Using search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your online and in-store sales is an important strategy to grow your business.

If you have a business website, you’ve likely tried strategies to improve your search engine optimization. You may not have mastered SEO, but you know it’s crucial to attracting traffic to your website.

But what do those website visits mean? To be valuable to your business, they should represent increased sales. It doesn’t take long to realize the marketing aspects of building traffic need to align with your sales goals.

Why is SEO important?

To understand how to connect SEO to sales, you’ll need a solid understanding of how optimization works. It’s an ongoing process that helps search engines find your website and ensure you show up in search results. You need search engines to find your site so they can send relevant search traffic your way. These website visitors are leads that you’ll want to convert into customers. This is known as conversion. Ranking high in search results is essential to attracting enough website traffic to convert.

Website visitors need to convert to sales for your efforts to be sustainable because sales are what contribute to your bottom line. SEO can be a fundamental part of your marketing strategy and a game changer in increasing online and in-store sales.

Did you know there are over 3.5 billion searches on Google every day? Many of the searches are for products and services, including what you sell.

The more relevant traffic you can attract, the more chances you will have to convert those visitors into customers. If you aren’t sure where you stand right now, here’s what Google looks for when ranking. High rankings put you in a visible position in search results, making it more likely that people will find you.

How can you increase sales with SEO?

Marketing efforts should offer value. Connecting SEO to sales is important because, ideally, it can bring new customers to your website all day, every day. Your website is a powerful sales tool that sells for you when you’re not available or your brick-and-mortar store happens to be closed.

Your goal should be to bring those visitors to your website and convert them to customers who buy from you once or regularly. If you are drawing traffic to your website and those visitors are not converting, you’re missing out on potential revenue.

Not convinced that SEO is valuable to your sales process? Did you know that 1.9 billion people worldwide purchased goods online in 2019? Search Engine Journal says that over 25 per cent of people click the first organic search result and over 55 per cent click on the first three. Imagine the value if you’re in the top rankings. Then imagine what you could be missing out on if you aren’t.

Online shoppers aren’t just ordering online. They’re also researching local shops and service providers. SocialMediaToday says 46 per cent of all Google searches are for local information, and 97 per cent of users looking for a local business search online. 

Tips to increase sales with SEO

Increasing sales through SEO will be an ongoing effort, but as you’ve learned above, it can pay off when you get it right. There is no perfect formula or combination of steps. Instead, there are strategies to improve your results and tactics you can test to see what works for your business.

Try these tips to use SEO to help grow your sales:

Keyword strategy

Keyword strategy should be guiding everything you do in SEO, as it will help you create valuable content your readers want. You’ll want to identify valuable keywords that allow you to target relevant website traffic and aren’t so popular that millions of people are using them. For example, you may never be able to rank for “shoes,” but you certainly may be able to rank for a specific type of shoe in your local shopping area.

High-quality content

Once you identify important keywords, you’ll be creating website content using those keywords to attract visitors. Develop high-quality content based on keywords for various types of online publications, such as blog posts, website copy, videos and guides. Make your content authoritative and valuable. Potential customers should read it and feel reassured that you are a trustworthy solution to their problems. Don’t forget to make your content mobile-friendly so local searchers can find you while out and about shopping.

On-page SEO

Take care of your on-page SEO to help search engines discover your content. Learn how to use your keywords correctly and structure content on the page so that it’s easy to read and easy for search engines to read and categorize for searchers. You’ll be optimizing each page of your website and every piece of new content you publish. If you’re selling products online, product descriptions should be unique and written with search engines and your customer in mind. Use keywords and clear language.

User experience (UX)

Website visitors only have so much patience for slow-loading pages and websites that are hard to navigate. You can improve their experience and the likelihood that they’ll stay and keep shopping by improving page load times, clearing up your menus and navigation, and removing dead links. This improves their user experience with your website, also known as UX.

Product reviews

Customers need to trust that you’re offering a quality product or service based on what they read on your website. Try adding product reviews to show what buyers think about your products to help customers feel confident about purchasing from you.

Local SEO

As noted above, local searches are valuable to your business and can increase foot traffic to your place of business. Look for opportunities to use local SEO to show up in searches for your city or delivery area. Use local keywords and landing pages to help draw this traffic to your business. Remember to make your content mobile-friendly for these users.

Add a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page

What are common questions asked by your customers? Check your social media pages and ask your customer service team. Identify common objections that make buyers hesitate or common questions about how you do business. If you can create a page that answers these questions, you can help buyers move past their hesitations without leaving your website. Don’t make them wait for a call or email from you.

Smooth your sales process

Once you increase traffic to your website and reassure visitors that they’ve found a trustworthy source of solutions, make sure these leads convert to sales. Consider what happens once someone decides to purchase from your business. Do they buy right from your website? Do they need to call you? Make it easy for them and smooth the sales process by removing any delays or obstacles.

Understanding how search affects your online sales is a necessary step to growing your business. The best approach is an integrated strategy that incorporates everything discussed here, ensuring that you know who you’re targeting and why. This will keep your keyword research and SEO efforts on track.

An agency can help you develop and implement an SEO strategy and ensure the essential connection between SEO and sales is kept strong. Make that link, and you can justify your investments in SEO and build your website into a profitable sales channel.