Ecommerce businesses thrive or perish based on their ability to attract new customers. Organic search traffic can be critical in the race to increase revenue. This is why.
SEO Benefits for Ecommerce
1. Driving brand awareness
For low-cost brand awareness, most eCommerce sites require search engine optimization. An appearance on the first page of search results or in Google's Answer Box could be the first time a shopper encounters your brand or it could remind her of a previous visit to your website.
Furthermore, some searchers regard high ranking as an endorsement, increasing their likelihood of clicking on a top result.
2. Filling the marketing funnel
The traditional marketing funnel — awareness, interest, desire, action — is dependent on a steady flow of new customers. At the awareness stage, SEO plays a critical role in driving lower-cost top-of-funnel traffic.
However, SEO also plays a role in the other stages. As customers progress from awareness to interest (research) to action (purchase), the intent revealed by their keyword selection shifts from informational to transactional. Targeting the right intent at the right points on your site influences shopper progression to the next stage, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
3. Elevating content
Advertising for keywords with high transaction intent makes sense. However, the value of other content, such as blog posts, buyer's guides, and how-to articles, is not immediately apparent.
SEO is beneficial for these types of content. Content optimization efforts can result in significant increases in traffic at a low cost. It only takes knowledge of what people search for (based on keyword research), the ability to optimise content, access to your content management system, and time.
4. Expanding remarketing audiences
Your paid search team can place cookies for remarketing campaigns once shoppers arrive on your site via organic search (or other channels). When those shoppers leave your site and continue their journeys, you can then show them display ads. The more people who visit your website, the larger your remarketing audience will be.
When you consider visits to the top of the funnel, SEO remarketing makes even more sense. As customers browse the web, they are reminded that your company provided them with something of value.
5. Capturing the long tail
15% of search queries are unique — Google has never seen them before. These obscure one-time phrases are part of the long tail, which includes queries that drive few searches individually but account for nearly 40% of total searches. Furthermore, long-tail phrases convert at a higher rate than other keywords.
Because they are built hierarchically on increasing levels of detail, ecommerce sites are typically well structured to target those long-tail searches. For example, on an apparel website, a common click path might be Clothing > Men's Clothing > Accessories > Ties > Blue Ties > Blue Silk Ties. These pages are further down the click path and have a good match for long-tail keywords ("mens blue silk ties").
