4 Reasons Why Your Business Needs SEO in 2022
Since 2020, the pandemic has upended everything, especially the way we do business. All of a sudden, we can no longer rely on the old methods pre-Covid, however effectively they worked for us in the past. The non-essential businesses felt the scourge of the pandemic a little harder, and if they had been laggards in the online marketing game, they either had to make cutbacks in several areas of the business or worse, fold it up completely.
With lockdowns here and there, coronavirus drove the growth of e-commerce and caused a massive shift in consumer search behaviour. How does your business respond to this change? Is there a benefit in investing in search engine optimization, when we’re seeing a huge decline of Covid cases globally, and things are now slowly going back to normal?
Here are four reasons why your SMB still needs SEO in 2022:
- SEO is never dead.
To begin with, SEO is never dead. In Neil Patel’s blog, he discusses that SEO is always changing, thanks solely to Google’s algorithm updates which compels businesses to target their ideal customer better and in a morepurposeful way.
If you are unfamiliar with SEO, it bears repeating its proven benefits:
● Increases online visibility
● Improves brand awareness
● Captures relevant traffic
● Builds trust and authority
● Educates your visitors
● Enhances web experience for visitors
- It is Cheap
SEO remains to be one of the most cost-effective ways to increase your brand’s online visibility, especially in the long run. Optimising your website is far cheaper than allocating your marketing budget for short-term ROIs coming from paid ads, influencer campaigns, events marketing, etc.
The pandemic taught businesses how to spend their marketing budgets judiciously. According to a study by Conductor, 34% of marketers increased their investments in low-cost channels like SEO and 63% predicted that SEO would be more important during these economically turbulent times. Before the study was released, 66% of marketers already declared SEO as their top performing channel in 2019.
- SEO builds Trust
SEO, when done right, can empower customers and build trust around your brand, product, or service. More than a decade ago, SEO used to be a game of keyword stuffing, spamming, and haphazard link building. Today, SEO is a marketing channel that helps potential customers become more informed of their future buying decisions.
When brands take steps to educate consumers and enhance their service or product knowledge, they are seen as more trustworthy than those whose goal is to bombard them only with marketing messages. A more educated consumer translates to frequent interactions between the consumer and the brand: He or she asks more questions, engages in productive dialogue, and can make word-of-mouth recommendations on your behalf.
An optimised website builds trust, so be sure to produce content that gravitates toward helpful and informative, rather than mere pushing and selling.
- Local Search is Your Pal
If you are a small- or medium-sized business, you can maximise opportunities to market for “Open now” and “Stores Nearby” searches. During the pandemic, when everyone’s movements are strictly policed, people have turned to local brands within the vicinity to meet both their essential and non-essential needs. In a research report published by Accenture in 2020, new retail consumer habits have formed, including the demand for local businesses. 56% of consumers have started buying from neighbourhood stores, especially that they are cheaper and sometimes, hand-crafted and mindfully sourced.
For starters, you can do local SEO by having a Google My Business page and optimising for keywords targeted to your location and areas around it.
There are plenty of reasons why businesses need to invest in SEO during the pandemic and even after it. Be patient and you’ll soon start seeing results in the coming weeks and months!
Talk to our experts at SEO Premier and let’s kickstart your SEO plan right away!
