Why Every Business Should Invest in SEO

Author: Brooklin Nash

Inbound marketing is at the forefront of advertising tactics for both B2C and B2B companies – and for good reason. With the right approach, focusing on organic leads can translate into better community engagement and conversions, all at a lower cost.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important subset of the inbound marketing ecosystem. The practice uses other inbound marketing practices (like content creation and social media management) to distill a strong and front-and-center web presence. The practice may seem intimidating, but every business should invest in SEO as part of their marketing strategy.

Here’s why.

Effective SEO doesn’t necessarily require fancy and expensive enterprise tools. In fact, most steps in SEO are free if you take the time and effort to complete them. A few free SEO basics include:

• Ensuring your landing pages and blog posts are SEO friendly with the right keyword density
• Revamping your website for SEO with image tags, meta descriptions, and compelling headlines
• Keyword research to make sure you are focusing on the right phrases for your niche

There’s a reason SEO has one of the highest ROIs in advertising. You won’t have to buy a single ad.

At the core of SEO is keyword research. This simply means figuring out which words or phrases will best connect with your target audience online. It is one of the most important parts of the SEO process.

You can start by building a list of potential keywords your target audience is likely to focus on. From there you can use keyword research tools (like SEMRush or Ahrefs Keywords Explorer) to narrow down the list to a more relevant set of phrases.

Going through this process will help you understand your target audience. Buyer behavior is highlighted through the way people search, and jumping down the rabbit hole will give you better insight into your leads’ interests, questions, and needs.

If keyword research is the foundation of SEO, link building is a welcome mat. Building links means reaching out to other authority sites and blogs with branded content, which in turn leads back to your own landing pages. This is a cost-effective way to both boost your SEO ranking and find new leads organically. Again, this element of SEO won’t take a big budget – just some time and determination.

Search Engine Optimization tools are necessary if you decide to invest in SEO for your business. These are the tools that will help you leverage each of the advantages identified above. Most SEO tools have similar features. The most common features to look for include:

• Keyword analysis and research tools
• Backlink analysis for identifying link opportunities and conducting outreach
• Site audits with suggestions for improving on-site SEO
• Reporting and analytics for competitive analysis, traffic analytics, etc.

You can get a good idea of which SEO tools will work well for you by research authentic customer reviews. Customer feedback provides information on the pros and cons, uses and limitations of an SEO tool. Once you do the research, you can start investing in SEO for your company.

Brooklin Nash writes about the latest tools and small business trends forTrustRadius. When he’s not writing, you can find him reading YA dystopian fiction (with guilty pleasure) and cooking.