30-second summary:
- SEO is without a doubt the most cost-effective channel for enterprises today.
- SEO also adds incremental value in a number of different ways.
- It helps maintain brand equity, helps inform product and sales.
- SEO can also be used as a PR channel and vice-versa.
- From consumer behavior trends to market and demand volatility, search behavior can provide the data businesses need to understand market drivers and pivot in real-time.
- SEO adds value by providing a model for continuous digital improvement of the user (customer) online experience.
Those within the industry understand that the inclusion of SEO as part of a comprehensive marketing strategy is an absolute. But while we recognize that SEO holds the keys to digital success – from the insights and context it provides, to the optimization of content it can deliver – we sometimes overlook the additional business value of SEO.
The power of doing SEO now cannot be understated. As the most cost-effective channel for enterprises today, SEO also adds incremental value in a number of ways. In this article, we’ll consider just seven ways of them.
1. Brand awareness
Some tend to think about SEO primarily in terms of rankings and traffic. While both are great ways to measure the success of your SEO strategy, limiting yourself to those metrics alone can miss the wider value provided by a first-page result – whether it converts to click through or not.
Every search returns pages of results, and each time your product, service, or brand appears on page one of those results you create an impression. Those impressions are fundamental to brand awareness, which is the extent to which consumers recognize your brand, your product, or service.
In an endless sea of options, brand awareness is the first