Benefits of SEO for Your eCommerce Site

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1. Enhances Your Marketing Funnel

SEO helps to study the marketing funnel and drive in more sales. An eCommerce site needs to engage people in all the stages of the funnel. It includes the awareness phase, research phase, and purchase phase.
What can be better than SEO?
as per the study made by SEMRush on ecommerce sites, most of the traffic was driven by organic search.
The SEO plans and strategies drive more organic traffic from the awareness stage itself.
For the other stages, it also uses intent-specific keywords. It encourages people to complete their journey on the funnel. It will result in a high conversion rate.

2. Helps to Find the Right Set of Keywords

Keywords can make or break your eCommerce business. Hence, always trust the SEO experts to research for you. They thoroughly study the market and find the perfect short, medium, and long keywords.
They run through several SEO tools (like Ubsersuggest in the image) and current ranking data to find the trending keywords that a business should consider.
They analyze your competitors to find out the things that will work for you. Besides, they consider the user intent and the keywords relevant to your business.
Accordingly, they incorporate them on your site and increase your visibility and sales.

3. Ensures Advanced Competitor Analysis

With the ever-increasing number of eCommerce sites, you need to know what your rivals are up to.
If you own a beauty care ecommerce store, you have to find your top competitors and compare the data (like keywords, backlinks, etc.) on tools like Ahrefs.

• What are the keywords they are using?
• Do they have a highly authoritative domain?
• What is their landing page authority?

These essential questions need answering before you finalize your keywords.
Competing with a website having high authority can be tough. Hence, SEO experts focus on other keywords, too, that can bring you easy wins. There are several SEO tools like Moz, Ubersuggest, and more that can assist you in researching your rivals.

4. Simplifies Your Website Architecture

The architecture of your website determines your traffic, visibility, and conversions. SEO makes an eCommerce website simple and easy to navigate.
Proper SEO planning also helps you increase your product lines in the future.
By rearranging the site’s architecture, SEO influences customers to make the purchase. Besides, it makes your site more crawlable for search engine spiders.
If you are new to business or have a site that you want to restructure, you should plan your structure for the long term as new products keep adding up. You can plan your site structure using free tools like Gloomaps.
SEO will help you secure a better rank on search engine result pages. Higher the rank, the more visibility. These are the crucial benefits of investing in eCommerce SEO.

5. Effective Internal Linking

Internal linking is an effective way to educate customers about your products.

Using relative anchor texts, you can channelize the customers to similar products on the product description page. However, it is never wise to overdo it. Using too much of anchor texts make Google suspicious of your intent.
SEO experts do the homework before using internal links. It helps Google to crawl your site easily and index your inner pages.

6. Enriches The User Experience

Google prioritizes user experience for ranking your eCommerce site. SEO ensures that your site is easy to use, helpful, and engaging.
For example, here’s an e-store whose categories, offers overlap on the image and the prices are also not mentioned. This infuriates users as they cannot precisely experience the product. Customers want to explore the products seamlessly.
Customers always prefer such sites for shopping for their products. When they find your site easy to navigate, they come back again. Besides, a user-friendly site ensures that people stay on it for a longer time.
All these factors go in your favor. You get to increase sales as well as your search engine ranking.

7. SEO Makes Your Site Mobile-friendly

Most people use mobile phones to access eCommerce sites. Not only do they do the research, but they also make the transactions using their mobiles. It calls for a mobile-friendly site.
So, SEO takes care of design, structure, PageSpeed, and other aspects of mobile optimization to give a friendly experience to smartphone users.
With the arrival of responsive web design, it is no more a struggle. It helps maximize your SEO efforts.
People get to view your site in their comfort without facing the need to scroll in and out repeatedly. Your content easily catches their attention.

