Top 11 Reasons for E-commerce Websites to do SEO

An e-commerce website is the digital version of mail-order catalog shopping - but better. Unlike a paper catalog though, internet users aren't likely to flip through pages on the way to finding what they want. Instead, they use a search engine to quickly find exactly what they want - and to find alternatives and reviews. This means that search engines become an important tool in helping internet users find products.

For e-commerce business owners, showing up in search engines is essential. The process behind showing up as a search result is Search Engine Optimization - or SEO.

At SilverServers, our SEO services start from the ground up. We optimize our servers, code, content, and everything in-between so that your e-commerce website has a great base to start from.

If you're an e-commerce business owner who's wondering whether or not SEO might be a valuable investment, then this is the article for you. We're going to give you 11 reasons why e-commerce website should do SEO.

Top 11 reasons for E-commerce to do SEO

#1: E-commerce is Dependent on Search Engines

E-commerce is more dependent on search engines now than it has ever been. Over 80% of customers, who shop online, visit the website directly from search engine results. SEO ultimately boosts your website ranking allowing customers to find your site and products easily and quickly.

#2: Increases Visibility.

E-commerce SEO increases search visibility. It is about reaching out to the right people at the right place and at the right time. The higher your SEO visibility, the more target keywords you rank for. A visibility score is based on how well your keywords rank in the SERP (search engine results page). Top positions in search engines are the summit of today’s online success.

#3: Create Traffic

By using SEO keywords that are specific to your product, Google, Bing, and other search engines will identify your website as the destination for that subject searched, which in turn may boost your product in the search rankings. Between this and finding ways to rank for related keywords or industries, SEO is more likely to attract more visitors to your website – which means more potential customers. Implementing SEO into an e-commerce marketing strategy will likely reap more benefits compared to non-SEO digital marking strategies.

#4: Increases Brand Visibility

In the earlier internet days, digital marketers would flood their e-commerce websites with the brand's names but that has changed significantly over the years. E-commerce websites now benefits from much more advanced and savvy SEO strategies to increase company brand visibility. SEO has always played a role in building company brand awareness and has gotten more complex, increasingly smarter, and substantially more user friendly. SEO can be a very useful method of lifting your brand over others. If a search engine thinks your brand will better serve a question than your competitor’s brand, you may show up higher in the rankings.

#5 Your Website Can Be Your Most Valuable Sales Employee

Websites run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Whatever your monthly invoice is to run that website, it is probably less than hiring a person to do a quarter of that work. Also, consider that your website can do hundreds of sales at the same time, where a salesperson can only talk to one person or one group at a time about one product at a time. Although it's important to have sales staff, consider that you're paying a person for every time they have to explain the same answer to a frequently asked question, or help each customer through the sales process one at a time, when your website can answer those questions and guide customers through a checkout for an incalculable number of people at the same time, for not much more than the cost of the electricity required to send the information. The point is, your website can be your most valuable sales employee.

However, no matter how good your website looks or how convincing certain points of the sales pitches on it are, it needs to show up in search results in order to be effective. SEO puts your best sales tool in a place where it can be found. Once it's there, it never needs a coffee break or a holiday, it can keep selling your products - any time, any day.

#6: Hyper-local Result Optimization

Hyper-local content has two major dimensions, geography, and time. Search engines seem to increasingly give value to locally-focused websites and content, meaning SEO may increase your site’s visibility to a particular geographical area by reaching out to customers located within the area. This helps businesses make more sales in the places they focus on and cuts down on unnecessary competition. IF you want to read more about the importance of locally focused SEO, we’ve written a few important articles about it.

#7: Long Lasting Benefits

SEO plans need time to work. If they’re done right though, they may have an increasingly positive effect on a website that lasts. A properly implemented SEO strategy may only get better over time, ensuring that your website continues to rank highly amongst search engines, delivering your customers day in and day out. If you maintain your SEO, the content you create may continue to bring in traffic long after you publish it.

#8: Competitors Are Investing in SEO

SEO is like intentionally working to earn a solid position a popularity contest with Google. If Google thinks a website is great, they will send clients to it. Competing companies know this, so they will incorporate SEO into their strategies to compete with your business’ reputation, trying to convince Google that they should send customers to their website instead of yours. Maintaining your e-commerce website with the most up to date SEO knowledge may make certain your business continues to thrive in search results.

#9: SEO is not going anywhere anytime soon

If you’re old enough to remember using the business section of your phone book in order to find businesses that provide services, you may remember sometimes seeing a half-dozen or so companies whose names start with “A”, “AA”, or “AAA”. One of the reasons for having a list of A’s in a business name is to show up first in a phone book. That strategy may not have been called SEO, but it’s the same strategy used in SEO: Find out how information is displayed, then structure the information in a way that gets you to show up first.

The concepts behind SEO have never been dormant, and they’re not going to go away for as long as businesses desire to be found first. What they look like has changed over the years though. E-commerce sites need to keep a sharp eye for the onslaught of algorithm updates from Google that happen all the time, so that they can move up or stay in their position. Keeping up with the latest updates, SEO trends, and search trends may keep your site visible, populated, and active.

#10: Cost-effectiveness

SEO is a smart investment. With approximately 93% of online sessions starting with search engines, SEO is one of the most cost-effective forms of digital marking used by a wide range of businesses to target customers. A well-formulated SEO tactic will pay for itself over time, especially as your strategy grows your site’s presence and popularity with Google.

#11: Builds Trust & Credibility

The goal of SEO is to enhance the users’ online experience and enable users to find a quality website that answers their questions quickly and easily. Establishing an SEO strategy for you e-commerce site may show Google that the site is a credible and trustworthy place to send internet users. As that happens, and your site consistently shows itself to be somewhere internet users want to be, you may find that it rises up the search results, thereby leading other users to trust the destination too.

Search engine optimization is not only about search engines, but good SEO improves the user's experience and usability of an e-commerce website. Executing an SEO strategy for your e-commerce website may boost your e-commerce sales and revenue and make you a market leader in your industry, generating more organic traffic from sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

If you’re convinced that SEO might be helpful, get a free test of your website today! Our team will take a look at your site, send you a report, and give some feedback on some items that could use improvement.

If you want to read more, check out our blog – full of tips, tricks, and news for SEO.

For more related content, check out the E-commerce section of our blog! Or, dive into our SEO Tips section!