Why You Should Use SEO to Increase eCommerce Sales

Search engine page rankings have a perpetual and dynamic effect on the revenue potential of eCommerce stores. High-quality SEO has the power to increase your “market share” in a large pool of refined user search traffic; where effective user engagement and targeting can be converted into real sales.

With the right strategy, investing in SEO for an eCommerce store can be hugely beneficial and valuable – we can quantify this exact value by using insights such as keyword search volume per region, page rank click-through rate per industry and normal conversion rate of visitors.

Let’s take an example: MJWebs Pty Ltd Decides to start selling $500 Wedding Dresses with a normal conversion rate of 1%.

I’m going to be making the following evidence-based assumptions for this example:

• 59% of users searching for keywords in the “apparel” category click through to the first search result while only 11% click the second search result. [SmartInsights, 2018]
• The average monthly search volume for “wedding dresses” in Australia is approximately 49.5k per month. [SERanking Keyword Tool, November 2018] If MJWebs was ranked in position one on Google for “wedding dresses”, how much revenue could we expect assuming an infinite stock of wedding dresses available?

Let’s do some basic math to work this out:

(59 / 100) * 49,500 = 29,205 # Number of Visitors

MJWebs is going to expect approximately 29,205 users (59% of total volume) visiting the website directly after searching “wedding dresses”.

(1 / 100) * 29,205 = 292.05 # Number of Sales

Based on our normal conversion rate of 1%, 292.05 users are going to make a purchase.

292.05 * $500 =  $146,025 # Monthly Revenue
12 * $146,025 = $1752300 # Annual Revenue

Based on our assumed search volume and conversion rate, the monthly revenue is around $146,025. If we assume the page rank remained in position one for 12 months, this equates to $1.7523 million in annual revenue.

Let’s see the difference for if MJWebs is ranked at position two for “wedding dresses”.

(11 / 100) * 49,500 = 5,445 # Number of Visitors
(1 / 100) * 5,445 = 54.45 # Number of Sales
54.45 * $500 = $27,225 # Monthly Revenue
$27,225 * 12 = $326,700 # Annual Revenue
$1,752,300 - $326,700 = $1,751,973.3 # Difference in Annual Revenue

The website ranked at position one made $118,800 more than the website ranked at position two on a monthly basis and $1.751973 million in annual revenue. As you can see, well-optimised Google page rank holds significant potential value to your online eCommerce store.

Conclusion

When we know an approximate keyword search volume and our normal conversion rate, it becomes easy to determine the monthly revenue potential and how much of this could be invested in improving SEO and retaining a target page rank.

Organic search engine optimisation is capable of being a key driver of eCommerce sales when keywords are identified and optimised strategically. By improving your search engine rankings yourself or by engaging an agency like ourselves (MJWebs) to boost your page rankings, you are drastically increasing your revenue potential by reaching a larger, more refined audience.