Many of you will have seen a lot written on how to do SEO and the rules to abide by but how much do you know about why you should be doing SEO? The aim of this article is to give you the main reasons for investing in SEO. The list is not exhaustive but by the time you have read this article you should have no doubt SEO is for you.

1. Visibility

Imagine you have created the most beautiful website in the world. What will you do if nobody can find it? I think we all know that the vast majority of people use search engines to find what they are looking for. What most people don't realise is that only about 30% of people will click on the paid adverts. So if you are only using paid adverts you are missing 70% of the potential traffic to your website. Can you afford to miss this traffic? If the answer is no then you will need to invest in SEO to get to the top of the free results and pick up a lot more traffic.

2. Reduced Risk

If you are high in the search engine results you will not be paying for those that click on your link but don't buy. If you are using paid advertising then quite often you will be paying for competitors that are checking you out. Can you really afford to pay for this? The risk of paying out a lot of money on clicks that are not from people who want to buy is very great making paid advertising risky. The same risks are not associated with SEO and people can click away on your link to their heart's content and you will not be paying out for this. Don't you want to reduce your risk?

3. Consistency

If you only used paid advertising then you have a problem when you budget runs out. As soon as you stop paying your site disappears and you are picking up no more traffic. However if you stop SEO your site will remain there. You will not stay there indefinitely but you will have time where you can get business when you are not paying. This will allow you to get the money together to continue your campaign and remain visible.

4. Targeted Traffic

Using search engines allows you to target your campaign to people that are looking to buy your products or services. This obviously applies to paid search engine marketing but not to other forms of paid advertising like banners. The more you can target your advertising the greater your chance of converting the people that click on your link, that should be your aim, to get a high conversion rate.

5. Brand Awareness

It has been shown in studies that people are much more likely to remember companies that appear in the top 3 of the search engine results. This means even if people do not use your service they will be able to remember the name of your company and may tell other people about you. The more your company is known the greater your chance of converting prospects.

6. Affordability

You may be surprised to find you that in the long run SEO is much more cost effective than paid advertising. This is because you will get a lot more clicks for the money you spend. Why is this? Well the main reason is that most companies put 90% of their budget into paid advertising and only about 10% into SEO. This means that the cost of paid advertising is far too high to be valuable and most people lose money on these campaigns. However with good SEO you should make money.

If you have read the above and are still not sure about SEO then fine but in our opinion you are missing a great opportunity that could be very valuable to your business.