Like any other website, your online store needs to be properly optimized for a search engine if you want it to make it to the top.
Better known as eCommerce SEO or Search Engine Optimization, it is what makes a website visible on the internet, or ‘Google’ being the major search engine.
The more you adhere to SEO practices, the higher you can rank on a search engine ranking page (SERP), and the more the chances of your e-store getting clicked.
Better known as ‘organic traffic,’ it is how you drive more internet users your way without having to invest in paid advertisements and marketing campaigns.
Apart from the cost-effectiveness, e-commerce SEO offers several other benefits that are quite important in today’s competitive market.
The Top 7 Benefits of eCommerce SEO
While there are tons of benefits of applying eCommerce SEO to your digital store, all of them boil down to improving your sales and profit in some or another way.
In other words, a higher Return on Investment (ROI), period.
Let’s take a closer look.
The 7 Key Benefits of eCommerce SEO: From Boosting Traffic to Increasing Conversions
1. Increased Organic Traffic
SEO is all about making your website or online store more visible on the internet or SERP by making your content relevant for target keywords and search queries.
Along with the much-needed keyword optimization, eCommerce SEO also improves your content, link building, and user experience thus making your website easy to find and more Google-friendly than ever.
2. Higher Conversion Rates
By providing the right information and products to users, eCommerce SEO makes sure that you obtain the right audience for your business especially those with a higher intent of purchase than solely window shoppers.
Thus, leading to more potential leads and a higher rate of conversion.
3. Improved User Experience
Things such as a faster loading speed and mobile compatibility further help your website rank higher on SERP by driving more users, including those surfing the Internet through mobile phones.
As an essential aspect of SEO, technical aspects such as these can significantly improve the user experience of your online store and the number of visitors.
4. Cost-Effectiveness
Perhaps the biggest advantage of enhancing your digital store with eCommerce SEO is the lack of investment as opposed to paid ads and their recurring cost.
That is, by simply optimizing your online store with proper search engine optimization, you can get the desired traffic of online shoppers without having to entice them with paid and targeted ads.
5. Building Brand Awareness and Authority
Getting higher rankings on Google means more number of clicks on your website on any given day. And that too without any “black hat” means of marketing.
Being shown on Google for every relevant search in your line of business will also cement your name in the industry as a leader and build a lot of authority and brand awareness for you all the while.
6. Competitive Advantage
With more loyalty and trust from consumers, you can get a competitive edge in the market and a larger audience in the end.
7. Sustainable Long-Term Results
Once you build a solid audience base by applying all the necessary SEO elements to your store, rest assured that you will be in the game for a long time.
With proper eCommerce in place, you can scale your online business exponentially much faster compared to a brick-and-mortar store.
Why eCommerce SEO is Critical for Long-Term Growth
As you can see, investing in an eCommerce SEO is quite crucial for your online store as it provides a sustainable and cost-effective way to drive unpaid/ organic traffic, increase brand visibility and authority, and get a competitive edge in the fierce business landscape.
Keeping that in mind, here’s how it helps your business achieve long-term growth no matter how challenging or competitive the path:
- eCommerce SEO provides a sustainable and cost-effective solution to guaranteeing higher visibility on Google and other search engines regardless of the ever-changing trends and search patterns.
- Consistent visibility establishes a longer-lasting trust and authority between your brand and audience which is all too essential for long-term growth.
- Original and relevant content further cements your name as an informative and expert source of information or products. This ultimately improves your brand’s reputation and helps you retain your loyal clientele while attracting more audience in the process.
- Higher organic or intent-based traffic, which is more likely to convert into paying customers, is the key to building a long-lasting brand in the modern volatile market.
How eCommerce SEO Increases Conversions
An online store with proper SEO elements in place has a higher potential for conversion than a store with no SEO optimization.
For starters, SEO focuses more on driving organic traffic or those users to your website or eCommerce store who are actively searching for products and services that you sell.
Since these users are more likely to make a purchase and become paying customers, SEO-enabled websites can make more sales and acquire more long-term customers in the end.
Similarly, by improving the technical aspects of your digital shop, for instance, intuitive navigation, faster loading times, and mobile friendliness, eCommerce SEO improves the user experience and customer satisfaction, resulting in a higher conversion rate and order value.
To understand that better, let us see how technical SEO works.
Advanced Technical SEO for eCommerce
Technical SEO is an innate part of Search Engine Optimization be it for a website or an online store.
While it includes many backend and front-end design elements of a website, in essence, it is all about improving its functionality and user-friendliness.
To make the most of it, eCommerce technical SEO involves improving your site speed for both desktop and smartphone users.
Faster loading of your online store ensures higher rankings as it is a major criterion for Google or any other search engine for that matter.
SEO also focuses on making your online store easy to navigate by making it as intuitive as it can. An intuitive navigation means customers can easily move back and forth on your online store when browsing, comparing, and ordering the products.
