It’s tough work building an eCommerce brand. It takes the right products, an understanding of your target audience, strong marketing, and pure grit. When sales fluctuate and Google throws curveballs at your rankings, you have to be ready to weather the storm and forge ahead.
Working with an eCommerce SEO agency that has experience building effective marketing campaigns for online stores is the best choice if you want to build your brand and gain positive attention in your niche. A skilled marketing company can provide you with everything you need to start expanding your reach and attract more customers.
In this guide we will highlight some of the benefits of SEO that specifically apply to building your brand online and growing your business properly. This includes why establishing a long term relationship with a skilled SEO company is one of the best moves you can make as you work on establishing yourself as an authority in your industry.
What Does it Take to Build an eCommerce Brand?
Other than a stellar product line and excellent customer service, the key to growing an online business is with a rock-solid digital marketing strategy. Of course, you have to take the right approach. There’s a lot more to marketing than just paying for some ads in order to give your traffic a boost.
Proper growth comes from a strategic marketing approach, with smart search engine optimizations at the forefront of your efforts. While you might be inclined to focus on social media for brand awareness, SEO should make up the bulk of your strategy. The reason for this being is that in general, your presence in organic search results holds a lot more weight than your presence on social media. While both are valuable and quite useful, getting noticed on Google should be your primary focus.
This is a tall order, especially for stores in crowded niches or if you are only just starting out when it comes to building your brand image. You have to perform a wide variety of technical SEO updates and create highly optimized content to even have a chance at really moving up in the SERPs.
Here are just a few of the tasks that an eCommerce SEO company would be able to assist you with:
- Thorough keyword research
- Ongoing site updates such as meta title optimizations
- SEO blog writing that is designed to get you found in the search engines and also up your readership, which will boost your brand authority naturally
- Improve your interlinking so that your website makes more sense from the perspective of the Google web crawlers
- Help you appear more often for search terms in your niche, thereby improving your reputation across the web
- Establish powerful backlinks that will work to boost your site’s domain authority
- Publish press releases that get distributed throughout the web and which will lend even greater visibility and credibility to your business
This is just a sampling of the kinds of tasks that an SEO agency will perform for you. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to handle all of these tasks on your own as an online business owner. Not only are they highly technical and require a professional touch, there’s enough work here for several full time jobs. Hence the need for an entire dedicated agency to work on your SEO.
Building a brand with eCommerce marketing might seem like an uphill climb, but that’s why it’s so important to work with the right agency. By selecting the right team of experts to help you build an effective SEO campaign that is fully customized to your needs, you will be much more likely to get the kind of results you are looking for.
The Benefits of Working With an eCommerce SEO Agency
So what are the specific benefits you can look forward to if you find the right agency for your eCommerce business?
Truthfully, there are many great benefits of eCommerce SEO. Even from a technical standpoint, your website will be optimized and will provide a better user experience. Over time, SEO campaigns tend to increase conversion rates and lead to a stronger business overall.
The following benefits are relative to building an eCommerce brand and might be areas of your business that you are currently struggling with.
Increase in Targeted Traffic
When it comes to marketing, there are several ways to boost traffic. However, site visitors are only valuable if they are truly targeted for your business. Low-quality traffic is not only a burden on your website, it can actually depress your rankings if they bounce too fast.
Instead of just trying to attract any kind of traffic you can get your hands on, it’s much smarter to invest in ways of attracting targeted traffic, and one of the best ways to do this is with properly managed eCommerce SEO services.
Targeted traffic is a massive boon to any brand, and a great sign that your brand as a whole is becoming more recognized and is moving in the right direction. If you are able to bring in traffic that is interested in the products you feature or that often frequents your niche, you are going to see much healthier signals such as a lower bounce rate and even an increase in sales.
This is perhaps one of the best reasons to go after targeted traffic, the sales factor. In online retail, you want to bring in customers that have a high likelihood of actually buying your products. Through a strategic SEO campaign, you can actually choose keywords and create content that is designed to target your ideal customers.
As a brand-building tactic, this works wonders. As you appear more often in the search results for queries related to your niche, you’re going to get noticed whether shoppers buy from you or not. As long as you begin appearing more often alongside your competitors, you’re going to enter into the conversation. This can also mean appearing more often in local map listings and in special searches like Google Image search.
