[MUSIC PLAYING] Search engine optimization is the single most powerful method for driving traffic and potential customers to your site. Studies suggest that anywhere from 60% to 80% of all website traffic starts with a search. That's a huge opportunity for you. In this lesson, we will explore three benefits of SEO to understand why you should care about this important marketing method.
First, it's the best source of traffic for quality leads. Let me put this bluntly. You're missing a huge opportunity if you ignore SEO as an e-commerce entrepreneur. When someone searches on Google, they're actively looking for something. By ranking for keywords related to your business, you can get your website in front of people who are looking for you or a business selling products just like yours.
It's not like running ads where you're interrupting people and hoping they click. Searchers already intend to learn or buy from you. Second, it's a very sustainable source of traffic. Most other sources of traffic require continuous management, such as paying for ads, sending emails, or creating social media content. But with SEO, once you've done the work to get your website ranking highly in search engines, you'll keep getting traffic month after month.
I'll teach you more about how to do this in the course. And lastly, SEO is free. Unlike paying for ads, SEO doesn't have to cost anything except for your time investment. When you take this course and set yourself up for success, Google will rank and showcase your content. If you're consistent with the practices I'll teach you in this course, you'll be able to rank at the top of search engine result pages.
You may have heard the term SEM. This stands for search engine marketing. That typically refers to paid search ads, like Google Ads. We're not going to cover that in this course, but it might be something you want to look at once you've built a strong foundation with SEO. So to recap, here are the three benefits of SEO. Number 1, it's a huge traffic source for quality leads.
Number 2, it's a very sustainable source of traffic. And number 3, SEO is free. Now that you know the value of spending time learning SEO, head to the next module focused on setting yourself up for success with Google. [MUSIC PLAYING]