For any eCommerce business, developing a strategy for achieving sufficient online traffic to increase the conversion rate is a crucial step toward business success. The conversion rate, one of the most crucial metrics in eCommerce and marketing, shows the number of people who do a desired action (such as purchase something, fill in a contact form, leave a review…) divided by the total number of people that visit your website. Increasing visibility and traffic to your site is a necessary step toward creating a successful conversion rate.

There are two ways to increase visibility and your search engine ranking: via the creation of a paid search (PPC), or to make use of organic search results via Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Within marketing, SEO is the most frequently used tool to ensure the visibility needed to claim the top position for your business amongst all the competitors. In this article we will look at the difference between paid and organic search and look at SEO: what it is, how it works, and why it is beneficial to learn. 

What are paid search & organic search? 

A paid search (PPC), also known as Search Engine Advertising (SEA), drives traffic to a site by paying search engines to position ads higher on search engine result pages (SERPs).  

Organic search results appear in SERPs because they are relevant to the search term, without the company having paid for a top spot on the search engine thanks to effective use of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). 

The major difference between PPC and organic search results is the fact that an organic search result takes a longer time to build up. A high position in organic rankings can generate much more traffic to relevant audiences and build customer trust in the brand. PPC campaigns on a SERP (such as Google or Bing) give you more visibility for a short period of time, and therefore a great short-term marketing solution. However, organic search results are more effective and give you a higher conversion rate in the long run. The best strategy would be to combine PPC with SEO – while building a strong SEO for a product or brand, PPC campaigns can raise awareness of the product or brand. 

What is SEO? 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.
Improving SEO gives a guaranteed wider range of visibility that leads to more online traffic. The greater the online traffic, the greater the conversion rate will be. 

How SEO works: 
In marketing, SEO has been compared to being in a library where the librarian (who is equivalent to a search engine) has read every book in the library and for each question you ask the librarian, they can show you the most relevant and related content based on your question. 

A search engine such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, are of course much faster than a human librarian. When a query is entered on a search engine, an algorithm determines which results to display. The goal of the developers of the search engines’ algorithms is to ensure the search engine provides the most relevant answer to a search query. Not only does it help the seeker find the answer, it increases the efficiency (and thus the popularity!) of the search engine being used. 

How might SEO help your business?  

On a Google search page, for example, there are only 10 spots per page, and since the products and what the customers are looking for can be found amongst those spots, the majority of people don’t bother to continue looking at the other pages. If you can’t get people’s attention because of poor SEO and there are 5.6 billion searches per day on Google alone, losses are guaranteed. 

More reasons to invest your time and learn about SEO 

Nowadays people prefer to do their own product research online and a majority of customers begin their purchasing journey on Google. Although a paid search can seem like a quick and easy solution to achieve a high ranking, SEO is more profitable long term considering the likelihood that a customer will click on an organic link is close to 85%. 

With the help of SEO, you will gain a better understanding of your customers and their behaviour. The search engine optimization you carry out will result in more traffic to your site. With more traffic, you will be able to see and understand what your customers are looking for and how they behave. The best way to learn more about your customers and their behaviour is by using different SEO analytical tools. By understanding your customers better, you will be able to adapt your offers, content and products to increase your profits. 

There are no shortcuts or quick fixes when it comes to dealing with SEO and reaching the top of Google’s search results will take time and effort to do it properly. In your marketing strategy, SEO deserves to be a top priority, especially since it will be more profitable in the long term and it will enhance your brand.

If you’re interested in learning more, look out for our post coming soon, “SEO on Amazon”. 

Get in touch with us to schedule a consultation about your brands’ marketing strategy on Amazon!