Identify the Best SEO Practices to Help Your Ecommerce Store Grow
If you don’t understand the value of SEO, you will regret it later. Period. No matter what type of website you have, informative, eCommerce, or anything else, if you’re online, you can’t ignore SEO’s role in getting you noticed. The only situation when you can ignore SEO is when you don’t mind leaving your website in the dark or just have it up and running to brag in front of your friends. If it’s a business, you must follow the best SEO practices.
There are many reasons why your business needs SEO. Well-designed and properly optimized eCommerce websites are more likely to rank higher in search engines. However, you get all the benefits of SEO when the SEO practices are followed to the dot. For instance:
Focus on Keyword Research
Just like content-centric websites, finding the right keywords for your online store matters a lot. The focus of your keywords would be different, though, as you must look for commercial and transactional keywords to ensure you get visitors ready to make purchases.
This means that eCommerce keyword research involves finding phrases relevant to your niche and audience and having a buying intent behind them. In many cases, it is better to focus on long-tail keywords, especially when your store is still new. These keywords usually have at least three words, and while they may not be traffic magnets, they still help you rank and even help your eCommerce store make sales. The goal should be to find a keyword that may be long-tailed but still has a higher conversion potential.
To handle the process, you can find many paid SEO tools. These off page and on page SEO software come with various features that not only help you add your transactional keywords into the right places (titles, headings, meta descriptions, etc.) but also help you keep an eye on your store traffic, internal linking, keyword rankings, and track other performance metrics.
Alternatively, you can use Google tools, like Google Keyword Planner or Google Search Console. These platforms help you find new keywords while learning about their search estimates and costs for targeting them. Google Search Console can help find low-hanging fruit keywords that are more likely to perform for new stores. Finally, using “Autocomplete Suggestions” in the Google search bar may also help.
Refine On-Page SEO and Ecommerce Product Pages
Proper website optimization requires focusing on product pages, just like updating your storefront to make it more attractive to potential customers.
SEO for eCommerce product pages involves paying attention to elements that make it more visible in search engines. On-page eCommerce SEO begins by making sure title tags and meta descriptions are correctly optimized.
Write compelling meta descriptions and use title tags carefully to improve CTRs and boost the SEO performance of your eCommerce store. It may not directly affect your rankings but can work wonders to enhance CTRs, and raising your CTRs may indirectly help with organic rankings. Also, keep your title tags limited to 60-70 characters while embedding your main keyword.
Use header tags when optimizing product pages. They are important because they help optimize your HTML structure. For instance, your product name could be the H1 header tag, whereas shipping details, product descriptions, and other information could be H2s. Speaking of product descriptions, ensure they contain your keywords and are informative at the same time. Don’t just use your descriptions to entice search engines but also educate users about the products they are about to buy.
HTML tags like schema markups may also help with product page optimization because they share additional details about the page, making it easier for search bots to crawl and index the page. Using schema markup is a good idea because it sometimes helps produce rich snippets, which can lead to a significant increase in click-through rates.
Furthermore, images should be used in a way that they remain clear and crisp but still don’t hamper the site load speed. When optimizing images, add captions with alt tags, use primary keywords in file names, and keep images small without losing quality.
Similarly, it is vital to use internal links properly – linking one page to another on your eCommerce store is vital. Just don’t go overboard with the idea of adding internal links because too many can confuse your site visitors.
Maintain Correct Site and Navigation Structures
Maintaining the right site structure is one of the most important SEO best practices. To ensure it is scannable, the store page should be structured using headings, subheadings, numbered lists, etc. It directly affects the user experience, which is a Google ranking factor and improves your store’s visibility in SERPs.
eCommerce stores should have product categories divided into sub-categories for easy navigation. eCommerce websites usually have “thin” content compared to blogs and other content-centric websites. Also, many products may fit into multiple categories, increasing the risk of content duplication. Using a better navigation structure and adding canonical tags can help resolve these issues.
Consider incorporating breadcrumbs to help visitors retrace previous steps, which improves user experience. Breadcrumbs can be added using JavaScript or various markup tags. They help offer category-level navigation on online stores, which simplifies crawling and boosts usability at the same time.
URL structure also demands attention when optimizing eCommerce stores. Keeping it simple would directly improve user experience. URLs must be readable and include keywords without using stop words. For instance, if people search for “women’s skirts”, adding that keyword to the page’s URL can improve its chances of getting indexed and ranked quickly.
