A lot has changed in the world of digital marketing in the last year, but a few trends remain steadfast. One of these is the importance of SEO as a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy.

To ensure your marketing message reaches the right audience at the right time, you’ll need to consider SEO first. When done right, SEO can help drive qualified traffic to your website from all over the world. This, in turn, can help you gain profitable customers and increased revenue. To learn more, check out these informative SEO resources from Google:

SEO Is About More Than Just Rankings

SEO is a broad term that covers everything from technical aspects of creating high-quality content to attracting the right audience.

While SEO can help bring in the traffic, it’s not solely responsible for generating revenue. This is where content marketing comes in. Creating high-quality content that appeals to your target audience can help drive qualified traffic to your site, with the hope this will translate to revenue eventually.

Choosing to focus on SEO alone to gain business growth can prove counterproductive. If you truly want to be considered a thought-leader in your industry, then develop content that is both highly informative and entertaining. This will likely attract and retain more of your target audience, which in turn can lead to more profitable results.

More People Are Trusting Organic Search

In the past, consumers had to go completely unaided when searching for products and services online. This is no longer the case thanks to SEO.

Thanks to various strategies and tactics, such as white hat SEO, SEO can help ensure your marketing message reaches the right audience at the right time through organic search results. These strategies are completely transparent to the user, ensuring your brand doesn’t receive any hidden agendas.

If your marketing strategy relies heavily on word of mouth, social marketing, or PPC (pay-per-click advertising), then SEO can help drive traffic to your website from all of these channels.

User Experience Is Everything

In the past, a lot of emphasis was placed on the number of people landing on a website. However, in 2017, user experience (UX) is the mantra. Ensuring that every part of a visitor’s experience is positive will help get you one step closer to gaining their trust and becoming a preferred resource for them in the future.

To achieve this, put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: What would I want or expect from a site or business I’m visiting?

You can also find answers to these questions by simply inspecting your site. Look for broken links, thin content, and poor web design and performance. All of these factors can cause a visitor to have a bad experience and ultimately put you at a disadvantage.

Content Is King (or Queen)

While SEO can help bring in the traffic, ultimately, the content is what keeps them coming back for more. In other words, you’ll need to create content that is both informative and entertaining to succeed as an online marketer.

The content for your website can take many forms. However, the two most important types are:

• Textual content – the information and data you want to convey to your audience. This can include everything from press releases to blog posts. The more text the better because it’s easier for search engines like Google to index and find.
• SEO-friendly images – Also known as “rich media” or “attached media,” this is multimedia content that will help attract and retain an audience. The most effective forms of rich media include video and infographics.

To ensure your content is not ignored by potential customers, conduct outreach via email to discover and grow a database of qualified leads. Use your leads to build long-term relationships and eventually move the needle on your revenue.