Inflationary pressures create risk. This is just as true for business owners as it is for consumers. As prices rise, businesses experience higher downstream costs. At the same time, consumers facing greater pressure on their pocketbooks are less eager to spend. In 2022, we’re seeing the highest inflation in 30 years, and it can still rise.
As waves of inflation ripple through various parts of the economy, many businesses are turning to digital marketing solutions and search engine optimization (SEO) to ride out the storm. Here are the top three reasons some business owners are investing in SEO in an inflationary market environment.
1. To Build Relevance and Authority
SEO is a long-term investment in ensuring the larger marketplace understands the value your company is offering. Rather than purchasing ads on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, you can rely on SEO solutions to drive traffic to your brand through relevance and authority—two traits that communicate your brand’s value.
Relevance is about how closely your content relates to what the user is searching for, and Google lists it as a key ranking factor. You can build relevance by using targeted keywords and strong content that relate to your products, services, goals, values, and clientele and attract potential customers to your site organically.
Authority is a measurement of how accurate and reliable search engines think your content is. Build authority by crosslinking and backlinking to connect your website to other pages online. Such connections are a fantastic way to build affiliates and partnerships that can unlock new value for your enterprise. When another site links to your site, it is, in a sense, “voting for” or endorsing your site, which search engines see as giving your site more credibility.
Building relevance and authority for your brand can be a smart investment during inflation. Inflation reduces the purchasing power consumers have in the economy. In other words, the money that consumers are spending is not going as far as it used to. As a result, they are seeking products that are less risky. Building your relevance and authority in a particular space using SEO helps consumers see buying your product or service as a lower risk. As a result, some businesses are investing in SEO now to avoid the future impacts of inflation.
2. To Reach a Target Audience
The online landscape is pitted with echo chambers and black holes. Creating content and publicizing it online are the easy parts; the hard part is making sure your content reaches the right audience. By investing in SEO, you can improve your online authority and relevance, which helps you stand out from the crowd. But SEO also helps you identify your target audience and reach them with more targeted messaging. Then, your business can convert more of the consumers who interact with it.
Because they help you capture intelligence about your audience, many popular SEO tools also provide data that will be helpful for your long-term planning. In fact, this is a popular reason many enterprises invest in SEO before they spend money on a PPC campaign.
When you achieve organic SEO by building relevant and authoritative content, you’ll attract people to your website from particular professional communities. By tracking the demographics of these visitors and users who discover you through organic search, your business can carve out additional strategies that hyper-focus on reaching your target market.
During periods of inflation, businesses must also be careful about how they spend their cash. Return on investment (ROI) is always critical, but the stakes are even higher when inflation is in the game. Investing in SEO during inflation is a great way for businesses to focus on their target audience and reach them directly with minimal waste.
3. To Boost Competitiveness
Business owners are constantly peppered with ideas for new ways to make more money and improve the quality of service. However, many of them find it challenging to stay competitive and relevant in the global marketplace. Investing in SEO is a smart way to sharpen your competitive edge while also building a foundation for future growth.
Beyond building relevance and authority to attract your target audience, investing in SEO during inflation can help your brand build the data and analysis necessary to boost competitiveness in the long-term. For example, SEO can help you understand more about who visits your website and why. It can show you when people are navigating away from products or services and where they may be going. It can even help you pinpoint your strongest referral networks across the World Wide Web and build affiliate and partnership relationships that pay back in multiples.
When there is inflation in the market, businesses can expect consumers to spend less money overall and to spend every dollar more thoughtfully. Sharpening a new competitive edge is necessary to succeed while other businesses succumb to the pressures of an inflationary market.
Up Your SEO Game
Inflationary pressures are already impacting business decisions. Downstream costs are increasing, and consumers are spending less money on non-necessities. However, every challenge is an opportunity. Take this inflationary market, for example; many business owners see it as an opportunity to strategize and refocus on their sales and marketing. And, of course, they are all focusing on improving their search engine optimization.
These are the top three reasons some business owners have been investing in SEO during our inflationary market, but there are countless more. Indeed, there is no quick fix or silver bullet for achieving great SEO. It’s a long-term strategy that pays out as the data and lead generation from creating relevance and authority build up across the web. With that said, digital marketing that includes investing in SEO during inflation is a consistent and practical way to improve your competitiveness and set yourself up for success across the larger digital advertising landscape.
