SEO (search engine optimisation) for any business can be a vital step for ensuring longevity of either leads or sales. There are many obvious benefits such as exposure and credibility that help capture more new customers. But there are other less pronounced benefits from a good SEO campaign that make good SEO a positive move for the companies financial future.
A key benefit of ranking highly on Google is that it is a long term sales or lead generation tool. Once you have a high natural ranking, you will become less reliable on other forms of advertising that require an ongoing spend, such as Adwords or print advertising. Of course you may wish to continue with other marketing to get the most profit possible. The thing is once you have a high Google ranking, it should last for a long time. We compare it to the Australian cricket team, it often seems harder to get out of the team once you are in, than it is to get in the team in the first place.
Another benefit is in your exit strategy. When it comes time to sell your business, ranking very highly for important phrases will add a lot of value to your website. Everyone interested in buying a business or even just your website/domain name, knows that one already ranking highly is going to generate them more business and profit. So this is another definite long term benefit that itself will normally more than cover the cost of your initial SEO investment.
SEO also requires only a small amount of time invested by the business owner when compared to other forms of marketing. Your SEO company should be doing most of the work for you. It does not require new graphics, slogans, colour choices, logos, printing and all that sort of thing. You just choose the phrases you want to appear for and they should do the work. The only exception might be copywriting. However a good SEO will have an experienced SEO copywriter as part of their team and these costs should be included in the price they quote to you.
So these are just some of the benefits of SEO that are not as obvious as, more inline visitors, more sales, etc. I hope you have learned something that you did not already think of and if you have other benefits you would like to add, please feel free to leave a comment.
We also have a post about pay on performance seo here that you may find interesting too..