8. SEO Increases Your Product Reviews

Reviews are mandatory for every eCommerce site. The below-mentioned facts prove why it's mandatory.
Incorporating a review section on your site helps to increase conversion by over 50%. You certainly do not want to miss out on this opportunity.
Besides, review sections boost your SEO efforts. You can always encourage your viewers to leave their reviews and rate your product.
More the reviews, the more the content on your site. And the higher the frequency of reviews, the higher the amount of fresh content. Remember, Google loves fresh content.

9. Gains More Conversion Through Long-tail Keywords

You cannot ignore long-tail keywords if you want people to find your site and buy your products. Though long-tail keywords drive comparatively less traffic, the conversion rate will be higher.

Long-tail keywords can either be informative or consist of purchase intent keywords. As you incorporate them into your content, it easily caters to people’s needs. However, you need to do thorough research to identify them.
You can also use several SEO tools like Google autocomplete, Ubersuggest, and the like.

10. Enriches User Experience Using Schema Markup

Schema Markup is important for SEO. Now, you need two types of schema markup for your eCommerce site.

• Product schema markup : Product schema markup primarily consists of your product name and cost. You can also add features like images and brand names. Your product looks as below for the normal and image search. You will get more information from Google’s developers to implement in your e-store.
  
• Review schema markup : Review schema markup consists of individual reviews and aggregate ratings.

By using schema markup, you make your website informative on the Google result pages. It enables you to use rich snippets for your website.

11. SEO Ensures Simple & Powerful URLs

Short URLs always help to rank better on the search engine result pages. Hence, you need to keep it clean and simple.
For instance, consider the below 2 URLs. Both search bots and users find the 2nd URL easy to read and understand the context.
Do not include dynamic parameters and avoid using extra words. Instead, use the targeted keywords in your URL. It will help both Google, and potential customers find out.
For better results, stick to lower case letters. A disorganized URL can be a disappointment for your user, especially when your eCommerce site has multiple product categories and pages.

12. SEO Ensures Your Website Protection Using SSL

Your eCommerce site may contain private information from several customers. The information may include their credit and debit card numbers, passwords, and more. It is essential that you add a security layer so that third parties cannot access the data.
HTTPS (Secure HyperText Transfer Protocol) helps you keep your data safe and encrypted. The diagrammatic representation of how HTTPS secures user data is here.
Besides, Google announced in 2014 that sites using HTTPS would have a better rank.
There are several free tools to aid you in your transition to HTTPS from HTTP.

13. Fix & Make Use Of 404 Pages

If your eCommerce site has 404 pages, it will affect the user experience. Google will certainly not appreciate it.

Users will end up on a 404 page if the page or the product is no longer available. It calls for some redirecting or cleaning up. The best way out is using a 301 redirect. It passes 90 percent of the product keyword terms to the new page.
To be on the safe side, you can create a creative 404 page with the link to another page.

14. SEO Helps With Pagination

Through pagination, you divide the content on your website into smaller sections. You use tags like rel=” next,” rel=” prev” to specific pages that are part of the series. It helps Google understand the relationship between your website pages.
For example, it looks like the image below. This is a vital feature required by ecommerce sites to show their vast products.
You can use the following tag to paginate your eCommerce site.
meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow”
You need to implement it on all the pages, except page one of your series.
Pagination helps to improve the readability score of your content. It also improves users’ concentration.

15. Load More V/s Infinite Scrolling Option

Infinite scrolling gives a better user experience. However, it hurts your search results. It does not allow people to use your website’s footer and miss out on the links present.
It annoys people when they cannot find your main pages Contact Us, About Us, blog, social profiles, etc. So, showing “Load/Show More” is a viable option.
Load more option enables users to scroll through the list of products.
You do not face the need to go to the next page. It calls for a better user experience with less load time. When you use load more options with pagination, you get better results for SEO.

