Ecommerce, SEO

Benefits Of SEO: Why SEO Is Important In Your E-commerce Business?

By: Lauren Petrullo
8 mins max
January 12, 2023

Search engine optimization (or SEO) is an important factor for the success of any online business.

But SEO for e-commerce websites is an even more crucial factor for success.

By adding search engine optimization to your digital marketing strategy, you can ensure that potential customers can find your online store easily when searching for related topics or products on Google or other major search engines.

But, as a beginner or new business owner, you might not fully understand SEO or the benefits of SEO for your online business.

Don’t worry; we have your back!

In this blog post, we’ll dive into the benefits of SEO and explain why SEO is so important for e-commerce businesses.

So, without further ado, let’s start with understanding what search engine optimization is and how it works.

What Is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it is the process of optimizing web pages to appear higher in search engine rankings. This means ensuring your website and its content are as optimized as possible so that when someone searches for a keyword related to your business, you’ll show up closer to the top of the results.

How does SEO work?

SEO works by using a combination of on-page and off-page optimization tactics.

On-page SEO involves optimizing the content on your website so that it’s more relevant to search engine algorithms and users. This includes researching and incorporating keywords, optimizing page titles and meta descriptions, using the right image size, and more.

Off-page SEO is the process of promoting your content so that it can be seen by search engines and drive more organic traffic to your website. This includes link building, content promotion, and other tactics that help to build authority for your site in the eyes of search engine algorithms.

Before we get to the details about on-page or off-page SEO drivers (or ranking factors), let’s quickly round up the benefits of SEO for an e-commerce website.

Advantages of SEO For E-commerce Businesses

Doubling down your SEO efforts offers a variety of benefits for e-commerce businesses, ranging from an increase in traffic to improved brand visibility. Here are the most notable benefits of SEO:

1. Increase Traffic and Visibility

One of the most obvious benefits of SEO is that it can help you increase the visibility of your website in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Implementing SEO techniques and using relevant keywords will improve the content of your online store, resulting in higher search engine rankings, quality traffic, and better overall engagement with potential customers.

It’s a great way to gain your digital presence as a business, drive traffic to your site, and increase customer conversion rates. With SEO providing a significant competitive advantage over other e-commerce businesses that don’t invest in search engine marketing, adding SEO to your digital marketing mix has become an essential part of any successful e-commerce strategy.

2. Reduce Ad Costs

With growing digital marketing expenses, search engine optimization is a great way to show up in the search engine rankings without relying on costly paid advertising.

This can significantly reduce your marketing budget and, at the same time, still provide a high return on investment.

Fact: “53.3% of all organic traffic comes from organic search.”

This means more than half of the users click on organic search results instead of Google ads.

That is why intelligent brands spend more on their SEO strategy and less on paid search results.

3. Improve Your Brand’s Credibility

SEO also helps to improve your brand’s credibility by increasing trust and authority. How?

When customers can find your website easily on search engines and see you among the top results, they will be more likely to trust your brand and purchase from you.

4. Stay Ahead Of Your Competition

A strong online presence is a key to any e-commerce business, so you must take advantage of SEO to help your business list higher in the SERPs than its competitors.

Although traditional marketing, like paid advertising, celebrity endorsements, and influencer marketing, will still play a role in your business’s online success, SEO is really what can help you stand out from the crowd.

Ranking higher in search engine results can help you gain more market share and leave less for your competitors—meaning you have a much better chance at success!

So, SEO should be a tool in your arsenal if you want to stay ahead of the competition.

5. Better Retargeting Campaigns

Search engine optimization gives you a significant edge over the competition, allowing you to target people who are already interested in what you have to offer.

For instance, if someone landed on your store via organic search results, you already have their interest level and can use retargeting campaigns to easily convert them into paying customers.

This means your retargeting campaigns will become much more effective, allowing you to get more bang for your buck and increase your ROI significantly.

This increased ROI on your marketing efforts is one of the biggest advantages of SEO.

