After auditing thousands of ecommerce accounts over the past 20 years, I keep seeing the same pattern. Brands come to us frustrated. They’ve been investing in SEO for months, sometimes years, and they’re still not seeing the revenue impact they were promised by other agencies or freelancers. Traffic is flat… Rankings feel stuck… And whoever they’re working with at the moment keeps sending reports full of vanity metrics that don’t connect to actual sales.
Here’s the thing: most of the time, the problem isn’t that SEO doesn’t work. The problem is that the strategy is pointed in the wrong direction altogether. It’s a huge problem.
The Gold Mine Sitting on Page Two
When we onboard new ecommerce SEO clients at Stryde, we don’t start by chasing the highest-volume, most competitive keywords in the space. That’s the approach most agencies default to, and it’s why so many brands feel like they’re pouring money into a black hole for 12 months before they see any return.
Instead, we start by identifying the keywords you’re already ranking for between positions 5 and 20ish. These are terms where Google has already validated your relevance. You’re showing up, but you’re buried just deep enough that no one sees you, which results in generating almost zero clicks and zero revenue from them.
But here’s what makes this strategy so powerful for ecommerce brands: those keywords are close. A focused push through better on-page optimization, stronger internal linking, and a few authoritative backlinks can move those terms onto page one, most times, the top of page one. And when you’re selling products, the difference between position 12 and position 3 isn’t just more traffic. It’s more revenue. It’s more customers finding your product pages, your collection pages, and your content at the exact moment they’re ready to buy. This is how you build an ROI focused plan.
The “10 Keywords and a Report” Problem
Too many agencies are still selling SEO like it’s 2009. They pick 10 keywords for you, send you a monthly report showing where those terms rank, and tell you to be patient. See you in 12 months… NO THANKS!
That approach was okay when the search landscape was simpler. But for ecommerce brands doing $1M to $15M in revenue, that kind of narrow strategy is actively holding you back. You’re paying for activity… a short list of deliverables, not growth… surely not revenue. At the end of the day, you’re getting a tracking spreadsheet when what you need is a revenue engine.
Your product catalog likely spans dozens or hundreds of SKUs. Your customers search in ways that no 10-keyword list will ever capture. And with AI-powered search results increasingly reshaping how people discover products, the old playbook of picking a handful of terms and hoping for the best is a recipe for declining visibility… again, NO THANKS!
What an Unlimited Keyword Strategy Actually Looks Like
At Stryde, we run what I call an unlimited keyword strategy. We’re not limiting ourselves to a short list of tracked terms. We’re looking at your entire search footprint and building a plan that attacks growth from multiple angles at once.
The fastest path to revenue typically follows a clear sequence.
- First, we lift what’s already sitting on page two. These are your quick wins, you know, the keywords where a targeted effort can produce measurable results in weeks, not months. We optimize the pages already ranking for these terms, tighten up title tags, improve content depth, and make sure the user experience supports conversions.
- Second, we tighten your technical foundation and internal linking. For ecommerce sites especially, a messy site architecture or weak internal link structure can quietly suppress your rankings across the board. Fixing these issues creates a rising tide that lifts everything.
- Third, we build real authority through strategic outreach and link building. Not spammy guest posts or link farms, actual relationships and placements that signal to Google that your brand is a credible source in your space.
- And fourth, we keep shipping content that supports the entire topic cluster around your products. This is what builds long-term dominance in your category. Every piece of content we produce is designed to reinforce your authority on the topics your customers care about, which makes every other page on your site rank better over time.
Why This Matters More Now Than Ever
The search landscape is shifting fast. AI Overviews are eating into organic click-through rates. Traditional blue-link results are getting pushed further down the page. For ecommerce brands, this means the margin for error on your SEO strategy is shrinking. You can’t afford to waste 12 months chasing keywords that are years away from ranking while Google reshapes the results page around you.
The brands that are winning right now are the ones moving fast on the opportunities they already have. They’re not waiting for a big keyword breakthrough. They’re methodically capturing the revenue that’s sitting right in front of them and using that momentum to fund the bigger plays.
Stop Paying for Activity
If your current SEO partner can’t tell you exactly which keywords are closest to generating revenue and what they’re doing to move them, you’re paying for activity. You’re paying for reports. You’re not paying for growth.
Ecommerce brands stuck in the $1M to $15M range don’t need more patience. They need a strategy that connects search visibility directly to pipeline and revenue, one that starts with the opportunities already within reach and builds outward from there.
The rankings you need to move the needle might already be sitting in your search console data. The question is whether anyone’s actually looking.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.