Table of Contents
eCommerce is the alchemy of converting traffic into revenue. When you put the effort into search engine optimization (SEO), you can drive traffic to your online store. When you work hard or partner with the right SEO team, you can convert that traffic into revenue. This is the sweet spot of eCommerce SEO success.
Organic traffic is different from so many other marketing sources. With organic traffic, each session can become a sale, and organic traffic often has the highest ROI of any other tactic you can employ. With paid search or social media advertising, which is often a huge portion of eCommerce brands’ digital efforts, you have to consistently put a lot of money into your campaigns.
With SEO, it’s a long-term effort, but the cost can often be lower than paid efforts. When done correctly, SEO growth for eCommerce is an affordable way to sustainably grow your online sales with people who are out there searching for your product or service online on search engine results pages. The key is building an eCommerce SEO strategy that matches your content and category structure to the way real buyers search.
What Is Top of Funnel SEO?
When we think about SEO, there are two ways people search: branded and non-branded keywords. Branded keywords mean people are searching for a specific brand (Apple iPhone), while non-branded keywords are used when people are searching for a more general product (cell phone or smartphone). eCommerce keyword research helps you identify which of these terms your audience is actively using and where your biggest opportunities are.
People at the top of the marketing funnel are typically earlier in their buyer’s journey, usually at the “awareness” stage. These people are still searching for the non-branded search terms, those looking for your product but not yet committed to a certain brand, and their search intent tells you exactly how to reach them.
Top-of-funnel SEO is where we can really capture people who are in need of your product or service, and this is where your SEO efforts should focus for real eCommerce growth.
Converting Those Early-Stage Buyers
Non-branded keywords used by early-stage searchers often have high monthly search volumes. That means there are potentially thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of people each month searching Google for your product or service, and showing up in those search results is where the revenue opportunity begins.
When we can convert the high-volume, organic search traffic that already needs what you have to offer into sales, you can see eCommerce growth results.
SEO is one way you can connect the demand side of organic search with the supply side of your brand’s product(s) or service(s). And the best part is that because SEO is able to give you an idea of the number of monthly search volumes, it gives you a predictable revenue model for the long-term growth of your business.
Keywords, particularly non-branded keywords, can give you an idea of what your potential customers are searching for. Targeting the relevant keywords your potential customers are already using gives you a clear picture of what they’re searching for. It can give you an idea of what stage of the buyer’s journey they are at and how you can help them understand your product/service, so you can make them your customer instead of the competitor’s.
So how do SEO teams go about converting those early-stage buyers? SEO for eCommerce requires a unique combination of technical know-how and quality content. At elk, we combine on-site optimization, content creation, and backlinking techniques to grow eCommerce SEO results.
The brands that win long-term are the ones that pair a focused SEO strategy with the right SEO tools to track, measure, and refine their efforts over time. Get in touch with the experts at elk Marketing, who can analyze your website as a first step to SEO growth.
