When fashion e-commerce business set up these strategy goals – to increase a web site traffic and page visibility in search engines; mostly the right digital marketing tool to implement is SEO. There is a logical thinking that if the SEO is highly effective, more consumers will visit the website and will be familiar with the offered products and services so the number of sales will straightforwardly grow. BUT is it really true that SEO will boost your sales? There si an article (see here) which says it won’t grow your business but let’s discuss…
SEO OVERVIEW
Search engine optimization is a marketing tool which help businesses to rank their web sites higher in search engines list so more consumers will be aware of that brand and the website traffic will increase. Nowadays, the most favourite search engine is Google but it is valuable for companies to take into account also other search engines.
-> WHY? -> see this article.
# Besides that, valuable benefit of the implemented SEO strategy is the cost effectivenes. If the company do not hire any specialist and if a focus is on improving an organic search (rather then PPC marketing), company does not have to invest a lot.
# The important thing here is the consideration of other marketing tools and the awarness of continuously extending area of digital marketing. Forget a narrow thinking about a basics of SEO, there is a need to still look for a new trends related to your industry and implement other strategies such is PR, email marketing, social media marketing etc. Also, when creating a SEO strategy, company must be aware that the results might take time.
In other words, when there is a need to improve SEO, besides the basics – evaluating keywords, web site optimization and modyfying site codes – other strategies might be implemented to support SEO, e.g.: content marketing, social media marketing or ingound marketing as they are related to each other and beneficial in terms of improving eWom (Erkan & Evans, 2016), referrals and backlinks.
Click on the title below to read a full article ->
Why SEO will NOT grow your fashion e-commerce business?
The article says that the e-commerce fashion segment is very competitive and mostly big and well-known brands have the advantages to be ranked higher than the small businesses. Further, it explains that either if the small online fashion shop would create very good SEO, build the traceable brand through online PR and offer consumers better experince, the benefit of this effort would be seen in 12 months minimum.
Based on these features, the blog post suggested that if there is a need to increase the fashion business and have more sales, rather than spent time creating more effective SEO, these tools should be considered:
Influencer marketing / Youtube & Facebook video / Distribution (attending events to find a small or a big fashion retail stores) / Content (focus on visual site consists of pictures and videos) / Visual Social media marketing (Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram) / Audience / PR (make your story emotional and captivating to keep the loyalty of customers).
Well, here we go, I would say, most of these features are related to the SEO in some way. However, it is understandable that building a strong brand requires more than SEO. But small online businesses must start somewhere as they need to let people know they are new in the market. Also, if the SEO strategy is created with the social media marketing, the brand awarness might be spread very fast. After that it is a responsibility of managers to keep customers engaged and offer them what they are expecting.
SUPPORTING POINTS THAT SEO WITH SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING HAVE POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE GROWTH OF MAJORITY OF BUSINESSES
The process, when consumers think about to buy a products starts with a searching and looking on different websites to find the right good. It might be through organic search, refferals or clicking on paid adds. The process – conversion funnel, nicely explained by Farsaii (2016), introduces the way from searching to purchase and the customers’ loyalty. The research article also show the importance of SEO strengths and the fact that majority of web site visitors come from organic search.
“Use of search engines affect our lives on a regular basis through user interaciton with results produced by them…use of search engines, together with the power of advertising, plays a role in peoples’ daily decisions on various aspects and is not limited to purchasing only” (Kritzinger, & Weideman, 2015).
Their study also stated that it is necessary ‘to be ranked highly with search engines’ and that the success of SEO ‘should result in increased sales‘. Also, when comparing the SEO to PPC marketing, it has been found that it is beneficial to invest more in the SEO improvement than in PPC campaigns. Please see the full report here if interested. Another research also claim that ‘although most of the economics and marketing literature on search engines has focused on paid clicks, the bulk of the traffic retailers receive through search engines is actually through unpaid clicks on organic links‘ (Jerath et al., 2014 cited in Baye, et al., 2016).
