Driving traffic to a B2B eCommerce website is an important part of a company's success, but it's more important to drive the right traffic than attract a lot of generic visits from the wrong type of buyers. The best ways to drive website traffic depend on reaching the right customers for the company's products and providing them with a feature-rich platform that keeps them returning. SEO for eCommerce includes optimizing product and category pages for organic searches. Basically, turn the product catalog into an SEO Goldmine. Other ways to help drive traffic are sending emails to existing customers, using paid advertising such as PPC, Facebook, and Instagram ads as well as content marketing. There are many ways to drive traffic, but the best are those that attract likely prospects. Best SEO eCommerce Strategies to Attract Relevant Traffic It's difficult to get the right kind of attention from buyers given the proliferation of online marketplaces, global supplier competition, and niche markets that attract certain buyers with attitudes that favor specialty suppliers. Large companies often allocate more money to their advertising budgets to attract new customers, but that's often a waste of resources that might be better spent targeting the company's existing customers. However, there are proven methods of attracting the right kind of customers while investing minimal dollars. These include the following ways to drive website traffic--the right kind: [1] Cultivate Referrals There are many ways to cultivate referrals. The Patel article quotes that 81 percent of people admit that a referral from a friend, family member, or business associate factors heavily in buying decisions. [1] Implementing a referral platform on the company's website can make it easier for customers to share with friends and post on social media. Refine Your Content Strategy Content is critical for companies that want to educate, persuade, convert, and attract new customers. It's important to keep the company's concept and values in mind while customizing content to resonate with the targeted prospect. Category landing pages are a great way to add significant amounts of SEO-rich content to your site, to help add to the Product SEO content. Provide Social Validation Customers trust social media posts more than advertising. about 92 percent of customers trust peer recommendations, and even 70 percent trust endorsements from strangers. It's easy and inexpensive to encourage satisfied customers to post reviews and testimonials or reviews on social media. Companies can also find key brand influencers who are willing to review company products at the cost of a free sample. Work on Website Capabilities It's critical to keep the company website functional, fast, and mobile-friendly. When adding new features, it's important to test them for functionality and speed. Restructure the site's architecture if it's become stagnant and requires multiple clicks to get to all parts of the site. The faster the site, the higher the company's SEO ranking will be. Responsive design (mobile-friendly) is very important in rankings. Best practices for building a fast, responsive website include eliminating unnecessary buttons and navigation steps. Offering customers multiple payment options can prevent new visitors from leaving the site immediately. Google now penalizes you if your site does not index as mobile-friendly. Incorporate SEO into Every Business Plan It's a cold fact--about 93 percent of web traffic comes from organic searches, and only 5 percent of people go beyond the first page of search engine return pages, or SERPs. It's important to get listed on the first page to generate traffic, so that means finding less competitive keywords that people actually use in their searches, often referred to as “long-tail keywords.” There are many other technical issues involved in SEO to satisfy the requirements of Google's ranking criteria. Professional SEO assistance can prove invaluable while delivering a high return on the investment. Clarity, being SEO certified, built its eCommerce platform with SEO in mind. Built-in Category landing pages, auto-generated product and category sitemap XML generation, and more. Retarget Prospects and Customers Each site visitor is a lead, so it makes sense to install cart abandonment software or send follow-up messages to nurture these leads. Build Trust Building trust is critical for attracting new customers and ranking highly in searches. It's important to display trust and security badges, SSL information, customer testimonials, and other methods of building trust. Content can often build trust by sharing values and offering thought leadership for products and services (i.e. show them you’re not just selling these products and services, you’re also the experts). Offer Free Shipping Although it seems a little strange, B2B buyers will spend more money to qualify for free shipping. People just don't like to pay to have products delivered. Up to 72% of shoppers will abandon their cart if they go to check out and there’s no free shipping. Free shipping can be tricky for B2B companies because of the number of products sold, but there are workarounds such as raising prices to cover shipping costs, offering free shipping only on orders that meet certain profit thresholds, and using the incentive to attract or retain an important client. Designing an Appealing User Experience The user experience is critical to keeping new customers on the company website long enough to develop his or her interest. Research shows that many calls to customer service contact centers involve customers who have trouble using self-service features. [2] It's important to test websites on multiple browsers and devices to determine the trouble spots and use the information to fine-tune the user experience. Typical problems include images that don't load properly, slow loading speeds, and large blocks of content that are difficult to read without breaks in the text. Drive Website Traffic with Development Choosing an experienced development partner such as Clarity can manage the technical issues of SEO for eCommerce. Clarity has built over 1,000 websites for B2B companies, enjoys a great reputation, and uses shortcuts and resources that speed development and reduce costs. You won't need to worry about testing, security, and page speed when you integrate your platform in a robust API layer and enable marketing automation, better management, and easy content creation to support your brand. Whether you need a traditional eCommerce website, integration with an existing platform, an auction site, or a peer-to-peer marketplace, we're here to help guide you with a complimentary discovery session. Get in touch for a no-pressure talk! References: [1] Neilpatel.com: 25 Ways To Drive More E-commerce Store Traffic Without Buying Ads https://neilpatel.com/blog/e-commerce-traffic-tips/ [2] Userzoom.com:12 fascinating stats about UX and usability testing to help your business case https://www.userzoom.com/blog/fascinating-stats-about-ux-and-usability-testing-to-help-your-business-case/