More Brand Recognition
In general, you can expect better brand recognition to come from a properly implemented SEO plan for your eCommerce store.
The magic happens in the search results. The more often you appear for important search terms related to certain products, the more often users will take notice of your brand name, the more often they will see your logo, and the higher likelihood that they will take note of what products you have available.
In a way it’s a simple numbers game. Appear more often for more related keywords, and this will naturally lead to a stronger brand that is recognized by more people and that has a greater amount of authority.
Another way in which SEO builds brand authority is through regular blog posting. This is a big one that many store owners ignore because it’s so difficult to write quality blog posts on a regular basis. Many eCommerce merchants don’t even have a blog and think blogging doesn’t matter.
The reality is that Google is constantly looking for site updates and fresh content on your site, especially content that will benefit users. Not only this, properly written blog content will also help provide additional context and authority to the rest of your site, which will help to boost your product and category rankings in the search results. There is literally no excuse not to have a professional blog on your website, as this is a key part of offering a well-rounded experience for your shoppers.
The prospect of writing SEO optimized blog articles is a daunting one at best, however, if you aren’t partnered with a professional eCommerce SEO agency. With the help of an agency, you will be able to regularly publish high-quality articles that are written within the framework of a larger and carefully laid out strategy that is designed to get you noticed in Google and give you that brand boost you’re looking for.
A Better Quality Shopping Experience
A professional SEO campaign will also include much-needed technical updates to your ecommerce website. These include correcting server related issues, empty category pages, meta title changes, site speed optimizations, and other important areas where a poor UX could mean an unsatisfied shopper.
How do you build an attractive brand? By making the shopping experience a pleasant one, of course. This is marketing 101. If your store is professional and fun, and it is easy to find certain products and purchase them without any hassle, your shoppers are going to spread the word about you naturally.
The best marketing is viral marketing and it’s nearly impossible to generate this artificially. To induce it, you are going to want to do everything in your power to make sure your store is properly optimized. No matter which eCommerce platform you are on, a dedicated team of eCommerce professionals will be able to jump into your website and make the necessary technical changes that will produce results.
As far as building a strong brand is concerned, you don’t want to skimp on the quality of your website. Even if you have an amazing product line, if users have to forge a veritable river just to buy from you, your brand isn’t going to take off. If you invest in your SEO, your site will look cleaner and run smoother, which will not only please the search engines, it will make your uses happy as well.
The Best Way to Navigate Through Google Updates
One of the biggest headaches you will face while running an online business is having to deal with Google’s constant algorithm updates. While properly optimized websites don’t really have to worry all that much, it’s of the utmost importance to have a qualified team at your back that is constantly monitoring these changes and making the appropriate adjustments in the background in order to ensure you are in good standing.
Google’s algorithm is designed to help users find exactly what they are looking for, whether it is a product, information, advice, or a service. In the process of adjusting the algorithm in order to make this happen, these “Google updates” can cause upheavals in the SERPs. Even a small error or lack of optimization, or improperly used keyword, can send your rankings plummeting.
Truly the only way to avoid this and having your brand damaged is with the constant aid of a qualified SEO agency. Professional digital marketers that know exactly what Google is looking for will give your store a much better chance at weathering whatever Google comes up with, rather than trying to forge ahead alone in the dark. Don’t risk having your brand suffer due to lack of an understanding of certain Google trends.
The Importance of Investing in Your Store’s SEO
As you can see, starting a full-scale SEO campaign is one of the best ways to help grow your eCommerce brand. However, the kind of results you will get may come down to the agency you select.
This is why you need to place your faith in an eCommerce SEO agency that has a proven system when it comes to getting results for clients. Here at Genius eCommerce®, we have developed a sound approach to search engine optimization that includes on-page optimization, deep keyword research, regular technical updates, and a full-blown brand strategy that is customized for your specific business. Nothing we do here is cookie-cutter, as we create each campaign step by step according to the needs of your business.
Want to start building your brand the right way? It’s time to invest in an agency that actually knows how to put a smart strategy together that will not only help you strengthen your store’s image, but will also help you gain more traffic and sales as well.
If you are ready to get started, give our team of SEO professionals a call at 888.982.8269. We will help you form a strategy that will change the way shoppers see your business.