The world hits search engines 3.5B times a day. Is your SEO placing you at the top?
Long story short: If you are not the first search result on Google for your industry's top keywords, then you are missing the opportunities for your customers to find you when they most want to, worse still, your competitors are getting your business.
Forget about buzz words like "disruption", "user experience", or "digital transformation". How is your business relevant to your customers when they cannot find you?
90% of the websites out there are in the black hole of being invisible to internet users because search engines cannot call them up when asked for. This presents an untapped opportunity still for many companies, especially for businesses operating in more niche markets.
The good news: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help your brand shoot up to the top 10% of search results and send valuable business your way.
According to a research conducted by a content marketing company in 2018, half of a website's traffic comes from organic search, while 5% comes from social media; which means SEO is 10x more effective than social media in generating traffic. From the same research, SEO is also found to generate 40% more revenue.
The better news: SEO is not hard. It is a step-by-step check-list that aligns your metadata with Google's search algorithm, that means structuring your content so that it is best understood and picked up by the search engines. It is an ongoing effort of optimizing your content over time so that Google will rank your site higher than your competitors' – hence higher visibility. Once the foundation for your SEO is properly covered, there’s always room to grow and get better.
Here are advices on SEO for our clients in 2019.
1. Think mobile first (and foremost!)
Google has announced that "mobile-first indexing will be enabled by default for all new websites starting July 1, 2019." This means Google crawls and indexes the web based on the mobile version of your page instead of your desktop version. Counting down to July, every brand should have its mobile site audited for the new indexing rules.
2. Implement Video SEO
According to Cisco, by this year, video content will account for 80% of global internet traffic. More people will be finding out about your brand and your offer through watching videos on Youtube than simply searching for text-based results. This means basic aspects on video optimization such as Channel Name, Channel Keywords, Channel Description on YouTube need to be done yesterday. If you have invested into making videos to promote your brand and your products, your expected returns on investment can only be fully optimised if you have also implemented SEO for the video asset. Our advice is carve out a budget for that for every video asset that you produce / commission to get the most out of your marketing budget.
3. Say "Hello" Voice Search!
Research from ComScore says voice search will be almost half of all online searches in 2019. You know it’s coming when Apple's Siri no longer sounds like a joke. And with Amazon's Alexa and Google Home only giving ONE result for any query, how will you snag that spot for your brand? It is time to at least think about it and get that onto your digital marketing agenda.
Organic search is where customers are looking and ready to learn, take action and make purchases. Place your brand where your customers are looking, or your competitors are eclipsing you in the big, big world of the world-wide-web.
Sources
According to Internet Live Stats.
BrightEdge, California, USA 2019
About the author
Anita Vachani is Head of Digital at Icicle. She is a creative problem solver with 9 years of experience driving global business transformation producing business results. In the ever-changing market of extreme uncertainty, she is driven to deliver what is best for the business and delight our customers