This article emphasizes the critical role of Google traffic in ecommerce growth, delving into how understanding Google’s ranking factors, including often overlooked ones like dwell time and user experience, is essential. It highlights the risks associated with over-reliance on Google and the importance of diversifying traffic sources to expand online visibility.
You know your products are great. Your ecommerce website looks fantastic. But why does your desired website traffic remain so elusive?
Perhaps an essential element is missing in your approach to gaining Google traffic: a deep understanding of how it works. This article, brought to you by the experts at Area Ten, will demystify the complexities of website traffic. We’ll offer insights into the factors Google considers when ranking search results and provide other possible avenues for amplifying your ecommerce website’s performance.
In ecommerce, website traffic is one of the lifebloods that fuel business growth. Your store is essentially an online marketplace. If there’s no visitor, how can you expect to make a sale?
Google, as the predominant source of internet traffic, plays a pivotal role in steering potential customers to your ecommerce sites. An increase in Google traffic means opportunities are ripe for conversion and tangible revenue.
But how does Google lead users to your digital storefront in the first place?
Unlike physical stores, which rely on large signboards and strategic locations to attract customers, ecommerce websites need a different approach. To be visible to potential customers, you want to appear at the top of the search results. This is what search engine optimization, or SEO, is all about.
Think of SEO as a strategic game of question and answer. This game hinges on understanding and responding to the queries your potential customers enter into search engines like Google. Then, you need to provide accurate and comprehensive answers to these questions. The more questions you get to answer, your site rankings soar, and organic traffic flows in.
For ecommerce website owners, your audience is not merely seeking information; they are in pursuit of products that meet their specific needs or solve their pain points. This means instead of just focusing on general queries, you also need to rank for more targeted phrases like “fast delivery” and “buy online” to drive visitors directly to your offerings.
However, Google doesn’t just randomly pick a website and put it on top of its results page. Its algorithms consider a plethora of factors to deliver the most useful information to users in a fraction of a second. These include:
We know what you may be thinking, “I’ve already checked all these boxes. If that’s how simple it is, then why is my ecommerce store still in the shadows?”
Beyond the surface of the ranking factors we mentioned above lie deeper, lesser-known factors that may also influence Google rankings:
Armed with this new-found knowledge, you might think that focusing all your efforts on optimizing for these ranking factors to gain Google traffic is the surefire path to digital success.
“But isn’t it, Jeremy?” Read along to find out.
While Google is undeniably a powerful catalyst for ecommerce growth, it’s also a good idea to diversify your strategies for increasing your traffic.
You’re potentially missing out on a wealth of other opportunities and other avenues for revenue streams if you ignore them.
Here’s how you can diversify your strategies for increasing traffic.
If you toggle on your Google Analytics page, you’ll find that it conveniently tracks your traffic sources.
Commonly, you would find sources like “Google,” which essentially means that someone found your website by searching on Google. If, for example, a visitor clicks on a link to your store from Facebook, then “Facebook.com” could appear as the source. When someone types your website URL directly into their browser or accesses your site through a bookmark, then you’ll see it under the “Direct” source.
With that being said, there are other possible ways to gain Google traffic:
But don’t get too overwhelmed. The effectiveness of these tactics will vary depending on the nature of your business, your target audience, and your specific marketing goals.
This is where an adept digital marketing agency like Area Ten can help. At Area Ten, we understand that a one-size-fits-all approach is not the answer. Each business is unique, with its own set of challenges and opportunities.
Capable of employing a blend of SEO, paid media (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more), live chat, and other digital strategies, we can identify which avenues can catapult your online growth and tailor a plan that not only diversifies your traffic sources but also perfectly aligns with your business objectives.
Another thing that hinders many ecommerce stores from gaining Google traffic is over-reliance on head terms—those high-volume, highly competitive keywords.
While they may be the proverbial “big fish” in the SEO ocean, solely focusing on them can overlook a vast sea of opportunities presented by long tail keywords. These terms constitute about 90% of search opportunities, representing users with a stronger buyer intent, which often translates to higher conversion rates on your website.
At Area Ten, we embrace a comprehensive Full Body approach to SEO, optimizing for both head and long tail keywords. Our approach ensures a wide net is cast, capturing all possible search opportunities and significantly enhancing your brand’s visibility.
But you may wonder, how do we effectively target thousands of these terms without incurring excessive time or expense?
We employ our Programmatic SEO strategy through our proprietary technology, CMAX™. It harnesses the power of AI to craft SEO-optimized content at scale. But more importantly, we go beyond the typical programmatic SEO solutions, which often result in generic content that may not align with your brand voice or meet legal requirements.
We’re capable of generating thousands of unique content pieces, each tailored to align with your brand’s voice and industry requirements. Moreover, CMAX is a self-optimizing machine, which means the content we deploy is dynamic and adapts in real-time to search engine algorithm changes.
