Would you like to generate traffic on your e-commerce website that's as congested as New York's Broadway during rush hour? As an e-commerce business owner, you should; and this is where e-commerce SEO comes in. Having a well-established SEO strategy in place can help your business thrive and leverage the rapid growth of e-commerce worldwide. In this article, we'll discuss why SEO is important for e-commerce and how it affects your e-commerce site's visibility.

To understand the importance of SEO for e-commerce, you have to understand what SEO is and how SEO and SERPs work.
Search engine optimization (SEO), is a process of improving your business' website to increase its visibility and positioning in search engine results pages (SERP) when people search for products offered by your e-commerce store.
The better visibility and search rankings your e-commerce store has, the more likely you are to attract potential customers to your business. This is called non-paid or organic search, and it can significantly boost your organic traffic, which increases your conversion rates and, interestingly enough, helps improve your SERP rankings further.
You'd want to increase your SERP through SEO because over 60% of all traffic on the Internet comes from search engines like Google Search or Bing. Surprisingly, 27.5% go through redirects and backlinks, and only 6.44% come from social media, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
What makes SEO important for businesses and business owners is the fact that more than 59% of shoppers use Google to research in-store or online purchases, and 74% of consumers stated that they've searched for various products online before buying them, either online or in-store.
54% of organic traffic goes to the top three page results, while those who ranked on the second page of Google Search collectively get only about 5% of traffic. Knowing these numbers, it's easy to understand why it's crucial to rank on the first page of search results. If your e-commerce website isn't on page one, you're missing out on massive business opportunities.
Rising Competition in E-Commerce
Over the past few years, the rise of various e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, and even AliExpress, revolutionized how consumers shop and engage with their favorite brands. As a result, businesses operating in the digital space had to adopt a variety of digital marketing techniques to reach their target audiences, making SEO critical.
Most users are well acquainted with the aforementioned e-commerce platform, as they're global players that continuously dominate the market, owing to their extensive product offering and robust supply chains.
The quality content that's often featured on said platforms through product pages, paired with consistent traffic and high search volume, affords them to rank well in SERP without having a well-established and actionable SEO strategy.
However, that doesn't mean your e-commerce business can't compete against giants, especially considering the growth of niche and direct-to-consumer brands, with businesses focusing primarily on specific product categories and target audiences. Their success is currently changing the landscape of competitive dynamics in the e-commerce industry.
How SEO Tactics Have Adapted for E-Commerce
To maintain their SERP ranking and online visibility and compete with major e-commerce platforms, e-commerce businesses had to adapt SEO tactics to better suit their needs. This includes employing several SEO strategies to increase your e-commerce business SERP rankings.
These strategies include both on-page SEO, technical SEO, and off-site SEO practices. On-page SEO refers to the process of optimizing online store web pages' content. This implies crafting high-quality content that's backed up by extensive target keyword research, including both short- and long-tail keywords, as well as adequate internal links, product descriptions, and meta descriptions.
Well-crafted product reviews centered around specific keywords are a good example of content creation, and most users rely on services such as Ahrefs or Google Keyword Planner to find the right keyword ideas for content structuring.
It's a form of content marketing, but it's either written on your e-commerce business's blog or on your own website leading to the e-commerce page itself. Make sure to avoid duplicate content as well. The next step of your e-commerce SEO strategy would be to optimize the technical aspect of your e-commerce website.
This includes optimizing the website for faster site speed and page load times and mobile responsiveness and having a discernable and user-friendly site structure, all of which significantly improve user experience. People don't like slow page speeds, and failing to optimize your technical SEO will likely see your customers going to the competition with a more optimized website.
Lastly, we should discuss off-page SEO, which refers to the optimization done outside your own website or e-commerce site that directly influences your SERP rankings as well as your thematic authority and relevance, all of which are the ranking factors.
Off-page SEO is all about link building and backlinks to other thematically relevant and reputable places on the Internet that link to or promote your website, "vouching" for the quality of your material. However, it also involves removing or replacing broken links, brand mentions, collaborations with influencers, and social media marketing.
A comprehensive SEO strategy involves all of the aforementioned aspects of SEO, all working together to improve your e-commerce's SERP.
How Long Does E-commerce SEO Take?
In most cases, implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy might take up to six months before any noticeable changes in the performance and traffic metrics because SEO is a long game.
Unfortunately, when it comes to SERPs, the long game is all that matters, so consider SEO a part of your comprehensive digital marketing strategy. It requires continuous maintenance and updates, but when implemented correctly, SEO yields a fantastic return on investment.
Boost Your E-Commerce Performance With an Effective SEO Strategy

Developing and implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy is crucial for your businesses, as it does more than boost your SERPs; it exposes your brand to a wider audience and affirms your hematic relevance or authority as a prominent player on the market.
Developing a comprehensive SEO strategy takes a whole team of experts to adequately implement all the SEO tools across different product and category pages, as well as off-page implementations, all of which are meant to bring your homepage in front of a higher number of web searchers.
If you're interested in boosting your SEO, don't hesitate to call in the experts. Orchard Marketing offers full-service and data-driven digital marketing solutions and the hands-on approach and expertise you need to propel your e-commerce to success.
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