The rise of e-commerce is not surprising. As more people learn and experience the convenience of online shopping, more and more consumers prefer to shop online rather than in person.
This change in consumer behaviour has been driving small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) for the past few years to transition to the e-commerce industry and establish online shops to make sales and increase their profit.
The problem, however, is that with millions of e-commerce websites that can be found on the internet, how can you get people to visit your online shop and browse your web pages?
Even though relying on paid ads on social media and search engines can be great for SMEs to raise brand awareness and gain conversion they come with a cost that requires a stream of income, which increases yearly.
To help your e-commerce business in the long-run, focus on SEO or search engine optimisation instead. Though it takes more effort and time to stabilise your SEO performance, it brings good conversion rate and helps the brand tap into the growing global e-commerce sales and drive online traffic to your online shop.
What Is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic refers to people visiting a website naturally by clicking on one of the web pages found on search engine results pages (SERPs) from unpaid sources.
Unpaid since the website owners did not pay Google, Yahoo, or Bing to rank their web pages to appear, which is why organic traffic is often known as free traffic since web visitors come and browse through the web pages without a cost.
The image below shows the difference between organic and inorganic traffic.
In this guide, you will learn the different ways you can help your e-commerce business with SEO to drive organic traffic to your online shop.
4 Ways To Drive Organic Traffic To Online Shop
1. Check To See If You Are Using the Correct Keywords
The first thing you need to do to drive organic traffic to your online shop is to use the correct keywords. These keywords are words or phrases your potential customers are searching for online. Knowing what keywords to use will help you optimise your content to help them appear on SERPs.
Conduct proper keyword research to know what you should use. Here are some of the tools for keyword research.
2. Use A Specialised External Keyword Research
Apart from the keyword research tools mentioned above, you can also use a specialised external keyword research tool. These are tools that analyse keywords of specific platforms like Amazon Market Place.
For e-commerce businesses, it is a good idea to cross-check the purchase journey and actions of the customer. In the case of Amazon, since it has more than 197 million online buyers per month, it is a gold mine for high buyer intent keywords. E-commerce business owners will learn the customer behaviour and pattern and apply what they have found to their niche.
To use specialised keyword research, let us say for Amazon, type a product name or keyword related to your niche. Choose a marketplace or country and the Amazon department, which will help narrow down the results. Once done, consider downloading the list so you will have a copy of what keywords you should use for your content, which you will post on your online shop.
3. Take Keywords Ideas From Ranking Websites
Another way to get keyword ideas is to find and take keywords from ranking websites. Just type your product or keyword on search engines, choose one of the ranking websites and click on their web page to scan through.
Since you want to rank higher and outcome the running websites, you should consider taking references from the top websites that are ranking for the keywords you are trying to optimise. Thus, ensure to see the structure of the website page, content, and any plugins, including the FAQs and contents that appear as featured snippets in SERPs.
After scanning through, think as thoroughly as possible to know how and what you could have done so your potential customers will also browse your web pages longer, check out your products or services and make a purchase.
Remember that there are other things to consider in SEO besides taking keywords ideas from ranking websites, such as domain authority, quality content, etc.
4. Include The Main Keyword In The URL
You can also drive organic traffic to your online shop by including the main keyword in the URL. Doing so will make your web pages SEO-friendly, which gives you an upper hand over your competitors.
Here is a good example of an optimised URL from Sephora. This beauty retail brand optimised its URL by adding categories and subcategories to its products. Doing so helps buyers find what they are looking for a lot easier.
Because of this, search engines can also index this URL properly and appear to the people searching for the same or similar keywords.For example, the image below shows a potential customer who is searching for a cleanser and exfoliator product. Since Sephora well-optimised its URL for this subcategory, Google recognises the keyword, which is why this one shows at the top of SERPs to give skincare recommendations to the potential customer searching for it.
To Sum Up
Implementing proper e-commerce SEO strategies can help you bring stable results to your digital marketing campaigns. The results might take a while, but your SEO efforts will bear fruit for a long time.
If you need a hand to guide you to the right SEO track, reach out to an SEO agency. Contact OOm at +65 6690 4049 or leave a message on our website and let us know how we can help.
