It can be difficult to quantify or draw direct correlations between an SEO campaign and the sales it generates. Unlike PPC, where keywords can be tracked from the click all the way to the conversion, SEO tracking 
is isn’t quite as specific. In fact, tracking sales from an SEO campaign can often be difficult to differentiate from other web marketing campaigns, except through source tracking which can be vague.
Many SEO skeptics and naysayers fill the net with their horror stories or proof as to why you don’t need SEO. Usually, these naysayers are promoting their own non-SEO created wins, much the same as the “junk SEOs” they decry. Yes, anyone can stumble into an SEO win.
But SEO is much bigger than content or links. It’s more than blogging, keyword research or fixing website problems. All of those are things that SEO does, but none of that explains why you need SEO. You may need all those services, but here’s why you need SEO.
SEO Builds a Better Website
Wait, I thought developers built websites? What does the SEO have to do with that?
Good question. The truth is, designers and website developers are great at creating sites that look and work well for the user. However, they rarely dive deep into search architecture and algorithm nuances; therefore, they don’t always know how their designs will play out in the search landscape.
The SEO, knowing these things, can work with the developers to tweak the site (preferably before it goes live) to make it more search-engine friendly. And making a site search-engine friendly is usually making it visitor friendly at the same time.
SEO Gets You Noticed
At its core, SEO is designed to get you noticed by getting your website ranked in the search engines for relevant keywords. Without SEO, you wouldn’t know which keywords are being searched, which keywords drive the most targeted traffic, and therefore which keywords you want to rank for.
Getting a #1 ranking for your site name is not SEO. That’s called having a website with a unique site name. You really don’t have to do anything to rank for those keywords. Real SEO is designed to help you get people to know you exist, not by already knowing your brand name but by searching for things, interests and needs that you meet.
SEO Extends Your Reach
Many people think they already know what two or five keywords they need to rank for. While these may (or may not) turn out to be the best keywords that drive the most targeted traffic to your site, there are likely dozens, if not hundreds of keywords that can drive traffic just as well.
As the SEO continues to optimize your site for more keywords, the more “doors” they are opening to bringing in targeted traffic to your website. Studies have shown that these “long-tail” keywords can often produce as much– if not more – traffic than the “core” phrases for the site.
SEOs push for optimization of both long- and short-tail keywords in order to extend your reach. Until the keyword pool has dried up, the SEO’s job isn’t done.
SEO Improves Brand Recognition
Every time your site ranks in a search, it’s a branding opportunity. In fact, it’s branding in action. The more keywords you are optimized and ranking for, the more branding you are actively doing.
This is why so many sites do both SEO and PPC simultaneously. The branding effect increases with the dual exposure. Now multiply that over dozens or hundreds of searches performed with all different kinds of keywords.
The more you’re found in the search results by a searcher, the greater opportunity you have to brand your website with that searcher. Every time you’re branded, you increase your opportunity to drive traffic.
SEO Increases Clicks
When you perform a search, what makes you click on one site over another? You may not even know other than that feeling that one site is more targeted to what you want. This is SEO. It’s not just about editing tags to get rankings, its about editing tags to make them as compelling as possible to get the search to choose your site over the other ten competitors on the page.
In fact, the best SEOs don’t always care about whether you’re ranked #1 or #5. What they care about is that you’re getting more clicks to your site. If you get better clicks at #3 than you do at #2, your SEO is successful.
SEO Produces Targeted Traffic
Getting more clicks isn’t always better. A cleverly crafted title tag can generate a lot of clicks, but it may do a poor job of qualifying the clicks to ensure you’re delivering targeted traffic.
Who cares, right? Isn’t any traffic good traffic? Not if it puts a burden on your resources but yields very little in new business. No one wants to spend more time responding to emails, calls or form submissions from customers you can’t help.
SEOs help you reduce untargeted traffic while increasing targeted traffic. Eliminating traffic that you can’t help gives you more time to assist those you can.
SEO Speaks To Your Audience
Once visitors land on your site, the message they see and read must be one that convinces them that they found the right site. The SEO’s job is to align your content with the keywords the searchers are using, creating that synergy between search and landing page.
If searchers do not find the content on your site that resonates with their searches, wants and needs, they will likely quickly leave the website. It’s the SEOs job to speak to the searchers intent by optimizing the content of your pages. If you speak your visitor’s language, you’re more likely to build trust and get a sale.
SEO Generates Sales
Despite what people think, the SEO isn’t there to get rankings for the website. It’s to help grow the business. Therefore, the SEO should be just as concerned about sales as the business owner.
By optimizing a site, the SEO helps the visitor move from search to site to answers to conversion. This is done through a number of on-page optimization strategies, including the use of solid architecture and implementing calls to action. Any good SEO knows that SEO without sales is useless.
SEO Is Profitable
Done well, SEO will increase sales greater than the cost of the SEO campaign. There are all different kinds of marketing avenues you can take, but SEO has consistently proven to be one of the most profitable.
SEO may not be cheap (and cheap SEO is generally poor SEO), it does give you the return on your investment. If SEO can give you a profitable return of +10%, it doesn’t matter if it costs $10,000 or $100,000. Not matter how much you spend your profits go up. The only loss is when you cut your SEO investment.
Of course, not all SEO is equally profitable and smaller SEO campaigns will generally take a longer time to generate a positive ROI. But if you go into your SEO campaign with the right mindset, you’ll walk away with a rewarding campaign that is increasing your bottom line and helping you grow your business day by day.
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