‘Higher visibility on search engines positively impact brand equity, higher offering visibility and revenue froms sales‘ (Aswani et al., 2018).
Within the digital marketing, social media marketing is still considered as a big challenge (Leeflang et al., 2014). However, when businesses are aware of the risks of using social media it gives them a big advantage. Thus, ‘Social media websites have created valuable opportunities for electronic word of mouth (eWOM) conversations. People are now able to discuss products and services of brands with their friends and acquaintances’ (Erkan, & Evans, 2016).
“Research findings suggest that more than 90% of all consumers read online reviews before they buy products and that 67% of all purchasers of consumer goods are based on user-generated content. Importantly, these reviews play a key role in purchase decisions. Hence social media content creates empowered customers who are more led by other customers than by advertising” (Leeflang et al. 2014).
“Using the SEO, supported by social networking sites, can contribute to the overall site traffic and improve interaction with customers” (Chen et al., 2011).
We can see the benefit of using social networks to support SEO and business generally; however the impact on SEO is not direct. It means that signals from social media do not help to rank higher in search engines; however look more deeply and think, there might be a positive impact! 🙂
To view the picture in more detail, please click on it.
Also, another indirect effect on SEO -> Baye et al., (2016) found that:
“…the brand equity of an online retailer is an important driver of organic clicks and that it is easy for search marketers to overlook the benefits of including investments in the quality and brand awareness of its site as part of an SEO strategy … Search engines tend to place retailers with stronger brands in better positions, which results in additional increases in organic clicks …”
The video below show the effectiveness of the SEO when it comes to growing a business, it is not related to the fashion industry, but it can give us a valuable insight.
References and further reading:
Aswani, R., Kar, A.K., Ilavarasan, P.V. & Dwivedi, Y.K. 2018, “Search engine marketing is not all gold: Insights from Twitter and SEOClerks”, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 107-116.
Baye, M.R., De los Santos, B. & Wildenbeest, M.R. 2016, “Search Engine Optimization: What Drives Organic Traffic to Retail Sites?”, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 6-31.
Chen, C. Y., Shih, B. Y., Chen, Z. S., & Chen, T. H. (2011). The exploration of internet marketing strategy by search engine optimization: A critical review and comparison. African Journal of Business Management, 5(12), 4644-4649.
Erkan, I. & Evans, C. 2016, “The influence of eWOM in social media on consumers’ purchase intentions: An extended approach to information adoption”, Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 61, pp. 47-55.
Farsaii, P. 2016, “Get the most out of web traffic: Tactics and strategies to increase on-site conversion”, Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 304-313.
Kritzinger, W.T. & Weideman, M. 2015, “Comparative case study on website traffic generated by search engine optimisation and a pay-per-click campaign, versus marketing expenditure”, South African Journal of Information Management, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 1-e12.
Leeflang, P.S.H., Verhoef, P.C., Dahlström, P. & Freundt, T. 2014, “Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era”, European Management Journal, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 1.
www.2xecommerce.com/seo-fashion-ecommerce/
www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/social-media-seo/
sociable.co/social-media/8-seo-hacks-social-media/
www.seo-theory.com/how-does-seo-work/
www.bloggingtips.com/2018/03/15/google-seo/
https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/why-the-buyer-s-persona-is-even-more-important-on-social-media
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/10/16/guide-to-evergreen-content-marketing
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/build-links-content-marketing/229601/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/free-seo-tools/242307/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertadams/2017/04/10/23-proven-ways-to-drive-traffic-to-your-website/2/#2aee589c6976
https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-leading-e-commerce-companies-drive-traffic-to-their-websites/
www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/video-marketing/can-use-video-content-help-boost-seo/
www.searchenginewatch.com/2018/02/21/overcoming-4-black-hat-seo-techniques-that-spammers-and-scammers-use-to-harm-your-search-rankings/
www.consumervaluecreation.com/2017/03/08/electronic-word-of-mouth-versus-interpersonal-word-of-mouth-are-all-forms-of-word-of-mouth-equally-influential/