6. Increased Usability and Shopping Experience

SEO can also help improve your website’s usability and overall shopping experience by making it easier for customers to find what they want.

When customers can easily find the products they are looking for, it leads to a much better shopping experience and encourages them to purchase from your store. This, in turn, results in frequent revisits and more customers for your business.

Overall, SEO is an important tool for any e-commerce business and should definitely be a part of your marketing efforts.

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of SEO for e-commerce websites, it’s time to dive into details.

So, let’s get back to understanding factors that makeup on-page and off-page SEO and other basic terms.

SEO For Ecommerce Website: All You Need To Know

So we have talked a lot about “optimization” and “keywords,” but these terms don’t mean anything if you don’t understand the basics.

So, let’s start from scratch, understand basic SEO terms, and see how incorporating SEO practices enhances your e-commerce business.

1. Ranking Factors

Whenever you type a query on Google or any search engine, it brings you a list of web pages.

Now, who gets to appear on the search results page depends on a couple of things known as “ranking factors.”

These ranking factors keep changing based on Google’s algorithm, but most things that matter are:

Content relevance & quality
Website friendliness, including UX, loading speed, and mobile-friendliness
Domain authority
Number and quality of backlinks
Social signals

These are the most important ranking factors, and working on them is important if you want your website to be found.

Next up, you should know what keywords are.

2. Keywords

Keywords are the words or phrases people type into a search engine when looking for information. For example, if someone types in “shoes,” it would be considered a keyword.

So, using relevant keywords in your content helps search engines understand what your page is about.

The more relevant and targeted your keywords are, the more likely your e-commerce store will appear in search results and bring you organic traffic.

However, keywords alone don’t guarantee success. You also need to optimize your website for the rest of the ranking factors.

3. Backlinks

Backlinks are links that lead from another website to your web page.

But why do they matter?

Well, Google considers a backlink as a “vote of confidence” for your website. It shows that other websites think your content is worth linking to.

So, having a backlink from a high authority domain means you have a quality backlink. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your website’s ranking will be.

That brings us to another ranking factor.

4. Domain Authority (DA)

Domain authority is a score that’s given to websites as an indication of how well they’re doing in terms of SEO.

It ranges from 0 to 100 and is determined by a number of factors, such as backlinks and content quality.

The higher the domain authority score, the better your website’s chances of appearing in search results.

5. Social Signals

Social signals are likes, shares, comments, and other forms of user engagement that happen on social media.

Google considers these as a ranking factor as it indicates how popular a website is.

So, if your website has lots of shares and likes on social media, it’ll be considered more trustworthy and authoritative, leading to higher rankings.

Now that you understand the basics of SEO and its ranking factors, let’s see how you can use e-commerce SEO to take your business to the next level.

SEO Tips for E-Commerce Websites

Here are some effective and efficient tips to boost your e-commerce SEO.

1. Find The Right Keywords

Finding the right keywords for your website is essential for ranking in search engines.

Ideally, you should target keywords with high search volume, low competition, and relevance to your products or services. However, you need to understand buyer intent or user intent to choose the right keywords.

Typically, there are two types of keywords when it comes to intent.

Informational Keywords:

People use these keywords when they want to learn more about a topic.

For example, “how to set up a website” or “how to grow a vegetable garden.”

Commercial Keywords:

These are the keywords that users search for when they are looking to purchase something.

For example, “buy shoes online” or “best blender for smoothies.”

For your e-commerce store, you would want to focus on targeting commercial keywords as they indicate that the user is looking to make a purchase.

But where to find them?

You can use keyword research tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, and Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer to find the best keywords for your website.

2. Optimize Your Content

Once you have identified the right keywords for your website, it’s time to optimize your content.

This means including those keywords in your product descriptions, title tags, meta descriptions, url, and headings.

This will help search engines better understand what your page is about and rank it accordingly.

You should also include relevant images, videos, and other multimedia content. Digital content will help engage users, increase their time on the page, and improve your website’s ranking.

