Ecommerce experts in this article talk about search behaviors, hands-on clients, forecasting<\/a> for aligning to current trends, and more.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see what they have to say.<\/p>\n James Finlayson<\/a>, Head of SEO at the7stars: \u201cGoogle\u2019s search volumes aren\u2019t just stagnating \u2013 in many cases, they\u2019re reducing. Despite this, consumers are conducting more research prior to purchases than ever <\/strong>\u2013 on Amazon and other \u2018super-retailers\u2019, on TikTok, large publishers with loyal audiences, Pinterest, YouTube, and Reddit. We recently looked at one market where, we estimated, less than 10% of search activity was actually happening on Google.\u201d Read Finlayson<\/a> on digital and in-store buying, pushing for larger budgets, and their Sofology success story.<\/p>\n Sara Povoas<\/a>, Content and SEO Manager at iProspect Portugal: \u201cWe observed a huge increase in shopping, not only for younger audiences but also for older ones, which is new. I think that users are getting more demanding and more informed<\/strong> \u2014 if you have a lot of offers, you need to make smart decisions. So people are looking for more. The reviews, opinions, video demonstrations, and price comparisons are getting more popular as people are doing these decision-making searches in order to make a purchase.\u201d Read Povoas<\/a> on fluctuating stocks, health and cosmetics trends, and client communication.<\/p>\n Luke Carthy<\/a>, eCommerce SEO & CRO Consultant: \u201cWhat I\u2019m seeing across my consumer-based clients is that Average Order Value is up, but the number of transactions is probably similar or falling. What I mean by that is they\u2019re spending more per transaction<\/strong>. Rather than someone going to a clothing retailer, maybe once a month or once every couple of weeks, depending on what their previous shopping habits were, they will shop less frequently. And when they shop, they\u2019ll spend more money. I think that happens for a couple of reasons: One is to mitigate the delivery fees and, secondly, to try and get to thresholds to claim rewards, whatever those might be.\u201d Read Carthy<\/a> on buy-in, shifting strategies, and B2B clients.<\/p>\n Jen Cornwell<\/a>, Senior Director of Digital Strategy at Ignite Visibility: \u201cThe way people shop has changed, as they had converted to online and are now back to this hybrid style<\/strong> again. I think it\u2019s all about expectation setting: Can we ever get back to those traffic levels or those conversion levels online again? What are some creative ways that we can go about if we think that\u2019s the case? User behavior has taken a big shift.<\/p>\n For instance, we had an electronics client who sold computers, both online and brick-and-mortar. We started to see a shift at the beginning of 2022 as they had more foot traffic to their stores \u2013 which they\u2019re happy about, but they do not see as many purchases online anymore. Even in the instances where there isn\u2019t a brick-and-mortar component or the product is only available online, the opportunity for somebody to go and buy it in person just pulls them away from coming to the Internet as much as they used to.\u201d Read Cornwell<\/a> on video content, white goods, and creative page optimization.<\/p>\n James Euinton<\/a>, Account Director at The SEO Works: \u201cOver the years, as Google improves its handling of language, it\u2019s been more important to focus on the more specific, longer-tail phrases. Sometimes this may mean catering to specific questions and keywords<\/strong> that fall outside standard products and category pages. It\u2019s important that we tailor additional content to these to target the customer at different points in the journey or funnel<\/strong>.\u201d Read Euinton<\/a> on moving the needle fast, Core Web Vitals, and business contexts.<\/p>\n Radu Marcusu<\/a>, CEO at Upswing: \u201cThe biggest challenge this year was for marketing managers to explain the drops in the market and how to go about it. That\u2019s why I would say it was more about us being proactive in communicating these shifts to our clients<\/strong>. They needed support in understanding the overall market trends and that it was a general change in demand \u2013 and, of course, in adapting to it. That also meant new tactics or focusing on specific actions. For instance, if Google now recommends refined searches, we make sure our clients have filters or categories targeting those searches. We also focus on having the right content to answer those searches<\/strong>. Or keep their Google My Business profiles optimized. In a nutshell, we were proactive in adapting strategies, budgets, and also specific actions implying Google changes.\u201d Read Marcusu<\/a> on differentiating through pitching, video searches, and developing internal tools.<\/p>\n Eli Schwartz<\/a>, Growth Advisor and SEO Strategic Consultant: \u201cGoogle and other search engines use deep learning to improve search results for their users continuously. This past year, I have noticed that local results are triggered more often when Google detects a local intent<\/strong>. At the same time, on results where there should not have been local intent, I have seen the local results disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n Marc Swann<\/a>, Director of Search at Glass Digital: \u201c\u200b\u200bThere\u2019s no doubt that retailers are feeling the pinch as consumers tighten their belts, and this presents risks for most marketing agencies when it comes to justifying the value of their services. SEO is a channel that is often more at risk when times are hard, and marketing budgets are scrutinized. SEO performance can ultimately be maintained in the short and even medium term without a recurring spend associated with it, unlike something like paid search where once ad spend stops, performance disappears. So certainly, justifying expenditure in SEO is something that we have seen requested more<\/strong> and not seeing it as a luxury in harder times. Ultimately, those that are able to fulfill their SEO strategies through the hard times will be in much stronger positions when the economy eventually turns positive.\u201d Read Swan<\/a> on multi-lingual sites, sports retailers, and \u201cluxury\u201d channels.<\/p>\n Steve Walker<\/a>, Technical Director at Journey Further: \u201cMeasuring ROI has always been important, but it\u2019s no longer a nice-to-have. Measuring ROI is essential.