We were recently contacted by a moderately successful ecommerce company who was looking for an SEO company to help them increase their business. As normal, we had a lengthy discussion about what they done in the past (like outsourcing SEO to India for a few hundred bucks with terrible results). Their web developer had done a decent job in setting up a new website based on Drupal and performed some “basic” SEO work. As we looked at their website we saw a few areas that could be improved. The company was doing some social media in Facebook and Twitter, but it had not been an area of focus.

They are in a very small niche market and our research only turned up 2 other competitors. Additionally, they sell an accessory to a common device (sorry can’t detail that further) which sells from $20-$40.

As we analyzed keywords relating to their market, they (along with the other competitors) always ranked on the first page of search results. Keywords identified high competition with low number searches. Our conclusion was that they didn’t need to spend significant money on SEO as anyone who searched on this type of accessory would return good results. However, they wished to increase their business and get more conversionsthrough their website.

So how can you drive more visitors to you website and increase conversions when straight SEO is not going to yield significantly more or better results? The answer has 3 parts:

Invest in Social Media

Creating an active presence in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ can drive more interested people to a website. As people start to “like”, “share”, “follow”, “pin” and “join” the interested base starts to swell. Posts need to convey topics of interest to your targeted audience; they need to “pull” people to the website. Links from social media posts back to the website are key – everywhere. By creating information that is useful, insightful and current you can create a viral response to your targeted demographic.

Fresh Content

Write a blog with relevant topics. As in social media, if the information is useful and insightful, people with follow and share your content. And yes, Google likes fresh content on websites for good rankings. Many times blogs with good keywords show up on the first page of search results above the competition. Blogs are also a great feed to social networks. Write it once and post excerpts in social media that link back to your website for the full story

Consider Creating a Forum

Forums are a great place to allow people to Q&A about topics related to your market. It’s also a source of free content created by others. Forums actually rank quite often in search results and can allow you to voice an authority and leadership position within your industry.

Collectively, this holistic approach to digital marketing can make a significant impact to increasing conversions to your website when straight SEO won’t do the trick