As a business and e-commerce owner on top of that, there are a few things you likely have in mind when it comes to your website: traffic, sales, traffic, sales, traffic. In most cases, too much traffic leads to excess sales. Obviously, the main challenge for an e-commerce business is to get customers to its website first. Having great SEO is the way to go in bringing quality traffic to your business, so what are the best practices?
With the pressure of Google’s constant refinement of algorithms and the effort required to keep up with content marketing trends, it can be difficult to know where to start. We’ll walk you through some of the best SEO practices to use for an e-commerce site and why they’re important.
Here are 4 SEO tips for your e-commerce site
Understanding SEO
Before applying your SEO strategies to your website, you will need to understand how this works. Search engine optimization is a process that helps drive more organic traffic to your website. As an example, let’s use Google. Every time someone searches on Google, they get a search results page (SERP). At the top of the page, you’ll find paid ads and after those, you’ll find organic results. With e-commerce, there will also be sponsored ads (Google Shopping) on the edge of the page, near paid ads.
When it comes to SEO for an e-commerce site, you have to make sure that the product pages of your website are on the first page of search results. As is quite obvious, the slower your website is, the more difficult it will be for it to receive a steady influx of traffic and therefore, to convert customers. Results at the top of the page will get the most traffic, and so implementing tailored SEO practices for an e-commerce site is absolutely necessary to be successful.
Keyword research
If you’ve read about SEO in the past, chances are you’re familiar with the suggestion to start with keyword research. The practice is essential for anyone who uses SEO, although some of the basics of keyword research have changed. It is important to note that keyword research for an e-commerce site will be done in different ways. You will seek to position yourself on commercial rather than informative keywords and target the consumer’s purchase intention.
The best place to start is understanding terms relating to your market and basically what your customers are looking for in relation to your products. Disclosing this information will help you understand how to approach organic search and how to set your goals based on this information. Keyword research can be conducted with a set of free tools found online. Using one of these tools, choose keywords based on their search volume as well as the level of competition associated with that word.
Another way to see what consumers are looking for is to use Google’s suggestion feature. Start by typing a phrase related to your business on the search engine, and then watch the search do itself. The bottom of the page will also offer some additional search queries. Besides using a keyword research tool, this is a great way to get essential information about what your consumer is looking for. You can also complete a similar task on Amazon, as this platform is obviously more focused on selling products. Keep in mind that long-tail keywords (which are three or four words in length) are always highly favored and offer higher conversion rates.
Your performance in the current year
If you are a new business, this advice will obviously not apply. If you have been in the market for a few years, we strongly suggest that you educate yourself on the impact of your SEO strategies so that you can improve in the next year and beyond. Take a look at Google Search Console for some words- keys that will bring as much traffic as possible to your website. Try not to focus too much on features or statistics and instead use that information to set goals for the next year. Another aspect of your website that you should focus on is identifying which pages naturally bring traffic. If any pages can perform better, be sure to take the initiative to improve or update them.
The structure of your website
Your SEO is directly affected by the way your website is structured, especially if it is an e-commerce site. Obviously, you are the head of an online store and because of this, you will want to make the process of making purchases as easy as possible. As you will likely add and remove products over time, you will want your site to be structured in such a way that it will be easy to manage as your business grows. It will be difficult and time-consuming to have to reorganize your site every time a new product is added. Also, note that you have to make sure that each of your product pages is only one or two clicks away from your home page. Your home page is the one with all the authority!
Simplicity is essential when it comes to e-commerce, the process leading to the final purchase should be as straightforward as possible. There are many peculiarities when it comes to the design of an e-commerce website.
On-page SEO
At this point, you’ve completed your keyword research, properly structured your website, and established some goals to achieve. Now, it’s time to take a look at specific pages to optimize them. The pages you should target are product category pages and product pages. Depending on the platform your website is operating on, you might benefit from having SEO features already built into your site. Other elements that require the intervention of your optimization skills are as follows:
- Adding keywords to titles and meta descriptions;
- Editing alt text so that product images contain keywords;
- Editing file names to include keywords;
- Changing the URL for blog posts, web pages, products, and collections;
- Fine-tuning the content.
Another important point to consider is the following: metrics like offers, discounts, free shipping, and so on will help increase your traffic as well as improve your search engine rankings. This is because Google pays attention to the click-through rate and will rate you based on this element as well. Keep in mind that piquing the interest of consumers is just as important as being attractive to the search engine!
Several other strategies are necessary when it comes to taking care of the SEO of an e-commerce site. Nevertheless, the information that we have offered you constitutes the basis of what you need to know to have a stronger e-commerce platform that is more oriented towards achieving objectives.
