Doing SEO for e-commerce sites presents a unique set of challenges.
For one, effective strategies for e-commerce marketing has changed over the years and continue to change due to rapid technological updates and massive shifts in user behavior.
Moreover, an e-commerce site has significantly more pages and require different pages and products to optimize compared to the typical business website.
Another potential challenge is site structure. Figuring out the right navigational strategy can be tricky with the various categories that need to be organized. Having the right navigation structure is crucial for SEO because it helps search engines understand your site better.
The opportunities for establishing quality content and linkbuilding in an online shopping site are likewise not as straightforward compared to regular websites since a bulk of the pages can “merely” contain merchandise information. These can be prone to duplicating content in the manufacturer’s’ product pages.
While there are serious hurdles, understanding how SEO works for e-commerce websites is a must. An effective SEO strategy not only helps your pages to rank well, it can also help your business in achieving the following objectives:
- Attracting new and more customers.
- Increasing sales, customer loyalty and retention.
- Providing superior user experience.
- Controlling operating costs without compromising efficiency.
- Promoting the band and enhancing brand image.
- Preparing the business for the future.
Fortunately, there are proven and specific steps you can take to get significant and sustainable SEO results for your online enterprise. Start with the following e-commerce SEO fundamentals:
1. Keyword research
Keyword research serves as a guiding point for all efforts included in an e-commerce SEO campaign so it needs to be done right. Problem is, keyword research needs an extra dose of meticulousness for e-commerce SEO because companies selling the same types of products often end up with the same exact set of keywords.
So, how do you go about this the smart way? You turn to online marketing specialists.
2. SEO-friendly web design and development.
Make your site responsive to ensure all pages will display correctly on any device which in turn gives it more chances to enjoy heightened visibility in search results. With the accessibility a responsive website allows, you can capitalize on the sense of urgency consumers typically possess when searching for products to purchase.
Likewise, pay attention to page loading speed. Pages that don’t load quickly are not only a great source of annoyance for an impatient audience, but they also appear suspect to search engines. Bounce rate is usually high for e-commerce sites that take a while to fully display; 40 percent of mobile web users abandon a website that takes more than three seconds to load.
So, find a good web development team that can tweak design factors that affect page loading speeds and SEO performance.
3. Use Adwords.
Google Adwords is the best-converting traffic source. A study on e-commerce KPIs found that Adwords accounts for 26 percent of traffic and 25 percent of revenue on average. Tap into the power of Adwords using a combination of Search, Shopping and Display Network , and you can expect to witness a surge in your website’s traffic and actual sales.
4. Get creative with your product titles and descriptions.
Listing the characteristics and special details of your products will satisfy the curiosity and lock in the interest of customers. Such customization of page titles and descriptions is also essential in helping search engines differentiate your site from other sites that may be offering similar products or services.
Use the power of words to be unique because it will help search engines establish the good value of your site, and rank you higher than your competitors. This may be a time-consuming effort at first but once you do it consistently, standing out in a positive way is bound to get easier.
5. Release high-quality, valuable and popular content regularly.
Content is still king and its reign is eternal as far as SEO is concerned. Some types of content, however, perform better than others.
Articles with curiosity-triggering headlines, power topics for blogs, and well-researched studies never fail to bring great value to consumers and should definitely be used by e-commerce sites. Invest in quality onsite content and guest posts in other authority sites. Utilize an extensive content research and discovery process to create relevant, specific content targeted for your audience.
And when it comes to really high performing visual content, videos are Queen. Websites that have demo, tutorial and review videos demonstrate stronger stickiness, net in more traffic, increase conversions, and boost customer retention.
6. Use social proof to your advantage.
Facebook likes, retweets, number of Instagram and Twitter followers, testimonials, local reviews and ratings can be used to boost SEO performance.
Reviews from local customers can be used for your local landing pages. Post that content in Rich Snippet (Schema format) and you may score the possibility of Google showing the star rating for your local page.
SEO for e-commerce websites is a fiercely tactical game. Make sure you have and are using the right tactics not just to win, but more to offer higher value to your customers and forge long-term relationships with them.
