We have witnessed an increase in digital buying, especially in recent years. eCommerce shoppers are slowly increasing, and this gives e-Commerce brands a competitive advantage. However, for your e-Commerce store to succeed, you need to be visible in search engines.
This article explains some of the e-Commerce SEO Strategies to grow traffic and increase your revenues. Let us first start by understanding the meaning of SEO.
Understanding Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (popularly abbreviated as SEO) refers to a technique that helps website owners to boost their ranks in organic search results. Therefore, SEO improves the general visibility of website content to those looking for specific content, products, or services via search engines.
Search Engine Optimization is a vital element determining a website’s success or failure and content with an online presence. Come to think of this-there are over 3.5 billion searches on Google each day. Each day that passes without Google indexing your website, you end up losing a lot, thousands of opportunities for web visitors to visit your website, make a purchase, or read your content.
Practicing SEO will improve your visibility in the search engine results pages and give you an upper hand to beat your competitors by driving in more traffic, increasing leads, and doubling your revenues. To achieve this, you must have a sound e-Commerce SEO checklist or strategy. When developing your SEO strategy, it would be best to divide your initiative into two categories: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO Strategies
On-page SEO deals with all the SEO factors that are within the scope of your control. Your e-Commerce website has several elements that you can easily control to make it easy for search engines such as Google and Bing to index your website content. The following are some of the on-page SEO factors that you should know.
1: Secure e-Commerce Website with an SSL Certificate
Let us be a bit practical with this one. Go to a search engine and search for anything. Then, keenly observe the URL links of the top results of your search. You will notice that the first results pages have URLs beginning HTTPS and not HTTP. That is how essential an SSL certificate is in your SEO strategy.
SSL certificate is an indispensable ingredient without which your SEO strategy is incomplete. It ensures encryption of the in-transit data exchanged between the web browser and the client-server. Google and other search engines value the privacy and security of searchers. To ensure that webmasters adhere to the best security guidelines such as data encryption and data integrity, Google usually prioritizes HTTPS websites over HTTP websites. It means that if you want to win and beat your competitors in search engine rankings, you must buy an SSL certificate for your website.
Many webmasters have been wondering whether specific SSL certificates receive ranking priorities than other SSL certificates. That is not the case. The rankings will be the same whether you are using a Comodo SSL certificate, GeoTrust, Rapid SSL certificate, Thawte SSL, or DigiCert SSL. You are missing out a lot by using HTTP. It is time to make the HTTP to HTTPS migration and improve your ranks in search engines. All you need is an SSL certificate.
2: Invest in Quality Content
When it comes to Search Engine Optimization, content is the king. Without quality content, you will find it very difficult to rank in search engines and drive leads. Quality content is that which adds value and engages the searchers.
It would be unwise to create similar content for different web pages. It is also important to remember that you are writing for your audience and not for search engines. The best option is to create quality content for your web visitors, and the ranks will follow. Always ensure that your content is free from simple grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. Make your content as captivating as possible, and your web visitors will keep on coming for more.
3: The Structure of Your URL
Your URL structure will have a significant impact on the success of your SEO strategy. URL structure affects the ability of search engines to index the content on your website. To reign the top search engine pages, you should consider a more organized URL structure. When creating URL links, it will be wise to edit them to include the title of your web page.
4: Use of Pictures and Graphics
e-Commerce websites that wish to rank high in search engines must be willing to use images, graphics, and videos. There is nothing as bad as landing on a web page that has so many texts. Pictures are a great way to break down unnecessary texts. Most importantly, they serve as a way of communicating with search engines.
It is essential to understand that search engines cannot scan an image to tell what it is. As such, you should give them clues that tell them what the image is all about. You must ensure that you name every image you upload on your website. The name of your picture will live in your website’s HTML. Because search engines scan HTML, it would be important to use file names to describe all the images you upload on your website. Additionally, you can include Alt tags on your pictures to give search engines an upper hand.
5: Internal Linking
When creating website content, you might want to refer to other web pages within your website. To do this, you will need to attach links that will direct web visitors to the web pages. Anchor texts are a great way to reference other pages or websites. Using an anchor text means that the page you are linking to is about the keyword you have used as your anchor. Internal linking is another great way you can use to increase your visibility in search engines.
6: Use Proper Title Tags and Meta Tags
Another great way of increasing your visibility in search engines is by ensuring that each web page has a proper title tag. Title tags are the blue links that search engines display in the search engine results pages when a user types a search. The idea here is to ensure that you choose your title tags wisely. You ought to keep in mind that title tags should not exceed 75 characters, and this is why you ought to choose your words carefully.
Meta Tags are found below the title tags and can be categorized into two-meta descriptions and meta keywords. Meta descriptions describe what a specific web page is all about. Search engines will first look at your meta descriptions to find the text to put under the blue link. Meta keywords allow you to include a few keywords that relate to your web page. As a best practice and for the sake of your search engine rankings, you can include 5 or 6 keywords in the meta keywords.
Off-Page SEO Strategies
1: Link Building
Search Engine Optimization is not a one-man’s game. At one point, you will need to bring in more players to help your eCommerce website rank in search engines. Off-page SEO deals with building relationships with other websites. Link building is the technical term for building relationships. Link building answers the following questions; Which websites are linking to your websites? And how are the websites linking to you?
Getting who to link to you might be an uphill task. However, it is something that can be easily achieved. For instance, you can ask your friends who have websites to link to your website. However, such links will not significantly impact SEO impact than the links from popular sites such as educational websites or significant publications. In short, some websites are more valuable than others. Therefore, you must strive to ensure that you garner the links from popular websites.
2: Using Social Media to Spread Your Brand’s Content
Social media platforms are growing in terms of need, relevance, and impact. For example, 54% of customers use social media platforms to research a brand before finally purchasing a product. Therefore, social media platforms present e-Commerce business owners with a unique opportunity to improve their SEO strategies. In addition, search engines now value content shared via social media platforms. Therefore, it would be best to make your content easy to share, and implementing social media share buttons can help you accomplish this.
3: Identifying Keywords- Use Long-Tail Keywords
A critical element of search engine optimization is to choose the right keywords. To ensure that your website ranks high in the SERPs, you must follow the least resistant path. For instance, if you have an eCommerce store dealing with Ladies’ fashion, you might want your website to rank for “ladies fashion store.” However, if you optimize several web pages for every fashion design, you will have much more success. A keyword like “Ladies sports outfit” is an excellent example of a long-tail keyword that will bring more SEO success.
Conclusion
To increase your webshop sales, you ought to understand that you must start by improving your visibility in the search engine results pages for you to sell. A perfect SEO strategy will take you top of the search engine results pages. This article has explained some of the SEO factors that will boost your ranks in search engines.