16. SEO Helps With Pages Prioritization

If your eCommerce site has multiple pages, you need to prioritize them. You can prioritize the important pages by using Google Analytics.
It will show on what pages the users are landing more, which you can prioritize to optimize.
Once you have a list of prioritized pages, you need to find and map keywords to each of them. For this, you target both head keywords and long-tail keywords.
Consider their search intent before incorporating them. As you prioritize your pages, it gives a better user experience. Also, it assists you in achieving better conversions.

17. SEO Ensures Better Meta Titles & Descriptions

Most of the eCommerce sites tend to use a common template for their meta tags and descriptions. When you have several pages, it is an easy option.
Writing unique meta descriptions and titles for each page can be quite daunting. However, you cannot optimize your pages by following a templated approach. It calls for a hybrid approach.
For example, a self-acclaimed world’s strongest coffee company, DWC has a lot of products, yet they have unique meta and descriptions for the vital pages on their site.

• Write well-optimized tags for the important pages.
• Create an innovative template for each brand, category, and sub-category.
• Use this for the rest of the pages.

18. Writing Unique Product Descriptions

Almost all the eCommerce sites maintain description pages for their products and categories. It helps users find more information about the product. Also, it enables Google to understand your page better.
As you add unique content for each of your products, it improves your Google rank.
For example, two products in the same category (TV on Amazon) have unique product descriptions.
Add the head target keyword as well as the long-term variations in the description. However, do not ramble; keep the content short, crisp, and informative.

19. Finding Duplicate Content Issues

Owing to a slight variation in URLs, you can end up having duplicate pages. If they are of no need, delete one of them and redirect the page to the other. However, on some occasions, you may need the duplicate pages to co-exist.
In that case, use a canonical link. It makes Google index only one of the pages.
What happens if you don’t use the canonical tag? Check out the below example to find out that the same pages will compete for the SERP rank.
Using a canonical link is a great way to improve SEO for your eCommerce site. However, do not block the other page.

20. SEO Improves Deep Crawling

Deep pages refer to the webpages that are four or more clicks away from your homepage. These pages do not remain easily accessible to the users and affect the quality of your site.
That is why most eCommerce sites ensure that pages are not more than three clicks away from the homepage.
If you have a large eCommerce site, apply the general rule to your most important pages. However, you should always adjust the internal linking structure to avoid deep pages.

21. SEO Ensures Quick Site Loading

Having a fast website offers a better user experience and secures a better Google rank. One of the easiest ways to increase the page loading time is by adjusting the pictures.
Make sure to compress the pictures properly. You can use any image compression tools er your image format.
Also, reduce redirects and eradicate render-blocking JavaScript. Besides, enable caching and minimize the codes.
All these make your website respond faster than the usual time. You can also find out your competitors’ page loading time and take steps to be better than them.

22. Making Use of Out of Stock Products

Prefer not to delete a product page from your website if the product has gone out of stock. If it is likely to be back soon, mention it on the page. Or else, leave a message on the site if you have discontinued it.
Amazon maintains these pages by showing “currently not available.”
To assist the users, add a few relevant links of similar products on that page. However, if deleting that page is the only option, implement a 301 direct. Use the URL of the most relevant page in that case.

23. Creating & Marketing Videos

As you write unique content for your products, include videos too. It is a great way to engage with your customers.
Prefer making your videos. However, keep a check on their size. It should not affect your page-loading time.
You can also use a few tricks to ensure all other elements on the page load before the video. By the time users view the other elements on the page, the video gets loaded easily.

24. SEO Will Boost Offline Purchases

A study says that over 65% of people research online before buying in a physical store. Your business will get more customers when your stores rank on top in local SERP because of SEO.
Another study reveals that the top results have a click-through rate of 20 percent. This rate drops to 1.5 percent when your website appears on the second page of the search result.
That is why your eCommerce website needs to secure a rank on the first page of search results’. And what can be a better way than SEO to achieve the results?

