So, you’ve spent thousands upon thousands of pounds on your SEO campaign and finally you rank in the top 3 search results on Google – Or you achieve something incredible and hit the #1 spot and you remember your SEO agency telling you that the #1 organic spot gets over 33% or so of all clicks… But you have no sales… why?!

You may think it’s thousands of pounds down the drain and you may of lost your faith in the internet and digital marketing but there are a number of factors that may be leading to your disappointment with SEO and digital marketing.

High rankings in Google do not guarantee more online sales, although there are ways your SEO can boost your conversion rates.

Your chosen Keywords

Are the keywords that you have chosen correct?

You may be surprised to know that if you work with a poor SEO agency that they may not even do any keyword research for you – They may just ask you for some keywords and think that they will work best – Not necessarily the case!

Keyword research is fundamental to your ecommerce SEO campaign and its not unusual to spend the first month or 2 of working with an SEO agency to get the keywords right, research your keywords, review the findings and ensure you are targeting the right keywords and that there is sufficient search volume each month.

With intent being a huge part of how Google ranks websites and Rank Brain being able to separate between someone researching a product versus someone wanting to buy a product – the search results can differ.

When doing keyword research ensure your content matches the intent of the user – Trying to sell a high ticket product for a certain keyword without providing any content or education could put buyers off when they would rather want to know more about you, your company and your product rather than click and buy there and then.

Traffic location

You have your keywords in place and you are driving traffic that’s still not converting – But is that traffic relevant and located where your target audience is?

If you are getting lots of traffic from over seas and you are selling pizza at a local pizza shop in Birmingham, UK and the majority of your traffic is from Birmingham, Alabama, then you will of course have a high bounce rate as the traffic is the other side of the world looking for something local to their self.

Whilst Google is very good at figuring this out – You still need to make sure by using Google Analytics that your traffic is relevant.

Content

If your content is weak then your bounce rate will be sky high.

Content on a webpage can be anything from text to infographics, video or photos – It all helps to tell an engaging story and keep visitors on your website for longer.

If a user lands on your page and it is thin on content and doesn’t paint the full picture of what the user is looking for, then it’s likely that they will leave, pretty quickly – Without taking action.

Content can also be sued to add your user journey, using standout call to actions that take your website visitors by the hand from homepage to product page to checkout are super useful to help you convert more of your organic search engine traffic.

User Journey

So, you have the right keywords and your content is as tight as it can be – Yet your visitors still don’t go past a single page – Why?
It could be down to a poor user experience and more specifically the user experience.

Content is a way to take your visitor by the hand and take them from one page to the other, but if the journey isn’t thought out, is too long and unnecessary then your SEO efforts will be going to waste.

If you have someone land on your homepage and don’t direct them to view your products or give a clear call to action such as “Sign up here” or “Click here to buy now” then it’s highly unlikely that users will follow the journey you are wanting them to follow.

It is also important to ensure that the user journey is streamlined at your checkout, you don’t want to be giving people ways out and directing them away from your checkout.

Sure, you may want to upsell products, but no need to send your customer from checkout to another page, just use something simple like a 1-click add to basket so that it’s done with minimal fuss.

Poor website design

Trust signals, Great UX, Great User Journey and clear call to actions, all of which are mentioned above, all contribute to a great website design.

If you have a poor website design, then it’s highly likely to be contributing to your high bounce rate and another reason why your website traffic isn’t converting.

People want to trust a website, and a clean design goes a long way to giving a professional feel that can subconsciously make a person want to buy more from your ecommerce website.

Conveying your brand, using clean relevant fonts and ensuring that a user can land on any page and get to a product page and checkout with minimal fuss is one way to ensure you don’t suffer from a poor website design and make the most out of your website traffic.

These are some of the most common reasons that websites fail to convert organic SEO traffic into buying customers.

SEO agencies sell the dream that being at the top of Google will solve all of your problems, that it will take 6-9 months and then you will have a flood of visitors to your website and the rest is history – Not true and far easier said than done.

If you are unsure on your keywords you could try running a small Google Ads campaign and monitor how the traffic behaves.

You will get quicker results and you wont have to wait 6-9 months spending a bucket full of cash on keywords that aren’t right for you.
When you use Google Ads you also get to see the search terms people are typing in to find your ads – This could be the insight that you require to ensure you target the right keywords in the long run.

If you think User Journey may be an issue on your ecommerce website and that you have a poor ecommerce design, then get some more opinions.

You can firstly use Google Analytics at no cost to work out what your traffic is doing by using the user journey/ visitor flow tool.

If you have more of a budget, then you can use some tools on the market such as usertetsing.com to allow you to set tasks, ask people to get from A to B to C on your website, get a recording of it and a first hand insight into how easy or difficult your website is to navigate.

SEO is very powerful.

Get your keywords right, your website design right and constantly test things to improve your conversion rate and you will notice more and more of your SEO traffic converting into paying customers on your ecommerce website.

Remember, SEO isn’t a standalone activity, the more you monitor it, the more you test things on your website the greater chance of success your website will have at converting that organic search traffic into paying customers.