Optimize for Mobile Devices
It is vital to keep the latest SEO trends in mind when optimizing eCommerce sites, and one of the strongest trends is to access online stores through mobile devices.
Mobile eCommerce is witnessing an incredible rise in popularity, with about $1.7 trillion in sales in 2023. That is exactly why Google now indexes the mobile version of any website first to ensure it adapts to changing screen sizes as seamlessly as possible.
Sticking a responsive design for eCommerce stores is essential, as they change with a change in screen sizes. It is also necessary to pay attention to various elements and images to ensure fast page load speed. Minifying codes and taking advantage of browser caching would also help here. Using large, tap-friendly buttons makes a lot of difference, and so does the ease of checking out after adding products to the cart. Moreover, getting eCommerce stores ready for voice search and swipe gestures may also help improve UX and rankings.
Correct Issues Hampering Page Load Speed
If a site takes longer to load, people just won’t wait. They will quickly switch to the next best option, and this high bounce rate would come back to haunt any store, no matter how impressive their product line-up is.
Following all on-page SEO best practices will go a long way in improving the page load speed of eCommerce stores. Since it is a ranking factor, no compromise should be made in this regard. Using paid SEO software can help determine whether or not your current speeds are up to the mark. It can also be done using Google’s PageSpeed Insights as well as GTmetrix.
If speeds are slow, go back to the drawing board and check if there’s too much content for the webserver to handle. Sometimes, running too many scripts simultaneously can slow down load times. Using larger images would also take longer to load. Some optimization options include having smaller images on pages, using compressed files, optimizing images, adding fewer social media widgets, and limiting HTTP requests and redirects.
Design a Robust Link Building Strategy
On-page optimization is vital, but off-page optimization also deserves equal attention, often involving building backlinks to eCommerce stores. Quality backlinks are important for SEO business optimization because they serve as a vote of confidence and tell Google you deserve more visibility in SERPs.
Several tactics can be used to develop a robust backlink profile. Writing guest posts is one of them. Getting a post published on a high-authority website with a link back to your eCommerce store sends some link juice to your store and improves its rankings.
Similarly, using social media ads may help, just like sharing content on social works in your favor. Issuing press releases, creating infographics, and wiring blog comments are other ways of building an impressive backlink profile.
Update and Optimize Content Regularly
Whether it is about building backlinks or simply educating your visitors, updating and optimizing content regularly is vital. A robust SEO content strategy can make or break any marketing campaign. The importance of content in SEO can’t be ignored, even in the case of an eCommerce store that is usually not as heavy on content as blogs.
eCommerce optimization depends heavily on how on-page SEO is handled, and optimizing web copy is a vital part of any on-page SEO checklist. Updating stores with fresh content attracts organic traffic and establishes an eCommerce store as a “niche” and “authority.” Moreover, high-quality content is required to improve brand awareness, which helps with backlink opportunities and improves the chances of getting sales.
eCommerce stores can add quality content to websites in many ways. It could be in the form of FAQs or how-to pieces. News about product launches or establishing a glossary page may also benefit SEO. Sometimes, leveraging user-generated content is the way to go. Video demonstrations, testimonials, webinars, and Q&As are all effective ways of adding more content to eCommerce stores.
Optimize for Local SEO
Optimizing eCommerce stores for international audiences holds importance, but sometimes real sales come when online stores are optimized for local audiences. The process begins by identifying local keywords and optimizing product pages accordingly.
Maintaining a presence on Google Business Profile also helps reach local audiences more credibly. Also, creating content that would impress a local audience is vital, as it also creates backlink opportunities. Adding local keywords to titles, URLs, and descriptions is also essential. It may also help eCommerce stores maintain social media presence and create profiles to connect with local audiences. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are great ways to reach those audiences and improve local SEO.
Monitor and Analyze SEO Performance
Even after following best practices for optimizing eCommerce stores, it still requires meticulous attention to detail to understand what works and what needs more work.
Some of the most important performance metrics for data-driven eCommerce decision-making include organic traffic, keyword rankings, and click-through rates.
Also, your DA (Domain Authority) will increase if you’ve been doing everything right. If that’s not the case, you need to improve the quality of your content and earn more backlinks. Using an SEO software solution will help track these metrics with more accuracy.
Conclusion
Optimizing your eCommerce store for search engines is vital. eCommerce sites are growing worldwide, making trillions of dollars in profit each year. Competing with them is not easy and requires a proper marketing strategy. That’s when SEO comes into the picture and helps eCommerce stores improve rankings, attract customers, and make more money in the process.