Why Your Marketing Budget Must Include SEO

[dannybindras]

Many small business owners make the mistake of thinking that search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO, is simply a passing trend - but they couldn't be more wrong. In fact, marketing consultants Econsultancy and ExactTarget recently completed a survey of more than 1,000 companies and discovered that they spent 24 percent of their marketing budgets online in 2010. But that's not all, 64 percent of those same companies intend to increase spending on SEO in the coming year. Why? Because it works.

Benefits of Adding SEO to Your Marketing Budget

Many small business owners are reluctant to shift their marketing budget away from more traditional forms of advertising like newspapers, yellow pages and radio or television spots. But those that do make the transition will quickly discover just how effective SEO can be in promoting their products and services. The benefits of search engine optimization include:

• Higher rankings in search sites such as Google, which means being more visible to your target audience.

• Increased conversation rates, because organic traffic from search engines translates into highly targeted, pre-qualified traffic that is already interested in what you have to offer.

• Organic SEO continues to deliver results long term, which means you get a much greater return on your marketing dollars.

These are only some of the benefits that a well-designed SEO campaign has to offer, but the bottom line is that SEO is the most effective method for lead generation, period. Think about it - SEO provides direct access to your potential customers and audience by putting your business and products or services directly in front of interested prospects. They want what you have, you just have to make sure that they find it, and that's what search engine optimization does for you.