Why Is Seo Necessary?

According to a recent survey, small businesses spend most of their marketing resources on social media rather than SEO. Thirty-seven percent think social media is the most successful way to reach customers, while only 5% of them work on SEO.

This is understandable. Posting on social media is fun and easy, provides almost instant feedback and can deliver short-term results. SEO, on the other hand, is not flashy and takes some time to get results.

However, a good SEO expert can grow your business in a way that social media cannot, so you need to have both a really effective marketing program. Basic SEO is not particularly complex or difficult to learn. And it benefits online shopping tremendously, SEO can make the difference in being found by new customers or being superior to more curious competitors.

So how do you create an SEO program for your business? Start with something you already know, your customers.

See how your customers are shopping
To understand how and when SEO and social media help you connect with customers, it's important to understand how your customers decide to buy what you offer. Typically, customers go through three very general stages when shopping.

Awareness: Awareness can take several forms. One is to be aware of an existing problem. For example, your customer's coffee machine breaks and they immediately know they need someone else. Another type of awareness is learning about an attractive product. For example, your customer sees and wants a handbag with a leopard print on it.
Research: You can assume that your customers follow up, even for impulse purchases. Research can mean searching for the best coffee machines with a timer or checking the reviews of an online store before buying a handbag with a leopard print from them.
Purchase: When your customer feels satisfied with the best product, price and recycling of the product, they will buy.
Going through these stages can be slow. For example, if you are planning to buy a top-of-the-line refrigerator for your new home, you will likely spend a lot of time researching different models, manufacturers, and retailers.

Or customers can move quickly through all three stages. Maybe they see a T-shirt that they know their dad would love, so they do a quick check to make sure the trader is legit and then spot it.

How do customers move through this process? If you've adjusted your Search Console conversion, you might already know this. If not, you need to look at data as below

Where customers come from to come to your site.
Keyword searches that provide efficient visits to your site.
How visitors navigate your site (do they read your informative content like buying guides?)
You can also survey your customers to find out how they prefer to shop. And once you have a clear idea, you can see where social and SEO can connect with them.

Social media to build brand awareness and increase traffic
Social media is great for people to know about your business, which means it's important for the awareness phase of the purchasing process. It is also important to build 10 Platforms to Increase Your Reach that can feed the research and purchasing stages of shopping.

When customers know and like your brand, they are more likely to take that into account when researching a purchase. And of course, the likelihood of recycling and buying is higher when you post a quick sales info or a special offer.

But if you rely solely on social media, you're probably missing out on a large portion of your potential audience when they're ready to spend money.

SEO to reach customers when they're ready to spend
The reason SEO reaches customers before they open their wallets is because most people use search engines to find out where to spend their money. How do Social Media Algorithms work? read:

Worldwide, 74% of shoppers who shopped at nearby stores said they were looking for stock items, places, and watches before leaving home.
60% of smartphone users reached a business from a search results page.
Almost half (49%) say they use Google to get suggestions on which products to buy.
Obviously, many customers are moving directly or almost directly from search to purchase. If your business doesn't appear in search results, you're missing sales.

The key to appearing in all of these customer searches? SEO.

Learn the basics of SEO
Increase Your Brand Awareness Through Social Media Of course, you can combine this with SEO and appear as high as possible in people's search results.

It's a fancy way of saying you're going to make it easy to find.

The basics of SEO are:

Keywords: things like "best dog groomer near me" and "local organic produce manufactures" are examples. Check your Google Analytics dashboard to see what keywords your customers are using to find you.
Content: All words and media on your site. All should focus on the keywords your customers use and contain relevant tags and titles.
Headings: Parts of your web pages and blog posts that search engines crawl for information. For example, "Learn the basics of SEO" is a level 2 header that explains what this section is about to the search section. Use keywords to make your headlines relevant.
URLs: At a minimum, your URLs should indicate what each page on your site is about.
Metadata and tags: behind the scenes keyword tags in your content that tell search bots what is happening on your site.
The best way to learn how to use these basic SEO elements is to hire an expert.

With the guidance of our Web Experts and some free technical tools they will show you, you can adjust or improve your Google My Business profile and improve your website's SEO. You can then reach more customers along their shopping journey awareness, research and purchase.

Would you like to start building your SEO program now? Sign up, connect with support or contact us on our whatsapp support line.