Most webmasters and business websites aim to drive in organic traffic instead of investing in paid campaigns and ads to draw traffic to their pages.
Ultimately, if you want to win against the other e-commerce giants like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, etc. then you must sharpen your SEO techniques to get ahead of the game.
When you prioritise better e-commerce SEO then your products and pages have a better chance at being discovered online, bringing in higher click-through rates and generating sales.
Customers that leave your store satisfied are guaranteed to spread the good word about your online marketplace and products, which will naturally enhance your online presence.Click To TweetIf you feel like you’ve hit a dead-end on effective e-commerce SEO approaches, then we’re here to help.
Follow this guide of tips on how to fine-tune your techniques to boost your site’s ranking and attract more traffic.
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Let Search Engines Read Reviews
Consumers rely on online reviews about a product or brand to help them make the final purchasing decision. It’s one of the most effective ways to attract new customers and boost your visibility online.
Your site has countless product pages and letting customers submit reviews and feedback can serve as a great method to convince prospective customers to convert. You’ll witness a significant escalation in conversions and traffic just after adding a few reviews to your pages.
Not only is this valuable in enticing visitors about your products, but it also enhances your e-commerce SEO, bringing your website massive exposure via other audiences.
Websites that give customers the ability to scroll through reviews and comments encourage shoppers to take the leap and make a purchase.
Essentially, it proves that when your products and services inspire consumers to leave an excellent review or 5-star rating, you gain the trust and loyalty of your customers.
Be a Content Machine
It’s important to establish your site as a useful and relatable source of information to capture the attention and trust of potential customers.
Once that’s in the bag, you must integrate SEO into your practices by placing targeted and popular keywords into your content so your pages start ranking in searches.
Procuring the help of a digital marketing agency will help you understand how sharing informative content and proactively answering shopper questions online can prompt your online store to rise to page one on Google.
Remember that prospects can’t see the products in-person, which emphasises the significance of sellers sharing meaningful information about the products.
Create Dynamic Meta Descriptions
The Meta description is essentially a snippet which summarises a page’s content on Google and is crucial for on-page SEO.
Your customers pay attention to what you write in that space so make sure it includes the targeted keyword while explaining the content efficiently.
Visitors will read the meta description before they click on your URL, which helps them decide if they want to proceed further or not.
E-commerce sites that offer a variety of products find it challenging to regularly update their meta descriptions to optimise search engine results. It’s not practical for online marketplaces to invest time in writing unique and engaging meta descriptions for every page.
This is why SEO experts have opted to use ‘concatenation schemas’ which is a default content that updates dynamically according to the category and product information. It’s a small string of code that makes use of fixed rules to generate relevant meta descriptions automatically.
In short, instead of spending days updating specific categories, this schema can automatically update the website for you. That’s a big reduction in time and it turns a large and tiring task into a smaller, less challenging one.
Prioritise Speed
If you wish to gain a competitive advantage on the web, you need to make your site load faster.
Nothing turns away potential customers quicker than slow webpage loading time.Click To TweetWhen your page loads at a slow pace, visitors will abandon your site before they even look at your products.
Site speed is not only important to e-commerce SEO but also has a noteworthy influence on the complete user experience.
Google’s best practices claim that a page should load in under four seconds, anything under that can significantly decrease your conversion rate. So, the faster your site, the better.
Be sure to monitor and understand the numbers behind your site. Analyse the bounce rate, the conversion rate, loading time, and the time visitors spend on your site to identify areas that require your attention.
Page speed is all-inclusive of every device which means your site needs to be mobile-friendly for the portion of mobile consumers who rely on their smartphones for online shopping (optimise your website for super-fast mobile performance with AMP).
Promote Your Content
Websites that are new or relatively fresh on the web often turn to other trusted sources within the same niche to increase their overall reach.
Link building is a tactic that is important to how Google ranks pages. Webmasters that wish to improve the ranking of their sites can do so by link building with high-quality websites that link to their pages.
If a widely-appreciated and high-traffic website or blog shares your content with their audience, it drives traffic to your page, establishes credibility about your brand and products, and builds a relevant backlink to your pages.
Guest posting is another approach that can effectively bring fresh traffic to your site from a reputable and popular blog. If the blog you’re writing for allows it, you can strategically place a link to your site within the content, or just attach it in your author biography.
Readers that appreciate and enjoy your content will be inclined to click on your site which will boost conversion rates and increase traffic on your pages. This is a great way to build a loyal following while also improving your site’s credibility through an already established audience.
Just make sure that your content is informative and educational, not promotional as audiences are quick to abandon sites that share a lot of promotional pieces.
Measure SEO Success
In order to track your rankings, it’s imperative to check whether your SEO efforts are working and delivering results.
There are several free and purchasable SEO tools available online to help you monitor the progress of your practices. They provide valuable insights that give you a sense of how productive your efforts are and where there’s room for improvement.
Google Analytics is a free method to measure organic traffic and search ranking improvements so you know where you stand.
It’s important to find out where most of your organic traffic is originating from – desktop or mobile. This way online merchants can streamline the web experience across all devices which includes faster page loading speeds and responsive web design.
Recent studies have gathered that more than half of today’s digital traffic comes from mobile devices.
Therefore, businesses that neglect to have a website that meets the appropriate web standards are missing out on mobile traffic and also disregarding their chances of success on search engines.
Drive Social Signals
Social media marketing has become a widely popular marketing tactic to help brands connect with audiences, build awareness, increase lead generation, and drive sales.
Social media platforms serve as a powerful tool that drive traffic and inform prospective customers about the value of your website.
It’s also a great way for sellers to develop a community of loyal fans online which consistently recognises and appreciates your products, building credibility.
They offer an opportunity for e-commerce companies to interact with their customers and respond to their comments, queries, and feedback.
Consequently, when you make an effort to engage with your followers it establishes value and loyalty which inspires them to click on your pages and make a purchase.
Invest in Local SEO
If your online marketplace has physical stores scattered across different cities, then developing local pages can make considerable improvements to your e-commerce SEO by driving in branded local and non-branded local traffic.
When a user at a geographically closer location to your store searches for your business or products that you specialise in, they will be directed to local search results.
Prospective customers that wish to visit your physical store before making a purchase can learn your store’s location, the hours of operation, and any promotional offers that are coming up.
Optimising your website for local SEO brings greater local visibility which means more sales.
Additionally, it delivers more targeted traffic and drives potential customers through relevant search terms.
As a result, search engines are more likely to pick up your business location and show it on top results when local customers search for your products.
Wrapping Up
While e-commerce SEO seems a little complex, the effort you put in can have a substantial impact on your traffic, leading to greater visibility of your products and higher sales.
Note from Josh Barney @ Einstein Marketer: SEO is a long-term play. The sooner you invest in optimising your site for search engines, the sooner it will pay off – but the biggest results won’t occur overnight. You may have to use SEO tactics (like the ones mentioned in this blog) for a while to see big results, but it’ll be worth it!
If you notice your competitors doing better than you, then it’s time to incorporate these SEO tactics to improve the performance of your e-commerce site.
Invest time in researching keywords, creating relevant and quality content, and optimising your website’s interface to offer the customers seamless user experience.
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