For e-commerce businesses, optimizing your site for search engine optimization is a must. But many of them are clueless about how to do this. Fortunately, the internet never forgets anything. There are plenty of tutorials and videos available to teach you all about SEO techniques. You can also find out more about what makes an effective SEO strategy by reading articles on the matter.
We have compiled some free information for you that will help you fix any technical SEO issues that might be plaguing your eCommerce site. Read on to learn how to tap into the power of SEO for your business.
What is SEO, and how does it work?
SEO is the process of optimizing your eCommerce websites to rank higher in search engine results pages. In other words, it’s the art of getting your site to appear at the top of Google or whichever search engine you use. SEO is a complicated subject with many facets, and it takes time and patience to see any actual results.
But if done correctly, SEO can be a powerful tool for e-commerce businesses. It will help you turn more visitors into customers and grow your business significantly.
SEO techniques include:
- Optimizing titles and meta descriptions
- Creating relevant content for users
- Linking internally and externally to relevant sites (quality links)
- Using Schema markup on your pages
Once you have implemented these techniques, you need to monitor how they affect traffic, conversion rates, etc., by regularly checking analytics reports. If you aren't receiving the desired outcomes from these techniques after a reasonable amount of time, tweak them and try again.
The Technical SEO for Ecommerce
SEO is an essential part of digital marketing. Your site needs to be optimized for search engine crawlers to rank high in SERPS and deliver a better user experience. SEO is also imperative to see improvements in conversion rates and return on investment.
But what does technical SEO even mean? The easiest way to define it is the set of steps that web admins need to take to make a website crawlable by spiders, which will, in turn, lead to higher rankings in SERPS. Below are a few tips for e-commerce businesses looking to improve their technical SEO:
- Make sure your site has an XML sitemap file
- Use H1 tags when appropriate
- If you're using WordPress, make sure you're using the Yoast plugin
- Upload JPEG images with a minimum size of 2MB
- Include keywords when appropriate
- E-Commerce Technical SEO Checklist
When developing websites for B2C e-commerce companies, some aspects of your website should be carefully considered from the very beginning to avoid future problems with search engine optimization (SEO).
Although these issues may seem trivial or non-negotiable, they can have a significant impact on both user experience and search rankings. The best time to catch any potential errors is while you're still in development and testing mode.
Checking on-page technical elements are only part of the process; the rest is about checking how your eCommerce sites stack up against their competitors. Let's take a look at some of the most important things to check for:
Check How Well Sites Rank For The Competitor's Product Listings
Price comparison sites provide users with an excellent overview of which retailers sell specific products.
Searchmetrics showed that appearing on search engine results pages (SERPs) on price comparison websites can improve visibility and click-through rates. It's therefore worth checking which online shops have product listings on the most relevant price comparison websites.
Analyze Site Speed & Mobile Friendliness
Your site's page speed is usually affected by several factors, including hosting location, image sizes, and more. Search engines are now using page load times as a ranking signal, so optimizing your site to improve its loading time is essential. According to data collected on Google's Infrastructure blog, 53% of consumers expect a website to load within 2 seconds or less.
They also anticipate mobile sites to load in under two seconds on 3G connections, which means mobile-friendliness has become another crucial factor for e-commerce websites. The Internet Retailer 2016 Top 1000 report showed that mobile devices are responsible for 42% of online retail orders, with many of them (34%) made on smartphones and 18% on tablets.
Check Site SEO & Mobile Apps: Google My Business & Google Play
Google My Business is a free tool that lets you list your business and manage its location across Google services like Search and Maps. It's vital to ensure that all of the information you provide is accurate, as it's one of the main factors influencing your website rankings in local search results.
Also, having a mobile app for iOS or Android can give more credibility to your brand. If you don't have an existing app, consider developing one as they tend to rank higher than websites within the App Store and Play Store sites.
Analyze Competitor's Presence
Social proof plays a vital role in making purchase decisions. Consumers tend to check how many people like or follow a brand before deciding which one they should buy from. Therefore, seeing lots of likes and followers indicates social proof, increasing the likelihood for users to trust them and eventually convert.
Check Rankings For Competitor's Keywords
It's important to study your competitors' strategies and identify which keywords drive more organic traffic than others and which ones receive the most click-through rates (CTR).
Once you've identified these, you can use them yourself and compete with them for higher rankings. It's worth noting that Google doesn't disclose its search volume estimations anymore, so there is no 100% accurate way of knowing their organic traffic.
Check On-Site Social Activity
Social media plays an important role in e-commerce SEO, as it can affect positioning in SERPs through factors like broken links and social signals. Therefore, it's important to analyze your competitors' profiles on social media networks to see how many people are engaging with their content at the moment.
By studying this data, you will better understand which services are generating more organic traffic. You can then use them to attract more visitors and convert them into paying customers.
