In recent years, many eCommerce brands have shifted their business model from Business-to-Business (B2B) to Direct-to-Consumer and undergone immense growth. Part of the success is their effective use of the search optimization engine (SEO) to improve online store visibility.
With the help of SEO, you can improve your brand ranking on search engines and drive quality traffic to the website. Undoubtedly, this innovative tool is worth taking into account when building up your Shopify store website.
Although there are many beneficial strategies to boost your D2C eCommerce SEO, this article offers a practical and beginner-friendly guide to support you from the most basic step.
What is a D2C eCommerce Brand?
A D2C business functions without a middleman so that end-consumers can purchase directly from their online sales channels. In contrast, a traditional retailer (clothing shops, grocery stores, etc.) purchases goods in bulk from a distributing company or wholesaler, then sells the products to consumers.
As the inventory is distributed straight from the manufacturer/producer to shoppers, there will be fewer disruptions and help shorten the supply chain process. An online shopping survey also shows that over 50% of consumers prefer buying directly from the brand producer rather than retail businesses.
Benefits of Running a D2C eCommerce Business
There are some recognizable advantages when you apply the D2C eCommerce strategy to your online brand:
Pursuing Omnichannel Sales
Manufacturers/producers have total control over their business activities, from the packaging process to their marketing approach, as they run the D2C model. This means they get to provide end-consumers with a well-rounded omnichannel shopping experience on multiple platforms.
Better Management of Brand Image
When a manufacturer/producer relies on a retailer to sell their products, they cannot manage how the middleman sells these goods. The D2C business model allows producers to be in charge of sales strategies, product distribution, and developing direct communication with consumers.
Generally, the brand manufacturer does not have to worry whether a retailer gives customers the wrong impression about their products and preserves brand standards. They can also quickly deal with problems and offer shoppers practical solutions.
That is why the D2C model creates opportunities for them to understand end-consumers better and obtain valuable insights to optimize manufacturing, sales, and marketing.
Why does SEO Matter to D2C eCommerce Businesses?
Being the owner of a D2C eCommerce store, your responsibility is not only about converting customers who are willing to shop but also drawing the attention of potential ones and having them buy your goods.
Therefore, your brand website requires effective D2C eCommerce SEO to be optimized and reach higher ranks on search results, maintaining consistent communication with end-consumers throughout their customer journey from the beginning.
As shoppers search for your online store, SEO is essential in promoting your brand content to top pages, attracting more traffic to the website, and converting to purchases.
Practical Tactics to Optimize SEO for Your D2C eCommerce Brand
Let’s walk through detailed instructions on how to get the most out of your D2C eCommerce SEO strategy.
Check Your Current SEO Metrics
If you are not yet familiar with a standard SEO strategy, the first factor to examine is how organic search on your eCommerce website performs. After integrating Google Analytics into the website, you will get an overview of how much traffic you have acquired from organic search and its performance compared to traffic from other channels.
However, the tool you need to check your website performance on Google Search is called Google Search Console.
It reveals valuable information about the website, such as search impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and average ranking position you gain on the Google search result page for a specific search term. In addition, the application allows you to do a direct analysis and extract the data into Google Sheets.
Differences between branded and non-branded searches
Branded searches refer to search queries with your brand name, mainly from customers who know your brand website and are looking for information about your products or business.
On the other hand, non-branded searches are queries that do not include your brand name and are typically searched by people who are clueless about your website. Still, they might be interested in similar things you can offer.
As you have the relevant information in Google Sheets, you can classify branded and non-branded searches by categorizing organic search impressions and website clicks. In addition, it will help you understand how your organic search traffic works, thus, the effectiveness of your SEO tactics.
Conduct Research on Your Competitors
Apart from analyzing your organic searches, you should also check out other businesses to see how they apply D2C eCommerce SEO. Although the search data on other websites is not available on Google Search Console, many SEO tools can get you access.
It would be great to have subscriptions to Ahrefs, Moz, or SEMRush, but the free tool, Ubersuggest, is useful enough to start with. Imagine you are the marketing manager of a D2C eCommerce store named rainwaterbotanicals.com, attempting to use SEO to improve brand awareness and get more organic traffic to the website.
Open Ubersuggest and input your web domain name to receive an overview of its performance. Keep in mind that each SEO tool collects data differently; though the data you get from such software are less accurate than Google, it provides enough information for comparison purposes.
What are the primary SEO metrics?
The traffic overview page introduces 4 important SEO metrics:
Organic keywords: The keywords your eCommerce website is ranked for, usually within the top 100 results.
Organic monthly traffic: The monthly estimated organic search traffic.
