How important is SEO?

The end goal for a company is to get their blogs and key pages landing in the competitive #1 position on the SERP. SEO can get you there.

Ranking high means companies will get more organic traffic to their site, increasing the chances of converting leads into paying customers.

Let’s look at an example...

In this example, Semrush (a keyword research tool which is a well-respected SEO blog) has the top match, meaning that their snippet is featured as the 'answer' to my query.

However, you’ll also notice that wix.com appears above Semrush as an advertisement: Wix has used paid search to appear at the top of SERPs.

The difference is that Semrush has invested in organic search, using SEO tactics to increase their ranking naturally, meaning they’re not funnelling money into ads each month.

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Paid vs organic search

Paid search allows advertisers to highlight their pages via the pay-per-click (PPC) model, which means they pay a small fee each time someone clicks on the link. Paid search can help with content ranking, but many internet users specifically avoid advertisements in favor of organic results. In fact, 94% of people skip over these ads.

Organic is a long-term source of traffic, increasing brand reliability and authority. In fact, 49% of advertisers consider organic the best approach.‍

This competition over spots in organic search gives companies the incentive to continue creating new content and optimizing existing content to move up the SERP rankings and stay there.

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Stats that show the importance of SEO

Let’s look at some quick-fire SEO stats to help you get an idea of how important it is, sourced from this great resource.

• 53%: The percentage of all trackable website traffic that comes from organic search
• 32%: The average organic click-through rate (CTR) the first Google desktop search result gets
• 26.9%: The average organic CTR the first Google mobile search result gets
• 91.75%: The total worldwide search engine market share Google currently holds
• 96.55%: The percentage of pages that get no organic search traffic from Google
• 50.3%: The percentage of all browser-based searches on Google.com that resulted in zero clicks
• 45.25%: The percentage of all browser-based searches on Google.com that resulted in organic clicks
• 8.5: The average number of organic mobile search results Google shows on page 1
• 8.7: The average number of organic desktop search results Google shows on page 1
• 52.94% of internet users worldwide operate mobile and tablet devices
• 3: The average number of words a typical searcher uses in their search query
• ~8%: The percentage of search queries that are phrased as questions
• 18%: The percentage of queries on Google that result in the searcher changing their search terms without clicking any results
• 21%: The percentage of searches that lead to more than one click on Google’s results.

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How does Google rank results?

SERPs use the formula 'E-E-A-T' to evaluate and order web pages. This method takes into account four different factors:

• Experience: content that demonstrates first-hand experience with the subject matter will be prioritized. This is why storytelling is so crucial in blog content.
• Expertise: topical expertise, including knowledge, qualifications, and credentials, is required to produce reliable information. This is why it’s important to match writers to the subject matter,or feature a recognised name on the topic.
• Authority: your overall industry reputation, based on how many websites link back to your content for your topic or niche
• Trustworthiness: factual accuracy, well-founded sources, and secure connections are all factors that play into trustworthiness

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How does SEO work for tech companies?

Simply having a great product and unique selling point isn’t enough.

The SaaS sector is witnessing rapid growth at an annual rate of 22%, which is higher than the average growth rate of all industries at 17%. This means the field is saturated and competition is fierce, so anything you can do to stand out will matter.

With a whopping 90% of web pages receiving zilch, nada, zero organic traffic–making sure yours receive traffic should be a big focus. So, how can you be in the remaining percent that actually gets traffic?

One of the most sure-fire ways tech companies are growing is via search engine efforts. With only 0.63% of Google searchers clicking on a result on the second page, the goal is clear for tech companies: appear on the top of search results or * figuratively * die trying.

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SEO for tech companies

SEO helps search engines discover, crawl (robot for ‘inspect’), and present your web pages to (what should be) your target audience. Without it, your chances of being found online are incredibly slim.

And what about the ‘real world,’ you might be wondering? Well, getting ad space on magazines or papers, or running TV commercials or billboards is good for some brands, but for tech companies, and especially those only starting, it won’t be worth it. Its ROI will be low as you’ll need to make a long-term investment, can’t guarantee your audience, and real-world ad costs are notoriously much higher.

SEO allows your content to abide by Google and other search engines’ algorithms and by your bone-and-flesh-audience’s checklist so that you can make it to the top of the SERPs. However, SEO is not easy by all means. It involves holistic strategies, technical fixes, CMS optimization, and a lot of mastery over the subject to get the results you want.

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