25. SEO Empowers Your Blog

When you sell multiple products through your eCommerce website, blogs come in handy. They are a great way to grab users’ attention and be in the limelight. Focus on popular products or the categories as you decide on the topic.
For instance, the top e-commerce sites like Alibaba, eBay, Etsy, and more have blogs along with their product pages. SEO helps these blogs rank and increases the rate of sales.
Blogs are a great way to optimize your content using long-tail keywords. However, ensure that the write-up is in tune with the keywords.
Users use long-tail keywords for two purposes. Either to find detailed information about a product or the nearest physical store.

26. SEO Increases Customer Engagement

Another great way to grab a higher rank on Google is communicating with people. Your potential customers may have several queries about your products.
Answer them and clear their doubts. Try to find out the most frequently asked questions. Now, include a write-up on your website answering them.
This helps users resolve their issues instantly and helps you rank using keywords in it.
Your efforts will not go in vain as Google always appreciate it when you give a better experience to the users. It is one of the biggest advantages of SEO for an eCommerce site.

27. SEO Ensures Categorizing Of Your Products

All your SEO efforts will go in vain if you do not organize your eCommerce site’s content. You need to keep it as simple as possible.
Categorize the products in a way that they are easy to find. Also, use internal linking to link your blogs with the relevant products. It helps both Google and users find information quickly on your site.
Users mostly abandon a website and never revisit it if they find the website unorganized.

28. Finding The Right Social Media Influencers

Try to get social media influencers to promote your products. It is a great way to spread awareness of your products.
Endorsements from powerful influencers can do wonders for your business. For example, Jacob and Co partnered with Leonel Messi to influence their timepieces in the market. It builds brand name and drives a crazy number of sales.
Studies have shown that an influencer campaign can lead to a significant rise in sales. Now, every industry has its influencers. Find them and contact them in a non-aggressive manner.
You can join forums where they are participants. Be patient as it is a time-consuming process. However, once an influencer backs your products, people start trusting you.

29. SEO Helps With Voice Search Optimization

In a world where people largely depend on mobiles, you cannot ignore eCommerce SEO for voice. Optimizing content for voice search is different from the normal search.
People usually use it to ask questions rather than typing it. It makes it necessary that you use a conversational tone to write your content.
As per Adsharmarkerting, the voice search will have more words than text. So, use strikingly conversational tone content to let search engines know you have what the users are looking for.
One of the ways to optimize your site is by including a FAQ section. It will also make you more accessible to Google as well.

30. SEO Helps You To Secure Backlinks

By securing high-quality backlinks, you establish an authority in the market. It builds a kind of trustworthiness among search engines, which helps rank your site well on top.
Now, there are a couple of ways through which you can acquire such links.
You can reach influential bloggers and other third parties. Share your content with them and ask them to use your link on their website. If you have an eCommerce site on shoes, find out reputable relevant sites, and contact the owners.
You can also try to gain the backlinks of your competitors.

31. Make Use of Social Media Platforms

Are you present on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter?
These platforms widen the opportunities to connect with your audience and build the business. Most people are quite active on social media and interact with the content. So, (add this before - Perform SEO to optimize your content and promote your eCommerce products. )
Perform SEO to optimize your content and promote your eCommerce products. Use title tags and meta descriptions to describe them as you post content on social media. It will bring lots of positive effects on your site.
You can also promote your new launches and special offers on social media. However, do not forget to use the keywords. It is a great way to influence people’s decisions and bring them to your site.

32. Finding The Right Partners

If you are new to the business, you can always find affiliated websites for a partnership.
While you advertise and sell their products using their platform, you reach people. Now, when people like your products, they try to find more about you. Eventually, they end up on your eCommerce website.
This is an effective, low-risk, and low-budget strategy for marketing your product. Referring to the below image shows the difference between
For each sale, you have to pay a commission to the affiliates. When you are new, it is a great way to spread the word.

