Did you know that almost 80 percent of people ignore search engine ads while browsing Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines? That’s why getting organic SEO traffic is so important. However, it is not the only reason why you need to prioritize SEO.
Today, I will review six reasons why SEO is essential for Shopify stores. If you are not yet prioritizing SEO as part of your e-commerce strategy, you need to start sooner rather than later. After reading this article, you should have a pretty good idea of why SEO is essential, even if you are already paying money for paid advertising.
Let us get into it.
1. Effective SEO Is Essentially Free Advertising
Even if you are earning an excellent ROI on your paid marketing efforts, it still pays to invest in SEO. If your SEO strategy is effective, it is essentially free advertising. Once you get good rankings in the Google search results, you can get free traffic every day, for years, without paying anything extra.
On the other hand, you have to constantly keep paying for traffic you get via PPC or social media ads. Even if you end up with a profit when all is said and done, you still have to keep spending money to maintain your traffic volume. Whereas with SEO, it is not necessary. You can maintain your existing Google rankings with minimal effort, and you can still keep getting new website visitors even if you take a break from working on SEO.
SEO is essentially free advertising, allowing you to improve your bottom line and increase your profits by a lot. Since you don’t have to pay much for SEO, most of the revenue you make as a result of an effective SEO strategy will be pure profit. If you are not satisfied with your current ROI, focusing more on SEO might help.
In 2021, global ecommerce is forecast to hit $4.89 trillion – almost a 400 percent increase in seven years.
2. Organic SEO Can Bring In Targeted Leads
One of the beauties of organic search results is that they can bring in targeted leads for free. You can target keywords that show buyer intent, for example, to attract targeted leads who are likely to make a purchase. It’s all about the keywords you target and rank for. A generic keyword like “baseball bats” might not be very specific because you don’t know what the intention of that particular search is. Do they want to buy a baseball bat? Or do they want to know what a baseball bat is?
On the other hand, a keyword like “the best baseball bat for kids” or “where to buy a baseball bat” shows buyer intent. That searcher is looking to buy a baseball bat, and if you can rank for that keyword, you can attract people looking to buy the product. The same goes for any kind of conversion you are trying to achieve, whether that is trying to get people to buy your product or sign up for your email list.
3. SEO Makes Your Store Easier to Find Online
Sometimes, one of the most challenging things about running a successful Shopify store isn’t getting people to buy from your store, but get them to find your store online. If someone is interested in purchasing a specific product because it fulfills a need, convincing them to make the purchase doesn’t take that much work. However, if they never find your store in the first place, you are not going to succeed, even if your store is highly optimized for conversions.
The problem with e-commerce stores is that they don’t have a lot of valuable content. Sure, you have product pages, but they don’t have a lot of informational content on them, for the most part. They can still rank, but that depends on the site. If the site is enormous, has a lot of links, has a lot of authority, and has been around for a long time, product pages will have an easier time ranking. Otherwise, it can be hard to rank, especially if you’re up against sites like Amazon, Walmart, and Target.
SEO for eCommerce stores usually involves some degree of blogging. Adding a blog to your store allows you to add informational content and get your website to rank. It also allows you to get backlinks to your site organically, and you can slowly build up your site’s reputation and authority.
4. SEO Optimized Sites Can Have Higher Conversions
Shopify stores that are optimized for SEO can have higher conversion rates for a few reasons. First of all, you can get a lot more visitors, which naturally translates to higher conversions. The more visitors you have, the more buyers you will have, even if your conversion rate stays the same.
However, there’s more to it than that. As I already mentioned, the vast majority of searchers ignore paid ads that pop up in the search results. Even if they do click on it, they tend to mistrust ads. That’s why people use ad blockers – they don’t like advertisers, who obviously have an ulterior motive. People tend to trust natural, organic search results because it provides provide helpful, informational content.
So, even if they do click on a paid ad, they might not trust what they see enough to make a purchase. They’re coming from a place of suspicion. On the other hand, when they see a helpful blog post, they’re often coming from a place of trust, as you are helping them out. Even if they land on a product page that shows up in the Google search results, they will likely trust it a lot more than a paid ad.
The more they trust you, the more likely they are to make a purchase. They’ll trust that the product you are providing is of good quality and that you will give a good customer experience. So, not only will you get more visitors, but your conversion rate (the percentage of visitors making a purchase) might go up as well.
Mobile e-commerce has seen particularly rapid growth worldwide, with Insider Intelligence forecasting that m-ecommerce will grow at a 25.5 percent compound annual rate until 2024.
5. High SEO Rankings Can Improve Your Brand’s Credibility and Engagement
A site without an SEO strategy and good rankings looks kind of suspicious. If you only rely on paid advertising and don’t have a blog that is getting high rankings, people won’t trust you as much. You won’t be able to position yourself as an authority in your niche, and you won’t be able to establish more credibility. You’re just another e-commerce site that nobody visits, resorting to ads to try to get sales.
However, if your site consistently ranks on the first page of Google for various search results, you are more likely to be respected. Your credibility will go up, and your brand will be looked at as an authority. People will trust you and the quality of your products more – that’s just how it works. People tend to trust the first few results on Google more because Google itself deemed them trustworthy enough to give them those rankings.
With more credibility, your engagement rates can go up. People might buy from you more, follow you more on social media, and leave comments on your posts. They may even share your content with friends and family who were looking for a product, service, or solution you were offering.
6. High SEO Rankings Can Position You As an Industry Leader
High SEO rankings do affect the way people look at your website and business overall. When people search for e-commerce products online, they expect to see industry leaders dominating the first page. For example, they might expect to see Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Target, and other famous e-commerce sites popping up on the first page, as those are leaders in the e-commerce industry.
In more specific industries, they might be expecting industry-specific sites. For example, if they are searching for baseball paraphernalia, they might expect to see the MLB Store pop up. If they are searching for hosting services, they might expect sites like GoDaddy to pop up. If your store pops up for whatever they are searching for, they will expect your site to be an industry leader and regard it as such, simply due to the fact that it appeared in the search results.
When people see your site on the first page of Google, they will be more likely to click on it, more likely to trust you, more likely to regard you as an authority, more likely to trust your recommendations, and more likely to make purchases on your site.
Shopify customers include major brands like Nestle, Pepsi, Unilever, and Budweiser, as well as innovative brands like Gymshark, Hawkers, and Leesa and celebrities like Kanye West (Sources: Shopify).
Hopefully, you now understand the importance of SEO for Shopify store owners. There are many plugins that can help you optimize your Shopify store for SEO. Increase your site’s authority by starting a blog, and improve the rankings of your product pages by optimizing the descriptions for keywords, getting backlinks, and including high-quality images. SEO is a process, and you won’t get results overnight, but the results you get are easy to maintain and can significantly increase your profits.
