The pros and cons of using SEO for your business

So you know what Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is. Now it’s time to have a look at the pros and cons of using it for your business. After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding of how SEO can benefit your business, and whether it’s the right choice for you.

Let’s get stuck in, starting with the pros.

What we’re going to cover:

The PROs of SEO
The CONs of SEO

The PROs of SEO

Pro #1: Increase conversion

A good ranking in any search engine results can seriously improve your conversion rate. If your business sits in the few top spots on Google for long enough, people will become more aware of your business and the quality of your work. As well as boosting your credibility, you’ll be seen by many as an industry leader.

As people become more familiar with your brand and learn about your product or services, they are more likely to buy from you.

Pro #2: Establish brand awareness

Brand awareness is all about how much your target audience recognises your brand — referring to how familiar they are with your products or services.

If you’re in the top one, two or three positions on Google, more people will see your brand and in turn, become familiar with what you do. Automatically, this leads to a higher number of your links being clicked, which means more people visiting your website. What’s more, it promotes word-of-mouth marketing.

Pro #3: Improved ROI

Businesses appreciate paid ads because it’s easier to see the return on ad spend. However, costs are increasing and margins are being squeezed. With SEO, once you are in a dominant position and you’ve generated sales to cover the investment in getting there, leads are generated at no direct cost, which means better profit margins.

Pro #4: Reach more people

Most marketing campaigns focus on a specific target audience. But not SEO. SEO helps you attract anyone with intent at any given time, regardless of where they are in the buying funnel. By targeting keywords rather than demographics, you can attract more people who might be interested in purchasing your products or services.

Pro #5: Takes you ahead of the competition

Chances are your competitors are investing in SEO, and so should you. Those who invest heavily in SEO will outrank those who push it to one side and do bits here and there — allowing them to rank higher on Google and take more market share.

Results on the first page of Google get over 90% of traffic, so you cannot afford not to be there — especially if your competitors are.

Pro #6: Help with scalability

Less than 10% of online users will interact with an advert, whether that’s Google AdWords or paid social ads. Being at the top of Google, you can expect north of 25% of searches to hit your website. Having strong SEO can help put your business in front of a larger audience around specific search query, this helps your business scale and grow in areas you want to target.

The CONs of SEO

Con #1: It takes time

The biggest downside to SEO is that it can take months to see results. As we’ve already said, SEO is a long game — far from a fast-moving process. No matter how much you optimise your website or how many SEO best practices you follow, it might be the case that you don’t see results for many months after you start.

Con #2: Changes to Google

SEO changes all the time. Or should I say, Google changes all the time. Google updates catch every SEO out and can mean that one day you’re at the top of page one and the next day at the bottom of page two. Unfortunately, there’s not one thing you can do about it, either.

No matter what any SEO person tells you, it’s impossible to fully know how Google’s algorithm works. Likewise, when a new update is coming. All you can do is be prepared for when it happens by having an experienced SEO team by your side.

Conclusion

SEO is a great solution for businesses looking to grow their turnover, it is better suited to businesses that are more established than start up businesses due to some of the factors of SEO. Authority of a domain will naturally be stronger for more established businesses, on top of this start ups usually want to make an instant impact with marketing efforts and SEO is not as dynamic. All this being said if you are looking for a marketing method to grow your businesses revenue and long term growth, then utilising SEO to market to the massive amount of internet users, then SEO is definitely the method you should be considering.