To place high on search engine rankings means that a website receives more traffic and clicks. If you own a website, your focus should be to convert this traffic to customers. However, to start, you would need to get visitors for your ecommerce shop. If you want to help expand your shop’s reach, you can consider following different ecommerce SEO tips and tricks.
Importance of SEO to Ecommerce
With the current digital landscape, most businesses have begun to turn to creating their ecommerce shops. For any sellers, their goal would be to get more customers and sales. This is where SEO comes in. When you own a shop online, the easiest way to attract more customers is by having your site easy to find in search results.
Search engine optimization is not only crucial for influencers but also for businesses. Even the largest corporations found online still rely on SEO. No matter how big or small your shop is, there are a lot of benefits you can get with a fully optimized site.
13 SEO Tips for Your Ecommerce Website
To help give your ecommerce site a boost in both traffic and sales, you should improve its SEO. Here are ecommerce SEO tips that you should consider.
1. Get HTTPS and SSL certification
In 2014, Google – one of the most significant search engines on the internet – announced that a website’s safety and security could affect its search rankings. This is why when you search for any keyword, the first pages will have websites that use HTTPS/SSL certification.
If you want to optimize your ecommerce site, you should follow the majority of the top websites that practice this act. Aside from helping you rank up in the searches, HTTPS/SSL also prevents browser connection warnings that might scare potential clients.
2. Increase your website load time
Your ecommerce platform should have a fast load time – or it might lead to a decrease in the number of clicks and a low ranking on the search engine.
Some search engines – Google, in particular – use page load times as one of the factors in whether your page will reach proper SEO or not. 2.9 seconds should be the maximum load time for every page on your site. With this, you are guaranteed to be faster than half of the total websites – and competitors – on the internet. This will significantly boost your ranking.
3. Have a responsive web design
Whether you are the one who designed your website or you use an ecommerce platform template, you should ensure that the design is responsive. By responsive, it means that the design and layout of your online store remain intact when you use tablets, computers, and mobiles.
Since users had made inadequate responsiveness a concern, search engines considered this factor. Websites that load flawlessly on every device are given priority.
4. Utilize category pages
When you set up your store in an ecommerce platform, you should consider whether they allow you to divide your products by categories. This is because websites that use category pages have better SEO. With categories, you are not only making it easy to use and navigate for potential clients. You are also giving yourself a boost in search engine analytics.
5. Create optimized title tags for every page
When you look up a particular keyword, title tags or meta titles are the headlines that appear on the search engine. Since title tags that are closer to a keyword are presented first, you need to optimize your title tag to appear first on search engines. To optimize your title tag, you would need to do keyword research. Search for competitor sites and look for similarities in the titles of those that first appear on searches. Aside from that, you can also look up the most common keyword that relates most to your page.
6. Choose short but keyword-filled and structured URLs
Structured URLs are not only aesthetically pleasing for customers and potential site visitors. They are also considered better by search engine analytics.
Google, in particular, loves short but keyword-dense URLs and places them in higher ranking.
The rule of the thumb in customizing your URL is by making it from general to specific. It should display your website name, categories, sub-categories, and finally, the product name from left to right. Do not use product IDs and minimize the use of underscores.
7. Show best sellers on your homepage.
If you want your ecommerce homepage to have better optimization, you should consider adding a best seller section on it. This is because since your best sellers have the highest number of sales, clicks, or ratings, they are the most optimized product pages that you have. When you add a list of your best-sellers, you give the page additional keyword content and internal links.
8. Create blog content
You might think that since you are selling products, you only need to post what you are offering. However, while that is a route you can take, you should consider adding a page for blogs and content if you want better SEO. Search engine algorithms place pure content pages before product or service pages in higher priority. If you have a blog that has the correct headline and keywords, it can be the way to let your site reach higher rankings. Content pages can also allow your website to use even more keywords to boost your position on the search results.
9. Use backlinks
Backlinks are links that allow visitors from another website to go to your ecommerce site. Backlinks are usually integrated into the content of a page.
When your site receives many backlinks, it can help improve and maintain your website’s SEO.
When another website frequently references your site, search engines take this as a sign that your platform is valuable and credible. Because of that, they allow your online business to appear higher on search rankings. There are various ways to receive backlinks. You can consider doing collaborations with other websites. You can also ask a digital marketing service to do this for you.
10. Take advantage of meta descriptions
Like title tags, meta descriptions are elements utilized when your site shows up on searches. Meta descriptions are the short summaries that you see below the headline. While title tags are given priority, meta descriptions are also considered when someone looks up a particular keyword.
Since these descriptions are more extended than title tags, you can use them to your advantage. If you can do it naturally, you can consider adding several related keywords so that your site will show up with different searches. However, even though you can use many keywords at once, make sure that your page description remains readable. This is not only for people who see your site, but it is also something factored in by search engine algorithms.
11. Maintain and repair site links
While you might think that dead links are unimportant since no one will use them, that is not the case for search engine algorithms. One factor that can affect your rank is whether your site has a certain number of broken links or not. Websites that only use active links are given more priority. When your site has a dead link, you should consider adding a redirecting page for them. This way, the algorithms will not have to reach it and take it against your ecommerce site’s ranking.
12. Update keywords regularly
Even though the keywords that you used for your homepage and product page were the best a few months ago, they may not be the best ones to use now. When you consider keywords, you should think of them as trends. They regularly change. In turn, your site should be able to adapt to these changes. Make sure that you are doing regular keyword research. This will ensure that your search rankings remain high and above other competitor shops.
13. Use Yoast SEO plug-in
If you are hosting your ecommerce business on WordPress, you should significantly consider using the Yoast SEO plug-in. This plug-in is not only for blogs and content sites – but it is also incredibly beneficial for ecommerce businesses in the platform. With Yoast SEO, you can use various tools to modify different SEO elements for your site. You would also be able to find multiple performance metrics to help optimize your page even further.
Improve Your Ecommerce SEO
Using the ecommerce SEO tips in this article, you can help improve your site’s position in search rankings. From gaining more credibility as a brand to receiving more sales and profits, you can get many benefits when your site is fully optimized. As SEO is one of the main factors to an online store’s success, it is something that you should consider doing.
Boosting your SEO is a future-proof that will remain relevant for a long time. As more businesses turn digital, you can gain an edge by having a high platform in search results. Some ways to improve search engine optimization might sound intimidating, but most of them are easy and can be done even by beginners with no prior knowledge.
