According to SmallBizGenius, 93% of all online activities start with a search engine. Moreover, 75% of searchers never click past the first page of results.

Those are impressive stats that indicate how important Search is in a consumer’s path to purchase. It also shows how SEO continues to be essential to any brand’s marketing strategy, just as much as traditional ad campaigns. 

These new stats shouldn’t be too surprising. In the omnichannel world that we live in, Search continues to be at the center of how we research a product before we buy.  

At the very least, these trends also should reveal how important SEO is within the marketing mix. And what’s more, many companies still diminish the impact that SEO brings. 

These stats are only the latest in a slew of data that says any marketer should be utilizing SEO as a powerful tool within your marketing toolbox. Here’s why:

Search Experience Optimization

At its core, SEO is about optimizing all aspects of the searcher’s experience, aiding their journey to find answers.

While some will consider SEO a temporary solution (or at worst snake oil), it's really the process in which a website’s health, performance, and visibility are improved. 

SEO, when done well, is focused on establishing a foundation that includes designing an effective user experience, writing great content, and providing a clear path to conversion. From there, more technical SEO tactics can help improve performance and provide a faster, more responsive experience for the user.

E-A-T for Results

Today, SEO is a blend of art and science. It’s also more about the quality of content and UX  than anything else. But it can be summed up by one acronym—EAT. 

E-A-T stands for: Expertise, Authority, and Trust.

Google's algorithm is ultimately searching for content with these attributes. It shows preference for and ranks sites that achieve it. 

Sites that rank well for competitive keywords are those that show expertise in a related field, prove themselves to be an authoritative source of information, and demonstrate they could be trustworthy. 

For many websites that demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness, organic search quickly becomes one of their top performing channels for traffic. The bonus is that it’s free traffic; you don’t have to pay for each visitor!

Sure, there’s also the ability to run ads in search, and paid results can be easy wins that are also important to an overall marketing strategy. But it’s an organic search strategy that leads to a brand’s ability to really saturate the first page of results for a query in Google. 

Your Brand and SEO

SEO takes time, which isn’t always a luxury that all brands have. 

Perhaps you have a new content content management system (CMS) that isn’t SEO-friendly. Or worse, you have a homegrown or proprietary CMS that doesn’t allow certain SEO elements. 

This is a common challenge, as many brands have a CMS that isn’t built with canonical tags, no-index tags, or schema. Moreover, some e-commerce CMS options help brands sell directly to consumers, but won’t necessarily have the URL structure to accommodate custom queries, or navigation to support natural SEO queries. 

If this sounds familiar at all, it is worth looking into how to upgrade your CMS. Finding workarounds to basic SEO challenges are essential, but also finding helpful SEO professionals to fine tune the content you have already might be worth investing in as well.

Help Customers Find You

As mentioned, SEO takes time. It isn’t a flash in the pan, or guaranteed quick fix. But it is part of a long-term strategy that certainly drives return. And more than likely, it’s something your competitors are already employing. 

SEO principles won’t just help you keep pace with your competitors, it will help you build stronger relationships with new customers actively looking for your product. The key is remembering the EAT concept, and to consistently create pages that are credible sources of information about a specific topic that provide real value for users.