3 Ecommerce SEO Strategy Mistakes & How To Solve Them

More than half (53%) of all consumers in the US turn to a search engine like Google to find information about a product before making a purchase.

Yes, organic search is still the channel with the highest ROI.

If you don’t incorporate SEO into your digital marketing strategy, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity.

It’s 2022 and SEO is more important than ever for direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce brands.

Done right, you can use educational content to drive high-ranking search results that reinforce your brand’s authority and attract more qualified customers than ever before—and the opportunity to return revenue to your content efforts.

But how do you know what works and what doesn’t?

We give you our cheat sheet of three possible mistakes you could make, from content creation to SEO attribution.

Then we will help you Learn how to find out what really works versus what isn’t, allowing you to demonstrate real ROI for your intensive content work.

Mistake 1: Not thinking about the revenue impact and end goals of your educational SEO content

Having a blog and posting regular content is time consuming.

And when other priorities pile up, it can be easy to push SEO and content creation to the bottom of your list—understandably so.

Marketers like you constantly have numerous campaigns running and no shortage of suggestions from team members across the organization on what to do next.

So why spend time on SEO?

When it comes to e-commerce websites, sales are what count.

Your content can bring new eyes to your website, nurture people who are already in your funnel, and ultimately be the part of your digital strategy that convinces a website browser to become a new customer.

As you can see it is very important Think about your SEO content and its end goals.

The solution: plan SEO attribution from the start

Before you start your digital marketing strategy, think about how you want to track your blog’s impact on your bottom line.

Make sure you can clearly see how SEO-centric content converts readers into buyers.

Start by finding a platform that will show you the impact of all your marketing and organic content and help you understand the exact role SEO plays and what part of the funnel it impacts.

Mistake 2: Choosing content ideas without a solid strategy

You probably know a lot about what your potential customers want.

Whatever you’re selling, razors, skin serums, bidets, you name it, you know there’s endless amounts of information to share that will actually enrich the lives of your readers.

You can live and breathe the weighted jump rope culture and feel like you know exactly what your readers want.

That doesn’t mean you should skip the process of topic and keyword research, though.

What you instinctively think will resonate with your readers may not necessarily be the right content.

You may miss out on additional quality ideas if you don’t create content based on strategy.

The solution: Start with an idea, then validate it with research

First things first: You can start with your instinct for topics and then check them out.

Next, based on what you know about your business, decide on broad categories of content that people might want to consume.

For example, if you are a makeup company, instinctive themes might include:

• Beauty Tutorials
• Ingredient dives deep
• New beauty trends

Once you have basic ideas for your content, use them to narrow your ideas down to specific keywords. You can do this using free methods like Google’s suggested searches or other paid keyword research tools.

Then go one step further. Build on your content ideas with user interviews or browse social media comments for frequently asked questions and trending topics.

After creating a list of keywords, you can start creating content on that topic.

Finally, refine these steps further into a strategy based on actual performance by using attribution.

With an attribution platform that can track how different blog categories on your site contribute to conversions, you can focus on topics you know are doing well and then repeat your keyword research to refine your content to enhance.

Mistake 3: Prioritizing vanity metrics over sales

Do you have someone on your team who isn’t convinced why you should focus on SEO?

Tell them that nearly half of marketers say organic search has a higher ROI than any other marketing channel.

Better yet – show them.

SEO is so much more than just a way to drive traffic to your website.

While vanity metrics like page views are exciting, there are better ways to track your SEO success.

Instead, you should attribute your efforts to conversions and revenue.

If you’re not tracking how your SEO strategy is affecting these things, you’re missing out on how impactful this channel could be, which in turn affects how much money and time your business is willing to devote to SEO content.

The solution: Monitor and present these SEO KPIs

Avoid reporting only vanity metrics like page views, conversions, and conversion rates.

You should also monitor the following:

• Monthly recurring revenue from SEO.
• order value.
• Time to conversion for SEO influenced paths.