Driving Revenue with SEO

In the world of search engine optimization, we have a specialization called eCommerce SEO. it’s what we specialize in here at 1Digital^Ⓡ Agency. 

The cornerstones of both “regular” SEO and eCommerce SEO are really the same, and all of the same ranking factors apply, but the eCommerce version is more specific. 

That is, whereas vanilla SEO is specifically designed to optimize a website for rankings, visits, time on page, and similar metrics, eCommerce SEO is geared towards profit. 

Meaning, the goal of eCommerce SEO is to generate sales for the client’s business. 

Here’s how it’s done.

Focus on Commercial and Transactional Keywords 

The main differentiator between SEO and its eCommerce-focused cousin is that our version targets a specific subset of keywords that have one of two types of search intent: commercial and transactional. 

Got a keyword with massive volume, low difficulty, and almost no competition? If it’s informative, it hardly matters. It’s not a good pick for eCommerce.

Optimizing an eCommerce website for keywords that have an informational intent is somewhat counterintuitive. You will get keyword ranking increases in the search engine results pages, and you’ll probably get more visits, but you’ll be unlikely to get more sales 

So the first thing you need to focus on is making sure you don’t throw good money after bad targeting keywords that are not conversion-oriented. 

This is one of the prime reasons that some businesses choose to work with an SEO agency, at least for keyword research. These specialists have extensive experience finding and vetting keywords to determine whether they make a good fit with a client’s strategy, especially if the goal is to make money. 

Once you’ve selected a suitable cohort of target keywords, a lot of the actual legwork in eCommerce SEO and regular SEO is the same, with a few nuances. 

Target Categories or Individual Product Pages 

When you’re doing SEO for a blog or a content management site, or even a lead generation website, you can optimize pages the goal of which is to capture data, or just to house affiliate links. 

You can use blogs or CMS pages as target URLs. It really doesn’t matter if the metrics you’re going for are time on-page or newsletter sign-ups. You can make the URL suit the need. 

When your goal is driving revenue with SEO, you need to be much more specific about which URLs you use to gain traction and domain authority. 

For instance, you can optimize a blog for eCommerce SEO, but you have to remember that blogs have really high bounce rates – sometimes more than 90%. It doesn’t pay (literally) to optimize a blog page for a strategy with the goal of driving revenue if 9 out of 10 visitors bounce without taking any additional action.

Rather, with eCommerce SEO, what you’re going to want to do is optimize categories, or even specific product pages, as target URLs. 

So, for instance, if you optimize a blog or CMS page for that keyword, you don’t want to cannibalize. What you can do is transfer some authority from those pages by including internal links to the category or product pages. 

The fact that you want to optimize product or category pages also necessitates that the bulk of your on-page optimizations should be dedicated to those pages, and each of them should have its own unique content optimized for a set of conversion-oriented keywords.

Don’t Forget Internal Links 

Another big thing about eCommerce SEO, especially if you intend to drive revenue with SEO, is that you shouldn’t forget to include internal links in your optimized content. 

There are two reasons for this. The main reason is to transfer authority from content-heavy pages to the pages where the transactions will actually occur. Ideally, you want traffic with an intent to purchase to land on the page where the transaction will occur. 

The other reason is that it is hard to answer a lot of queries on a target page, and that is one of the secret ingredients in SEO. By optimizing CMS pages and including internal links, you can funnel traffic to the right place on your website. 

There’s one more, though. You should also include internal links on your product and category pages, so that customers can navigate across them. This will optimize your website for conversion rates, since internal links will help open up opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. 

Build Powerhouse Topic Clusters 

Another thing you’re going to want to do – although this is not unique to eCommerce- is to build strong, high-authority topical clusters to serve as anchor pages for your website. 

Let’s face it, you’re not going to be able to build out a product page with thousands of words of content that answer a lot of high-value questions. At least you won’t be able to do so without tanking UX and CRO (

But what you can do is create CMS pages with FAQs and other useful information that can serve as a high-input-traffic landing page that draws in leads and then sends them out to other pages on your website. 

I know I previously suggested optimizing category and product pages as target URLs, but building these high-authority topic clusters is also necessary if you want to compete in the long term. 

But, some topical clusters merit a very deep and thorough investigation that can’t be done in a cursory fashion. You can’t get away without optimizing some content pages. They will bring in leads, even leads with the intent to purchase; you just have to make sure you send them to the right place. 

Make Sure Every Target Page (at Least) Has a CTA 

This one’s a relatively easy optimization to make, and very easy to implement since it doesn’t necessarily hinge on keywords. 

Basically, every target URL – honestly, every product page, if you have the bandwidth for it – should have some sort of call to action. 

It doesn’t need to be anything fancy, but at the same time, catchy, memorable CTAs add a human element to your website and will probably produce better results. 

Another trick is to use an urgency play. Instead of telling users to “buy now” consider going after the consequences of not buying. Key in on factors like limited stock or editions, short supplies, or time-sensitive discounts. A timer on the page with a countdown for a sale or promotion can yield results, too. 

This technically isn’t an SEO trick. It’s a conversion rate optimization trick, but it does work hand-in-hand with search engine optimization when your overall goal is driving traffic with SEO.

Remove Barriers to Conversion 

Another thing you can do, which will support driving revenue with SEO, even though it isn’t specifically SEO-related itself, is to remove barriers to conversion. 

A barrier to conversion is literally any website element that will cause people either to abandon their carts or to stop progressing down the conversion funnel. 

Some things that are conversion killers are:

• Slow page load speeds
• “Buy now” buttons that are not readily visible
• Lack of visible security icons
• Checkout processes with multiple steps 
• Hidden fees
• Landing pages wherein there are no visible links, icons, or pictures of the product the visitor wants to buy

Though this list makes a good introduction, these are just a few of the many barriers to conversion that can exist on an eCommerce website. 

For this reason, it often behooves eCommerce merchants working on organic digital marketing campaigns like SEO or social media management to work closely with teams that also offer CRO services, as these will boost the efforts of the SEO strategy by improving the user experience of the website. 

Track Your Metrics

Last but not least, you need to track your metrics so you can compare them by period. 

There’s no single metric you need to track, but for eCommerce SEO, some of the best ones to follow are organic traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, transactions, and revenue. 

Organic traffic accounts for all organic leads that the SEO campaign helps bring to the website, and bounce rate is what portion of those visitors land on one page and take no additional actions before leaving the website. 

As for conversion rate, that’s fairly obvious. It’s the percentage of visitors that commit a desired action, in this case, generally, conducting a sale. 

Transactions and revenue are also important to track, because you will definitely want to know how much money your campaign is earning (from organic sources) and whether or not transactions are up or down in a given period. 

Once you have those ducks in a row, you can get serious about tracking results as your SEO campaign starts to unfold.