10 of the Major Benefits of SEO that Every Business Owner Needs to Know

Everyone who’s familiar with online marketing knows that they should be using search engine optimization. You know that it’s important if your want their business to succeed in the digital space.

But why is that? How exactly does SEO help your business? This post will help you understand the major benefits of SEO so that you get an idea of how important it really is for your business.

#1: It Gives You More Visibility

One of the most obvious benefits of SEO is that it increases your website's visibility in the search engines by improving your rankings. Since SEO involves optimizing your on-site content with relevant keywords that get a lot of searches, it improves your ranks in the search result pages for those keywords.

This makes your website more visible to searchers, which can further yield its own benefits. According to a case study by Pronto Marketing, advanced SEO helped improve their clients’ rankings by 25 positions on average, over the course of nine months.

#2: It Drives More Organic Traffic

Another major benefit is something that I myself have experienced. SEO, when done right, can significantly boost your organic traffic.

As mentioned earlier, it increases your visibility in search results so that increases your chances of driving more people to your site.

Between 2016 and 2018, I managed to get a 12 times increase in organic traffic to my website. In 2017, there was a 275% year over year increase in the number of users. In 2018, there was a 364% year over year increase in the number of users.

#3: SEO Traffic is Highly Relevant

What does it mean to drive relevant traffic?

Traffic isn’t just any traffic. You need traffic that consists of an audience that is interested and highly relevant to your niche.

They came to your website because they were actively searching for something. And your website was among the most prominent results relevant to their search.

So they’re not just visiting your website for the sake of it. They’re there because they’re looking for something.

Whether they’re looking for information or for products to buy, there’s a good chance they will find it on your site because of your advanced SEO efforts.

#4: It Enhances User Experience

One of the biggest benefits of SEO is that it enhances the user experience and helps you leave a lasting impression on the right audience.

What do we mean by user experience?

This phrase encompasses the overall involvement of the user with the product. It includes the audience’s experience with your website and the product.

As mentioned in the previous point, SEO connects you with people who were searching for information relevant to your products or content.

Since your website contains information that’s relevant to what they were looking for, it’s bound to have a positive impact on their experience.

Besides this, SEO involves other tactics to enhance user experience such as developing a layout that’s easy to navigate, optimizing page load speed, and using a mobile-friendly configuration.

All of this contributes to enhancing the experience of people who visit your site, which will have its own positive benefits. For instance, it will lead to higher engagement rates on your site and that will further boost your rankings.

#5: It Improves Your Engagement Rate

An enhanced user experience for a highly relevant audience can only mean one thing. Your visitors will be spending more time on your site.

Why is user engagement important?

High user engagement is associated with increased ROI. When your customers are engaging with your product, then it means that they are bonding with your brand.

This, in turn, means customer loyalty for your product.

Since it’s easy to navigate and you have the kind of information they’re looking for, they are likely to engage with your content more thoroughly. This significantly improves your time-on-site, which translates to higher engagement rate.

#6: It Yields a Higher Click-Through Rate

How does SEO lead to a higher click-through rate?

More visibility and relevance in search results will also yield better click-through rates – another major benefit of SEO.

There’s evidence to suggest that the more prominent you are in search results, the more click-throughs you will get to your website.

According to an Advanced Web Ranking analysis, the top position gets a significantly higher click-through rate on both desktop and mobile searches.

It generated a CTR of 30.54% on desktop and 23.59% on mobile. The CTR drops gradually along with a drop in search position, suggesting that there is a correlation between higher search ranking and higher CTR.

#7: It Generates Quality Leads

As discussed in the previous points, the benefits of SEO include attracting a highly relevant audience to your site and enhancing their experience.

Since the traffic you are attracting is made up of people who are likely to be interested in your products, you also have a better chance of converting them.

What this means is that you are attracting high-quality leads through your SEO efforts. And this improves your chances of driving conversions on your site.

#8: It Helps You Drive More Sales

What’s great about all of these benefits of SEO is that they are somehow interconnected. One benefit will result in a different benefit and so on.

So how does SEO boost sales?

So even in the aspect of sales, SEO improves your performance because it helps you attract relevant visitors and quality leads. And that’s not just supposition; there are plenty of case studies proving how SEO drives better sales.

Let’s take a look at the example of Pinocchio’s Italian Eatery located in Brighton, Colorado. The restaurant had never worked with an SEO expert before and their website wasn’t even mobile-friendly.

With the help of an SEO team, they launched a mobile-friendly site with an optimized layout that would simplify user interactions. The restaurant reported a 16.7% increase in sales following this.

An even more impressive example is that of SendOwl, which focused on creating quality content that’s optimized for search engines. They managed to drive 40% of their signups from SEO over the next six months.

Besides these two, let’s take a look at another case study that clearly demonstrates some of these major benefits of SEO.

How did Goat.com optimize their site for SEO?

After all of these improvements, Goat.com saw an 87% increase in organic traffic within six months. Their sales from organic traffic also increased tenfold over the next two years.

#9: Organic Results Get More Clicks than PPC

Search ads are much more prominent in search result pages. So the common assumption is that they will get more clicks than organic search results.

What percentage of clicks do PPC ads get?

According to powertraffic.com, the top three paid ads get 41% click-through rates. The relevance of PPC is growing. Still, organic results beat PPC.

While these ads do have some impact on a website’s traffic and click-through rate, people still prefer to click on organic search results. And the top organic search results tend to get more clicks than PPC ads.

That’s another way in which you can enjoy the benefits of SEO.

According to SparkToro, a lot of searches ended up with zero clicks. But among the clicks that occurred, most of them went for the organic search results.

On desktop and laptop devices, around 66% of clicks typically went to organic results in 2018. Paid clicks only accounted for around 3% of the clicks.

#10: It Helps You Decrease Your Cost per Acquisition

One of the biggest benefits of SEO is that it helps you cut costs. Once you’ve made an initial investment, you won’t have to pay ongoing fees for the organic traffic you are attracting.

This is very different from PPC, which involves ongoing expenses as you will have to pay for every click to your ad.

In fact, PPC ads on Google will cost you about $1 to $2 on average for every click, according to WordStream.

But with SEO, you won’t have to pay for every click and every visitor you drive to your site. You just make an initial investment in terms of funds and efforts but incur no ongoing cost. So this significantly reduces your cost per acquisition.

Bottom Line

These are some of the major benefits of SEO that every business can enjoy. All of these benefits will eventually result in long-term exponential growth for your business and strengthen your credibility in the industry.

As you can see, a lot of these benefits of SEO are somehow interrelated and you can enjoy two or more of them with a single effort.

Know of any other benefits of SEO that I didn’t cover in this post? Please share your thoughts in the comments below. The experts at SEO Company Durango, CO will love to know your thoughts. Stay tuned for more updates.