Domain authority: Your domain’s trustworthiness is measured by this score.
Backlinks: This is the primary contributor to your domain score, including links from other websites back to yours.
Recognize your competitors via search data
Sometimes, you have little idea who your current competitors are. By clicking the “Organic keywords” tile, you will get insights into brands you compete with on Google.
For instance, “troubled skin” is a non-branded keyword that contributes to your website’s high ranking. However, meowmeowtweet.com and fatandthemoon.com also apply this keyword to their SEO content strategies, making them your top business competitors.
Improve SEO rates based on their performances
As you are aware of your competitors, type in their domain names to get relevant data. From that, you can quickly compare them with your eCommerce domain using the primary SEO metrics.
For example, the comparison overview of rainwaterbotanicals.com (your website) and fatandthemoon.com indicates that your competitor has a broader organic traffic volume and keyword profile. Its domain score is higher with more backlinks, explaining why its ranking beats yours using the exact keywords.
A deeper look at branded and non-branded searches
The next step is to extract your competitor’s keyword lists and split them into branded and non-branded. Do not forget that you need to use the same data source to compare, including information about your website.
Suppose an eCommerce website has a better organic traffic volume and gains more traffic from non-branded searches. In that case, it will have a higher percentage of website visitors in organic traffic and better enhance brand awareness via SEO.
Map Keywords for 4 Customer Journey Stages
What is a customer journey? This journey consists of 4 main phases that a customer experiences from the first acquisition of your products and more. As new information is available, the buying process is likely to grow.
Brand awareness: The first stage where potential shoppers have the chance to explore your brand value.
Conversion: This is how these possible customers turn into paying ones.
Relationship building: Your business will continue bringing more value to customers in this step.
Word-of-mouth: This is how to motivate your customers to spread the word about your business to others.
Understanding short-tail and long-tail keywords
To map appropriate keywords for your customer journey, you need to understand the concept of short-tail and long-tail keywords.
Short-tail keywords are search terms with a few words representing a broad and general topic. Despite having a high search volume, their intent is less clear, resulting in a low click-through rate.
On the other hand, long-tail keywords usually contain 3 or more words and represent a specific search topic. Their search volume is lower than short-tail keywords, but Google can find more explicit content with the search thanks to the precise search intent.
If you combine the idea of short-tail/long-tail keywords and non-branded/branded keywords, you can create a framework that highlights 4 phases of the customer journey.
Build a Keyword List Targeting Each Stage
This is how you apply this keyword listing strategy to your own D2C eCommerce business:
Begin with keywords you are currently ranked for
Find branded keywords and identify whether they are long or short-tail. They are not necessarily the same as your domain name (rainwaterbotanicals.com), but any keywords highly associated with your store can be branded like “rainwater perfume.”
Next, look for your non-branded keywords by high search volume and relevance, such as “shampoo botanicals.”
Target non-branded keywords from your competitors
Respectively, for your brand of rainwaterbotanicals.com, “toner masking” or “mocha perfume” are good keywords for you to develop content around these terms. This helps emphasize the similarities and differences between what you and your competitors offer.
Gain insights from your customers
Needless to say, customer acquisition is the eventual goal of your D2C eCommerce SEO strategy. Therefore, you need to have a clear idea of the customer journey from current customers and the value your goods bring.
How did these people find out about your brand? Why did they decide to buy your products? What are their purposes for using your products? These are important questions that you should keep in mind to draw the appropriate data.
Get expert feedback from search engines
Lastly, it is ideal for heading to Google for valuable keyword recommendations as you type into its search box. It suggests those search terms based on actual data at the time.
Moreover, you can also check out the “People also ask” section on Google’s search result page. Do not stop at the first group of questions you see since Google will pop out more related queries as you click on a random question in the set.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is Better: On-page SEO or Backlinking?
In general, both on-page SEO and backlinking play an essential role in your D2C eCommerce SEO tactics. Backlinking is a great alternative to help your targeted keywords reach the top 3 search results ranking, but its effectiveness will not be as expected without on-page SEO/keyword optimization.
How to Prioritize Your D2C eCommerce SEO Efforts?
If you have not applied the mentioned SEO strategies, optimize the product category page by adding optimized content and internal links between your categories.
If you need assistance from your dev team to ensure the product category page optimization is up to par, it is best to work on producing educational content during your wait.
Conclusion
Developing and enhancing D2C eCommerce SEO for your business is not easy; it takes time and a proper understanding of what the brand needs to amplify online. As a D2C business, you should view your website as something more than an eCommerce store because it is the perfect channel to develop your brand and engage with potential shoppers.
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