One of the best ways to promote your company is through online marketing. In 2012 alone, about 80 percent of American adults and teenagers were projected to use the internet to research products online. Also, by 2016, online sales are predicted to increase from 7 percent to about 9 percent of all retail sales, according to Forrester Research. These numbers make it vital for companies to invest in internet marketing strategies that will keep their company on top of the competition. Search engine optimization (SEO) provides companies with a ideal way to accomplish this goal.
SEO is the process of finding organic ways for your company to be at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) on sites like Google, or Bing. This is important because most users never look past the first page of a SERP to find what they want. If your company has a low search engine ranking, your website might not ever be seen. An SEO expert will be able to analyze what users are searching for on a search engine, and utilize those same keywords in content on your website. This increases the chances that your site will show up higher on a SERP. An SEO company can provide you with quality content that contains organic links that lead back to your company’s website. About 75 percent of users ignore paid advertisement, and they are more likely to click on these organic links instead, making this an vital part of marketing your company. SEO leads also have a 12.9 percent higher close out rate than outgoing leads like print ads or direct mail.
Additionally, SEO companies can work with you on web design to optimize its function. Web design that is user-friendly, informative, and eye-catching has a greater chance of retaining customers, and possibly increasing sales. To accomplish this kind of web design, and other marketing objectives, many company owners decide to resell their marketing to an SEO company. Instead of hiring their own on-site SEO team, company’s turn to an SEO company to create quality content, productive web design and implement the best marketing tools to help increase their business’s visibility on search engines. Other reseller programs include social media marketing as a way to increase search engine rankings as well. In fact, about 30 percent of companies currently outsource part of their social media marketing to another entity, which is up 2 percent since 2011.
Millions of websites on a search engine are vying for a consumer’s attention. Without some form of marketing, your site is likely to get lost among the many others like it. By investing in outsourcing SEO, or working with an SEO company to optimize your website, it will be easier for you to make sure your site pops on the first page of a SERP. SEO can be the difference between your company’s success or failure.