It’s true that eCommerce SEO services are not quite like PPC. First off, they take a long time to get moving, and results take longer to develop. Secondly, it’s a little harder to trace the efficacy of search engine optimization as compared to PPC.
But it isn’t impossible. These are the things to look for.
Organic Increases in Keyword Rankings
If SEO is doing its job, your organic keyword rankings will increase. This can be seen through SEMRush, along with any other tools that your provider may have developed.
This is the key way to determine if SEO is categorically working, but there is one small caveat.
Impressions
Now here’s the thing about increases in keyword rankings. If the keyword has no search volume and no difficulty, your page will immediately jump in rankings.
But it won’t get new impressions, because no one will be searching for that keyword. Therein lies the problem.
What you want, ideally, is not just to grow in the organic rankings, but to get new impressions too, indicating that more eyes are on your website. The right keyword research and eCommerce SEO strategy are necessary for this, however.
Click-Through Rate
Here’s another caveat. If your eCommerce SEO services provider optimizes your website for keywords that have volume and are attainable, impressions will increase, but will users click on your listings?
That depends – are those keywords relevant to your target market, or aligned with what your pages offer? If not, you won’t see a click-through rate increase, which is the portion of impressions that actually click on your website.
The higher the click-through rate, the better, but it’s pretty hard to get above 2%. If your website performs better, you’re in a good spot and your digital marketing strategy is working.
Time on Page
Time on page, or how long each visitor actually spends on your web pages, is another key indicator of performance.
Ideally, you want users to spend at least 2 minutes on each page – a little less is alright if the page is shorter and longer is certainly merited if there is a lot of copy on the page.
Google now uses these user engagement metrics as a ranking factor, so the longer users are on your pages, the better.
Sessions per Active User
If your website is properly optimized with internal links, you’ll start noticing that sessions per active user goes up, indicating that visitors are clicking through your website internally. This is another key user engagement metric, and one that Google may also be starting to use as a ranking factor.
Conversion Rate
Lastly, we have conversion rate, which shows the percentage of visitors that take the desired action on your website, which for most eCommerce websites is usually a purchase.
Conversion rates vary considerably based on the price of goods, how long the buying cycle is, what sorts of competition are present, and much more, so it’s hard to give an industry average.
With that said, use your baseline as an average. With an influx of new organic traffic it’s actually not rare for conversion rate to fall a little, but if your strategy targets keywords aligned with intent to purchase, conversion rate should increase.
Today’s the Second Best Time to Invest in eCommerce SEO Services
The best time to invest in eCommerce SEO services was like 5 years ago, if not longer, but all the same, right now is not a bad second best.
Start reaching out to SEO agencies that specialize in your niche and start talking to them about how you can improve organic rankings.
Any eCommerce SEO expert worth their salt will tell you it takes a while to get results moving for your online store, even for a data driven campaign – this means it’s high time to get going!
