How To Increase Online Sales Through SEO & Organic Search
As an ecommerce SEO company, the number one question I hear from store owners is:
How do I increase online sales through organic search?
To quote Ray Kroc of McDonalds, “No one knows all the answers to increased sales. If you did, you would be ripe and when you ripen, you rot.”
With that said, we will share some of our tips on how to increase online sales through SEO.
Page Title Tag Audit
Most companies ignore the most simple way to drive more traffic to their site: page title tags.
Page title tags are the words that appear when hovering over your browser tab when visiting a website.
If your page title tag says words like “Home” or “Welcome” – then your site is failing to communicate to search engines what your website and web pages are all about.
Title tags are important because search engines use them to connect web content with user search queries. If a user is searching for “mens tri-blend black t-shirts” then a search engine will retrieve all pages related to mens tri-blend black t-shirts.
But, if your page title tag is using nondescript key terms (like “Home” or “Shirts”), then the likelihood of appearing in a related search is slim.
Optimizing page title tags and meta descriptions enables an ecommerce website to start their SEO journey on a strong foundation.
This title tag audit provides an opportunity to take a close look at the initial optimization of a website, and to build upon the foundation.
Sometimes, revising page title tags is enough of an activity to increase online sales through SEO.
Action Item: Conduct a page title tag audit and implement recommendations.
Content Creation
A solid SEO content strategy identifies the right keywords and defines what content to create so that Customers get results.
Here are the steps to follow in creating a content strategy.
- Identify keywords (these SEO content marketing tactics will help)
- Get related keyword ideas to initial keyword ideas (tools like Ahrefs Keyword Explorer help)
- Gather information about search volume, difficulty, and cost per click for each keyword (again, using a tool that pulls data from Google)
- Prioritize keywords based on relevance, search volume, difficulty, and cost per click
- Create content ideas for each keyword including a Page Title and Synopsis. (Use a tool like CoSchedule to help with headlines)
- Add the content (Synopsis, Target Keyword, other Notes) to a project management tool to be executed
Creating a Content Strategy is one of the most essential steps in order to increase online sales through SEO.
The end result? Your highly targeted content creation efforts begin to rank for keywords. The website attracts organic traffic since these keywords are searched at a predictable, high volume each month. Online sales increase since a percentage of traffic converts.
A great example? We created a blog post for an ecommerce client that ranked for a highly searched keyword. Within 4 months, we ranked on the first page. Revenue from organic search traffic doubled, adding another $50,000 per month to online sales.
Happy brainstorming! If you need additional inspiration for keywords, here is a blog post walking you through some steps on how to identify the right keywords to target.
Action Item: Create an SEO content strategy and produce content on a weekly basis.
Share Content On Social Media
Wait a second, wasn’t this article supposed to be about increasing online sales through SEO? Why are we venturing into Social Media?
Well, because SEO and Social Media marketing work together.
If you didn’t click on that link, it’s worth a look to learn how social shares boost SEO traffic.
If you want the short version, here are a few ways to increase social shares.
- Share content on your brand’s social media accounts
- Ask employees or friends your network to share content on their social media accounts
- Share content with relevant social media users (BuzzSumo is a great tool for this)
The end result is more social media shares. Which, builds traffic from both social and SEO sources. And then, increases online sales organically.
Most brands work with influencers for pure product placement and endorsement. But, we’ve found that working with influencers in different ways can produce greater long-term results.
Action Item: Work with influencers to share content, not just products.
Digital PR
How does Digital PR increase online sales?
- Drives referral traffic from relevant and trusted websites
- Links help boost search engine rankings, which helps boost organic search traffic
Digital PR can range from a mention in a niche discussion forum to a guest post on a relevant website to an inclusion on a review page.
The goal of Digital PR is to increase the number of mentions a brand receives online.
The more mentions, the more traffic an ecommerce site can receive.
What are the best ways to identify relevant websites for Digital PR?
- Audit competitor backlink profiles to see how they have secured their mentions
- Google your keywords to see what results appear on the first 10 pages
- Identify people in your network who could make an introduction to an editor
Bottom Line: referral traffic drive relevant inbound traffic from trusted sources. Traffic being driven from trust converts, and sales increase.
Action Item: Identify relevant websites and figure out an angle to contribute content.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures that a website makes it easy for a customer to purchase.
Here is a short list of why customers don’t buy from you:
- Website loads too slow
- Connection is not secure
- Page no longer exists
- Not mobile optimized
- Navigation is difficult
The list goes on, but these are some common issues facing ecommerce sites in regards to customers.
Then, there are search engines to keep happy too. Here is a short list of why search engines don’t rank your ecommerce website:
- Indexing: Robots.txt, Canonicalization
- Status Codes: 3xx, 4xx, 5xx
- XML / HTML Sitemaps
- Duplicate content or Thin content
- Page Speed: Rich media compression, Caching, Server Optimization, CDN, Script compression, Parallel downloads and minify
Technical SEO keeps both customers and search engines happy. By ensuring your site is error free, the path is clear for customers to make a purchase.
How do you know which issues are impacting your site? An SEO audit can help identify these issues.
Action Item: Conduct a SEO audit and correct the discovered issues.
What Else?
These five tactics will increase online sales through SEO. The only other thing to know? SEO takes time to see an impact. According to Google, even SEO services should be given 4-12 months to see results.
If you are looking for immediate ways to increase online sales, then SEO and organic may not be the best bet.
But, if you are looking to build something predictable and sustainable, then SEO and organic search can deliver the holy grail of ecommerce: recurring revenue.
Contact us today to learn more about how we help websites with their ecommerce SEO.
