The Benefits of Ecommerce SEO

In the era of online shopping, it is important to have a strong ecommerce SEO strategy in place.

Ecommerce SEO can provide many benefits for your business including increasing brand awareness, filling the marketing funnel and capturing long tail search queries.

Ecommerce SEO can also provide a better user experience through improving your ranking on Google’s search engine results page (SERP). This will also help customers find you more easily when searching for products online which is becoming increasingly popular every day.

This article will give you an introduction to the benefits of ecommerce seo and how it can help your online store generate more revenue.

What is ecommerce SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the ranking of a website in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid “organic” search results.

Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization, or ecommerce SEO is the process of increasing the quantity and quality of ecommerce website traffic that comes from search engines (organic results).

Why do you need SEO for ecommerce websites?

It basically boils down to one thing: more traffic leads to more sales. It’s as simple as that.

Furthermore, 81% of shoppers do research online before making a purchase. This means your ecommerce website has to rank well on search engines when people are ‘Googling’ for your products.

According to a recent study, 65% of total eCommerce traffic sessions came from search traffic. Your competitors are investing in SEO to get as much visibility and traffic as possible. You can’t afford to not be noticed on search results.

Top 8 Benefits of Ecommerce SEO

What can SEO do that puts it above other forms of digital marketing for online stores?

Here are ecommerce SEO benefits that we love.

1. Ecommerce SEO is potentially “free” traffic

If you are a budget conscious ecommerce site owner that just launched your online store, there aren’t many choices you can rely on to promote your website and drive traffic for cheap.

Someone with basic knowledge in SEO can realistically learn how to perform keyword research, optimize product pages, and write relevant articles. These can all contribute to help a brand new site attract organic traffic.

Compare that to Google ads, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, or TV/Radio ads. Most or all of them require you to start with a marketing budget – something that a lot of startups, solopreneurs, and home based businesses don’t have.

We don’t normally recommend that business owners do SEO themselves – they should be concentrating on selling and business development. However, when left with no choice, ecommerce SEO is a good way to earn some traffic at the start.

2. Typically, SEO has a higher clickthrough rate than SEM/PPC

Why should you use SEO rather than Google Ads to drive traffic to your store?

Research has shown that the 8.5 times higher odds of clicking on organic search results over paid search results is a major motivator for SEO.

Research also shows that as many as 70% to 80% of people ignore paid ads when searching online. If someone is really looking for honest answers to an answer they’re more likely to click on something than an ad trying to convince someone to buy something.

Getting higher clickthrough rates means more people are likely to click on your link when it is not an ad. More clicks = more traffic.

3. Get on top of the search engine results

Search optimised product pages on your website will help you get higher rankings on search engines.

When you get better rankings, you will attract more clicks. It is a fact that the higher your ranking in Google’s organic results, the more clicks you will receive. This means more traffic which leads to potentially more sales.

There is also another benefit of being high on search results. Which is..

4. SEO increases brand visibility and brand awareness

When your website is ranked high on search engines, people will see it as an authority in that field. That’s why you should always work hard to rank higher.

When your products and pages appear on search results first, it’s likely that your customers will perceive them as trustworthy.

You gain more web exposure because your products’ pages get better positioning in the results page.

This consequently drives more traffic to your site and makes your brand more recognizable and more popular among your target customers.

5. Ecommerce SEO helps you reach customers who have specific needs

Some shoppers search on Google for highly specific product variations – for example, someone might search for ‘men’s oversized blue turtleneck sweater’.

15% of search queries are new — Google has never seen them before.

These obscure one-time phrases make up part of the long tail search queries. These comprise of queries that individually drive few searches but when combined, represent nearly 40% of the total search volume. Long-tail phrases also tend to convert at a higher rate than other general keywords.

Ecommerce sites can naturally target those long-tail searches because product pages are categorized in ‘themes’, and product descriptions can sometimes contain details that set each product apart.

Those pages are deeper in the click path and match well to long-tail keywords (‘men’s oversized blue turtleneck sweater’).

