SEO has always been important for businesses, but it is more important than ever now that the internet dominates our lives. SEO strategies are different for each type of business. For instance, eCommerce SEO takes on a much different approach than organic SEO for B2B companies.
In this blog post, we will be focusing on eCommerce sites and what you can do to make them rank higher in search engines. We will discuss five SEO strategies that work specifically for e-commerce websites: page speed optimization, content marketing strategy, link building strategy, keyword research strategy, and social media marketing strategy, so stay tuned and read on to find out how you can make your eCommerce website rank higher and sell more.
Why is an Ecommerce SEO Strategy Important for your Ecommerce Store?
An eCommerce SEO strategy is important for your online store because it makes it easier to rank higher in search engines. If you have an eCommerce website, the chances are that most of your customers will find your site using Google or another search engine. You want these people looking for exactly what you offer to easily navigate through your website and find the products they are looking for.
If you want your site to rank higher, a few different SEO strategies can help get it up in the search engine ranks. For eCommerce websites, which we will be going over next.
What is Technical SEO?
Technical SEO is all about making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website. This includes things like having a sitemap, using tags, metadata on each page of the site, implementing schema markup where appropriate, and setting up an XML feed so that Google can easily get updates when you add new products or content to your online store.
In essence, technical SEO deals with everything on-page, which means it is done before a website goes live. But once set up, you will never have to worry about technical SEO again as search engines will be able to quickly and easily crawl your site without any problems or issues cropping up.
1. Page Speed Optimization: Fast Loading Pages is Important
Let's start with page load speed optimization: this is a very important aspect, especially for eCommerce websites, because not only does a slow website annoy visitors, it also wards off potential customers, and in a technical SEO perspective, it can also have an effect on your bounce rate and conversion rates. A study conducted by KISSmetrics showed that 47% of people would leave a webpage if it takes more than three seconds to load, and over 80% don't wait longer than ten seconds before leaving a slow-loading website.
In fact, according to Search Engine Watch, "visitors expect web pages to load in two seconds or less," so if your eCommerce site can't do that, well, you're in trouble. Luckily for eCommerce site owners and marketers, there are many ways to increase your site speed.
Image Optimization
The first is image optimization. If you are not aware, most browsers will load the images found on a webpage before they load other elements such as CSS or HTML, so it is important to make sure that your site doesn't have too many images. Use image compression software to optimize them.
Caching
Another thing is caching: this means storing commonly accessed data in memory for faster access. You can use caching plug-ins for your eCommerce site to ensure that the data you are using is stored in memory, so it doesn't have to be reloaded each time someone visits a page on your store.
Caching plug-ins will also help with server load times, which improve search engine rankings as well.
Luckily, there is something called Google Page Speed Insights that will analyze any webpage URL you enter and suggest ways to make your page load faster.
2. Content Marketing Strategy: Blogging is Good for SEO
Next, let's talk about content marketing strategy, which is one of the most important things you can do to improve your search engine optimization on an eCommerce website.
The first part of this strategy is blogging. Content marketing itself has been proven to be one of the best SEO strategies you can do, so if you haven't been blogging, now is a good time to start.
On-page SEO - Meta Tags, Title Tag, Headings, Alt Tag, and Meta Descriptions
The next part of the content marketing strategy is on-page SEO. This refers to the elements found within your webpage that help tells search engines what it's about, including things like meta tags, title tags, headings, and alt text for images. All these are important because they let Google know exactly what a page is about to index it correctly.
Quality Content
Google's Panda Algorithm penalizes sites with less than 300 words per page, and it doesn't matter what kind of site or business you own: big corporation or small business; this still holds true. The only difference with eCommerce websites is that instead of having 300-word blog posts about things like how to raise your vibration by eating chocolate-covered strawberries while watching Titanic on Netflix all day (which would be great content marketing), they should focus on populating quality content on their category pages, product pages, product descriptions, product reviews and tutorials which include pictures because Google loves images!
Duplicate Content
Now, another thing you want to avoid is duplicate content: this can happen when your CMS automatically creates a page for each product that gets added, and it happens more often than you think.
So if someone visits one of these pages with the same information as another page on your site, but there isn't any internal linking taking them from one page to the other, Google will start to see these as duplicate content, and it can devalue your site.
The good news is that there are a lot of eCommerce SEO plug-ins available (such as the Yoast plug-in) which help you optimize pages for search engine results, so this doesn't happen by accident.
3. Ecommerce Link Building Strategy: Quality Matters
One of the most important SEO strategies for eCommerce sites is link building: this means that you want to get other websites and sources to link back to your website. This helps with search rankings, and links serve as trust signals that Google uses when determining whether or not a site should rank higher in search results.
The key thing here, though, is quality over quantity: don't just go out there and spam every blogger on the internet asking them for a nofollow link because chances are, they aren't going to take too kindly towards that request since those links have a negative effect on their own site's SEO.
So, what should you do?
