How an eCommerce SEO Consultant Can Grow Your Online Store

Why Is SEO Important?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential part of an online business’s marketing efforts. After all, what’s the point in having a digital store if your potential customers can’t find your website? There are many different tactics involved in SEO, but it starts with understanding user intent and identifying keywords to target within the content. 

On the face of it, SEO may appear simple. However, the competition has risen and Google’s algorithm has got smarter, meaning that cheap tactics like keyword stuffing won’t work anymore. As well as this, the tech industry is evolving all the time, meaning new tools and consumer priorities influence SEO trends. This makes keeping up extremely difficult.

Changes in the Google Algorithm

SEO has become increasingly important against the backdrop of constant changes in the Google Algorithm. With updates such as the Helpful Content update and the Core Web Vitals update, Google has been emphasizing the importance of user-focused content and website performance.

As a result, website owners must ensure that their content is relevant, valuable, and accessible to users, while also ensuring that their site’s technical aspects are optimized for performance. By prioritizing SEO, website owners can improve their website’s visibility in search engine results, attract more organic traffic, and ultimately increase their online presence and revenue.

In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, staying up-to-date with the latest SEO best practices is essential for long-term success. Hiring an SEO consultant or consultancy firm will allow you to do so.

What Is the Role of an eCommerce SEO Consultancy?

While you’re an expert on almost everything you sell in your store, you’re most likely not an expert in SEO. This is become most digital store owners simply don’t have the time to be one. Luckily, there are excellent SEO consultancy firms out there that are experts in SEO

The primary goal of an SEO consultant is to drive organic traffic to your website by boosting its exposure on various search engine pages. To achieve this goal an SEO expert will…

• Conduct keyword research
• Optimize your web pages
• Make efforts to create solid backlinks to your online store

Amongst many other things…

Initial Assessment & Long-term Strategy

To get an idea of where your eCommerce store is currently at, they may start with an SEO audit. This will be a thorough assessment of your website to help them highlight performance issues, including broken links, missing metadata, inactive plugins, and misconfigured code.

The issues uncovered in this initial audit will inform and be rectified in a subsequent SEO strategy. Importantly, your eCommerce consultant or consultancy firm will account for the specific SEO considerations that are relevant to your platform. For instance, SEO for Shopify and SEO for WooCommerce stores have slightly different nuances.

A quality SEO consultant will also liaise with you to help improve your overall marketing strategy. They may have ideas to improve your social media efforts, which will drive even more organic (particularly branded) traffic to your website.  

Measuring Organic Success

When you choose to put your trust in an SEO consultant, you’re relying on them to give you a return on your investment. After all, these types of services don’t often come cheap, especially at the higher end. 

Regular reporting will give you access to a ton of metrics that will indicate whether they’re doing a good job or not. Here are some common KPIs to keep in mind: 

• Organic traffic: The number of visitors that come to a website through non-paid search engine results.
• Search visibility: How frequently a website appears in SERPs for relevant queries.
• Search ranking: Indicates a website’s position in SERPs for a specific search query or keyword.
• Branded traffic: The number of visitors who arrive at a website by searching for the brand name or related terms.
• Backlinks: The number of external links pointing to a website, which can improve search engine rankings and authority.
• Average session duration: The average length of time that visitors spend on a website before leaving.
• Return on Investment (ROI): How much revenue or profit is generated compared to the amount spent on marketing efforts.

Gaining an understanding of these KPIs – amongst a number of others – is crucial to determining the success of your SEO strategy. 

Working with Your eCommerce SEO Consultant: A Collaborative Effort

For your SEO consultant to succeed, you will need to follow through on any requests they have. For example, if they need any descriptions or images, be swift with your delivery. If you constantly delay, you’ll only push the project back and wind up complaining that you aren’t seeing results. 

At the same time, it’s up to your consultant to truly immerse themselves in your brand to get a feel for your industry’s competitive landscape and your target audience. They cannot simply specialize in search engine optimization, they must also understand brand marketing – the two go hand in hand.