Why is SEO so Important for your Business Post-COVID
The Covid Pandemic taught a lot of businesses that having a solid online presence is the key to managing a successful brand during a troubling time. The power of SEO and social media has become clear and is a much-needed tool for any business.
Many brands either shut down or gained traction during the pandemic, and the evidence of it is seen in the post-pandemic environment of the business world. But brands should not dwell on what has already happened, and the pandemic is the past.
Brands should now look at ways to secure a lucrative position in the digital space. The online world has many possibilities and is yet to be tapped into by many brands. SEO allows businesses to be seen and found through the assistance of powerful search engines like Google. SEO is an essential form of digital marketing and is highly viable in the digital space.
The habits of consumers during the pandemic have stayed the same even in the post-pandemic era. Online searches and shopping still reign supreme, which should be highlighted in brand strategies. While some businesses might still have numerous storefronts, SEO allows brands to reach consumers from your geographical area and beyond. You no longer have to be limited to your area code.
In the post-pandemic environment, consumers still depend on online deliveries, which makes it detrimental for brands to be spotlighted in the digital space. With numerous brands competing with each other to be seen on SERP (search engine result pages), having more resources to spend is not enough to acquire the top spot.
This is why your brand’s web pages need to be optimized so search engines can rank your site high on SERP and consumers can start being directed towards product and purchase pages. The importance of SEO should never be undervalued in the digital space.
That is the primary function of SEO, but there are many more reasons why every brand should invest in SEO capabilities in the post covid era.
Some of these reasons are:
1. Consistent SEO Effort is the Key to Success
With any marketing strategy, consistency is always the key to ensuring a successful endeavor, which is no different for SEO. It would be best if you kept your efforts continuous when dealing with the SEO capabilities of a brand’s web pages.
If you venture down the SEO route, you must be fully committed to it. SEO is not a method by which you can drop off in the middle and expect good results. Instead, you need to constantly monitor and adjust content and functionality to fit the requirements of search engines.
SEO ensures all platforms are consistent. Consumers appreciate consistency when researching a brand or business. When you decide to undertake SEO for your business, it drives you to achieve the same level of effectiveness on all platforms.
An effective SEO strategy will ensure your company information is up to date and that consumers are not confused when they come across your brand on any platform.
SEO practices keep you and your brands in check regarding your short and long-term goals. At the same time, it is assumed that SEO only procures medium to long-term results. However, you can still mark goals that you want to achieve in terms of the progress of the SEO functionality of your web pages.
For example, your short-term goals could be to refresh your content or add more information to your product and contact information pages. Long-term goals could be to achieve the number one spot on search engines and have a certain number of consumers visit your website daily. Incorporating white hat SEO into your strategy will help you balance these goals, making them achievable and effective for your business.
2. Quality Content Improves Ranking
Content will forever be king, so brands need to update the content they are putting out. When you involve SEO in your business strategy, you must be on top of topical events and be informed about what consumers are attracted to.
This means that research should be done about the needs and wants of your ideal audience. Old and outdated content on brand accounts needs to be refreshed or removed. While new, more relatable content needs to be spread through platforms.
SEO techniques assist businesses in checking the content they publish and keeping the quality and relatability of the content high. In the post covid era, content is readily available on any platform and from any brand, so being effective with your content will make the difference and give you the competitive edge you need.
3. Local SEO Improves Brand Visibility
While getting visibility on search engines is vital, being found locally is essential. SEO allows you to be found by consumers close to you who are most likely to visit your storefronts. An effective local SEO strategy will ensure that your brand’s web pages pop up whenever a consumer looks for specific keywords.
Being well-known in your surrounding areas is just as crucial as being well-known in the digital space. The aim for any business using SEO is to appear in the top results on search engines to have a real effect on consumer decision-making.
4. Voice Search Helps You Reach a Wider Audience
It has been observed that more and more consumers are turning to voice search queries to find what they are looking for. This includes information about products, services, brands and solutions to everyday problems. The advancement to voice-activated technology like Google Home and Amazon Echo complimented the use of voice search queries. This means that brands now need to cater to this segment of consumers. SEO for a brand will now have to ensure that their business pops up for written as well as voice searches.
Since the number of people that use voice search queries is increasing, missing out on this marketing opportunity would not be advised. So if you are putting together an SEO strategy, include voice search optimizations to help your brand grab the attention of every ideal customer regardless of their form of search queries. SEO will also ensure that your brand’s web pages pop up first on the top spots of voice search result pages.
5. Image and Video Optimization Boosts SEO Effectiveness
Search engine optimization techniques help brand websites rank higher on search engines, increasing brand visibility. But search engine crawlers don’t only scan content on brand websites. They also consider the images and videos you post on your web pages. These search engine crawlers are known to analyze and deduce whether images or videos match the search engine ranking metrics. But using SEO isn’t only to impress the crawlers but also consumers.
At the same time, you can add tags and descriptions to your media to make it stand out to search engine crawlers to get ranked. This kind of media optimization will also leave an excellent impression on consumers that visit your website. Being noticed will help your brand, but keeping potential customers will assist in conversions.
6. Featured Snippets Increases Clickability
Featured snippets are the search listings that appear at the top of the SERP. They have additional functionality and data to add visual interest to the searcher. An SEO strategy can help brands target these rich snippets and improve CTRs.
There are various rich snippet types that you can target when it comes to SEO. These are product markups, music, reviews, events and recipes. Each type of rich snippet gives valuable consumer information, which would give the user an inclination to click on the link. The information could be ratings, locations, prices, dates, etc. This is known as structured data markups which are readable by search engine crawlers.
While it is observed that structured data is not a direct ranking factor, it is included in on-page content factors like entities that are the subject of the webpage. In short, utilizing SEO on your website gives your brand a higher chance of appearing on SERP in the form of rich snippets. Consumers like quick information they can click on and extract the necessary answers. By tapping into this Google feature, you improve the clickability of your links on the search engine.
These reasons are only a few benefits of incorporating SEO into your strategy. Any marketer will assure you and your business that investing in SEO has done wonders and will always have a positive effect. While SEO can be very technical and tiring to execute due to how consistent and efficient you need to be, the rewards you reap in the long run make all the grinding worth it. You must be sure you know the difference between SEO and SEM and distinguish yourself between the two.
There is a specific way you undergo SEO for your brand; if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can drain your time and resources. That is why there are specialists in agencies like SV Digital that offer businesses SEO services to ease the transition.