Tip: Don’t forget to add alt tags to pictures.

3. Make Your Website User-Friendly

A user-friendly website is also important for search engine optimization because Google wants its users to have a good experience.

That’s why you should make sure your website is easy to navigate and user-friendly. So, make sure you have a logical page structure, fast website speed, and a mobile-friendly design.

You should also ensure that all your pages are properly indexed and that there are no broken links.

4.Track Analytics & Improve

It’s important to track the SEO data of your business website and understand what’s working and what’s not.

You can use tools like Google Search Console to track your website’s performance and Google Analytics to see how users interact with your website.

This will help you identify areas that need improvement and take the necessary steps to improve your SEO strategy.

Google Search Console Tips:

Here’s what you can do with Google Search Console:

Track and analyze the performance of your website to find out high-ranking keywords, well-performing pages, and any rank enhancements.
Find out if Google was able to crawl and index your web-pages.
Submit sitemap and fix future sitemap issues
See if your website has any issues with mobile usability.

Google Analytics Tips:

Install your website tracking code on every page
Set well-defined goals on your analytics account
Track demographics and interests to know your target market better
Analyze your landing pages’ clicks, impressions, and other important data
Track conversion and bounce rates and change your SEO strategies accordingly
Analyze your overall website traffic

5. Build Quality Backlinks

Backlinks from other websites are still one of the most important ranking factors.

Google considers backlinks as a sign of trust and authority, which leads to higher rankings in search results.

However, it’s not that easy to get quality backlinks for free. Here’s what you can do to improve your chances:

Write guest posts
Use more infographics
Leave comments on other posts/forums
Share high-quality, valuable content on social media
Issue press releases for new happenings in your company

All of these steps would help you get more organic visibility and brand awareness, which might even lead to more sales.

6. Utilize Social Media

Social media is more than just a way to stay connected with friends and family. It can also be an incredibly powerful tool for e-commerce SEO.

Social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Instagram can be used to create brand awareness and attract more quality traffic.

Creating and sharing engaging content on social media can help you build a larger customer base, attract more website visitors, and ultimately improve your search engine rankings.

7. Use Structured Data & Schema Markup

Structuring your website data is a simplified way of telling search engines what your page is about. Why is it important?

Well, it helps search engines better understand your page content and display it in a more user-friendly way.

This is why big search engines have teamed up to make Schema.org, which lets you translate your website content into a code that search engines understand.

Schema Markup is the most advanced way to structure your data.

Not only does it help search engines understand your website better, but it also enables rich snippets to appear in the SERPs. These snippets make your website stand out from the competition and improve the click-through rate.

As an e-commerce business, you can use rich snippets to display product information, prices, availability, and other useful data.

Bonus: Adding schema markup to your website also boosts your website’s local search impressions.

This brings us to our final tip.

8. BONUS Tip: Optimize Your Website For Local SEO

This tip is for you, if your e-commerce business has a physical store or at least plans to have one in the near future.

Why is it important?

Optimizing your website for local SEO will help you attract customers who are in the vicinity of your store. This is especially beneficial if you have competitors in the local market.

You can do this by following a few simple steps:

Create a Google My Business page and add your business information
Leverage online business directories, such as Yelp and Foursquare
Make sure all your business details, such as address and phone number, are up to date
Include local keywords in your content
Get reviews from customers who have visited your physical store

By following these tips, you’ll be able to optimize your website for local SEO and reach customers in your area.

With these eight tips, you should now have the knowledge and resources to create a successful SEO strategy for your e-commerce business.

Follow these steps, and you’ll be well on your way to achieving better SEO results for your e-commerce business.

However, remember that SEO is a long-term marketing strategy. It won’t bring you brand awareness or new customers right away. But, if you keep at it and stay consistent, SEO results will eventually come.

Launching a new ecommerce business? Need help with content & SEO strategy?

Our ecommerce solutions can help you win big.

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