Within marketing, SEO is the most frequently used tool to ensure the visibility needed to claim the top position for your business amongst competitors. We will explain the difference between paid and organic search, and we will look at SEO: what it is, how it works, and why it is beneficial to learn.

For any eCommerce business, success requires developing a strategy for achieving sufficient online traffic to increase the conversion rate. 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. One way is to create a paid search (PPC), and the other is to make use of organic search results via Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

What are paid search & organic search? 

A paid search (PPC) drives traffic to a site by paying search engines to position ads higher on SERPs. SERPs are search engine result pages, such as Google, Safari and Bing. PPC is also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Organic search results appear in SERPs because they are relevant to the search term. This positioning is not purchased, it is achieved with the help of effective SEO strategies.

The major difference between PPC and organic search is that it takes longer to achieve a higher organic search ranking. A high position in organic search can generate higher visibility to relevant audiences and build customer trust in the brand. PPC campaigns on a SERP increase visibility for a short period of time, making them 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. PPC campaigns can raise awareness of a product/brand while use of SEO strategies build up optimal positioning in organic searches.

What is SEO? 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.
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:

Imagine a librarian who has read every book in the library. When asked for information, they would be able to find the most relevant content based on the query. A query in a search engine results in the most relevant content based on input information. Knowledge/SEO allows the librarian/search engine to provide the most relevant information.

A search engine is, 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 developers is to ensure the search engine (algorithm) 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 to show products. The majority of people don’t bother to continue looking at other pages, since they can usually find the products they are looking for on the first page. With 5.6 billion searches per day on Google alone, losses are guaranteed if you can’t get people’s attention because of poor SEO.

More reasons to invest your time and learn about SEO 

Nowadays people prefer to do their own product research online, with the majority of searches starting from 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 optimisation 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.

Want to read more about SEO? Read our post, “SEO on Amazon.”

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

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