What is Ecommerce SEO and How Does it Drive Sales?

According to Statista, the world’s online retail sales are estimated to be around 5.5 trillion U.S dollars in 2022, an increase of 0.6 trillion from the previous year. Even better, the number is forecasted to grow more than 50% in the next four years.

So, what is your business doing to leverage these numbers? Let’s discuss eCommerce SEO and how you can use it to drive sales.

What is eCommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO is the tool used to increase traffic and sales by optimizing product pages for online stores by creating quality content that ranks well on Google and other search engines.

Search engine optimization focuses on improving the visibility of eCommerce sites on search engines. It has become an essential component of online marketing thanks to the growing importance of online shopping in consumer purchasing decisions.

Before we discuss how eCommerce SEO can drive sales, let’s take a look at why SEO is important to your eCommerce platform and what it is all about:

Why Is SEO Important to Your eCommerce Site?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing your eCommerce website.  Done well, SEO will procure higher placement on search engines including Google and Bing.  The higher the ranking on the search engine results page (SERP), the more traffic it will receive from users searching for your products.  

Your eCommerce site will benefit from SEO in several ways, including;

• Increased Traffic

One of the main benefits of SEO is that it drives more traffic to your eCommerce website. When people search for products and services, the top results feature products from well-optimized sites. This means that if your eCommerce site is optimized for SEO, more people will find your products when they search online.

• Better Brand Awareness

SEO is a highly effective lead generation method. Successful SEO will place your eCommerce site at the top of SERPs.  Once there, your site will continue to appear at the top of SERPs when anyone performs a search for your products or services.  

With each click on your eCommerce site, awareness of your brand continues to increase as visitors discover your products and services.  

• SEO Helps You Build Trust and Authority

A well-optimized website that ranks at the top of search engines gives visitors an excellent first impression and enhances credibility. When search engines like Google index a well-optimized page, they consider it trustworthy because it contains relevant content and has high-quality links pointing back to it from other websites around the web.

What’s the Difference Between eCommerce SEO and Local SEO for Retail stores?

While eCommerce SEO and Local SEO for retail stores are related, they work differently. ECommerce SEO entails optimizing your online or digital store to make it more visible on search engine results pages. It usually involves optimizing your brand headlines, merchandise descriptions, inbound links, metadata, and navigation structure, among others.

On the other hand, local SEO for retail stores entails optimizing your site for local-specific searches. Essentially, when users perform local searches related to your business, your site will come up within Google’s local pack.

Local SEO is particularly vital for improving the visibility of businesses with physical locations (brick-and-mortar businesses).

What’s the Impact of SEO on Your Brand?

SEO impacts your brand in many ways. Some of these impacts of SEO on your brand are:

• Increased sales and revenue

SEO generates leads, improves conversion rates and overall sales revenue by giving your products/services visibility in front of thousands (if not millions) of potential buyers online. This works incredibly well if you have something unique or exclusive to offer or if you sell high-quality products at low prices (like Amazon does), which is an integral part of any business. As such, SEO has a direct impact on the sales and revenue of a company.

• Helps you reach more customers

Among the many benefits of eCommerce SEO is better rankings in search engines and increased traffic from organic searches. These provide your brand with an opportunity to reach more customers than other lead-generating techniques.

When people search for something online, they often use specific words that describe what they want to buy or learn more about. The best way to be noticed by these potential customers is through SEO because it helps you reach customers who are actively looking for your products or services — without having to pay for ads or promotions! 

Use SEO to Drive Sales and Revenue

We’ve learned what eCommerce SEO is and the benefits it brings to your brand. So how do you leverage SEO to drive sales and revenue? Read on -   

• Understand keywords that drive clicks

Keyword research is the first step to getting the right traffic. This is the process of identifying relevant keywords for your business and finding out how many people search for them monthly.

Keyword research can be time-consuming, but it's well worth it in the long run. The more targeted your keywords are, the better your chances of getting traffic from Google and other search engines.

However, getting traffic alone isn’t enough. You need to convert the traffic into sales and, therefore, revenue. Knowing and using the keywords that drive clicks will help you identify missed clicks and ultimately convert most, if not all, of your visitors into buyers. 

• Start blogging

Blogging is one of the most effective ways to grow your business through traffic and conversion. Blog on topics related to what you are selling or offering. For example, if you sell shoes online, write blogs about the fashion and footwear industry and link to your products.

Include keywords related to your business or products in the article title, subheadings, and body text. You should also use different keywords throughout your article so that search engines can easily find them when they crawl your site.

• Don’t complicate your website architecture

SEO isn’t rocket science but it does require patience and regular maintenance of your site. You can’t just do it once and expect results. You must keep up with it if you want to reap its benefits.

Keep your navigation menu clean and clutter-free with no more than three or four categories per page. This makes it easier for the search engine’s algorithms to crawl through your site structure and index all relevant content.

Calculate Ecommerce SEO ROI

Ecommerce SEO ROI is the revenue a company gets from investing in eCommerce SEO. It can be calculated in many ways. The most common methods are:

• Calculate the amount of money spent on SEO versus the resulting increase in revenue. The formula for SEO ROI is:

(Profit – Investment) / Investment x 100. 

For instance, if you made a profit of $100,000 and you have invested $20,000, your ROI would be;

 {($100,000- $20,000)/$20,000} x 100, which gives an eCommerce SEO ROI of 400%

• Track your conversions. You can use Google Analytics to track the number of people who visit your site and how many of them convert into customers or leads.

• The goal of eCommerce SEO is to help a website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), so check if your eCommerce site gets more organic traffic from people looking for products or services.

Conclusion 

It is important to remember that search engine optimization (SEO) encompasses several aspects of a website, not just keyword density and placement. Many other areas can be improved, including website relevance, links between pages of your website, navigation structure, and the overall user experience. 

For retail and ecommerce marketing, SEO is a no-brainer if you’re looking to generate leads, create brand awareness, drive your sales and improve revenue.