Advertising on the internet is hard. It’s like trying to sell someone socks while they’re looking for tractor parts. (Or, worse, while they’re scrolling through cat memes.)
Since the cost of digital marketing is on the rise, it’s a smart idea to incorporate more targeted strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) to your ecommerce efforts.
SEO is vital to successful ecommerce marketing. The good news is you already know how to use Google. (Apologies to anyone who’s been living alone on a deserted island for the last 25 years.) The better news is that it drives traffic to your website for free.
If you’re a business with something to sell, you need to know what happens under the hood when someone clicks “search.” You can boost your business — big time — with an SEO strategy designed to get more leads, more customers, and more revenue flowing into your bank account.
Let’s take a closer look at what SEO can do for your business.
SEO Drives Free Organic Traffic
SEO lets you target customers at the exact moment they’re actively looking for your products or services. This is the part you’re already familiar with.
For example, when you search for local restaurants that serve cheesecake, Google gives you a list of results of local restaurants with cheesecake on the menu. Restaurants that have optimized their websites for SEO are much more likely to rank higher in the search results.
This is called organic search — searches that yield results based on Google’s algorithms, not paid advertising. It’s gold because it gives you a link straight to a customer who’s thinking about buying your product or service. They already want what you’ve got; now you need to make a connection with them.
And you don’t have to pay advertising fees to get that traffic. If you’re doing your SEO work correctly, you’ll be driving visitors to your web pages at no extra cost.
The key? Keywords. Choosing the right keywords and phrases is very important to connecting with the right customers.
A restaurant that wants to sell more cheesecake would need to include the right keywords on their website (for example, “cheesecake” or search phrases such as “local restaurants that serve cheesecake”).
SEO Attracts a Targeted Audience
When you perform SEO correctly, you attract people who are ready to buy. When they enter their search phrase into Google, it’s very likely that they will make their purchase from the top two or three search results.
Good SEO gives you a direct link to the people who want what you’re selling. A qualified marketing agency will help you select the best keywords, build them correctly into your website, and bring lots more (free) traffic to your business.
In the digital world, you won’t find a stronger connection to potential new customers. They’re waving their hand to let you know they have a need you can fill for them. All you need to do is make sure they find you when they’re looking.
Organic Traffic Grows Over Time
When done right, SEO can yield results for months and years to come. With the correct keywords, you’ll be able to target those looking-to-buy consumers in a way that grows over time. That’s because all the work you’ve done in previous months builds on itself, increasing the likelihood that your business ranks higher in Google searches.
Google’s algorithm is a learning tool, meaning it’s constantly evolving the way it mines websites for information. While that might seem like a constantly moving target for marketers, it actually works to your benefit. Whenever you add new pages tagged with the right keywords, Google (and other search engines) read that new information and add it to their search results calculations. aggregate results As both a short- and long-term strategy, SEO brings you likely buyers again and again.
Of course, throwing a bunch of words on your website doesn’t mean they’re going to count toward your SEO results. There are rules and formatting to follow, and an experienced marketing agency can help you do it correctly.
Endless Possibilities with an Ever-Changing Online Market
If there’s one constant in the search engine world, it’s change. Methods, standards, algorithms, and other factors are in a continual state of evolution. So a strategy you used five years ago — or even six months ago — may be outdated.
While that can be challenging for marketers, it typically works for the benefit of businesses. That’s because the system is built to be perpetually improving. People change the way they search for products and services over time, and search engines like Google take advantage of that.
What that means for you is a regular stream of new possibilities to capture your market’s attention. If you and your marketing agency are doing the hard work with your SEO strategy, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of those opportunities when they come your way.
SEO Works with All Search Engines
While Google is by far the most used search engine, SEO works for all the other ones, too, including Bing, Yahoo, Duck Duck Go, and others. That means ANY potential buyer using search engines will be able to find you.
Can you imagine the cost of paying for ads across a wide variety of search engines and websites? The expense would add up fast and likely be quite steep. But since SEO marketing works across all search engines, you’ll be able to spend your marketing dollars on more effective efforts.
SEO Offers Long-Term Benefits
When you do your SEO work properly, it’ll get you measurable results and continue to grow over time. Even though changes are always happening in the search engine landscape, the work you do today will keep giving you results, potentially, for years.
Even if you stop actively doing SEO work, you’ll continue to see performance on your website. Your efforts keep paying off for you after you’ve established the basic keywords on your site.
That said, it’s always a good idea to remain active with your SEO efforts. There are always new opportunities to capture more of the market and test new keywords.
Ecommerce SEO Is Still an Untapped Opportunity
It’s hard to believe that any business these days wouldn’t be taking full advantage of SEO ecommerce practices. But many of them still aren’t putting any effort into it, convinced that the more traditional methods (i.e., paid advertising) are the best way to market their products.
And they’re missing out.
Surprisingly, the competition for organic search traffic is relatively low right now. Which means it’s a great time for businesses to capitalize on the opportunities. So when anyone is looking for what you’re selling, they’ll find you at the top of the list.
Now is the time to get ahead. The sooner you start, the longer you’ll have an advantage over the businesses that don’t.
Let the experts at AMPED create a successful, measurable SEO strategy for your business.
Let’s Connect!
