The more traffic you can direct to your eCommerce store, the better. But as many know, this is easier said than done. eCommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a top solution for becoming less reliant on paid channels. This involves ranking higher in Google searches and therefore directing more organic traffic to your store. Let’s take a look at how you can achieve this.
Invest In Keywords
Keywords are the backbone of any eCommerce strategy. Your products and pages should be optimized for keywords that your target audience are searching for. Google analytics tools could help you to understand what the relevant keywords are: “Google Keyword Planner” is a tool that all google merchants have access to. This can give you stats such as: keyword ideas, traffic estimates and bidding estimates.
Once you have this information, you can come up with a plan of action for targeting more keywords on your web pages and product pages. Keywords should be sprinkled in the following areas:
- Product descriptions
- Category pages
- Blog posts
- FAQs
- Product titles
- Solutions Pages
You shouldn’t overload the keyword use. But you should remain mindful: don’t miss out on keyword opportunities.
Create An Engaging Experience
The customer buying experience and UX in general should be enjoyable in order for your SEO strategy to work. There’s no use in getting people to your website but once they are there they simply bounce. The standard of quality on your website should be high: this includes images, content, descriptions and features.
Be creative! Make sure your website stands out as an engaging and unique experience. You can merge your pages with social media, you can include videos, bundles, promo tiles and more. Just make sure you have the user experience in mind.
Make sure there is no duplicate content. This counts for product descriptions, categories or anything else. Google needs to know how you stand out, in order to differentiate and prioritize you over other similar pages.
Optimized Web Navigation
Another reason customers may leave your website is if the navigation and structure is not optimized. Slow loading pages or bad structural design does not lend itself to repeat custom, or even closing the deals the first time round. After 10-20 seconds, shoppers may leave if they are unsatisfied.
So, make sure your UX is good. Navigation needs to be incredibly clear: show customers where they have come from and where they are going at all times. Secondly, URL structure should be clear for your visitors and for Google visibility and accessibility.
Clear Broken Links
The more broken links you have on your website, the lower the SEO rating will be. They affect both your performance and the customer experience. It overall gives a bad impression of your store and your site.
There are platforms which can help you identify broken links and these should regularly be used and checked. A few broken links aren’t a huge problem, but it’s something that is important to stay on top of.
Improve Page Speed
Page speed is crucial in order to connect buyers with the products they are looking for. The slower the page speed, the higher the potential bounce rate. There are certain ways this can be achieved:
- Reducing image file sizes
- Minimizing CCS and Javascript
- Adding lazy loading
Optimize Store For Mobile
We all know the importance of mobile commerce by now. With more and more people making their online purchases via their mobiles, not having your mobile site optimized is a big mistake. This will impact SEO negatively.
Google is looking for certain things when it comes to ranking mobile websites compared to browsers such as:
- Similar content on mobile and browser
- Mobile optimized images and videos
- No ads hindering mobile experience
One way of making sure that you stay optimized in this field is also to create a mobile app. Platforms such as Tapcart facilitate this, and this means that you will gather new customers as well as optimize your user experience.
Keep An Active Blog
Blogging is known to be one of the best ways to get traffic to your online store. These blogs should repeatedly feature keywords that are known to provide the outcomes you are looking for. Blogs containing these keywords are used as a vehicle to drive views to product pages and other relevant on site pages.
These blogs can inadvertently provide sales and revenue. They also serve as a useful method of letting your shoppers know that you are experts in your field. They help in creating a brand voice, as well as educating your clients on your areas of interest.
Internal linking within blogs is very important in order to improve SEO. Link equity is built through internally linking on your website. This is a signal to Google that this page should be prioritized. This is a tried and tested method.
Conclusion
Creating a successful and strong SEO strategy takes time, consistency and patience. Growing traffic isn’t a simple overnight fix, you need to work to ensure it’s possible. If you follow these SEO practices then you boost your chances of success in the long term. It can take a while, but overall the final results are worth it.