Importance of SEO for E-Commerce Business in Bangladesh

Do you know there are more than 700 e-commerce websites and 8000 Facebook retail pages in Bangladesh? (Source).

The number is huge and growing every day. But you don’t see all of them ranking now, do you?  Only a few e-commerce websites catch your attention and rank first in the SERP. 

So, how would you get your site to top and rank among the big shots? The answer is easy, SEO. One thing I learned over the past few years is that there is no limit to the Importance of SEO for eCommerce businesses in Bangladesh. Start-ups like Pikaboo became one of the largest one-stop shopping destinations in Bangladesh in a matter of 5 years. 

Their SEO team worked day and night to make that happen. Now then, here I am going to tell you just how much SEO can change the fate of your Online shop. Let’s go at it then. 

What is eCommerce?

Basically, E-commerce is where you buy or sell anything over the internet using any electronic device. You can use your smartphone, Ipad, Tablet, Laptop or desktop for this. In Bangladesh, you can receive the price through a payment gateway like Bkash, Nogod, bank or provide cash on delivery. 

There are different delivery service providers in Bangladesh who will safely transport the product to your precious customer. As of 2022, 52.58 million people are daily using the internet in Bangladesh. So, the consumer base is huge here. All you have to do is reach out to them with your product. 

What is Organic SEO? 

Organic SEO, also known as organic search engine optimization, is the method of increasing your position in the SERP on the platforms such as Bing, Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo without any sort of extra payment.  There are a few ways you can do this- Short or long-tail keyword research, competitor assessment, link building, kickass content and many more. 

E-commerce SEO History of Bangladesh

The Ecommerce business in Bangladesh started in the late ’20s. Munshiji Technology Limited launched its website to sell jute, silk, handicrafts, leather goods and tea in 1999. In 2005, ClickBD started its operation on a smaller scale. People could sell their goods through cash on delivery. Later they incorporated a few retail stores.

But people were relatively unaware of the e-commerce concept due to a lack of payment gateways and good internet facilities. Later in 2009 online transactions came into the field and popular platforms like Daraz (2010), Chaldal (2013), Bagdoom (2010) etc e-commerce websites started to emerge. 

But the concept of SEO or google algorithm was fairly new even then. Especially in the E-commerce sector. There were only a number of E-commerce sites and they were easily ranked in the SERP. But during the pandemic, the e-commerce business started to bloom. In 2020 there were 2500 new e-commerce businesses registered under E-CAB. With this increased number the fight to take the crown of the SERP’s first page began. (Source)

And so, E-commerce SEO took the stage as a prominent battle strategy. Before that SEO was only limited to ranking affiliates and other websites among international audiences. 

Ecommerce SEO Statistics in Bangladesh 

In Bangladesh, SEO started with the high emergence of online businesses. Many small businesses became well-known brands for SEO.

Rokomari, the number one online book-selling shop started its journey in 2012. Till 2016 they had literally 0 organic traffic and little to no conversion rate. But all that changed when they invested in SEO in 2017. From the years 2017 to 2022 the turnover was drastic. Now they have over 105K organic traffic a month. (Source)

Here is a list of monthly organic traffic of popular E-commerce websites in Bangladesh (Source)

• Daraz: around 9.5M people per month
• Bikroy.Com: approximately 2.0M people a month
• Chaldal.Com: 1.8M visit a month 
• Pikaboo.com: 424.2k people per month
• Clickbd: about 145.9 every month
• Priyoshop: nearly about 112.8k people in total
• Banglashopper:  84k netizen visit this page every month 
• Ajkerdeal: total visit of about 55.6k 
• Othoba.com: 516k organic traffic each month

Importance of SEO in E-commerce Business in Bangladesh

E-commerce stores rely on a continual flow of new clients as well as a loyal base of returning customers to succeed. It is more difficult for any store to expand if new buyers are not bringing in fresh revenue.

SEO will assist in attracting significant new buyers who have a huge possibility of purchasing from you. SEO allows you to win the faith and trust of online buyers, increasing their lifetime worth to your company.

Here's how all these come in your favour: 

1. Increase website traffic

There is a common saying, "An e-commerce industry survives and dies by its capacity to captivate and hold the buyers."  Customer engagement is the heart. If no one notices your brand or does business with you, you’ll be out of the market soon enough. Of course, captivating Ads, phone calls, and emails can get people to notice you.

But let’s get real here, Ads or promotions cost you a fortune and will only show up for a few months and no one really attends to phone calls or unwanted emails. The alternative is SEO. But what is E-commerce SEO?

