How to Drive More Organic Traffic to Your eCommerce Store (10 Practical Tips)

If you have an eCommerce store, then your primary target is to attract as many visitors to your site as possible. Once they are on there, you will have to work out a reliable system that converts them into paying customers, but this can’t happen unless you can consistently draw significant traffic to the website.

It is no surprise that organic traffic is treated like gold dust in digital marketing – because it is. When you don’t have any, you will feel like the lights have switched off and you are in the dark. When you finally achieve it, your business can experience exponential growth. 

At this point, you are likely wondering whether it is possible for your eCommerce store to increase the amount of organic traffic it receives, and if so, where do you start?

Although it can be overwhelming when you’re first piecing together a strategy, you can make the challenge far easier to manage by breaking it down into its constituent parts.

These are the most effective ways to increase the amount of organic traffic your eCommerce store receives.

#1. Work alongside a specialist marketing agency

Many business owners make life difficult for themselves when it comes to organic search traffic. They think they have to put all the weight on their own shoulders, learning the various strategies to achieve it and trying to complete all the work themselves.

In fact, this could have the opposite effect as intended.

If you are busy trying to run an online business, your days are already filled with various time-consuming tasks – from sourcing stock to delivering items and managing customer service. 

The last problem you need is to distract yourself with content marketing. It runs the risk of damaging other parts of your business, which renders the entire process null and void.

Instead, if you have the budget, you should consider working alongside a specialist marketing agency like Nuanced Media that can conduct the work for you and guide you through the process from start to finish. 

By doing this, you will fast-track your progress, learn best practices for each strategy from an experienced team of professionals and see results much faster.

#2. Create a content strategy

When you want to increase organic search traffic, you are going to need to draw up a content strategy. Without a clear plan, you will quickly be swamped under the weight of your options and then blown off course at the first signs of difficulty.

Of course, the exact strategy will depend on your specific target. If you want to cultivate a strong and reliable following over the course of months or even years, then you are more likely to want to focus on creating long-form content like blog posts or even YouTube videos and podcasts to attract more website visitors. 

Alternatively (and probably more likely), you want a short-term hit of traffic, which will spike sales and hopefully spark an entirely new group of repeat buyers. 

In this case, you are better off looking at PPC ads.

By creating (and then sticking to) a content strategy, you can easily track your progress and check whether you need to adjust your approach as you go.

#3. Focus on SEO

One of the most fundamental building blocks of organic search traffic is SEO.

The reason for this is simple. Search engine optimization is the technique that increases your web domain authority and builds the trust of search engine algorithms. 

These algorithms are responsible for deciding the order of SERPs (search engine results pages). When they crawl your website, they want to know how valuable it is to your target market, how much they are likely to enjoy their experience on your site and whether you offer what they are looking for. This is called matching search intent.

As an eCommerce store, you should have a two-pronged approach to SEO.

Firstly, you should ensure that each product you offer is clearly labeled with niche keywords that will flag them up on results pages. For example, if you sell pens, then you should find as many responsive pen-related keywords as possible and integrate them seamlessly into your various product titles, descriptions, links, and landing pages.

You should also include content on the site that will be of great interest to your target market. Perhaps you could publish articles which teach them how to use your products properly or cover topics which are related to your product lines. 

These articles should be well-researched and include keywords that are popular within your sector.

If you execute your SEO strategy well, you will start to experience an upturn in organic traffic which will swell further and further over time. However, be aware that search engine optimization campaigns take months to bear fruit. They are not overnight success hacks and should not be relied upon to deliver results within days or weeks.

Lastly, I suggest you start with free SEO tools such as Prepostseo or one of the best quality value tools such as SE Ranking.

#4. Improve your website

One of the most straightforward ways you can increase your organic search traffic is to improve your website. Slow, cumbersome sites are punished by algorithms and will severely limit the number of visitors you receive. 

If you’re going to overhaul your site, then focus on user experience. Make sure each page loads quickly, that the aesthetics of the site are top draw, and that the user can quickly find whatever they’re looking for without any concerted effort.

After all, the easier you make it for visitors to find specific products, the more sales you are likely to land.

#5. Cultivate a social media presence

Building a successful online business is all about the audience. You will struggle to land consistent sales if you are constantly chasing after new customers rather than working to create repeat business. 

One of the best ways you can start to cultivate your own dedicated audience is via social media. These platforms are literally designed to create connections and build communities – and it is a travesty that more businesses don’t fully embrace their limitless potential.

Not only does creating a community of customers drive more visitors to your website, but it solidifies your brand in the marketplace. You have to convince your target market to visit your site rather than competitors, and emotion plays a large part in their decision process.

