I often find that when I’m introduced to emerging brands, they tend to ask me “Why would we invest in SEO now, before people hear about our brand? Shouldn’t we wait?” There are a few specific instances — such as when a brand is creating a category — when waiting makes sense; however, for the large majority of brands, an early investment in SEO reaps compounding benefits.
I am writing this article because we all know that SEO performance can make or break you on the internet. It’s also something that businesses often get wrong. In this piece I highlight reasons to invest in SEO early on, especially if the brand website has not been built. Right from the start, you should establish the foundation for what will likely be one of your largest revenue drivers: organic traffic.
So, why is it important to invest in SEO from the beginning of the journey?
- SEO Helps to Understand Your Target Consumer: SEO will reveal valuable data. The more SEO research a company does, the more data they get about what potential customers are searching for. Businesses can see which words and topics their target audience is interested in and is using to conduct searches online. Based on that, you can determine what content will answer your consumers’ questions? An intelligent use of SEO reporting builds crucial insights into what your consumers are looking for.
I can help make sure your brand website presents the content your consumers are craving, driving them to conversion. - Save Money on Web Development: Hiring an SEO team after a site is built almost guarantees that changes will be requested of the dev team. Specifying pertinent SEO needs within the development partner scope of work can save brands thousands of dollars—and time! This workflow efficiency then materially impacts the number of additional tasks for the SEO team; SEO recommendations only impact your site once executed, so early implementation is key.
- SEO Takes Time: SEO can take anywhere from six to 12 months to start producing a meaningful return on investment. Once the benefits of SEO come to fruition, your brand will get traffic that can yield conversions and revenue. Organic traffic becomes the highest revenue-driving channel and the highest ROI marketing activity for many brands. Early investment = earlier benefits. Instead of allocating money on social media ads and other marketing strategies, I recommend using Google’s best practices and focus on SEO.
- Data Should Guide Product Development and Naming: All content and copy—from how products are named through to how things are described on a website—can have a huge effect on SEO performance over time. Product names, taxonomy, and URLs are more difficult to modify later on and are better to set up correctly in the beginning. I can help develop keyword research, which supports the naming of products, copy production, taxonomy decisions, and more.
- SEO Optimization Builds Long-Term Audience: Paying for advertisements delivers short term results for a high price. SEO helps companies provide their visitors with the content they want. Instead, of having a traffic tank the moment an advertisement runs out, SEO will build an audience over time.