<\/strong> This is why performance monitoring tools like SEOmonitor<\/a> are critical to your agency. The amount of in-house teams has also increased dramatically over the past few months. This is a great thing for the SEO industry and a testament to SEO\u2019s importance in digital marketing \u2013 but it fundamentally changes how agencies need to operate. We\u2019re no longer just additional resources doing basic SEO activity. We need to act in a similar way to a business consultancy and provide strategic-level support.\u201d Read Walker<\/a> on new user journeys, measuring impact, and funnel optimization.<\/p>\n Ben Austin<\/a>, Founder & CEO at Absolute Digital Media: \u201cWe utilize forecasting for both pitching and upselling to ecommerce clients<\/strong> to showcase our understanding of the industry they compete in and the business. By doing so, we can more effectively dictate what is required to drive continuous growth to the business whilst highlighting the ongoing value our innovative SEO strategies provide. In addition to providing a basic forecast of the brand\u2019s current market position, we supply further insight into the wider business benefits such as returning customers, revenue, and ROI.\u201d Read Austin<\/a> on business strategies, performing verticals in ecommerce, and dynamic URLs.<\/p>\n Charlie Norledge<\/a>, Head of SEO Performance at Impression: \u201cThe pitches are much more competitive now because there are probably fewer clients going to market as things started to slow down a bit. We\u2019ve had to make sure that we include innovative tactics<\/strong> in there. Like talking about how to utilize social media trends in organic when we talk about tech SEO, not just putting a list of fixes, making sure we have priority behind things and just giving them as much detail as possible.<\/p>\n Forecasting is another important piece. When we go to a competitive pitch, forecasting is, I\u2019d say, required<\/strong>. If we didn\u2019t do it, we could miss out. We were in pitches against other agencies, and because we had forecasts in place, we ended up winning the work.\u201d Read Norledge<\/a> on GPT-3 efficiency, reporting, and client expectations.<\/p>\n Kevin Gibbons<\/a>, Founder and CEO at Re:signal: \u201cFor us, it\u2019s important to have strong communication with our clients<\/strong> about where the priorities are and make sure that we know not just where the search demand is, but also the supply. Knowing what clients are focusing on \u2013 both in terms of seasonality and where the priorities could be and could be shifting because of those issues \u2013 helps us re-address what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n I think everyone\u2019s just probably a bit more price-conscious and cautious right now in terms of what they\u2019re doing. So, again, that\u2019s why ecommerce is such a strong sector for us. For the reason that you can track organic revenue performance. Everyone wants to make sure they\u2019re maximizing their ROI.\u201d Read Gibbons<\/a> on internationalization and their ASICS success story.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just about one channel or one tactic, but ecommerce digital experts are looking more and more into how they can optimize the full user experience, coordinate PR and SEO efforts, and make sense of the whole industry landscape and where the opportunity lies:<\/p>\n Petar Jovetic<\/a>, Organic Director at Impression: \u201cEverything we do has to show value and be targeted. We\u2019re baking innovation more and more into our proposition. It\u2019s been quite compelling to leverage AI to handle higher workloads and then do it more efficiently. One other thing I\u2019m keen to explore is using our CRO department, especially at the bottom of the funnel where every user counts, to grow acquisition strategically with more A\/B testing, multivariate testing, etc. We\u2019re looking into how CRO and SEO can complement each other more<\/strong>. I think that is really appealing in the current economic climate. So we\u2019re not just throwing additional users but nurturing them through the funnel to conversion.\u201d Read Jovetic<\/a> on SEO maturity frameworks and the State of Retail.<\/p>\n Charlie Clark<\/a>, Account Director & Founder at Minty Digital: \u201cI noticed more clients are looking to build their brand through digital PR<\/strong>, and we build their brand name rather than just focus on sales. Some of the bigger companies we work with used to allocate a separate budget to SEO, and that used to be the entire thing. Now they\u2019re allocating separate budgets within their departments, one for SEO and one for PR. They\u2019ll have their traditional PR, the standard press releases, but then they\u2019ll also be tying in the digital aspect to that, which is something that\u2019s been quite interesting to know.\u201d Read Clark<\/a> on entering new markets and campaign KPIs.<\/p>\n Heemesh Vara<\/a>, Head of SEO at Semetrical: \u201cOur keyword research process focuses on exploring the whole industry<\/strong>. That\u2019s something different from other agencies. Where they might take a category-by-category approach and do it month by month, we do it the other way around. It\u2019s a lot of work for us at the beginning, but it does provide the client and us with a complete picture of their entire industry. For example, we worked with a vintage furniture client with multiple types of products and categories, from sofas, stools, chairs, side tables, etc. So we had to research the entire industry all at once. And this is one of our unique selling propositions that we always put in the proposal as well.\u201d Read Vara<\/a> on SEO data analysis and baselines, stakeholder management, and securing budgets.<\/p>\n In the end, as our 15 interviews have shown<\/a>, both ecommerce clients and markets continue to shift, so it\u2019s critical to showcase sustainable results.<\/p>\n With all these challenges SEO experts face in mind, we continue to develop SEOmonitor<\/a> so it helps you:<\/p>\nImplement Multi-Touchpoint Customer Journeys As Search Behaviors Change<\/h2>\n
Get Creative With Product Reviews, Long-Tail Keywords & Specificity, As Google Algorithm Updates Intensify<\/h2>\n
Forecasts, SEO ROI & Data-Led Decisions Should Be At The Forefront For Ecommerce Businesses<\/h2>\n
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Rank Tracker\u2019s Strategy view on SEOmonitor.com, December 2022<\/span><\/div>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n\n
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SEO Forecast by SEOmonitor, December 2022<\/span><\/div>\n<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\nLeverage Integrated Campaigns To Build More Growth Opportunities<\/h2>\n
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