All being equal, customers are more likely to choose the eCommerce site that has sparked a strong emotional reaction in them, made them stop and consume content, or interact with a post than a website they have never heard of before. 

By creating a strong brand identity, you will continue to attract more and more organic search traffic simply based on word of mouth. People will want to buy from you for your reputation, not just due to the SEO techniques you employ.

To build a strong social presence, you should focus on one platform to start with. Trying to launch yourself on multiple sites will only milk your audience size down and prevent you from growing a single account. 

All social media platforms require a different approach – whether it is the informal creativity of Tik Tok, the beautiful imagery of Instagram, or the corporate angle on LinkedIn. 

By mastering one at a time, you can bring your audience along on your journey as one unit rather than spreading them out across the internet.

#6. Focus on a certain niche

You might imagine that the wider you cast your net, the more visitors you are likely to receive. While it makes sense in theory, the reality is rather different. 

The internet is a vast network of relatively small subcommunities and niches. People search for specific items or topics, not for browsing random websites.

If you want to land more organic search traffic, then you need to perform niche research to find your niche and double down on it. This will make it far easier to be noticed by customers and helps you to establish yourself as a market leader. 

Ultimately, it is better to be the dominant brand in one industry than a small one in a bunch of them. Your brand image will be boosted considerably, and you will be ‘known’ for a certain type of product. 

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you should stick to one niche forever. If you experience a great deal of success in a particular area, you might want to expand into other industries too. Beware, however, of alienating your original audience. 

You don’t want to go so off-piste that your brand has no continuity anymore. Instead, stick to related products, and you can slowly scale.

#7. Create an eye-catching offer

A fantastic method you can use to spark fresh interest from your target market is to create enticing offers. If you feel as if your customer appeal is waning, then wrapping your products up in a striking new way will increase the chances of people visiting your website.

Perhaps you create a buy one, get one free offer, which encourages people to buy more products in one go, or you launch a bundle that pieces together products that people may be getting too accustomed to.

Arguably the most impactful variant of this is the limited-time offer. When you give your prospects a time limit, they will be pressured into making an immediate decision. 

If the offer is desirable enough, this will cause them to visit your website immediately to assess whether to purchase it or not. Of course, when you have tempted them there, you can advertise other products they might like. 

This could be enough to rekindle their relationship with your brand and demonstrate to the algorithm that your site is popular in your market.

#8. Use PPC ads

If you are looking for a quick surge in organic search traffic, then one of the best tactics you can use is pay-per-click advertising.

The reason why PPC ads are so effective as short-term traffic boosters are that they are highly targeted. You can whittle your target market down to the prospects who are most likely to buy the product you are advertising.

The targeting system deciphers this based on key metrics – such as demographics, location, recent browsing history, and previous buying habits.

Of course, to do this, you need a strong understanding of your market in the first place. If you don’t know whom you are targeting or why your adverts will fail to convert.

Although you can target precisely, you will be relying on the strength of your imagery, copywriting, keywords, and call to action to seal the deal.

Once you have them up and running, PPC ads can be used as an ideal stopgap while you wait for other, longer-term organic traffic techniques to start working. The perfect example of this is SEO, which often takes months or even years to deliver the full breadth of its performance.

However, remember that PPC ads should not be relied upon as anything more than a short-term tactic. It would be best if you worked hard to cultivate organic traffic in other areas to ensure your visitor numbers stay high long after you stop using the ads.

Lastly, I suggest you check these Adsense niches since they are the best to get started with advertising.

#9. Create a dedicated sales funnel

We have already mentioned many of the best ways to draw more people to your website, but what hasn’t been touched on is what you are supposed to do with them once they have arrived.

This is why you should create an evergreen sales funnel that takes visitors on a coherent journey from the moment they click on your site to the checkout. The more streamlined this is, the more customers you will process, and the more likely it is that they will come back again in the future.

People like to be sold to – they just want it to be painless and memorable. If you can achieve this with your sales funnel, you will drastically increase the amount of organic search traffic you receive. 

#10. Make the most of seasonal marketing

Lastly, it would help if you made the most of every seasonal opportunity to draw attention to your website. This means jumping on events like Black Friday, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, and both the January and Summer sales periods.

These events spark huge upswings in consumer spending every single year, so take advantage of them with a dedicated marketing campaign.

For best results, you should focus on niche marketing.

Conclusion

Driving organic traffic requires a lot of work and consistency. However, if you use the strategies displayed in this article, you can start driving more traffic to your site, which will also increase your revenue.

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