Instead, you should create useful content and services for your eCommerce website's audience ( remember: quality over quantity ) such as tutorials, reviews, infographics, and so on. Then you can reach out to other bloggers who have written about related topics with something like this:
"Hi [First name], I came across your post at [link] today, which was great! I'm really interested in linking back to my site if that's okay with you?"
After all, Google values relevant links pointing back to a site which is why it doesn't want people building thousands of low-quality links if they don't help with search engine rankings; that is not only against its guidelines but also bad business practice since nobody wants their domain name associated with spammy behavior. This is another reason why it isn't recommended to use link directories or article directories.
Internal Links
Another SEO strategy for eCommerce sites is internal linking. This means you want to link internally between pages on your own site, such as from the product page of one particular item, back to other related product and category pages, and so on. Internal linking also helps with search engine rankings because it makes your site easier to navigate, encouraging people to stay on the website longer.
This is especially important for eCommerce sites since these websites usually have a lot of products and categories that you can look through, so internal linking helps with navigation by providing breadcrumbs such as from product page A → Category B → Subcategory C → , Product page D, and so on.
Fixing Broken Links
Lastly, you'll want to fix broken links, which are dead backlinks that no longer point towards your website. These can have a negative effect on your site's search engine rankings, so it is important to keep track of these things and remove them if need be.
Link Building Strategy
Don't just build links for the sake of building links because it can have a negative effect on your site's rankings. Instead, invest in having quality content as it is always more important than quantity, so don't go out there and spam other sites and website owners with requests for backlinks to give you some quick link juice. Instead, focus on creating useful eCommerce content to which bloggers and website owners will want to link back.
Local SEO for Ecommerce
Another important SEO strategy is local SEO, which helps your site rank higher for queries that are location specific such as "ice cream stores near me”.
For most websites, this means you'll want to optimize the pages on your website with relevant keywords and also include a physical address.
4. Keyword Research Strategy
This SEO strategy for eCommerce sites involves choosing the right target keywords so that you can rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The best way to do this is by using a tool such as Google Keyword Planner, which will help you uncover keyword ideas and long-tail keywords, including low competition and high search volume-related phrases that your potential customers are searching for.
What is Search Intent?
The second part of the keyword research strategy is finding the best keywords for your eCommerce site and understanding what people who are searching for these keywords (i.e., your target audience) want through search intent.
The Google Keyword Planner tool mentioned above will provide you with average monthly searches and suggested bid prices ($) and competition based on relevant keywords, which can help give you an idea of how difficult it may be to rank in the top ten results.
Primary Keyword
Your primary keyword should be the main term that you want your eCommerce site to rank for in search engine results (e.g., "best ice cream stores near me"). Once you have your primary keyword, it's time to use the Google Keyword Planner tool again, but this time, to get keyword ideas that are related to your product or service. Ideally, your pick a primary keyword with high search volume, low competition, and low keyword difficulty.
Informational Keywords
Think about informational keywords, which are phrases people might type into the search engine when they're looking for an answer or asking a question.
These types of keywords can be great to rank high in the search results because they tend to have lower competition and higher organic click-through rates (CTR) than commercial intent-related queries. Informational keywords are long-tail keywords that can include words or phrases that provide the answer to a question such as "how do I make ice cream at home?" They might not be exactly great as a primary keyword, but they help you find content and keywords that will help you attract more organic traffic to your blog post section.
Keyword Stuffing
One of the things that you have to be careful about is keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is basically when you have too many keywords on one page, which can be a problem because Google will see this as spammy and penalize your website for it. This is why it is always better to come up with content that really speaks to your target audience rather than stuffing in endless target keywords so that you can rank higher.
5. Social Media Marketing Strategy
Last but not least, one of the best SEO strategies for eCommerce websites is social media marketing.
This type of online marketing focuses on using different types of social media to drive brand awareness and grow your audience so that you can increase sales (through boosting demand), customer loyalty (by providing great customer service), and brand advocacy. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok are excellent tools for promoting organic content and paid ads.
The goal here should be to create shareable images or videos that will get people to link back to your website with their own followers. You also want to focus on creating original content that will make it easier for other users within this same niche and market space to promote your site organically through their own social media accounts.
Get Ready to be Seen by Search Engines and Scale Your Ecommerce Website!
Ecommerce SEO is not as complex or intimidating as many people think. Once you get a sound understanding of what eCommerce SEO entails and be able to develop a solid plan, then you'll be well on your way to ranking higher in search engines and getting more organic traffic for your eCommerce store.
When it comes to eCommerce, developing an effective SEO strategy involves creating great content as well as finding ways to optimize your site both through technical SEO, proper keyword research, and a little push from social media so that search engines understand exactly who your audience is and what they are looking for when they visit your eCommerce site, product pages or blog post section.
And with that, we hope that these strategies will help you rank your eCommerce website and boost your sales with less effort. Looking for a hand to improve your SEO? Check our our E-commerce SEO services. We're happy to help!
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