The Benefits Of E-commerce SEO

E-commerce SEO is one of the most important investments you can make as an online retailer. 38% of all e-commerce traffic comes from search engines, with 24% from organic search. If you’re a start-up with little to no brand presence, this number is likely to be even higher. If that wasn’t enough, ranking in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs) between positions one to three will deliver a click-through rate (CTR) of between 30% for position one, to 10% for position three.

For many businesses, there is the unfortunate temptation to go for a short-term ROI model, which naturally lends itself to investing heavily in pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing. This might bring in some revenue from Google AdWords and Google Shopping, but you’ll also have to pay for each click, which can seriously eat into your budget. Organic SEO is different in that rather than paying Google for clicks, you’re making your mark as one of the most relevant sites in the rankings for a given search term. That doesn’t go away overnight – organic SEO is the gift that keeps on giving.

This is one of the reasons e-commerce is such a crowded marketplace. With the help of an effective SEO strategy, e-commerce gives literally anyone the opportunity to set up shop and sell their wares to the world, whether that’s a dropshipping model or a traditional wholesale supply chain.

So, how can you use the benefits of e-commerce SEO to your advantage and stay afloat in the sea of e-commerce sites out there? In this guide, we’ll explore the quantifiable advantages of implementing effective SEO strategies for your e-commerce website so you can improve your online sales.

Increased Traffic

First and foremost, effective e-commerce SEO will give your site an exceptionally higher level of traffic. With higher rankings comes more exposure and more users driven to your site, resulting in more sales.

There’s no doubt that organic traffic is effective, but you can also drive traffic through link building, where other websites link back to yours. Links from authoritative sites will boost the authority of the page being linked to. Linking to deep pages such as blog content and evergreen guides is even better, and is actually essential if you want to start gaining real traction in the search results. Here’s how to incorporate link building into your e-commerce SEO strategy:

• Guest Blogging: This is when you invite someone from outside your company to write and publish a blog for your own site, and, when done well, is one of the best ways to build authority links to your own onsite blog content.
  
• Broken Link Building: This is the process of identifying links in other people’s content to pages that are now down, and getting them to link to your content instead. Although slightly convoluted, it’s well worth the time and effort.
  
• Link Placement: This can be a tricky sell – first, you seek out extremely good content, and then you ask the owner to link back to your content. You need to have inherently linkable and complementary content for this to work, so you might want to spend some time creating media such as a video or infographic that the blog owner could use to enhance their own content, making a win-win situation for both of you.
  
• Link Earning: If your content is at an exceptional level, it’s likely that people will start linking back to it of their own accord, without you even needing to ask. For this to work, you need to focus on the quality of your content, as well as your brand presence – you want your content to be getting the exposure necessary for other businesses to notice it.

Higher Conversion Rate

Effective e-commerce SEO encourages browsers to cross that line and become real customers. A lot of this comes down to keyword research – in e-commerce SEO, a lot of keyword research will focus on very specific products that may have low search volume but high CTR and conversion rates. This is because buyer intent on specific product searches like this are usually very high.

Our work with Bespoke Arcades, a London-based business that creates hand-built arcade machines, lead to a 400% increase in Google Ads conversions after our organic SEO strategy started kicking in, with a 103% increase in average organic traffic and a 101% increase in keyword rankings on page one. 

If you want to boost your conversion rate through proper keyword research, you’ll need to identify the categories and possibly subcategories that your products fall into. These will usually rank for more general terms, which may carry much higher search volume and a variety of long-tail search terms. You can use any number of free and paid tools out there – SE Ranking, SEMRush, Ubersuggest, Keyword IO, and Google Keyword Planner, to name a few – but make sure keep these factors in mind:

• Search Volume: The number one indicator for identifying a keyword’s potential to deliver traffic, but remember that it will not always guarantee how much of that search volume you can actually tap into.
  
• Competition: Along with search volume, this will give you an idea of a keyword’s real potential, ranging from high competition with low search volume, to low competition and high search volume.
  
• Relevancy: This is a factor all too often overlooked – it can be easy to go down a data rabbit hole, so remember to bring it back to relevancy when you can. Ask yourself: is this something that my potential customers might actually type into Google?
  
• Intent: As with relevancy, intent isn’t something that keyword tools tend to pick up on. It requires a level of common sense and an awareness of your target customer. Effective e-commerce SEO means optimising for those words and phrases with high user intent to buy.

Enhanced Branding & Credibility

E-commerce SEO offers businesses an enhanced level of branding. With more visibility and higher ranking in the search results, more potential customers are going to be exposed to your brand, creating a level of familiarity and therefore higher awareness that is likely to lead to more sales.

Not only does this build trust and credibility, but it also works to offer your brand a competitive advantage that sets you apart from other businesses in the game. By appearing more prominently in search results, your brand can effectively establish itself as an industry leader, raising you above the competition in the eyes of the customer.

Increased Customer Engagement

Possibly the biggest benefit to e-commerce SEO is increased customer engagement. This is invaluable for any site looking to boost their sales, and can easily be achieved through proper optimisation of your website.

If you’re looking to maximise your engagement, keep these areas in mind when assessing your content optimisation strategy:

• Long-Form Copy: The Google Gods enjoy substance, so make sure to bulk out your site content wherever you can. This can be anything from product descriptions to your FAQ – just make sure to avoid overly ‘thin’ content.
  
• Quality Copy: Keeping the above in mind, if your content is overly fluffy or not offering real substance, your site won’t be ranking any higher. Focus on crafting quality copy that is actually enjoyable to read.
  
• Avoid Over-Keywording: This leads us on to keywords – while effective and necessary, they are all too easy to overuse, which can actually damage your rankings as well as annoy your users.
  
• Stay Away From Duplication: Make sure to always keep your content original, as duplicated content can be detected through Google’s algorithm.
  
• Provide Value: Users don’t want to be overly sold to – if you’re offering content that actually provides insight and expertise, people are going to be more drawn towards you as a business and actually make the decision to become customers of their own accord. 

Higher-Value Content

Well-written content is an essential component of any good e-commerce SEO strategy. Content marketing helps to attract potential customers, keeping them on your site and upping your chances of a sale. Working on your content is a benefit in itself, as you will be increasing the overall quality of your website while maximising your SEO. 

Blog content is key here – you want your blogs to rank for a number of related long-tail searches on that particular subject. While search volume may be low, they can equate to a lot of relevant traffic when taken together. In terms of your SEO strategy, blog content will also allow you to create pages on your site that are inherently easier to link to, which, as we know, drives traffic through link building. 

High value content is also paramount – a single, well-written 600-word article will be worth infinitely more than several poor 1200-word blogs. Quality is what’s going to rake in the rankings and bring genuine traffic and exposure to your site. 

E-commerce SEO is a vital strategy for any online retailer wanting to boost their rankings and enhance their visibility. Optimising your website doesn’t only give you more of a chance of ranking higher in the search results, but it also gives your users the experience they’re looking for, working to convert passive browsers into active customers and harnessing a better brand image for you and your business.

Looking to boost your sales and increase traffic through an effective e-commerce strategy? Our free Conversion Rate Checklist gives you a complete overview of your site, with a helpful health score and roadmap to conversion rate growth and more sales for your business. With over 130 actionable Conversion Rate checks you’ll have a full breakdown of where improvements can be made and, more importantly, how to make them. Download yours now to take your conversion rate to the next level.