Analyze Content & Product Pages
SEO for product pages is very similar to regular eCommerce pages; they both need steady amounts of backlinks and high rankings on search engines. However, these web pages can't rank high on search engines without offering users great content.
Check Keyword Rankings For Competitors
As mentioned above, it's important to check which keywords your competitors are ranking for, as they might be the same ones that you're trying to rank for.
Without a doubt, Google is a powerful tool for keyword research and competitor analysis. You can use it not only to find out what key terms they're targeting but also how much organic traffic those phrases generate.
Use the Correct Meta Information.
One of the most important things to remember when optimizing your eCommerce website is to use the correct meta information. Your metadata allows search engines to understand what your page or website is about.
For example, if you sell shoes, your metadata should include keywords like "shoes" and "sales." This way, when people search for those terms, your site will show up.
Validate Your Website
The first step to improving your e-commerce site's SEO is to validate the website for error.
There are a lot of tutorials and videos on the internet about how to do this, but you can also find out more about what makes an effective SEO strategy by reading articles on the matter.
One standard error that needs to be fixed is duplicate content. If this error exists, it needs to be removed as soon as possible.
To check for duplicate content, you will need to use Google Search Console. From there, click on "Site Search" and select "Duplicate Content." This will show you all the duplicated pages on your site and which ones need removing. You can then take care of those pages accordingly.
Optimize Your Images
One of the most overlooked aspects of SEO is image optimization. Image optimization entails tightly cropping an image for your page, using alt tags to convey the image's intent, and selecting the proper file format for your pictures.
You should also avoid placing large images above the fold or inline because this could cause your site to load slowly. Social media sites like Facebook are also crucial for providing high-quality pictures to attract clicks and engagement.
There are numerous reasons why digital marketing is crucial for businesses, but one reason that stands out is targeting your ideal audience. Imagine being able to market directly to people interested in your products or services? With digital marketing, you can directly reach leads interested in your business.
With traditional methods, you don't know if people will see them or not (unless they come across it by chance). You can target your audience more precisely than traditional methods with digital marketing. You can input necessary information about your audience and use that information to shape your digital marketing campaigns. It makes it easy for you to reach the right people.
Employ Server-side Caching
The first step in improving your site’s SEO is using server-side caching. This is a way to store information on your server so it can be served up quickly. It cuts down on the number of requests for data, which means you’ll get a speedier website.
How do you get started with server-side caching? You don’t need any special language skills or sophisticated programming knowledge to use this technique. It will take some time, but you can learn to implement it by reading tutorials and watching videos on the subject.
Another good idea is to optimize your images. It would be best if you kept file sizes manageable while still maintaining high quality, which is why you must know how to use Photoshop for this task. But before you start tinkering around with the settings too much, watch tutorials about optimizing images, so you have a better understanding of what you’re doing and why it needs to be done.
Make Use of a CDN
There are a lot of benefits to using a CDN. The primary benefit is reducing your page loading time by 50 percent or more. This makes a huge difference in the user experience, and according to Google, this has been an important ranking factor since 2010.
CDN has become a standard feature in most hosted e-commerce platforms because they know its potential. However, not all sites take advantage of this technology. If you want to improve your site's SEO rankings and make your website load faster at the same time, then you should consider switching over to a CDN service provider.
Use a Canonical Tag
One of the best ways to increase your site’s SEO is to use a canonical tag. A canonical tag allows you to access page elements that are very important for SEO purposes. It will also let you tell search engines that there are equivalent category pages, allowing them to be indexed without any problems.
What do you need to know about using a canonical tag? Canonical tags are great for directing traffic toward the right place of web pages with multiple sub-pages of content. But this isn't something that's recommended if it's not necessary, so you should only use canonicals when needed.
How to Improve Your Site’s Performance
Google makes use of search engine algorithms to determine which sites rank higher. This algorithm ranks web pages based on their quality and popularity. You can also take advantage of the PR algorithm with your website’s content. If you want to improve your site’s performance, you should focus on:
- Keyword research and optimization: Keyword research and optimization are essential for SEO success.
- Site map: A well-structured site map will help search engines better index your site, which will, in turn, help your site rank higher in the SERPs.
- Navigation: Your website needs a good navigation system so visitors can find what they need quickly without any difficulties.
Conclusion
E-commerce SEO Strategy is a significant facet of any modern website’s success. The implications of not having a solid SEO strategy in place don’t just mean that you won’t rank high in search engine results; it could mean that you won’t have any search engine results to rank at all.
We’ve outlined the most important technical SEO tips for e-commerce sites, so you can get ahead of the competition and be sure that your site is ready to go.
Are you interested in being a guest on the BlueTuskr E-commerce Blog? Click here for more information.
Community for E-commerce Sellers
Leave a Reply