Without a thoughtful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy, paid ads and other forms of online promotion can only do so much. SEO concepts and rules apply to online advertising as much as they do web pages, articles and blogs. By combining paid and SEO strategies, you can solidify your Google rankings while optimizing your exposure across all web platforms.
To begin, let’s take a look at how mastering SEO strategies can enhance your eCommerce site traffic and help you outperform your competition.
SEO Strategies: Keyword Searches
Keywords are a foundational element of eCommerce SEO content. Why? Keywords are what people use to find the right web pages through Google searches.
Interestingly, paid ads can be bolstered by well-researched, keyword-rich content. Studies show that users are more likely to click on paid ads if a company’s ad appears organically in the search results page. In other words, the higher your organic rankings, the more likely a user will be to click on your paid listing.
When inserting keywords into your content, ask yourself the following questions:
- Who is your audience?
- What combination of keywords will users type in to find your website, your social media page or your ads? In other words, what is the user’s intent?
- How do those keywords directly correlate with the content on your platforms?
- Where and how often should you use those keywords?
- Are the keywords reasonably easy to rank?
For example, let’s say you’re selling reusable water bottles online. Your audience may be athletes, travelers, office staff or people who spend a lot of time outdoors. Your audience may type in keywords like water bottles, plastic water bottles or sports bottles. They may intend to purchase a water bottle online or based by location.
Keywords correlate best with your content when you place them in core elements such as:
- The site URL
- Meta descriptions and title tags
- Titles, H1s and H2s
- Throughout all content channels (organically incorporated into paragraphs and sentences)
- Online media, such as photos, graphics and videos
- Product titles and descriptions
Add More Web Content to Your eCommerce Site
There’s a reason web designers and eCommerce marketing companies insist on clients adding website content. Not only will your online store rank for more keywords, but you can create more internal links to other pages on the site.
One of the fastest and easiest ways to add content is by writing blogs or editorial articles that are optimized for SEO. Essentially, you’re adding valuable keywords to every page while ensuring that it is readable and scalable for the user. You can integrate your paid search strategy here by evaluating the best-performing keywords in your paid ads and incorporating them into your marketing content.
All blogs and articles should be user-centric and focused on relevant topics with fresh information and content to set your articles apart from the competition. If your article provides the same information written similarly as other online content, you will get no traction with Google ranking.
When writing an eCommerce article, remember these helpful guidelines:
- Create catchy and compelling H1s and H2s that keep the reader moving down the page.
- Don’t waste the reader’s time. Get to the point of the topic in the first sentence and stay focused the entire time.
- Eliminate all fluff or filler from the online article. Readers are more impressed with useful information than they are your ability to write creatively.
- Optimize for SEO in every article. This serves the primary purpose of producing the content.
Integrating Paid Search into Your SEO Strategy
Now that we’ve established how well powerful SEO content can work to boost your site’s performance, let’s consider how to put SEO and paid search tools together for even better results. Teams that combined SEO and pay-per-click (PPC) efforts reported a 30 percent increase in organic site traffic and a 25 percent boost in paid clicks, resulting in a rise in quarterly profits by 20 percent.
Combining both strategies ensures that you’re spending the right funds in the most valuable ways — i.e., investing in ads that are particularly hard to target organically with SEO and using SEO to capture easier targets — and saving time by sharing keyword data with paid search. It’s important to combine your data to discover keywords, user trends and demographics that can apply to both SEO and paid advertising. In other words, don’t perform two separate sets of audits or reports. In many cases, the results will be the same.
Your paid and SEO teams should be working together to identify critical elements, like demographic information, peak sales times and data on which keywords yield the highest returns. In short, well-done SEO is good for paid search and vise versa.
By reinforcing your paid advertising with strong SEO practices, you will create a site that your users can quickly discover and enjoy. Remember that good SEO strategy strengthens both your content and your UX in the same platform. With a good strategy, you’ll notice an uptick in site traffic and sales conversions, which will help you outpace the competition.
Have more questions about mastering SEO and PPC tactics for your online store? Drop by to ask one of our Customer Success Specialists a question or use the eCommerce scorecard to learn how your online business stacks up in the marketplace.
