Hiring an agency to deliver eCommerce SEO services just might be one of the best decisions you ever make for your online store.
Most digital marketers agree these services deliver the best return on investment. But the truth is also that some entrepreneurs pay for these services and don’t know what they’re getting – or how to gauge the success of the services.
Here are some of the key metrics to look for that eCommerce SEO services can deliver for your business.
Keyword Research
This is the stage where the eCommerce SEO expert selects target keywords for the SEO campaign. In general, for an eCommerce SEO campaign, the agency will want to select keywords associated with commercial and transactional search intent to maximize conversion value.
It’s also important for the agency to select keywords that have high value and low difficulty, which will render them attainable for the client as a part of the eCommerce SEO strategy.
Impressions
Impressions refers to how many eyes you get on your eCommerce website. For example, when you search something and see a listing in the search engine results pages – that website gets one impression.
When you hire an agency for eCommerce SEO services, the first thing you should see increase is impressions. As a website comes into ranking for more keywords, the more visibility will increase, resulting in more impressions.
Clicks
Assuming that the right keywords have been targeted and that the eyes you get on your listings are qualified, then clicks should increase.
Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (or CTR) refers to the total portion of impressions that turn into clicks – or what percentage of people that see your website actually click on it.
The higher the click-through rate, the better. The overall average for all websites in eCommerce is just about 2%, so as a general rule, anything higher than this is better.
With poor targeting, impressions may increase but clicks may not – but with good targeting, only qualified leads will see your website listings, and so not only impressions and clicks should increase, but so should the click-through rate.
Time on Page
Time on page refers to how long users stay on a page after clicking-through to it. This is important because Google recently announced that user experience metrics are now officially ranking factors.
The more time on page a user spends indicates two important things: one, that the content on your website is relevant to the user (and that users are qualified) and two, that the user in question is actually engaging with the website. Therefore it is indirectly an indicator of the relative success of the marketing strategy implemented by an eCommerce SEO company.
Pages Per Session
When keyword targeting is on point, and when the user is really engaging with the content on a website, there is a higher chance that the user in question will click through to another page before completing the desired action.
This is another one of those user engagement metrics that Google will now be officially using as a ranking factor, and it’s something that should increase pursuant to an effective SEO campaign.
Conversions and Sales
Though difficult to impact directly, this is the ultimate goal of any eCommerce SEO campaign. When keyword targeting has been done effectively, and when qualified users get to a website, there is a higher chance that they will end up buying the products on the website.
Getting Started with eCommerce SEO Services
When an eCommerce SEO services provider finds high value keywords associated with a high intent to purchase, and when the campaign makes effective changes to important ranking factors (like on-page optimizations, linking and content) you will see the metrics indicated in this article changing for the better. The first thing you should look for are increases to impressions and clicks, followed by ballooning user experience metrics, and finally, increases to organic conversions and sales.
