11 Ways SEO Can Affect eCommerce Websites’ Success in 2024

Whether you’ve just started an e-commerce business or been in the industry for a while, attracting more customers is vital. For e-commerce sites, higher and better quality traffic leads to more sales.

So, when funneling higher quality leads for your site, there’s no better than SEO. According to experts, SEO leads to better ROI than any other marketing tactic and leads to better results. Despite this, online sellers maintain their stores with almost no SEO strategy.

So, if you’re ignoring SEO or are unsure how it could provide value to your online store, this guide is for you. We’ll walk you through the basics of e-commerce SEO, why it’s crucial for your success, and how you can get started.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) includes a wide range of strategies tailored to enhance the quality and value of traffic that goes to your site. The goal is to help your site rank high on search engines, improving visibility and leads.

E-commerce SEO is also made to enhance the number of leads and the sales volume of your e-commerce site. So, even if your site already gets a lot of traffic, SEO strategies help you attract better-quality leads. So, not only will you improve your site traffic, but you’ll also be able to draw more visitors who are willing to buy.

Now, here are ways how SEO can affect your e-commerce site’s success:

1. Helps with Brand Awareness and Visibility

Brand awareness is one of the first steps in the marketing funnel, which often proceeds leads and sales. Before you start your own e-commerce website, customers need to know who you are and what your brand is all about before they can purchase from you. 

For a lot of marketers, brand awareness is the primary goal. While there are plenty of ways to drive brand awareness, e-commerce SEO is one powerful tool. 

If you rank well for queries related to your business, it’s easier to build recognition and trust with your prospective customers. 

2. Enhances Your Marketing Funnel

SEO lets you study the marketing funnel and drive more sales. Your e-commerce site needs to engage people in various stages of the funnel, from the awareness, research, and purchase phases.

So, what can be better than SEO? Various SEO strategies help drive more organic traffic from the awareness stage as well as in conversion rate optimization and it uses keywords that are intent-specific. Therefore, it encourages people to complete their journey on the funnel and leads to high conversion rates.

3. Gives More Traffic & Sales

Optimized sites rank better than non-optimized ones on search engines, resulting in more visits to your online store. With an optimized e-commerce site, you can attract more traffic and boost your sales. 

Your site also gets free organic traffic. But organic traffic isn’t just about getting more visitors from Google search results. You can also get it from other websites that link to your site. 

You can also boost your search rankings if you use target keywords and user-generated content from the products and services provided by your business.

4. Target Potential Customers

In the same way, e-commerce SEO helps you connect with customers who are already actively looking for your products on search engines. 

Thus, when you invest in e-commerce SEO, your brand will attract better-quality traffic because you’re targeting users who need your product offerings. 

5. Helps Improved User Experience

Aside from allowing you to reach your target audience, SEO can also enhance the overall user experience on your site. This includes site speed and navigation, ultimately affecting how likely users are to stay on your site and make a purchase. 

Moreover, providing quality user experience is a critical ranking factor, especially with Google. Suppose several users go to your site in large numbers but go back immediately to search results. 

In that case, Google will assume that your site isn’t relevant for that specific query, which can ultimately affect your rankings. 

6. Can Multiply Sales

The more clicks you get from people interested in your products, the higher the chance you’ll get better sales and profit. 

To show how effective SEO is in helping you land better sales, Hubspot reported a 14.6% close rate on search engine leads. This data is impressive, considering e-commerce stores have an average conversion rate of 2-4%. 

7. Increased Customer Engagement

One of the most critical factors to the success of a specific customer engagement program is to boost customer loyalty and satisfaction. One of the best ways to do this is to provide your customers with an experience they’ll remember, which can only happen if your site is optimized for search engines. 

Websites with clear navigation and compelling content will encourage people to visit your site repeatedly. As a result, they become loyal customers in the long run. 

8. Reduce Marketing Spend

SEO is one of the cost-effective marketing strategies, compared with other paid ad methods such as pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM.)

SEO makes it easier to get long-term results without breaking the bank, making it a valuable investment for your e-commerce business. 

9. Expand Remarketing Audiences

Your paid search team can put cookies for remarketing campaigns as soon as shoppers land on your site via organic search or other channels.

You can display ads to these shoppers when they leave your site and continue their journeys. The more people you can get to your site, the bigger your remarketing audience will be. 

SEO remarketing makes more sense when considering visits to content at the top of the funnel. As more shoppers explore the web, they’re passively reminded that you gave them something valuable. 

10. Creating Lasting Value

Another significant advantage of SEO is that it gives you long-term results. Once you’ve got high rankings on search engine results pages, it’s easier to maintain that position with consistent time and effort. 

This contrasts with paid advertising, which requires regular investment to maintain online visibility. 

11. Better Credibility

A high-quality site establishes trust between customers and brands. Customers feel more comfortable buying from businesses that have established themselves and have been around for years. 

A robust e-commerce SEO strategy allows you to become more responsive, publish high-quality content, look for spam links, and utilize other social media platforms to promote products and services. 

All of these activities help you gain your customer’s trust and make you credible in the long run. 

Over to You

So there you have it. As you know, there’s a lot of competition online. If you want it to succeed, your site needs to be noticed by your target audience. 

One of the effective ways to do this is via search engine optimization (SEO.) This requires optimizing your site so that it shows up on top of search engine results pages or SERPs.

So, if you want to boost your sales and expand your market, you must have a solid e-commerce SEO strategy. Doing so not only allows your site to benefit from SEO in terms of credibility, visibility, and long-term traffic. You can rank your site on search engines by adopting these handy SEO strategies. Good luck!