At the same time, by implementing a proper structure or schema markup into your online store, an eCommerce SEO helps Google understand your products and content way better than a non-SEO website.
All-in-all, by enhancing all the technical aspects of your online store, eCommerce SEO can guarantee better visibility and click-through rates.
And that’s not all! With advancements in technology, you can implement even more advanced features to your online store in the likes of Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, and so on.
AI and Automation in eCommerce SEO
As an integral aspect of running an online business, SEO has come a long way too.
While in its early days, it was all about keyword research and back-linking, modern SEO practices encompass more advanced technologies than ever before.
This includes, but is not limited to AI and automation for a more personalized experience for every user.
Here’s how it helps:
Keyword research automation by using advanced machine learning capabilities and algorithms to automatically suggest relevant keywords and search trends.
AI-based content optimization that aligns with the Search Engine Ranking criteria.
Better personalization of your products and pages depending on user preferences and shopping behaviors. This improves brand engagement, reduces bounce rates, and delivers more relevant content to users based on their location and search habits.
Automation can also be used to audit your online store from time to time to assess, identify, and rectify the errors.
Similarly, AI can enhance your link-building game, voice search, and data analytics, among other things.
Last but not least, it can help you predict future trends and provide meaningful insights on what needs to be done to further improve the performance of your online store.
Content Marketing and Blogging for eCommerce SEO
You must have heard the saying that “Content is King.”
Well, no matter how far we have come ever since the Internet made its way into our day-to-day lives, content continues to rule the online market.
By embedding your products, services, and web pages into fresh and original content naturally, eCommerce SEO helps you gain the trust of a search engine, including Google, which further helps you attract more organic traffic, build brand authority, and improve overall search engine rankings.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Embedding long-tail keywords in your content to meet the shopper’s intent.
- Creating product-specific content that answers the queries and questions of users.
- Focusing on engaging and informative content with the right target keywords helps increase your brand visibility on Google.
- Making your content shareable so that more Internet users can know about your products and services and further share it with their friends and family.
- Consistently posting fresh and original content can build a lot of brand authority, as it puts your eCommerce store at the forefront of your niche.
- Using educational blogs such as how-to guides and tutorials to provide value to your audience and ultimately help them make informed purchasing decisions in the end.
All-in-all, content/blogging is a powerful tool that, when used correctly can not only drive organic traffic, build authority, and improve search engine rankings, but also enhance your brand’s visibility and support the buyers' journey all the while.
Schema Markup and Rich Snippets: The Secret Weapon
eCommerce SEO has plenty of tricks up its sleeve to further enhance your online business as a whole.
When it comes to making the most of your online store, schema markup is yet another aspect that helps search engines understand the content on your website more effectively.
By embedding schema markup or a proper form of structure into your website, you can allow search engines to show enhanced search results known as “rich snippets,” which offer a more detailed glimpse into your products or services, as you must have seen on Google right above the top search result.
By highlighting the relevant information from your site at the top, Google makes it more likely for consumers to click and visit your online store, aka click-through rates (CTR) than the following search results themselves.
Thus, bringing more organic traffic your way in the end.
Local SEO for eCommerce Stores
Since any business journey, including its online endeavors, begins from a local location, eCommerce SEO pays special attention to local SEO.
In other words, it optimizes your online store for searches made from your location or service vicinity.
In that, blogging and other marketing tactics such as local events, trends, or store updates can significantly boost your brand’s visibility for local search queries such as those including a specific location or the keyword “near me.”
E-Commerce SEO also includes incorporating localized keywords into your blog posts, which ultimately improves local search rankings and brings genuine customers who are searching for nearby stores or services.
In the end, it drives a substantial amount of relevant traffic from nearby locations right to your store.
Link Building Strategies for eCommerce SEO
Link-building or back-linking has always been a crucial aspect of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
The same goes for eCommerce SEO as it works on creating more link-building opportunities for you than ever before.
For instance, high-quality blogs that mention your products and services can attract backlinks from other websites especially if your content offers something of value and relevance.
Apart from bringing more organic traffic, backlinks can significantly improve your online store’s authority in the long term as we have seen from numerous third-party providers who don’t necessarily manufacture the products themselves but only deal in selling online.
Similarly, by embedding more internal links on your content to take the users to your product pages, category pages, etc., you can further strengthen the overall structure and performance of your website both functionally and financially which again leads to higher conversions.
Conclusion
All-in-all, as an essential aspect of running a successful online store, eCommerce SEO offers ample benefits that are all too crucial if you were to scale your business for exponential and long-term growth.
By enhancing your store with all the elements that online shoppers look for i.e. a fast-loading app or store, easy navigation, informative product description and content, and shortcuts such as backlinks and internal links to reach the right product/page with a single click, an eCommerce SEO can give your store the much-needed makeover required to stand out among the fierce competition.
Do everything right, and you can get sustainable and non-stop growth, higher traffic and conversion rates, and better customer loyalty and retention for years and decades to come.