6. Ecommerce SEO helps to attract customers doing research

Not everyone who is shopping online is on the lookout for very specific products.

They could be looking for information regarding a problem they are having, or just looking for the latest trends.

Ecommerce SEO is a critical component in driving more traffic from people who are still doing their product research.

Doing keyword research in ecommerce SEO helps to uncover related queries which often give you hints on the problems customers are facing.

This gives you ideas for content that will help solve concerns and build trust.

Targeting the correct intent at the ideal points in your site influences shopper movement to the next phase, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

7. Ecommerce SEO helps to power your other marketing channels

This is one benefit of ecommerce SEO that doesn’t get mentioned often.

Did you know that the traffic that arrived through SEO can be further used to benefit other marketing efforts?

Once shoppers land on your website through organic search (or other channels), your paid search team can place cookies for remarketing campaigns.

You can then continue to show ads to those shoppers when they leave your site and continue their journeys. The more people you drive to your website, the larger your remarketing audiences will be.

You can also create very targeted lookalike audiences through your website’s Facebook pixel. You can then run Facebook ads that retarget the same audiences or lookalike audiences for more effective ad targeting.

Funnel the organic traffic into an email newsletter and watch your regular customers grow!

Compared to other paid advertising, ecommerce SEO brings about a more holistic digital growth.

8. Ecommerce SEO is a high ROI marketing channel

You’ve surely heard the saying, ‘SEO is a long term investment’.

Just like Branding, SEO is one of the highest ROI marketing channels. It just takes awhile to see it.

Unlike paid advertising like Google Ads or Facebook ads, traffic does not stop when you stop SEO activities. Your investment into Ecommerce SEO in the first year can continue to bring in traffic and sales for years to come.

This benefit of ecommerce SEO is what attracts business owners who want to build sustainable, long term businesses. A marketing team can afford to divert marketing budget away from SEO into other channels without much loss of traffic. Not so, for other paid channels.

For every dollar you spend on SEO, there is a possibility of generating returns for years.

How to do SEO for your ecommerce website

Now that you know the benefits of ecommerce SEO, here are 3 easy ways you can do SEO for your ecommerce website.

Ecommerce Keyword Research

Search engine optimization is all about improving your website’s visibility with keywords.

For ecommerce websites, it means finding and targeting the specific keywords that customers are using when they search on Google, Bing or other search engines.

Ecommerce keyword research should be done with the following in mind: Each product or product category should target a specific keyword phrase and/or long tail keyword

You can use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner to find out the search volume and trends of keywords that are relevant to your products.

On-page SEO for Ecommerce Product Pages

Optimize your product pages and product categories with on-page SEO to rank higher in the search engine result page.

What this means is you will need to use the keywords on the page, especially in these places:

• Product Title
• <title> tag
• Product description
• <meta description> tag
• Headings and subheadings (h1, h2)

Write content that answers questions that your customers have

One of the best ways to increase the traffic going to your e-commerce site is by leveraging a blog that has relevant and informational articles.

As part of your SEO keyword research, you might have noticed that certain queries come in the form of questions. You can turn those keywords into informational blog posts to answer the questions.

By creating such informational articles, you can rank higher when someone searches for those same queries on Google or Bing.

For example, if you sell kitchen knives, you can write about the different types of knives and their use cases. When someone doesn’t know the difference between a carving knife and a cleaver knife, they might find your article talking exactly about this. This gives you an opportunity to promote YOUR knives in the article.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that the world of ecommerce is competitive. You have to stay on top of trends and innovations in order to stay ahead of your competition. SEO for ecommerce websites provides a cost-effective way for you to get more traffic, build brand awareness, and make sales from online customers without having to spend as much money on paid advertising channels like Google Ads or Facebook ads.

Even though this article is about the benefits of ecommerce SEO, we aren’t saying you should ONLY do SEO.

Consider your budget, the industry, the target audience, and the competition, to judge which marketing channel would be best for you.

If you still aren’t sure whether ecommerce SEO is for you, feel free to talk to our digital strategists. We build SEO-friendly ecommerce stores, and we have experience executing SEO strategies that generate results.