33. Finding The Right Sponsors

Another way to find customers is by sponsoring your products on other people’s blogs. Many bloggers accept sponsored content.
There are hundreds of bloggers writing for well-established websites like Forbes, where people pay to get their articles posted. So, it could be a better place to find your niche blogger to pitch for product inclusion.
As you sponsor your content, your audience base expands, and so does your visibility. It results in you getting more leads for your products.
Finding sponsors is an effective way to boost eCommerce sales. However, reputable websites sponsor your content only when you fulfill their prerequisites. One of them is high-quality content.

34. Finding Influential Bloggers

You can contact influential bloggers of your industry for guest posts. It is a nice way to build authority, backlinks, exposure, and relationships. Also, you can ask them to include your promotional offers on their blogs.
In addition to bloggers, numerous websites accept guest posts. You can find these sites using niche keywords such as “eCommerce + write for us”, “eCommerce + submit guest posts”, and many more relevant keywords.
Research and find bloggers who are promoting your rivals’ products. It is a great place to start.

35. Creating The Best Homepage

Your eCommerce website homepage should cover information from all angles, like your promotional offers, new launches, and products trending in the market.
Optimizing your homepage is essential to retain customers. Make sure you organize it properly. Your homepage should help audiences know more about your products. However, do not overstuff it with information.
Here’s an ecommerce store home page, which has a pop-up that indicates the users must have or login to the account to access the products. This is a big turn-off for the customers. So, create a website that provides easy navigation.
Also, use relevant keywords in the homepage content, title tags, and meta descriptions. It encourages people to visit your website.

36. Optimizing The Images

Image optimization is crucial for eCommerce sites.

• Imagine a site that does not allow its users to view the product image from different angles.
  Having multiple images as shown in the image makes it difficult for the users to perceive its uniqueness from the angle.
  
• Or, the images are there, but they are taking too much time to load.

The users will never prefer the website to make the purchase. Hence, ensure your site has multiple pictures of the products, and all of them are visible. Keep the file name short and reduce its size. Add a caption, if necessary. It will reward your website in search rankings.

37. SEO Brings The Much Needed ROI

SEO ROI for your eCommerce site refers to SEO’s contribution to your returns. After you design the website, the costs involved with its hosting is relatively less.
With SEO, the website grows organically over time and the number of pages ranking on SERP increases. As you see in the image, the highest % of traffic comes from organic search only.
It helps you maximize your profit through online sales and achieve a higher ROI.
You can measure it by obtaining data from Google Analytics and other sources.

38. Helps to Adapt to Google Algorithmic Changes

Google is constantly updating its algorithm and ranking formulas.
It updates marketers officially through Twitter whenever they release a major algorithm update.
SEO helps maintain a website according to Google search quality guidelines. It eliminates the chances of penalization.
It aims to give better results to people.
Google considers people’s search history, profiles to show them the results. Now, a reputable SEO firm always remains abreast of the changing Google algorithms.
It uses the changing algorithms to your site’s benefit and helps you expand your visibility and reach. It is essential for an eCommerce site considering the present-day competition.

39. SEO Helps In Cost Management

Inbound leads reduce the cost of lead generation than outbound leads. You can find many studies proving it. SEO is an inbound lead generation category, and it involves little to no cost.
PPC and other forms of paid advertising come under outbound lead generation categories. Now, when you do SEO for your eCommerce site, you enjoy a high Google rank within a few months. It eliminates the need for paid advertising.
Check the below image. The first website (with “Ad” beside the URL) should pay for each click even if the users don’t buy. While on the other hand, the other two sites are ranking using SEO and don't need to pay anything. On top of that, people trust organic results more than advertised products.
All you need to do is keep using SEO strategies to ensure profits flow into the business. You can also get in touch with us to know about the benefits of SEO for eCommerce websites.

40. SEO Boosts Your Market Share

When you do SEO for your eCommerce site, your rank increases, people tend to find you more easily. They visit your sites and become your possible leads. If they show interest in your products, they will make a move. They either purchase from your site, subscribe to the newsletter, or sign up for becoming a member.
Whatever it is, they become your customers, and you witness a rise in your conversion rate. And every time it happens, you earn a share of the market.

