In the digital age, SEO is a valuable marketing strategy for all types of businesses, but it’s particularly useful for those businesses that utilize e-commerce to make direct sales to customers solely through online interactions. If you run an e-commerce site, you should know the value of SEO as well as the key points involved to boost your organic search rank and drive more traffic to your site. This article will offer some helpful insight to get your SEO campaign up and running or improve your current efforts to boost your business.
SEO is a complex effort.
You may hear the term SEO thrown around a lot, but do you have a good grasp of what it means? SEO stands for search engine optimization, which focuses on organic search. Though paid search results, sponsored content, and banner ads may be associated with your SEO marketing, these elements will take a backseat to organic search results. Ranking well on search engines requires an ongoing, multifaceted effort. Search engines like Google don’t tell businesses exactly what they need to do to rank high, but they do offer plenty of hints that can guide your SEO campaign. In general, content will be key with SEO, because posting high-quality content related to your products and services will ensure that potential customers get the information they need to make wise purchases.
You need SEO to attract customers.
Every business benefits from online exposure, but e-commerce businesses rely almost exclusively on it. Fortunately, e-commerce and SEO work well together, because they create a shopping experience that is simple and effortless—and it can take place anytime, anywhere.
People make purchases following organic search.
One of the reasons that SEO gets so much more attention than other marketing strategies is that consumers are more trustworthy of organic search results than paid ads. With SEO that’s done right, a customer can arrive at your website and feel like he or she is making a smarter purchase for a more positive shopping experience.
SEO pays off as a long-term investment.
Unlike an ad with a limited exposure time and period of relevance, SEO will have a long-term payoff. The content you post will remain on your site and continue to offer benefits, and you will only continue to build a positive reputation for your business as you continue to invest in SEO.
Your site structure will be important to your efforts.
With e-commerce sites, you not only have to be aware of how much traffic is getting to your site, but you also need to know what might be driving people away before they’ve gotten the opportunity to make a purchase. Site structure contributes to SEO, because a well-designed site will encourage users to click through multiple pages and continue to take actions that lead to purchases. This means a lower bounce rate and better reputation, which will both drive up your rank in searches related to your business. In addition, a solid site structure will support customers through the purchase process so that they don’t abandon their carts and seek services from a competitor.
If you run an e-commerce site, you probably already know that people do not want to have to work hard to find what they’re looking for. Products should be easy to search for, and content pages should be well-organized and easy to scan quickly for relevant information. In addition, you should make sure that every link works properly, since a 404-error page is a surefire way to send a customer right to a competitor.
How long does it take pages to load?
Once you’ve organized your site and created a user experience that guides customers seamlessly through the purchase process, you should consider how long it will take for each page to load when a customer clicks on a link. Long load times are one of the most frustrating aspects of online shopping, and there is a clear correlation between page loading time and page abandonment rates for online shoppers.
Is your content error-free?
SEO can hold so much more value for e-commerce businesses, because it truly designs the entire experience that customers will have with your company. Though some customers might use a live chat feature or call for help with their purchases, most will probably go through the process without ever interacting with a real person representing your business. That means that your content will be the best representation of your brand, so it should be completely clean and free of errors. Even minor spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can reflect poorly, so be sure that you’ve taken the time to do your content right.
Your keywords should be well-researched.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a discussion of SEO without a mention of keywords. The use of keywords in SEO has evolved through time, but keyword research remains a backbone of any successful SEO campaign. With online businesses specifically, it is absolutely essential to target only the most relevant keywords that will represent the items you are selling. Broad and highly competitive keywords can be a detriment to your e-commerce business, because they will set up false expectations of what your store sells, so you might see more customers leaving your site than making purchases.
The right content provider can support your SEO campaign and ensure that you are not missing out on valuable leads due to simple content errors. To find a partner for your business, connect with Pennington Creative to explore our content services.
