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SEO Tips for Ecommerce Sites: 17 Ecommerce SEO Guide
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Back in the days, before the advent of eCommerce— then there were zero needs to bother about SEO tips for ecommerce sites— you had to drive to the grocery store, grab the cart and load it up with everything on your list, pay with some dollar bills and leave. Rinse and repeat! Fast forward to recent years; that has changed.
Are you an eCommerce website owner? Search engine optimization for your eCommerce website or store is critical for the long term.
These are 17 SEO guides and SEO tips for your eCommerce website to rank higher on SERP of Google, generate more site traffic and ultimately make more sales.
Without any further ado, let’s get into it.
1. eCommerce Keyword Research
Keyword research is probably one most important SEO tips to identify the search intent of potential customers. Services like AnswerThePublic.com can easily allow you to listen and discover what people are asking about in real-time.
Keyword research when done the right way, can be the easiest guide to put forward the best click-worthy content and product reviews, which in turn increases traffic and sales.
2. SEO Audit
SEO and technical auditing of an eCommerce website help the owner spot what and what to optimize, lags, bugs, and possible soft security spots to tighten up for maximum performance.
Secondly, auditing is an on-page SEO requirement to ensure search engines can efficiently crawl your site without errors.
3. Content Marketing
Content marketing in eCommerce if properly utilized, through writing value-filled content with the right audience targeting; can greatly affect the conversion goals and SEO performance of an eCommerce site.
Thus it stands firmly as the third of the top 17 SEO tips for optimizing eCommerce sites.
4. Link-building
Link building is yet another undeniable strategy to boost every metric and fulfill all sales goals of an eCommerce website. It can also be one of the most challenging aspects of eCommerce SEO.
You can read up a more broken down eCommerce SEO guide for link building here.
You may be thinking, but CID, every fool may already know the importance of link building. Well… effective link building is one, how you can apply them to help your eCommerce business succeed is entirely a different ball game.
5. Easy Navigation
Just imagining how frustrating poor website navigation can be. An average eCommerce shopper is of course, not savvy neither does she care about what technology you use. All they want to do is to place an order and get delivery as easy as possible.
Take navigation and site structure as a crucial SEO tip for eCommerce sites.
6. Search Bar
A search bar is one of the top 17 SEO tips for eCommerce sites.
To better understand the importance of a search box in an eCommerce website and its SEO implications; think of search as a way site visitors walk around finding products faster, that time when your navigation couldn’t help.
If they can’t find a reasonable place to go next, no matter where each user enters your site, they’ll turn to your search box for finding particular products, topics, or pages fast. Else, they’ll find their way out of your store!
7. An About Us Page
As a website owner, you should have a monthly eCommerce SEO guide, something kinda checklist of what to do every month. That’s by the way.
With an about page, you can communicate the behind the scene story of your business, the audience you serve, the quality of your products, even feature the faces behind what runs underground.
Do you know that it’s a rule of the thumb that every website has an About Us Page? This page serves as a place to bounce back to, for visitors.
Analytics also show that in many types of websites like eCommerce sites, the about us page is one of the most visited sections.
So if you already have this page on your site, it must be up to date in record time. If you don’t have one, consider including an about page.
8. Add Product Categories
Instead of an archive of a plethora of products, consider having a categorized listing of all products based on product type.
This form of grouping can help boost customer engagement on an eCommerce site and also foster the faster discovery of products.
Imitate the big dogs and how they do things if you want to become one soonest. Adding product categories is the 8th topmost important SEO tips for eCommerce sites.
9. Product Thumbnails
A product thumbnail is probably the first thing any user will see during a search. The SEO tip for your eCommerce site here is to take this aspect of optimization with priority.
The thumbnail your potential customer will be seeing is the miniaturized representation of whatever has gone into that product, during production, and during marketing.
It means that much.
10. Calls to Action In Overviews
Every product on your page has an excerpt.
The little description of each product, together with the product image, is what we call an overview in an eCommerce business.
Once you’ve got that perfect product description, do well to pair it up with powerful Call to Action buttons (as this part of the SEO tips for eCommerce sites can create room for more sales).
11. Product Images
A popular quote goes, “what the eye admires, the heart desires.”
This quote explains why humans will always go for beautiful and amazing things. Optimizing product images will mean engaging to the fullest, this SEO recommended tip for every eCommerce website.
Shoppers automatically try to deduce the quality of a product from its images. Anything short of ‘standard’ can make or break their further purchase decision.
12. Product Description— 12th most important SEO Tips for Ecommerce Sites
An overview or product description is a COPY that allows each product to drive more sales. It is used to convey to potential customers, why a product is a ‘must-have.’
A compelling product description provides customers with details about the features of a product from a benefits perspective, and problems it can help buyers solve.
13. Secure Socket Layout (SSL)
According to SSLshopper. SSL is the backbone of our secure Internet and today and it protects sensitive information as it travels across the world’s widest computer networks.
As of the time of this publication, almost every big and small website shows an ugly “Your connection is not private” message. It simply means that a host of websites on the internet right now are not secure.
So how secure is your website? Do you have that handsome security key symbol on your search bar or a discouraging warning message to website visitors? This is the 13th eCommerce SEO tip on this guide for your eCommerce site, awaiting your implementation.
14. Social Media Presence
Until recent years, the only thing a business could count on to get the word out, make sales, or announce a new arrival was purely through print advertisements– some expensive newspaper columns, radio infomercials, television ads, and billboards. All these weren’t flexible as they favored localized businesses more.
Today we swim in the social media buzz, and this cannot be overlooked anymore. If you are not in the social media game yet, you are losing big time, and my SEO tip for every eCommerce site is to join the game ASAP!
That’s enough to know why almost every top 500 fortune company has a verified Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter handles, where they are selling their products.
15. Mobile-first Approach Web Design
Optimization for omnichannel sales starts with a mobile-first website design approach. This allows for a seamless customer experience, whether the shopper is accessing the site from a mobile device, desktop, or wristwatch.
16. Speed of Site
An eCommerce website loses roughly 25% of its visitors for every 4 sec lag in speed. That’s bad news for any slow eCommerce website.
A typical eCommerce site is heavy and can be slowed down due to the many product images and listings. The best feasible way to negotiate this problem is to upload smaller well-optimized product images.
Additionally but important SEO tip for your eCommerce site’s speed is subscribing for more resources and space from your WebHost.
If the website host you currently use can’t easily handle a traffic spike, then consider moving over to another host.
The sooner the best!
17. Meta Description
A product meta description, usually between 147-160 words count in length, is a meta tag that acts as a summary of a product or product page.
It’s an important ranking factor as search engines show it in search results. Meta description in eCommerce serves two purposes;
- as an On-page SEO ranking factor, and,
- used for boosting click-through rate and increased product sales.
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