For small to medium businesses, having an effective online presence is increasingly important. The operative word here is effective. Websites should be SEO friendly and optimized for mobile devices in order to stand out in the ruthless world of search rankings. Search rankings determine the visibility of your business to potential customers, and hence of the number of potential and actual sales. Luckily, to succeed in the world of Internet marketing, you don’t have to try and master the arcana of search algorithms yourself. You don’t even have to hire a new staff of web developers. Working with specialized SEO consultants can ensure the best results for your web design and social media presence.
Helping your customers find you online
The success of social media strategies can be attributed to the fact that customers are increasingly looking for good and services online. And when they find what they’re looking for, they’re much more likely to make a purchase. Research into online shopping habits has found that 50%, or half of all online searches on mobile devices have the goal of finding local results. To put it simply, that means customers in your area are actually looking for your business.
As many as 61% of online searches for local results lead to a purchase. In general, leads generated by SEO produce a 14.6% close rate, which is way higher than the 1.7% close rate achieved by traditional outbound marketing like direct mail or print advertising.
Speed matters: optimizing your site for mobile devices
For most web users today, a slow loading site is a deal breaker. As many as 40% of Internet users will wait only for three seconds for a page to load before abandoning it. Users are equally impatient when it comes to following search results. Fully three fourths or 75% will not look at search results beyond the first page. This is why SEO optimization is so important: it can gain your website a better ranking in search results and thus higher visibility.
With all the challenges, the rewards of marketing are real and substantial. An investment of just six hours each week on social media resulted in increased online traffic to their websites, 74% of brand marketing experts reported. There are a number of strategies that can make it easier for your customers to find you online. SEO consultants will be able to help you incorporate these into your social media presence.
Blogging generates more online traffic and leads
There are many aspects of website design and SEO that can produce good results. Blogging is a proven way of directing more traffic to your site. It’s also a way of informing customers about your company, your products and services. A regular blog also helps you to educate customers about industry basics and trends, and to keep them updated on current business news.
And it works. Blogging has been found to increase online traffic by 55% for online brands. Blogs produce 67% more leads for B2B companies with blogs of their own, as compared to those that don’t blog.
Even for real-world businesses, having an effective and credible social media presence matters. Up to 46% of online shoppers say that they determine the credibility of a company on the basis of its website design. Internet marketing and social media are not the tools of the future, they’re here now. And an experienced firm of SEO consultants can help you to use them successfully.
