobile devices.
• Google ranks faster loading websites on top of the search results page. Users don’t like slow-loading websites. Hence, optimizing speed yields a better user experience.
• Google’s quality rater guidelines heavily focus on optimizing your content for users’ search intent. It leads to a better user experience, as users instantly find what they are looking for on the web.
• SEO involves optimizing for different UX signals. These include signals such as bounce rate, dwell-time, and organic click-through rate. Hence by optimizing for SEO, you will be improving your website’s user signals. It will again lead to better UX.
• Other technical aspects of SEO involve the removal of 404 pages and reducing crawl errors. All of these ultimately aims to improve your website visitors’ experience.

In short, all your SEO efforts will ultimately lead to better user experience. It will help you gain more visibility and popularity as a brand. It will improve your brand’s authority in the industry. And ultimately, better user experience will result in increased revenue for your business.

3. SEO Improves Brand’s Online Reputation

Ask any marketer, and they would say that SEO can massively contribute to building a brand’s online reputation. Today, competition for brands is huge. There are hundreds of competitors in your industry. Hence the only way to stand out is through a stellar reputation.
Here’s how SEO can improve your brand’s online reputation:

• Through SEO, your brand can climb to the top of 3 spots in Google search results for relevant terms. It indicates to your target audience that you are a credible brand in your industry. Automatically, people will trust you more. And this helps to build your online reputation.
• When users search for big brands, Google displays knowledge panels. Knowledge panels contain important information about your brand. These may include a brief intro and the founder’s name. Through the implementation of scheme markup, you can add many more details. You can add social media links, customer support contact numbers, and stock prices. These things will increase your brand awareness.
• Google also displays reviews and ratings of brands. Google shows these either through product schema or through My Business listings. You should aim to get more positive reviews on Google. Then, users will perceive you as an authoritative brand in your industry.
• Google’s E-A-T (Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness) algorithm focuses heavily on gauging these factors for ranking. E-A-T uses signals such as the authors’ credibility, the number of backlinks, and the content’s accuracy. These signals again help your brand to build trust with users.

4. SEO is a Vital Part of your Sales Funnel

Sales funnel forms an integral component of any enterprise’s marketing strategy. A sales funnel indicates the different stages that your customers go through before making the final purchase.
The first stage of a sales funnel consists of the awareness stage. That is where a potential customer gets to know your brand for the first time. Attracting your target audience to this stage is highly important. It is to ensure that at least a few of them end up becoming your loyal customers.
Where does SEO fit in here?
SEO plays a vital role in the awareness stage of any enterprise’s sales funnel.
It is because 68% of online experiences start from a Google search. Hence, through SEO, you are ensuring that more and more people become aware of your brand. And thus, more people will reach the bottom of your funnel.
Research shows that the majority of website traffic comes from Google searches. Hence, by working on SEO, you attract more customers to be a part of your buyer journey.
It is also a known fact that most of us use Google to research a brand and its products. Only after thorough research, we decide to associate with a brand.
Imagine if you do not have an online presence. Most of your potential customers would pick a competitor’s brand that has a better online presence.
Often, people also become familiar with a brand through social media. Most social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook double up as search engines. Hence, SEO also helps you to attract new leads via social media platforms.

5. Increased Opportunities for Local Businesses

If you are looking to expand your business to local customers, SEO is an absolute necessity.
Don’t we all make frequent “near me” and “where to buy” searches to look for local businesses? According to Google, such local mobile queries have increased by 200% in the past couple of years.
Through these local Google listings, we look for ratings, reviews, and other details. Based on these details, we then choose a brand.
Hence, it is evident that SEO plays a major role in the expansion of local businesses. You can gain Google listings, maps, ratings, and reviews through local SEO
Using local SEO, you can optimize your business listing. Your business will show up when users in the vicinity look for services provided by your brand. For this, you must optimize for Google My Business Listing, Knowledge panel, and social media profiles.
Moreover, 28% of all local searches result in a purchase! Hence, through local SEO, you can maximize your lead generation and conversion rates.
Focusing on better user experience and building an online reputation will result in good reviews. And this way, you can expand your business’s local presence.

