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author
Erik Newton
M Posted 4 years ago
t 3 min read
Digital Marketing

Why SEO?

This is a question SEOs and digital marketers face inside and outside the marketing organization. SEO has been around for more than a decade and a half and now makes up a gigantic share of traffic for successful websites.

In fact, research by BrightEdge shows organic search is the largest driver of Web traffic for most sectors and a crucial component of revenue. The strength of SEO and driving organic traffic is clear.

Organic search usage and share is outpacing growth in other channels. Organic and paid dominated web traffic in 2019. Performing SEO for Google and other search engines is going to be even more important in 2021 as organic search continues to rise above other search traffic.

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A guide to the importance of SEO and SEO rankings - BrightEdge

Importance of SEO in 2021

Use this SEO guide and these fifteen points to elevate the understanding and position of SEO in the marketing mix.

  1. Channel Share. Fifty-three percent of traffic to websites comes from organic search (source: BrightEdge Organic Channel report). Organic search delivers the most traffic to websites by a wide margin.
  2. Search Share. On average, 83 percent of the traffic from search engines comes from SEO, and 17 percent from paid search (source: BrightEdge internal data).
  3. Share of Focus. Even though organic search accounts for the majority of traffic, most companies spend more money on paid search. Paid search owned 15% of web search in 2019.
  4. Long-Term Traffic Equity. While SEO does require an upfront resource investment, SEO rankings, once earned, have long-term duration.
  5. Organic Traffic. SEO traffic has no media cost and can provide a substantial ROI – higher than most other channels. Search engines appreciate and reward content that is relevant to readers and written for them rather than for bots. Focus on optimizing for your target audience.
  6. Structure. Proper SEO helps organize your website and makes it easier for your visitors to navigate and transact.
  7. Alignment. Marketing works best when all channels are aligned on the same message – including organic search. Multiple channel alignment improves results in all channels.
  8. Brand Elevation. SEO success secures a share of voice on the search engine results pages, and this is an integral component of your brand and creating brand trust.
  9. Conversion. SEO traffic often converts better than other channels due to the fact that SEO rankings often convey trust from the search engines. While paid search produces results quickly, it lacks authenticity and therefore should be paired with SEO strategies, too.
  10. Channel Synergy. Your other marketing channels generate demand for people to query the search engine for products and services such as yours. If your website is not there to collect the demand you spent money creating, your competitors will collect it.
  11. Market Consideration. Organic search is a critical part of the research process, especially for products or services with a long sales cycle. People use search engines to create a list of candidates for the product or service and use them again to collect opinions and reviews that help them make decisions.
  12. Search and Social. SEO works in tandem with social media; some queries are more sensitive to “fresh results,” and social signals, which can impact and determine positioning in the search results. Social media helps shape your brand's presence online and drive traffic back to your site.
  13. Research. SEO research allows you to understand user interest and intent and build content that addresses and captures that intent.
  14. Content Distribution. Focusing on SEO and legitimate link building leads you to develop relevant, useful content that people want to share and provides digital word of mouth.
  15. Global Reach. SEO has global reach and can even provide dynamic translation and localization that can bring in new and unexpected customers from all corners of the world.

That's 15 solid reasons why SEO service should always have a prominent seat at the marketing mix table.

Learn why over 1,500 companies use the BrightEdge platform to succeed at SEO for Google and other search engines.