SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a long-term digital marketing strategy that helps increase your website’s position in the search engine results (SERPs). This can be crucial to help bring traffic to your website, which is vital for eCommerce stores, but paid advertising can also bring traffic to your website. So what are the benefits of SEO for eCommerce?
Why does SEO matter for eCommerce stores?
//Copy: SEO matters for eCommerce stores because, done right, it can save money in the long run, as it helps increase your visibility and traffic without paying for adverts. It also helps with other things, like user experience, gaining traffic and ultimately will help increase your sales. It does take longer to see results from SEO than paid advertising, but its benefits can stick around long after a campaign finishes.
The benefits of eCommerce SEO
1. Improve brand awareness
//Copy: Showing up on the first page of the organic search results increases the number of people who see your brand name, recognise it from times they’ve seen it before. A lot of users also feel that appearing on the first page of the search results is an endorsement of your store and site.
2. Increase organic traffic
Organic traffic is traffic you don’t need to pay for, and it’s great to have more people visiting your website. This doesn’t just apply to your homepage or product pages, but any content you create that is on your website will also help bring traffic, and internal linking will help keep them on your website, looking at your content or browsing your product pages.
3. Grow your audience
SEO is a great way to increase your audience, as the techniques used by experts help with increasing the number of people you’re reaching. This grows your audience and helps give your eCommerce store a larger user-base who are likely to buy from it.
4. Create more backlinks
link building image
One of the key parts of SEO is link-building – creating internal links within your site, and external links from other sites to yours. This helps bring traffic to your site, allowing people at various points of the conversion funnel to find it and begin to trust it. It also helps add authority to your site, as other sites link to your site because you are demonstrating your expertise in your field.
5. Improve user experience
A key part of SEO is user experience, as many users won’t return to visit a site where they’ve had a bad experience. This might be due to slow loading speeds or struggling to navigate the site. With SEO for eCommerce, you can keep people on your site as the user experience will be improved, and they’ll be more likely to recommend your store to a friend.
6. Increase authority through quality content
Creating content for your audience helps nurture them through every stage of the conversion funnel, from preliminary research to purchase. Showing your audience that you can answer their questions, whether that’s with an infographic, a guide, a blog post or a video, will help them trust you and when they decide to purchase, will be more likely to choose your store.
7. Find new audiences for remarketing
More traffic coming to your website organically means more people you can target with remarketing adverts further down the conversion funnel, to remind them nearer their point of purchase that they visited your site and that the content you created. This will help increase sales and bring more people back to your website.
8. Increase sales
More traffic visiting your website and more trust in your brand helps increase sales. SEO is a key way to increase sales by nurturing visitors throughout the whole of the journey to purchasing.
9. Increase visibility
Appearing on the first page of the search engine results improves your visibility as the vast majority of users only look at the first page of results when they search. This means that if you’re not on the first page, you’re not going to have as much visibility as your competitors who are. Being on the first page increases visibility, thereby increasing traffic, trust in your brand and brand awareness.
10. The value of the campaign remains after the campaign has ended
One of the biggest benefits of SEO is that even after you have finished your campaign, the benefits can stay for a long time. SEO is also a very low-cost way to improve your visibility, brand awareness and sales, meaning that the extra value you keep getting is an added benefit.
Summary
Ranking in the search engine results has so many benefits, from increasing visibility and brand awareness to helping improve trust in your brand, that it’s important for the success of your eCommerce store to do SEO. While starting out might be difficult, it’s much easier to keep the process of SEO going once you’ve started, and SEO is an ongoing process that shows results over a long period of time.
Author bio: Rachel Gowland works at digital marketing agency, Tillison Consulting. She’s a passionate gamer and avid reader who loves to travel, using her knowledge of foreign languages to connect with people around the world.