41. Enables You to Rank for Seasonal Searches

The architecture of an eCommerce site enables its owner to incorporate incentives seasonally.
For example, you enable you to offer a 20 percent discount on sunglasses. If you implement SEO, people tend to find your site while searching for ‘sunglasses on offer.’
Here’s an example of how SEOs help rank websites during seasonal searches.
Make use of SEO for your eCommerce website and expand your market reach.

42. With SEO, You Are in Control

As an owner of an eCommerce site, you want to grab every opportunity to advertise your products.
Now, in that process, will you trust an outsider to take the calls on your behalf?
Not, right? But if you do not do SEO properly, your eCommerce site remains at the mercy of the search engine.
When you optimize its structure and content, you decide the way people and Google view it. This way, you are in complete control of your website.

43. SEO Elevates Your Brand

People start noticing an eCommerce site only after it creates a name of its own. Consider the popular eCommerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, and the like. They became familiar after establishing their brand names.
The same applies to your site too. Until you establish your name, it becomes hard to divert traffic. But with proper SEO strategies, you are on the right path.
Within a few months, people start knowing about your brand name and even trust your products.

44. SEO Brings in Higher Close Rate

Leads coming from SEO have a higher close rate than leads generated by outbound marketing.
When you track customers gained through cold leads, the conversion rate will be less. In comparison, customers coming through SEO will have a higher conversion rate. It is one of the reasons SEO is a boon for any eCommerce site.
As you gain a high rank on Google, millions of people visit you. Every time they make a purchase, your conversion rate increases.

45. SEO Enhances Brand Credibility

You have listed several products for sale on your eCommerce site. However, customers will not buy any of them unless they can trust you. As you do SEO, with time, you secure top rank on Google.
People trust Google. And when Google shows your name on the top of the search engine result pages, people tend to trust you too. It helps you gain credibility. It is vital to rule the market and expand your product line.

47. SEO Is Not Optional If You Want to Rank Higher

If you want to secure a higher position on Google search result pages, SEO cannot be an option that you can ignore. Remember, all other eCommerce sites like Alibaba and Amazon are using SEO.
By effectively using SEO, they are giving you a tough competition. You can now get an edge over them if you understand SEO’s Importance for an eCommerce site. You need to implement the SEO correctly. However, you need to be patient.
You need to put constant efforts into researching keywords and optimizing your site. By doing it, you get the results.

48. SEO Multiplies Other Marketing Efforts

You have several products on your eCommerce site. You also maintain a description page for each of the products. But,

• Have you optimized the content by adding the right keywords?
• Have you optimized your products’ pictures?
• Or Have you proof-read your entire site?

If not, your fancy new website will fail to have the desired impact on your users and search engines.
To reap all the benefits of your site, you need to implement SEO. SEO strategies multiply your impact on others.

49. SEO Will Bring In Loyal Customers

For your eCommerce site to shine, you need people to visit it, spend time on it, and buy a product. As you implement SEO, your site secures a higher rank on Google. It results in more people visiting your site.
SEO strategies also include optimizing your site and securing credible backlinks.
All these help visitors trust you. They start considering your brand products and eventually make the purchase. With time, their loyalty towards your brand increases. It helps you beat your competitors.

50. SEO Ensures In-depth Website Analysis

To be in the game, you need to keep your website updated, always. It requires a continuous analysis of your website.
An SEO firm does that. Their staff will constantly check your site and make the necessary changes, whenever required. They update a product page when the product goes out of stock, repair broken links, remove 404 pages, and so on.
Relevant : Tips for Your eCommerce Landing Page
Apart from this, they ensure visitors can avail themselves of the offers and discounts. They also scrutinize every aspect of your site to find out ways to refine them.
These are some of the SEO Benefits for an eCommerce website. Get in touch with us to know more.