5 Reasons Retailers Should Do Social and/or SEO

Didit Editorial

12 years ago

February 27, 2013: Online retailers looking to increase market share need to utilize all the tools in the marketing toolbox to succeed –including social media and SEO — according to Didit’s Mark Simon. Retailers that prefer to rely on a “paid media” strategy because accounting for spend, income, net profit and return on investment is easy, thus justifying financial allocations. But if you ignore “unpaid” media efforts, including search engine optimization and social media campaigns, you do at your own peril.

Mark identifies five big reasons for etailers to engage in social media and SEO:

1. Organic search engine results page (SERP) real estate still matters. Competition among retailers for both paid and organic real estate on SERPs is fierce throughout the year, with bid prices peaking during the traditional holiday shopping season. Given the scarcity of SERP listings, retailers who are able to dominate in both paid and organic listings will obtain more traffic, orders and profit than those relying on paid listings alone.

2. SEO isn’t just about links and keywords anymore. During its early days, the main focus of search engine optimization was on obtaining inbound links to acquire credibility with search engines. Content — i.e., the actual information served on the page — was never the primary topic of interest. In the past several years however, as Google and the other search engines have cracked down on sites which robotically generate low-quality content, the SEO discipline has matured and is less about gaming the engines than it is ensuring that sites, through their content, are relevant to human consumers.

3. SEO differentiates retailer’s products. Many online retailers, especially those using off-the-shelf shopping cart systems, do little to add value to these records, instead relying on stock images and standard descriptions (often identical to those furnished by the manufacturer). Retailers using SEO best practices, however, will add meaningful information that lets searchers, shoppers and browsers differentiate offerings.

4. Content velocity matters. While today’s SEO practices are focused on producing quality content, it’s not enough simply to warehouse such content and call it a day. Google and the other search engines favor sites that frequently publish new content.

5. An optimized site is a social site. The retailer’s job of attracting fans, likes and follows is easier if users are conditioned to expect new content in the form of news, updates and/or special offers. If a retailer has implemented SEO principles to make their site relevant, accessible and dynamic, creating dynamic social media areas is a much easier task and will result in more success.

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