4 ways that SEO will benefit your E-commerce business

Advertising is expensive and you probably don’t have a bottomless budget that you can keep shoveling into PPC ads. If your competitors are also advertising, then you are most likely seeing the cost increase as you try to outbid them on the best keywords and keep your ads live. Eventually, the budget will run out or be needed elsewhere, you will decide to cut the ads, and just like that your e-commerce business has disappeared from the search results.

By shifting your investment from PPC to SEO, even part of the investment, then you will find that you have to fight competitors less. With smart SEO investment, your eCommerce business will rise through the ranks of organic results like a bubble to the surface of water. Leaving your competitors in the dust. What’s better is that you don’t have to pay a daily fee to keep your spot. You only have to keep your site SEO relevant.

Studies are showing that when consumers search (and remember, they always search with intent) there is a tendency to skip past the paid ads and instead click into the top ranking organic results.

Data from web analytics company Enquisite found that for every 1 click on a paid search result, the organic results generate 8.5 clicks. Furthermore, they summarized that the opportunity from organic search is 5.66X that of paid search. Yet overall, businesses invest considerably less in SEO than PPC.

“What these studies show is that there is a real opportunity for the businesses that invest in SEO over ads,” says Jane Davis, an SEO writer at 1day2write.com and WriteMyX.com.

Simply put, investing in SEO will put you in front of your customers in a way that they trust and are more likely to engage with.

Imagine that instead of your brilliant e-commerce business, you had decided to set up a physical, bricks-n-mortar shop. For some reason, you didn’t get around to making the storefront appealing yet. How will anyone know that your shop exists? If you want them to come in and shop, you need to let them know you are there.

SEO solves this issue for online businesses. It lets your customers know that you are there and, by being ranked high in search results, makes your storefront more appealing. Being on the first page of Google results strengthens brand awareness and visibility.

According to Retail Dive, 87% of shoppers now begin product searches online. We have touched on trust above and remember I mentioned that consumers search with intent? Until your e-commerce brand is so well known that people search specifically for your site, you will have to rely on being found in relevant searches.

“Think of SEO as being a holistic marketing tool. It is not as simple as plowing in money and waiting for growth. It is more strategic,” says Sid Brown, a business writer at Britstudent.com and Nextcoursework.com. “SEO requires you to add value for customers and for them to view you as a trusted source of information as well as goods”.

SEO can drive more and more traffic to your site. The next step for you is to ensure that it is user friendly. If your e-commerce business has a high bounce rate – aka visitors leave quickly – then this will negatively impact your SEO. The experience is as important as relevance for reducing bounce and increasing sales. According to Adobe’s Digital Trends 2020, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for great customer experience.