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Small and medium-sized businesses often struggle to compete with big-name brands, however, when it comes to SEO there is no reason why they can’t challenge them.
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In a recent white paper report, E-commerce SEO company Reboot Online analysed over two million backlinks that 98 e-commerce websites received across five different verticals. The report then broke down the key steps in which SMEs can face large businesses head-on, using digital PR to ensure the best performance possible.
Key findings
- Using digital PR can result in a 64% higher domain rating than sites that don’t use it
- Over three quarters (79%) of the biggest e-commerce sites are using reactive digital PR and expert commentary
- 60% of e-commerce sites fail a basic Google Lighthouse speed and performance test
- The estimated cost of organic traffic to the average e-commerce brand is $34,364
How SMEs can increase organic links and overall visibility
Interestingly, an e-commerce website using digital PR to build backlinks to their site had a domain rating of 46, which is 64% higher than those that don’t use digital PR (DR 28).
The largest e-commerce websites from the most established are more likely to see the value and use digital PR in their link-building strategies, with 72% found to be doing so. This is in comparison to looking at e-commerce websites that had significantly less organic visibility, only 32% of them were actively using digital PR to build backlinks.
HOW CAN COMMENTS AND REACTIVE PR BUILD LINKS?
The report went on to reveal tried and true digital PR methods, such as expert comments and reactive PR, are beneficial in earning links from high-authority news publications quickly. In fact, 56% of e-commerce websites generating decent volumes of organic traffic are using one of these PR tactics to build links.
It seems, however, that SMEs are continuing to miss out on proven methods of SEO success as the biggest e-commerce websites are investing more heavily into expert comments and reactive PR campaigns, with 79% of them using these strategies to build links.
Medium-sized websites should be aware they have more to gain than average using this method as the average DR of an expert comment is typically 35, however for medium businesses it sits higher with an average DR of 40.
Helena Maniglia, Head of Digital PR, Reboot, “It’s not surprising to see over half of the e-commerce domains are investing in digital PR to increase organic visibility. Digital PR can be an effective way of building links from authoritative media publications at scale, helping to close the visibility gap against brands monopolising the search results. Not only that but being mentioned in relevant publications to your audience drives traffic and increases brand awareness.
In fact, Google’s John Mueller recently shook the industry when he said that digital PR can be just as important as Technical SEO.”
To read the full white paper report visit: https://content.rebootonline.com/challenging-giants If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