6. SEO Helps Keep up with Trends and Understand Competition

SEO is tough, painstaking, and time-consuming. SEO forces you to always be on your toes.
Google comes up with new algorithm updates 2 to 3 times a year. Many of these updates can completely change your current rankings. Based on the update, one day, you might climb to the top of the SERPs. And the next day, you might even disappear from the first page.
Moreover, your brand’s competitors are going to increase with every passing day. With all these, you can never catch a break with SEO.
For staying on top, SEO forces you to update your content with the latest trends. You need to have a competitive edge over your competitors. If you don’t, your rankings will drop.
Reaching on top of SERPs is one thing. But, staying there requires consistent efforts.

• Google comes up with frequent major algorithm updates. Most of these have users’ best interests in mind. Examples are algorithm updates such as Rank Brain, E-A-T, and YMYL. All these force you to update your content to provide the best possible experience to your users.
• SEO is a highly competitive game. Your competitors will always try hard to beat you. Hence, through SEO, you will have to update your content to stay ahead of your competitors.
• Lastly, competitor research is an integral part of SEO. By researching your competitors, you can understand the latest market needs and trends. It can inspire you to come up with new and better products for your users.

7. SEO is Long-Lasting

You will have to establish your presence on search engines. After that, SEO will keep bringing in traffic and leads for you like clockwork. It will work like a passive lead-generation engine for you.
SEO takes time. But, it is consistent and long-lasting. That is why most brands swear by SEO. Any brand that builds its traffic just through social media will never reach its fullest potential.
Hence, if you are looking for long-term and passive revenue for your business, SEO is the secret sauce. Let’s look at some reasons why SEO can generate long-term revenue for your business:

• Reports show that over 40% of any company’s revenue comes from organic traffic! Hence, SEO is a major revenue driver for most enterprises. Consistently investing in SEO will drive long-term results like no other marketing channel.
• SEO is an essential part of your buyer’s journey. It can majorly contribute to attracting new customers to almost all stages of your funnel. Without SEO, a major part of your sales funnel would be missing.
• Finally, SEO drives 24/7 business. Every hour of the day, people are searching on Google. And they are going to continue doing the same for the next few years as well. Hence, it is the best time for you to hop on to the SEO game. Within a few months, SEO will start yielding you sweet results in the form of leads and revenue.

8. SEO Helps with Voice Search Rankings

You must be familiar with popular voice search trends. New, more intelligent voice assistants are emerging in the market. Such devices have become more and more affordable over the years.
A large population of people owns voice assistant gadgets such as Google Home and Alexa. The others use their mobile devices’ voice assistants because of their ease of usability.
Stats show that 41% of people use voice search at least once per day. And most major brands have predicted that voice search is going to be our future. It is mostly because such devices make our lives so much easier and convenient.
Users increasingly use voice searches for local searches or other product-related searches. Hence, to stay relevant to your audience, brands need to optimize for voice searches.
Coming to SEO, did you know that Google picks 75% of voice search results from the top 3 search results?
It means if you want to rank for voice searches, SEO is the key.
40% of voice search results come from Google’s featured snippets. Hence, you should optimize for featured snippets and implement other SEO strategies. This way, you will automatically optimize your website for voice search.

9. SEO is Measurable

Lastly, one of the most important aspects of SEO is that it is quantifiable. It makes the process so much easier. It also yields better ROI. You can evaluate SEO results using various tools such as Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and other SEO tools.
Using Google search console, you can see the keywords that your website is ranking for. It helps you understand the kind of content that resonates most with your audience. Using this tool, you can also evaluate your organic click-through rates and understand user intent.
Google Analytics can be highly beneficial to understand insights about your visitors. You can view data such as user demographics, most-visited pages, user behavior, and UX signals. This data can be extremely useful for you. You can fine-tune your content and products so that it best suits your target customers.
Businesses should always strive to measure SEO and continually work on it. It can bring about a vast improvement in your conversion rates.

Conclusion

All the statistics and pieces of evidence are pointing in the same direction. And it is that SEO is not something that enterprises should ignore or take lightly. It even holds if the brand is already well established.
The entire world is moving online. Hence, without a strong online presence, it will be difficult to survive the wrath of what the future holds for you.
Consistent SEO will lead to long-term results. Some of these results would be increased lead generation, better brand authority, and increased revenue. Hence SEO is the best and wisest investment that should make today. Sow the seed of SEO today and watch your business grow in the coming years.