Hiring an eCommerce SEO agency definitely constitutes a big expense. Before you hire one, it serves your best interests as an online business to do all the research you can to hedge your bets.
Before you hire a digital marketing agency for search engine optimization services, read any eCommerce SEO case studies you can from the agency before shelling out the bucks.
Here’s what you can learn from one.
Industry Specific Barriers
Getting a business-to-business eCommerce website to rank in the search results is only half the battle of a B2B SEO strategy.
The other half is publishing useful content that drives the user experience, as B2B buyers are usually very well-informed, and buying cycles tend to be long.
On the other hand, an industry might be saturated with competitors, which would add its own barriers.
You can’t foresee what they might be, but an eCommerce SEO case study will tell you about them and how they were overcome.
Keyword Strategy
Keyword research and strategy drive eCommerce SEO for clients’ sites. Did the agency go after only short-tail, high-volume keywords? Or, was the strategy more in league with trying to write useful CMS and blog page content to show up in the PAA section of Google?
Or, was there a multi-pronged approach? Those details should show up in the case study.
What Work, Exactly, Was Performed
Not all SEO agencies do the same work. Some only write content for product pages and blog posts. Others only offer link-building services like adding internal links and sowing backlinks. Others might only perform a smattering of on-page optimizations or improve technical SEO.
For your part, you will want to know what you’re signing up for, won’t you?
Growth in Organic Impressions and Traffic
The proof in the pudding of SEO services is growth in organic impressions and traffic. The ideal eCommerce SEO case study will have metrics, drawn directly from Google Analytics and Google Search Console, that show you the relevant time frames, as well as how organic traffic and impressions improved.
At the absolute minimum, an SEO case study should show you positive growth in organic traffic and impressions.
How Conversions Responded
No eCommerce SEO agency can promise that conversions and sales will improve as a result of administered SEO services, but that is ultimately the goal in eCommerce.
Also, it is reasonable for sales to move in a positive direction when an eCommerce website starts to rank better for keywords associated with transactional and commercial search intent.
So, with that said, make sure you look for this data in an eCommerce SEO case study. The agency might just silently omit this information if sales and conversions didn’t improve – but at the same time, if they did, they will likely want to advertise it.
How the SEO Agency’s Departments Cross Collaborated
It’s common for large organizations to experience what is known as the “silo effect” in which the departments don’t work well together.
This is bad enough in other industries but it is crippling in SEO, as SEO is a summative game that requires technical, creative, and platform-specific knowledge.
For instance, when content creators and technical strategists don’t work together on an SEO project that needs them both, the client’s website suffers.
That is, specifically, sometimes a website doesn’t just need content, new links, and high-quality anchor text added to category pages. It might need its images compressed and security improved, too.
Departments often have to work together to accomplish these.
Why Consulting an eCommerce SEO Case Study Is a Good Idea Before Making a Decision
These are some of the best insights you can glean from an eCommerce SEO case study, but there are others – such as how the agency handled client objections or pain points, or how the agency made strategic shifts midway through the campaign that would be beneficial in the long term.
Either way, it’s in your best interest to do your research before you make the decision to hire an SEO agency – and a case study may be able to help allay some of your concerns.