How Can Retailers Benefit From SEO?

Introduction

COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted many retailers in the world. With regulations such as social distancing, many clients are shying away from public places including retail stores. Many retailers are therefore adopting online solutions such as using social media, websites, and various platforms to conduct business. This is great however a new problem arises. This brings much more competition online and retailers have to understand how search engines work for their stores and businesses not to get lost in the multitude of stores and businesses online making it difficult for both existing and potential clients to find them. To overcome this challenge, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be used. You could easily find an Austin SEO company, or any other within your locality to help you propel your business to the top ranks of the search engine result pages.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is comprised of a set of tools and techniques that are used to enable digital content on websites, to be easily identified by search engines and rank high in search engine results when people search for related content. A good example would be someone searching for a nice summer outfit on Google search. Google’s search algorithm will go through millions of web pages in search of related content. It will analyze the search intent and conclude that this person is probably looking to buy a summer outfit. The algorithm will then show the results of potential websites that have been optimized and contain possible results. That is the necessity of SEO. If your retail store has been well optimized, it has the potential of showing up high in search rankings.

How your retail business can benefit from SEO:

Now that we’ve had a look at what SEO is and how it works, here are some ways through which your retail business could benefit from it.

1. Google My Business

SEO through means such as Google My business not only makes available information about your retail store online but also increases trust among potential clients. Google My Business enables you to add photos of your business, location and it also displays ratings from previous clients which enables potential clients to have a good idea about how your business is run. Information such as operating hours, contacts and address information could go a long way in boosting the credibility of your business, both among existing and potential clients.

2. Attract potential clients

There is a lot of potentials for SEO to assist you in tapping a potential customer base that you may or may have not been aware of. Every day millions of searches are made on a variety of topics. Some of which may be related to your business. An estimated 30% of search queries being made locally, your products could be made visible in the search results of many potential customers whom you wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. SEO can help them find the exact product they are looking for by going through all the data your store has made publicly available and in the process, you could gain additional clients.

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3. A great marketing avenue

For many businesses, marketing is one of the major costs that the business has to accommodate, usually with very little or no data as to how effective the marketing campaign was. Afterward, a new campaign has to be launched to gain new clients. However, with SEO once performed on a page, its’ effects could last for a long time. Once a page has been optimized it also takes much less effort to keep it up to date so as not to miss out on any additional traffic that could be gained by making a few adjustments.  As opposed to other marketing techniques, data on traffic is easily accessible for each page, and the effectiveness of SEO could be measured through methods such as AB testing.

4. Guide business decisions

SEO is such a powerful tool that can help guide some of your business decisions to help your retail business offer products and services that are on-demand. Some SEO techniques such as keyword research can help you identify what products customers are looking for, the search volumes for such products, and you could also easily identify related products that people are searching for. This could contribute greatly to the decision-making process of your business helping you to determine which products to stock for it gives you a way to easily assess demand.

5. Brand awareness

There are several ways through which SEO can help create awareness for your brand. The first is just by default once your product pages are optimized and they show up on search results, your business automatically starts grabbing the attention of unsuspecting Google searchers. One other technique that many businesses usually employ is creating articles on both local and general content that may be related to their businesses. Blogging has proven to sometimes draw major traffic to business websites as it attracts clients beyond the domain of products and services. An example would be to post blogs on how to dress for the summer for your fashion retail store. This helps create brand awareness and helps people identify with your store beyond the purchase of goods and services.

6. Competitive edge

One of the major benefits of SEO is that it could help your business gain a huge advantage over your competitors. It can do this in several ways, the most obvious is by default. If your competitors haven’t optimized their business or websites, yours will automatically show up at the top of search results. The second way is through the use of some SEO tools that provide search volumes, you could easily determine the amount of traffic your competitors could be getting on related search queries, such as specific product pages, and use such info to determine how to improve your business to keep up with the competition.

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Conclusion

SEO is probably what your retail business needs to stand out from the multitude of retail businesses online. Despite whatever SEO service you may desire, you could find an Austin, Texas SEO service or any other new you to implement it. The above are just a few of the major benefits your retail business could gain if you choose to invest in SEO.