SEO increases the exposure of your site in relevant keyword searches. The greater your visibility, the more potential buyers you will attract. The terms you want to rank in the search engine will remain and may even grow with maintenance and tweaks over time. If the content you create gives value and attracts traffic over time, the AI algorithm is more likely to boost your ranking on SERPs and that will create organic traffic.

It helps you to improve the quantity of generating organic traffic through a search engine as well as enhancing the quality of your eCommerce websites. And by quality, we imply how likely it is for a viewer of your website to take action. You may receive a large volume of organic traffic, but if it is not transacting, it is not of high quality.

So, two points are important here:

1. The number of netizens visiting your eCommerce webpage daily
2. And secondly, how many visitors are buying from you?

 2. Improve CTR (CLICKTHROUGH Rate)

CTR is basically the number of people who click on your website. Web pages that rank first have a CTR of more than 30% to 35%. The second one gets 18% clicks; the sixth result is a minimal number of clicks. (Source)

If you're on the second page, you probably do not even come to the radar. There is a saying that you can even hide a dead body on the second page. It is very rare for people to go there.

The objective here is to reach the top position on the SERP. But that's not always possible. It's sometimes enough to make it to the first page.

Here are a few proofs of this fact: 

• According to a recent study, 65% of total eCommerce sales come through a search engine. (Source)
• 70 to 80 percent of people worldwide avoid paid promotion and ads. (Source)
• Whopping 40 per cent profit can come through organic traffic. (Source) 
• If potential consumers cannot find your website after searching generic keywords on the first page, they will most likely go to web pages run by your rivals that sell similar products or services. This will result in few conversion rates and sales.
• When you do SEO on your webpage and it ranks on the first page of the SERP the CTR of your eCommerce website significantly rises. 

3. Reduce Ad budget

No doubt SEO will cost you a bit. However, it is not a marketing cost. It is part of your business investment. You can buy a few SEO tools or hire an agent for this. But the payoff is way better. In some cases, you can even earn 10x the amount you have invested in SEO. 

Whereas buying a paid promotion or ad on google will dry up your pockets. The excess money you invest here can be used in some other sector of the business. Then there is the hassle of international transactions, dollar endorsement and continuous payment. 

As long as you pay the price the SERP’s algorithm will give you exposure. But as soon as you stop, the limelight goes with it.  So it is surely the better option, to be honest. 

4. Targeted Sell 

While increasing your website's organic traffic is a valuable step, your ultimate goal is to increase conversion rates as well as sales. SEO is an inbound sales strategy that can target potential clients and boost the number of people searching for the specific products and services that you provide.

There is a saying in sales and marketing, the more lead generation you have, the greater the sales you will make. Even if your conversion rate is low right now, every individual who visits your website is a prospective buyer: it's just a question of knowing which person will eventually buy. 

Every visitor can someday turn into a loyal consumer. Some results you will see right away however the sale will get better and better gradually. 

 5. Cultivate Brand Awareness

Even though SEO is primarily used to produce organic traffic, it also helps to improve branding and raise brand awareness. SEO and brand awareness basically goes hand in hand. 

When done correctly, SEO will not only help you attract more organic traffic to your website; it will also play an important role in turning them from leads to consumers.

However, there is much more to it. SEO also allows you to offer a clear message and a good outlook to your target market. It creates goodwill and builds trust.  This involves creating your authority in the market; proving that your site is reliable and that the services you provide are relevant and of high quality.

Increasing brand image means that internet users get more familiar with your company.  Building brand recognition increases the probability that users looking for the items or services your company provides will recall and visit your website. The more often a person sees your brand, the higher your chances of increasing loyal consumers.

Is It Important to Hire an SEO Agency for Your Ecommerce? 

Ecommerce success highly depends on the use of a great SEO strategy. If you have some experience, a very low budget, some SEO tools and a good internet connection then you should definitely do it on your own. 

Otherwise, you can take help from an expert SEO agency. Either seems like a good option to me. But if you hire an SEO company your strategy will be more precise, specialised and up to date. 

Agencies know how to analyse all your competitors and work with that data. My advice to you would be to hire a good SEO agent. SEO is a continuous process. You need to put in a lot of time, effort and energy. 

Frankly, in between running all the errands you will hardly get any time to research keywords, optimize backlinks, create content and whatnot. So, it is best if you opt for hiring an SEO agency. 

But before you hire one make sure they have a clean past record, nice portfolio and reasonable pricing. 

Final Words

That’s it for an article on the importance of SEO in E-commerce Business in Bangladesh. I hope you got some intake from this. So, embark on your journey to become a successful E-commerce businessman in the country.

If you have any further quarry then do leave a comment on the comment section. Feel free to put your input about the article as well.