eCommerce SEO
How is SEO for eCommerce Different?
Setting up shop is only one of the first steps to actually making consistent sales on your online store. There are many strategies to bring traffic to your site, but one of the best long-term strategies by far is with search engine optimization.
eCommerce websites have thousands of pages, more than most other websites, so it’s no surprise that traditional search and content marketing strategies geared for the masses typically fail to deliver any significant sales.
The huge advantage for a specialist approach to optimising an online shop for organic search engine traffic is the sheer number of revenue-driving search terms is completely uncapped. In fact, the bigger the site, the better the sales opportunity.
Our eCommerce campaigns regularly double annual revenue from organic search. So if less than 50% of your traffic and revenue is from organic search now, a new online shopping strategy together with keywords that indicate the “commercial intent” of users searching in Google will lead to an increase of more targeted traffic to your site.
Apart from the need to optimise all product pages differently to other web pages, there are a number of extra marketing measures that are needed if you want to succeed online.
Did you know…
28% of consumers begin product discovery with a search engine.
And 95% of consumers click on organic listings when they search on desktop.
The fact is, search engine optimisation has the highest ROI of any eCom marketing campaign. Organic traffic is the best kind of traffic: Free and recurring.
Optimising your eCommerce website for organic search results is something you need to be thinking about if you truly want to grow your store.
Don’t believe me?
I’ve seen organic listings increase an eCommerce site’s traffic by as much as 1780% in a few short months!
If your site isn’t optimized for search, you’re leaving traffic and money on the table.
A well-designed Search campaign will bring traffic to your website 24X7 for months or even years to come. Combine this with the fact that your site will rank for buying keyword search terms and you can probably see the benefits.
It does take time for Search Engine Optimisation to work but the results are long-lasting, creating a higher ROI in the long run, compared to any other marketing technique.
3 Reasons Why E-Commerce Websites Need Organic Traffic
1. An Optimised Website Is Critical For Helping Customers Find You
Having an e-commerce website without targeted organic traffic is leaving cash on the table — and plenty of it. But don’t take my word for it. Log on to your analytics tool. Look at where most of your visitors, conversions and sales come from. I’m positive that, in most cases, organic search will rank as one of your top sources of revenue. For many businesses, Google search drives the lion’s share of profit-producing traffic. (And if it doesn’t for yours, then you’re making some big mistakes somewhere.)
Not optimising your website for search means you’re taking the risk of not being visible during your customers’ buying journey. When you aren’t visible on search results, fewer customers know about you, you sell less, and your growth slows down. At the same time, your competitors will increase sales and profits — and you’re letting them grow stronger.
2. A Cost-Effective Way To Grow Your Bottom Line
Having an e-commerce website without targeted organic traffic is leaving cash on the table — and plenty of it. But don’t take my word for it. Log on to your analytics tool. Look at where most of your visitors, conversions and sales come from. I’m positive that, in most cases, organic search will rank as one of your top sources of revenue. For many businesses, Google search drives the lion’s share of profit-producing traffic. (And if it doesn’t for yours, then you’re making some big mistakes somewhere.)
Not optimising your website for search means you’re taking the risk of not being visible during your customers’ buying journey. When you aren’t visible on search results, fewer customers know about you, you sell less, and your growth slows down. At the same time, your competitors will increase sales and profits — and you’re letting them grow stronger.
In highly competitive industries and niches, paying for website traffic can run to many dollars per click. With effective search marketing, you are less dependent on PPC traffic. Of course, you can still buy ads, but if finances are tight, optimising your website can be a lifesaver that keeps sales and profit flowing.
Unlike paid search traffic, the traffic from organic search is “free” — no cost per click, no cost per conversion, no cost per impression.
You can attract quality traffic in large volumes without paying for it directly. (Of course, there are costs associated with hiring and retaining a search engine professional, though this is true for any online marketing discipline.)
Successful e-commerce companies integrate search engine optimization with an overall marketing strategy, tying it in with activities like content marketing and social media marketing, guided by an experienced online consultant.
Integrating search marketing with other marketing activities has a twofold benefit: it increases the effectiveness of these marketing activities while also improving your organic search visibility. This saves you time and money and brings down your cost per conversion. You’ll achieve more by spending less.
3. Results Are Long-Lasting, Making It A Great Investment
Search engine optimization delivers results that are targeted, cost-effective and measurable — and long-lasting.
Optimisation work for an eCommerce websites doesn’t have a shelf life of weeks or months. No one “pulls the plug” on a website that has been crafted with all the features Google expects to see on a website. With paid advertising (PPC), the minute you stop paying, the traffic drops. A well-optimised website just keeps going and going, working night and day.
The long-term effects of a solid program are clear. Unlike most forms of marketing, where you start with a clean slate every year, optimising a website builds upon itself to grow stronger over time. You can layer upon what you did last year and keep growing until you own your niche and dominate your market.
E-commerce and Google
Ecommerce is very different and really needs to be a strategy that involves your SEO expert in all the marketing plans you have. Below are a couple of spreadsheets from one company we help, that shows sales, traffic and more.
What is not shown is the fact that during this time no sales were made using email marketing, indeed 77% of all traffic was from organic search results. Had email been used the sales might well have been much higher.
(For security & GDPR compliance the website URL has been blurred out)
e-Commerce SEO is £579 per month
Related Reading: Local SEO for a Local Business | All SEO Services