Digital marketing agencies specializing in ecommerce tend to combine both marketing and SEO into a single service. That’s fine, as both strategies are absolutely necessary for an ecommerce operator hoping to effectively compete. But ecommerce marketing and ecommerce SEO are two distinctly different strategies designed to achieve different goals.
Online retailers can handle marketing and SEO on their own and do a pretty good job with both. But they can also hire digital marketing agencies to do the work for them. If a retailer can afford it, I would always advise hiring professionals. Paid ecommerce marketing and SEO services can pay off in a big way.
The Basics of Ecommerce Marketing
Ecommerce marketing is easily the broader of the two strategies. It is based on time-tested principles of marketing that companies have been using for decades. At its heart are two key components: driving sales and strengthening a retailer’s brand. Both are necessary if a retailer is to stay in business for a long time.
Webtek Digital Marketing is a Utah firm that provides ecommerce marketing services alongside others. They say that digital marketers utilize a variety of tools and strategies to promote their ecommerce clients. Here are just a few mentioned by Webtek:
- Paid Advertising – Paid online ads, particularly those of the PPC variety, can do a very good job of driving traffic to an ecommerce site. They can also be leveraged to take advantage of special sales, promotions, etc.
- Content Marketing – Relevant and helpful content goes a long way toward establishing brand authority. Good content can also lead to more sales by giving people a reason to visit a retailer’s website.
- Email Marketing – Email is not dead. And in fact, it is an incredibly useful marketing tool for ecommerce. Everything from email newsletters to targeted promotional messages can get customers excited about a retailer’s products.
Webtek and other digital marketing agencies have access to additional tools I will not cover in this post. The main point here is that ecommerce marketing is mostly about sales and brand strength. Those two things are what set it apart from ecommerce SEO.
The Basics of Ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO is more narrow in its focus. If it’s done right, increased sales and brand strength are among the natural byproducts. But its primary goal is not to drive sales. It isn’t increasing brand strength. Ecommerce SEO’s primary goal is to drive traffic through strong search engine performance.
Search engines like Google and Bing return what those of us in the industry refer to as ‘search engine results pages’ (SERPs). Ideally, a website owner wants his site or one of his pages to be as close to the top of the list as possible. He wants visitors to find his site on the very first page. Why? Because search engine users rarely venture beyond that first page.
Ecommerce SEO needs to account for the fact that a lot of people start the online shopping experience on a search engine. Therefore, SEO providers need to target search engine users on Google, Bing, etc. But that’s not all.
The Amazon Factor
Ecommerce operators also need to account for Amazon, the world’s largest and most prolific retailer. Amazon has its own search engine right on its website. Retailers who sell on Amazon need SEO services that know how the on-site search engine works.
It should be clear that ecommerce marketing and SEO are two separate and distinct strategies. They often go hand-in-hand for service providers thanks to the fact that they also overlap. But both could be practiced separately from the other. And now you know.
