We hear it so often; Do I really need to bother with SEO for my eCommerce site?

In a word, yes. Yes you do.

What’s interesting is why might you think SEO isn’t important for an eCommerce website?

So, Why Is SEO Important For eCommerce?

SEO is crucial because it drives traffic. When done correctly, traffic converts into revenue. As an eCommerce business, this bottom line is likely to be your motivation and bread and butter.

If you look at Google Analytics for any eCommerce site and filter by organic traffic, you’re likely to see the lowest bounce rate, highest session duration and competitive sales and conversion values compared to other channels. This is because the users clicking through to your site are motivated. They’ve actively searched to find you and what you do, they’re already in the sales funnel.

But, Couldn’t I Just Run Paid Ads Instead Of SEO?

In theory, yes you could.

However, so many businesses are over reliant on pay per click advertising, particularly in eCommerce, because they’re hunting for the ‘quick win’ and then become dependent on it for scaling their brand.

It’s widely believed that paid advertising is easier to quantify because there is an input and an output. Money goes in and revenue comes out, which is always very appealing when you’re selling goods. It will always be clear if the work you’re doing isn’t profitable in paid marketing. However, it’s a myth that eCommerce SEO isn’t equally as measurable.

You can set up goals and conversion tracking in Google Analytics to understand the real, tangible value that SEO is adding to your business.

Ultimately, if you asked our opinion as an SEO agency, we’d encourage you to do both paid and organic marketing. SEO will fuel Google ads and could bring down your CPCs by boosting relevance and achieving a higher quality score.

As your market becomes more and more competitive and saturated over time, it’s likely that cost per clicks and cost per actions are going to rise. Whereas ranking at the top of Google organically delivers the ultimate ROI.

Don’t Miss Out On Business

Consider the lost lifetime value of simply not doing SEO.

Choosing not to compete for organic positions is essentially just consigning them over to your competition.

You’re handing over potential customers, sales and revenue. Depending on the loyalty within your industry or niche, you may never get those customers back.

Simply competing for positions in SERPs can drive brand awareness - even if you are also running paid activity - because you’re getting your name out there. SERPs are essentially real estate and the more you can stamp your brand all over them, the more aware your audience will be of you and what you can offer.

And two is better than one - if you’re already showing for paid search or shopping ads, why wouldn’t you want to also rank for the search term organically? It’s a win win.

Not Sure Where To Start With eCommerce SEO?

Still not convinced on the importance of eCommerce SEO? Still think you don’t need it? Get in touch with us here at Damteq and we’ll show you the difference it can make.