Semalt: Why Is SEO Important For E-Commerce?

Creating a store is just one of the first steps in making consistent sales in your online store. There are many SEO strategies for e-commerce and traffic to your site, but one of the best long-term strategies is to optimize for the search engines.

Internet companies have been pushed to optimize their search engine strategies to better target the right types of traffic with great success. Search engine optimization has reached such a level of familiarity that even people whose profession is not in the field of digital marketing can explain the relationship between keywords and their listing in search engine results.

With that in mind, it would initially seem a bit, that business owners will have to optimize their content on the page in order to become more competitive in the online race.

Whether SEO gives more traffic is answered by thousands of studies that prove it has, but when asked how it can make a positive contribution to something as important as e-commerce, it is much more difficult for most e-commerce executives to give a clear and concise answer.

This should come as no surprise, as you will see below. Internet technology and SEO best practices have evolved much faster than users have been able to appreciate their full potential.

You need to understand at least the basics of SEO in an active set of e-commerce building tactics.

At a very fundamental level, it could be said with certainty that the more targeted potential customers are to visit your site, the more likely one (or several) of them are to become customers.

It is no secret that a properly implemented search engine optimization strategy can lead to an increased number of web visitors to your site. With a conversion rate of 2.5%, on average, it is relatively safe to assume that for every 1000 extra visitors you receive thanks to your SEO strategy, there may be 25-30 new customers.

With this in mind, not only does SEO seem like a viable method for improving both unpaid and paid traffic, but it also makes it clear that the increased number of conversions generated as a result of the SEO strategy can easily repay the money you invested in the initial development of the optimization framework. Compared to other strategies such as pay-per-click (PPC), search engine optimization involves a much longer-term effort. Unlike "renting" your traffic, a proper long-term SEO strategy can create equity in your site, which will not disappear once your ad campaign is over!

While such a profit from search engine optimization may not be possible until months after the optimization is complete, it is quite certain that you will receive a significant increase in your customer base as a result of such policies, especially if you succeed in a high keyword strategy.

Of course, potential customers who successfully convert to your site and become customers could quickly repeat purchases in the near future. A positive experience lends itself to repetitive consumer interactions and part of a long-term SEO strategy focuses on cultivating a positive experience even after the initial transaction.

Because of this, it could also be mentioned that, due to the increase in traffic and conversions as a result of SEO, marketers can also enjoy improved visits as well as consumer returns.

It would be a critical mistake to believe that e-commerce-based businesses save huge amounts of money by avoiding the traditional sales platform.

Whether investing in other media or buying space to target ads on popular websites, e-commerce businesses are often forced to spend amazing amounts of money on programs that may or may not pay off their ROI.

Is there a lot of money? It is, but keep in mind that these investments are not a luxury, but rather a smart investment in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving economic ecosystem that is just revealing its true potential on the world stage.

That said, search engine optimization can provide a powerful boost to organic search engine visibility and overall traffic simply because it offers sustainable, consistent improvements to overall page rankings in a way that advertising costs simply cannot.

Think of it this way: if, for example, a company invested in a paid online advertising campaign to promote a new product instead of funding an SEO improvement team, it could reasonably expect a significant increase in overall search traffic for the duration of the advertising, but an equally significant drop in traffic once the campaign ended.

The reason for this is the following: although advertising can generate a huge audience of interest, it does not offer substantial improvements in overall SEO and, consequently, in the ranking of your page in major search engines. Once your ad campaign is over, your site will be almost back in the dark…

While search engine optimization almost always requires a much larger investment of time to deliver results, the profits from these strategies also guarantee long-term improvements in search traffic.

In return for your patience, search engine optimization will give you an extended flow of potential customers for the near future, ultimately exceeding your ad display at a fraction of the cost.

If the debate over the effectiveness of SEO as a tool for promoting e-commerce has led to some conclusions in recent years, perhaps the most important thing is this: The "value" of SEO as an e-commerce utility stems directly from the fact that a website who has not been optimized will not be able to compete with those who have invested in this service. This is largely due to the fact that non-optimized sites will be downgraded to the lower areas of search engine results, which all potential customers, or almost if any, have never seen.

Once e-commerce SEO has reached the "industry standard" level, it has become a requirement for businesses of all interests and sizes to follow its guidelines. 

Given the fact that it is virtually impossible for e-commerce platforms to reach these valuable rankings on Google or other search engines, it could therefore be correlated that the lack of SEO leads to an almost lack of visibility.

When discussing SEO as the "industry standard" formatting protocol for major search engines, it is also important to remember that this method of improving visibility is also directly related to improving the overall experience for visitors on their way to the website.

Google now has a number of metrics, as part of the search engine ranking methodology, which is a complete departure from the initial repetitions of SEO. Having a mobile-friendly website, for example, significantly improves search engine rankings, while business owners who have not yet customized their website to accommodate mobile and tablet devices can expect a significant drop in page rankings.

Similarly, sites with abnormally long load times fall down in the list of search results in favor of those that are able to load quickly. Both the mobile-friendly metric and page load time clearly indicate that the overall customer experience remains a priority for search engine providers.

Looking at the two issues we just discussed, page load time and mobile-friendliness, it's clear that optimization in 2022 and beyond is as much about automated "bots" analyzing and ranking your website as it is about consumers visiting it to make purchases.

Knowing that Google's emphasis is on comfort and convenience, it is now widely accepted that e-commerce sites that rank well in search engines provide a higher quality shopping experience than their competitors.

Because of this, SEO can prove to be the focus, a tool that will help you maintain a quality shopping experience for your customers rather than a rigorous set of instructions with no real connection to the average consumer.

While it is possible to break away from the various search engine optimization positions and how to ensure optimal compliance, a more general statement must first be made, and this is as follows: Search engine optimization will create a better and more professional website than you had before the start of the process.

Whether you've started the process of optimizing your site or not, it is important to understand why these changes are necessary and not just follow the status quo. It is a unique indicator of the somewhat opaque nature of digital marketing that a staggering number of business owners admit to investing in online marketing tools like the DSD and strategies, without even coming close to understanding how these systems work.

Search engine optimization has gained a reputation for being somewhat obscure, due to the rapid development of SEO algorithms for e-commerce and therefore the demand offered by consumers but also due to the fact that most business leaders can not find a description of it -optimization method-.

It is essential that you approach search engine optimization as methodically as any traditional form of advertising. Identifying the myriad parameters that can go a long way in ranking search engines is the first step towards consolidating an effective and useful SEO strategy.

Analyzing the technical details of your website with the Dedicated SEO Dashboard tool and creating a more holistic overview of the user experience can shed light on the page design aspect which, although not necessarily, could benefit from its improvement.

As a final thought to consider, it is worth mentioning that search engine optimization remains significantly more accessible than most digital ad formats available today.

In conclusion, SEO for e-commerce has become its own highly effective tool and, in many ways, balances power between small and medium-sized businesses around the world today.

For those who are willing to spend time and energy identifying and improving various shortcomings in overall SEO coherence, a guaranteed boost to e-commerce success is right here. This is not only a commonly accepted aspect of the new 21st-century digital marketing and e-commerce space, but also an indisputable fact of doing business with a website today. Without optimization, there is virtually no way for those who are truly committed to enhancing the visibility and success of their own platform to compete effectively.

Therefore, we strongly recommend search engine optimization for all business owners, no matter how long the e-commerce platform was connected to the internet or how successful it was before;