MGWM

Ecommerce SEO Goals: How to Consider Each Objective

Table of Contents

Common objectives we see with clients and prospective clients are a great insight into the ecommerce industry as a whole. It's easy to think the objective of revenue and return on investment (ROI) is the main goal for most ecommerce companies. However, ecommerce companies may engage SEO agencies for a blend of objectives, included but not limited to the following common objectives.

Build organic visibility for non-brand search queries

Building organic visibility for non-brand keywords is a key component of our success metrics. It can show the adoption of the brand, new user generation, and it allows us to understand a couple of things:

  1. Is our client’s brand being recognized for their products or just their personalities?
  2. Who is really owning these non-brand keywords if it’s not our client?
  3. Which keywords can we push further into and how can we open up new areas of visibility?

Capture traffic throughout the customer journey

The customer journey in most B2C ecommerce cases is quite short. With larger purchases - think a snowmobile for instance - taking a little longer. If a client’s objective is to capture traffic throughout the customer’s journey, they’re probably looking for solutions like:

  1. A content strategy
  2. An alternative SEO strategy, or 
  3. A holistic approach to search.

Fuel customer acquisition 

A client looking to fuel customer acquisition is a client that knows the only way to succeed is to work cross-channel. Customer acquisition in SEO can be harder to track, but there are some excellent solutions to push you in the right direction:

  1. Work cross-channel with the paid search and paid social teams to flesh out a full funnel experience.
  2. Expand their content marketing initiatives to include top of funnel content.
  3. Lean in on UX practices.
  4. Identify and capitalize on partnership opportunities.

Increase sales by X% or $X / within Y category / timeframe

As you may be able to guess, this is the main objective of most ecommerce retailers. A client looking to increase sales is most likely looking for a strategy that includes:

  1. Optimizing high converting areas on the site
  2. A content strategy
  3. Dialling in on specific products that are their cash-cows

This is by no means an exhaustive list of objectives, and we see client’s all the time come through with highly specific requests like “I want to make sure more people are viewing our blog” - highly irregular for an ecommerce client but can still lead to great top of funnel content and extend the customer lifetime value.

By isolating the client’s objective and not just assuming it is an “increase sales” objective, SEOs can understand what to track, and how to effectively pivot the strategy into one that scales.

Ready to learn how to identify and measure Ecommerce performance issues?

Jess Girardi

Jess Girardi

Jessica is an award-winning SEO and e-commerce enthusiast with 8+ years of experience in the field. She leads powerful holistic search strategies for clients of all sizes and works with SaaS and e-commerce brands to build their organic presence. She's a Gemini, vegetarian, and all-around woo-girl.

See More Insights

How to Mimic Googlebot with Screaming Frog

Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly how Googlebot is crawling your website? Unless you have the keys to the kingdom, you won’t get perfect information. But, we can get close! Screaming Frog has nearly limitless configurations for just about any SEO use case you can imagine. This article presents

Read More

In a Rut? Try Our Pivot Method to Lift Traffic By 30%

Repotting helps remove dead roots and gives your plants more nutrients and space to grow. If you don't repot your growing plant, it will struggle to survive. I'm not a horticulturist, but I do know that a content strategy pivot is like repotting a plant. A content strategy pivot consists

Read More
MGWM

Director of Operations

Dave Sewich

dave sewich

Dave made an accidental foray into digital marketing after graduating from the University of Minnesota Duluth and hasn’t looked back. Having spent the first part of his marketing journey brand-side, he now works with the Uproer team to help clients realize their goals through the lens of search.

When not at work, you’ll find Dave staying active and living a healthy lifestyle, listening to podcasts, and enjoying live music. A Minnesotan born and raised, his favorite sport is hockey and he still finds time to skate once in a while.

Dave’s DiSC style is C. He enjoys getting things done deliberately and systematically without sacrificing speed and efficiency. When it comes to evaluating new ideas and plans, he prefers to take a logical approach, always sprinkling on a bit of healthy skepticism for good measure. At work, Dave’s happiest when he has a chance to dive deep into a single project for hours at a time. He loves contributing to Uproer and being a part of a supportive team but is most productive when working solo.

Founder & CEO

Griffin Roer

Griffin discovered SEO in 2012 during a self-taught web development course and hasn’t looked back. After years of working as an SEO consultant to some of the country’s largest retail and tech brands, Griffin pursued his entrepreneurial calling of starting an agency in May of 2017.

Outside of work, Griffin enjoys going to concerts and spending time with his wife, two kids, and four pets.

Griffin’s DiSC style is D. He’s driven to set and achieve goals quickly, which helps explain why he’s built his career in the fast-paced agency business. Griffin’s most valuable contributions to the workplace include his motivation to make progress, his tendency towards bold action, and his willingness to challenge assumptions.