With the unexpected Coronavirus pandemic changing life as we know it, many businesses are re-evaluating their online presence. For some, that means shifting away from a physical store and looking into an eCommerce-style approach to selling goods and services. In this blog, we review some essential methods of driving revenue and traffic to your online store.
SEO Methods for eCommerce Stores
SEO really is the pinnacle of eCommerce traffic acquisition – wherever possible, it’s always better to gain free traffic rather than paid, and this improves your ROI for each and every transaction.
To get started with SEO, it’s important to start with keyword research. If your business is established, use tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see which search terms people are using to find your business historically. As well as this, it’s important to identify other keywords that you want to rank organically for based on the industry you’re in and the types of products that you sell, bearing in mind at this point your competitor’s keywords too.
Once you have a comprehensive list of keywords, you can then begin to make changes to your website. Be sure to use these keywords to help optimise your page titles, meta descriptions, and product names to support you in climbing the ranks, and outranking the competition.
Google Ads for eCommerce Websites
To maximise your traffic acquisition options and to support your medium to long-term SEO strategy, you can boost your online marketing efforts by using Google Search and Google Shopping, which can both be accessed with a Google Ads account.
Google Search Ads will get you in front of the right customers when they’re actively searching for your products, and you will only pay whenever someone clicks your adverts. Be sure to use a range of keywords – if you sell women’s coats, for example, you will want to target not only coat-related keywords (‘red coat’, ‘red coat for women’, ‘women’s red coats’), but you’ll also want to target more broad keywords such as ‘women’s coats’, ‘buy coats online’ and ‘winter coat’ as part of your strategy.
Alongside Google Ads, you should also make use of Google Shopping. Google Shopping Ads include an image, product description, store name and price and appear at the very top of the results when someone searches for your products. This pre-qualifies your audience and works especially well for competitively-priced products, as it gives the user a range of suitable options and competitor pricing alongside your ad.
To get started with Google Shopping, link your Ads account to your Google Merchant Store and inventory, optimise your product titles and you’re well on your way! If you need a hand, our PPC experts are Google Certified Partners and are available to help.
Using Your Data
Don’t forget that your store backend, initial market research and Google Analytics will provide you with a wealth of valuable data, and it’s important to use this to dictate any marketing decisions. For example, you probably won’t want to spend an equal amount marketing to all ages, genders and global locations. Think about where your customers are, what their interests are and what your target demographic is, and then use targeting, exclusions and bid adjustments to weight your budget more towards your key audience.
Arguably the best use of customer data and site visitor behaviour is remarketing. Setting remarketing up means that once a visitor has come to your website and left without converting, you are able to use their cookies and on-page behaviour to encourage them to return and convert by:
- Showing them tailored adverts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram
- Showing adverts for your business or product(s) across the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites such as news websites and more while they’re browsing the web
- Display targeted adverts for returning visitors across other channels including Gmail and YouTube
- Create another campaign on Google Search where you’re able to create unique discounts, offers or content for returning visitors only via something called RLSA
If you’re looking for some support with your eCommerce Store marketing, get in touch with the experts at Blue Bee to discover the latest in SEO, PPC and more to drive traffic and revenue to your eCommerce store.