Despite the overwhelming amount of success that can be achieved by allocating advertising budgets to the online environment, businesses are still apprehensive about investing into digital marketing. Of course, if done strategically, search engine optimization can be the most rewarding campaign your business can launch due to the immense potential available by ranking highly on Google and Bing. As an agency, we have encountered our fair share of businesses that have expressed hesitancy in allocating a marketing budget to search engine optimization. However, once organic search strategies have been executed and perfected, these businesses have carved their spot on the 1^st page of search engines for years to come.

If you need help pitching your senior staff and co-workers on the benefits of search engine optimization, or if you’re still unsure of the potential return on investment from this digital marketing tactic yourself, here are five reasons why SEO is a rock-solid investment.

1. Gain a competitive edge.

Whether you’re just starting out in the digital environment or have had a website for years, the amount of work needed to start ranking well for competitive keywords can vary. Websites built on brand new domains are virtually starting at point zero, which can be problematic if there are a lot of competitors with sites that have been indexed for years. However, if you develop a strategic SEO roadmap, you will be able to generate a lot of momentum by publishing optimized content and building links. While this may require a lot of resources each month, this is your opportunity to match up with the competition and try to get ahead.

2. Fuel your content marketing efforts.

While “Content is King” is an overused saying, it’s very applicable in this regard. Organic search and content marketing go together like peanut butter and jelly. By conducting keyword research on a regular basis, you can discover questions, long-tail phrases, and other valuable keywords users are searching for on a monthly basis. Use this knowledge to your advantage and develop an inventory of content for your website that can boost your visibility organically and push users through the conversion funnel. For example, if you want to dominate Google, Bing, and other search engines for “local SEO”, you can use tools such as Serpstat to find valuable keyword phrases such as:

• Why local SEO matters
• What are the benefits of SEO to a small local business
• How to improve local SEO results
• How to do Google Local SEO

Based on the results above, one can write four articles on the topic of local SEO without even delving into deeper details.

3. Reap the rewards of a cost-effective marketing strategy.

Compared to traditional advertising campaigns, search engine optimization is a rather cost-effective strategy. The odds of reaching users via print, radio, and television continue to diminish as these forms of media are replaced by the corresponding digital formats: blogs, podcasts/satellite radio, and subscription-based entertainment. Even within the digital realm, search engine optimization can be far less costly than PPC advertising depending on your niche and where you can interact with your target audience online. For example, if you’re in the insurance or legal space, you can expect to pay anywhere from $10-50 per click for most keywords, but with so many competitors online, it may be fruitful to invest money into media buying. However, if you’re audience is more prone to avoiding ads altogether, a fresh organic search strategy might be a more affordable alternative to capturing new inbound traffic.

4. Improve the user experience on your website.

A fortunate byproduct of search engine optimize is the technical updates you can implement on your website to boost the overall user experience and create a more “search-engine friendly” structure.  For example, some of the items on our checklist when it comes to optimizing a website include:

• Implementing schema markup.
• Fixing broken internal links.
• Resolving 404 errors – redirecting broken links to the most relevant pages.
• Adding more relevant content to support the main objectives.
• Adding a breadcrumb navigation structure.
• Improving the overall website speed.
• Resolving mobile usability issues.

These are just a few of the elements that search engines analyze when crawling websites. Fixing issues such as broken links, thin content, and mobile usability issues can results in an increased conversion rate across all campaigns – earned or paid – and improve the overall user experience.

5. Get more flexible with your marketing strategy.

Contrary to popular belief, search engine optimization can be quite robust and flexible. The best example of this is the emergence of Trumpcare-based websites and pages that have been indexed over the past two months. As soon as Donald Trump was elected, health insurance websites in the United States began carving  their space for Trumpcare-related keywords in anticipation of a new health insurance initiative replacing Obamacare. Over the past couple of years, the keyword “obamacare” has been of the most highly-searched and competitive keywords in the health insurance market, so it would make sense for “trumpcare” to start gaining moementum.

You can take advantage of the latest trends within your niche by creating content in a timely manner, carving your place on the first page of search engine results.  Additionally, you can boost the visibility of your brand by sharing your content with other publishers around the web to build inbound links back to your website. An infographic or a whitepaper explaining a recent development (such as Trumpcare) can help your website get sourced by pages around the web, providing you with increased brand awareness and valuable inbound links.

While yours truly may be biased when it comes to the benefits of SEO, the investment is minimal compared to the potential returns your business can make in the years to come. The content and technical optimization alone can bring tremendous value to your website without even ranking for your main keywords.