Designed for compatibility with any ecommerce CMS system, including Shopify, Magento, and Bigcommerce, our programmatic content ensures minimal impact, if any, on your store’s load time. We use a unique Div ID and our JavaScript code embeds the content directly into the designated Div ID, preserving the design and layout of your ecommerce store.
A prominent candle ecommerce website, headquartered in the United Kingdom, faced challenges of low traffic and engagement. Their past strategy was to rank for the same keywords their competitors were using, but they weren’t able to achieve the visibility they wanted.
They sought an ecommerce SEO agency to revive their digital presence and partnered with us.
We quickly found that the core issue was an over-reliance on head terms, which, while valuable, weren’t capturing the broader search landscape. We shifted focus to include long tail keywords, tapping into 90% of the search opportunities that were previously unexplored.
Leveraging CMAX, our proprietary programmatic SEO technology generated thousands of unique, brand-aligned content pieces that significantly broadened the site’s visibility. In just under eight weeks, the candle ecommerce website experienced a 34.2% increase in organic traffic and a significant 21.5% rise in organic revenue.
An auto accessories ecommerce giant in the United States approached us with a unique challenge. Despite spending a large portion of its marketing budget on Google Ads, they were not seeing the desired results in traffic and conversion rates.
Our initial step was a comprehensive technical SEO audit, which revealed that a large fraction of their product pages had the same content. To optimize these, we deployed our unique programmatic SEO approach.
Our team of season writers created templates that resonated with the brand voice and met core messaging. Once we got the go signal, CMAX then took over and generated thousands of SEO-optimized pages for each product, ensuring each page was not only compliant but also primed for maximum search engine visibility.
Within one and a half months, the auto accessories website saw a 32.8% boost in organic traffic. More impressively, their organic revenue soared by 19.3%.
Interested in what their head of digital marketing had to say about working with Area Ten?
“We found ourselves in a tight spot, grappling with rising Google Ads costs. Honestly, I couldn’t see any other route to gain traffic, considering how competitive the auto accessories market is. Then Jeremy and his team came along and changed our perspective.
They discovered keywords we never thought to target and rapidly filled our pages with new, SEO-rich content. The real highlight? Seeing results way faster than we’d ever imagined. It’s been an absolute game-changer for our business.”
Google Analytics offers valuable insights into analyzing website traffic, but interpreting this data effectively is key to a successful strategy. For instance, your bounce rate may be misleading. A high bounce rate might not always signal a problem; it could mean visitors found exactly what they needed on the first page they landed on.
At Area Ten, we can set up and interpret tracking measures to provide a deeper understanding of these metrics, ensuring that your website’s performance is accurately assessed and strategically improved.
Defining “good” website traffic is subjective and varies based on your business’s nature, target audience size, industry, and specific goals. At Area Ten, our approach begins with a deep dive into your business objectives. We collaborate with you to develop and implement strategies that suit your unique needs and accurately measure the results, ensuring the traffic you receive aligns with your business goals.
Aside from helping your website gain the traffic it deserves, we can address specific challenges in ecommerce SEO, including scaling category and product page content, effective cross-linking, managing duplicate content issues, and handling out-of-stock products.
Our technology-first approach ensures that your ecommerce site is not only SEO-optimized but also equipped to handle the unique challenges of ecommerce, resulting in improved visibility, user experience, and ultimately, sales.
We’ve discussed the critical aspects of Google traffic and its undeniable influence on ecommerce growth. Let’s recap the essential takeaways:
Consider these actionable steps to enhance your ecommerce website’s performance in the competitive digital market:
As we peeled the hidden layers of Google traffic, it’s clear that the key to ecommerce success lies in understanding and strategically harnessing this dynamic resource. But remember, putting all your eggs in one basket is never an option for ecommerce success. Always widen your horizons. By constantly seeking new avenues and staying ahead of the curve, your ecommerce business can not only survive but thrive in the competitive online world.
Elevate your ecommerce store to unprecedented growth with Area Ten. Our proprietary CMAX platform embodies our commitment to delivering bigger SEO results, faster. By optimizing your website for thousands of head and long tail search terms, we ensure a rapid escalation in traffic, transcending the traditional timelines of SEO impact.
Our expertise, spanning a multitude of ecommerce industries, has positioned us as trusted partners for businesses seeking not just traffic but the right traffic that converts into tangible outcomes. Whether your platform is on Shopify, Magento, or Bigcommerce, our technology-first approach is adaptable and tailored to meet your unique ecommerce needs.
Our global impact, with successful SEO strategies implemented across all continents except Antarctica, speaks volumes of our ability to deliver results. We can start delivering results in just six weeks, significantly outpacing the industry standard of six to 12 months.
Tomorrow’s market leaders are making their move today with us. Will you be one of them?
If you run an ecommerce store, get your FREE SEO Fast Track with us.
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