As E-commerce continues to grow, businesses look at all the digital marketing channels that can help them maximize their online visibility and increase sales. Every digital marketing channel, whether PPC or social media marketing, has its place, especially as businesses adopt an omnichannel marketing approach to reach as many customers as possible.
However, SEO remains one of the most effective ways for businesses to get online website traffic and increase their presence. Most consumers today start their online purchasing journeys by searching for a product, service, or business online. After all, the internet has put the entire world’s information at their fingertips, making it easier to research everything about a specific product or service before making an informed purchasing decision.
When people search for products or services online, they usually click the first few links to appear on their search engine’s first page. These links didn’t appear there by accident or luck. Instead, digital marketers engineered a stellar SEO strategy to ensure they appear at the top of the search results. Especially in a city like Grand Rapids, which was ranked as the second-best city for small businesses, according to a study by Lending Tree, you need a robust SEO strategy to beat your competition.
Implementing the right SEO strategies can also help your business increase sales. However, a generalized SEO strategy isn’t enough.
Today’s SEO landscape also requires a specialized local SEO strategy. Michigan businesses can rely on a well-reputed SEO Grand Rapids agency, such as Top of the List, to boost sales with a fool-proof SEO strategy.
Now, let’s examine how specific SEO strategies can help your business generate more revenue:
- Use Keywords Effectively for Better On-Page SEO
No SEO strategy is complete without keyword research and usage. Keywords have always been important for ranking in SERPs. However, effectively using keywords can help your website gain more traffic, leading to more sales.
Let’s assume you created an E-commerce website to sell boxing equipment online. Your website has punching bags, speed balls, boxing gloves, jump rope, and mouthguards for sale. You’ll want to ensure your keyword research and strategy utilizes relevant keywords for all these items. In addition, you’ll also want to research and use more generic boxing retailer keywords, such as “buy boxing products online,” “online boxing shop,” etc.
More importantly, the rising local SEO trend also requires incorporating local keywords in your keyword strategy. For instance, you’ll want to include keywords like “boxing gloves near me.”
Remember to incorporate long-tail keywords in your keyword strategy because they’ve become more common and result in higher conversion rates.
However, on-page SEO isn’t only restricted to keywords. It encompasses so much more. In addition to keywords, you’ll also want to use meta descriptions, image alt-texts, page titles, etc. Furthermore, you must ensure on-page SEO formatting by using headings and sub-headings because they improve readability.
- Combine Content Marketing with SEO
Content marketing and SEO work well together. After all, keywords don’t matter if they aren’t accompanied by great content. Content marketing is particularly effective at capturing customers during the early stages of their purchasing journeys. For instance, if you can persuade a customer to click on your website’s link to learn more about how a product works and why they need it, you’ve already accomplished half the task. You can use compelling content to convince them they need the product and then redirect them to your product or service offerings.
Content marketing is also invaluable because creating more content provides more opportunities to rank in SERPs. For example, creating blog posts and new web pages means you have more pages to rank in SERPs, resulting in higher traffic and sales.
- Focus on Product Descriptions
Search engines prefer websites with original and helpful content. If your website sells products, consider writing product descriptions yourself instead of using the descriptions provided by the manufacturer. It might be tempting to use the manufacturer’s product descriptions. After all, no one knows the product better than those who made it, and it’s less work for you. However, writing unique and new product descriptions benefits you and the consumer.
The consumer gets an in-depth opinion about the product directly from you, helping them make a more informed purchasing decision. Meanwhile, product descriptions also allow you to use product-related keywords to target customers. Incorporating relevant keywords can allow these product pages to rank higher in SERPs, boosting your website’s traffic and sales.
- Mobile-Friendly SEO
Optimizing your website for mobile devices is crucial. Statistics show that approximately 58.33 percent of global website traffic comes from a mobile device. If your website’s design doesn’t automatically optimize for mobile websites, you’ll likely lose consumers because navigating the site becomes difficult.
Furthermore, Google switched to mobile-first indexing in 2020, meaning Google’s crawlers navigate websites as if accessing them through a mobile device. Websites without a responsive, mobile-friendly web design suffer because these crawlers can’t properly index them. As a result, such websites don’t appear in SERPs.
Google’s guide for making websites work well for mobile-first indexing states that mobile versions must show users the same content as the desktop version, including text, images, links, etc. In addition, it also highlights that meta and structured data should be the same on both versions.
- Focus on Local SEO
Local SEO has become more important, especially as more users access the internet via mobile devices. A good local SEO strategy is also crucial because most users searching for products or items close to them already have a stronger buying intent than their non-local counterparts. According to research, 76 percent of people searching for products or services on their mobile devices visit a nearby business within a day.
Therefore, a local SEO strategy is vital for targeting customers further along their buying journeys. While most SEO strategies target potential customers earlier in their buying journeys, usually during the information-gathering stage, local SEO can help convert customers who already know everything about the product. These customers are looking for how and where to purchase the product instead.
As a result, these customers usually start their search queries with “Where to buy” or “product near me.” Ensure your local SEO strategy incorporates such keywords to maximize sales.
- Leverage Social Media to Your Advantage
While social media isn’t an SEO ranking factor and doesn’t directly contribute to SEO rankings, having a well-established social media presence can help as search engine crawlers use these pages for social proof (reviews, likes, and comments) when determining a website’s credibility and authority.
Conclusion
SEO is a particularly effective tool for getting more traffic to your website. The right SEO strategies can help you turn this traffic into sales. Incorporate a robust on-page, off-page, and local SEO strategy for the best results.
