Posted by Vishal Parmar
March 23, 2021
For years, SEO has been a prominent medium to market online businesses with limited expenditure costs. Did you know that 44% of the total eCommerce traffic comes from search engines due to effective SEO techniques?
Online stores have become a popular source of income for a lot of businesses. But regardless of its popularity, there are various factors involved in gaining qualified leads and converting them into customers. This makes life challenging for online retail operators as they cannot bring in new clients within a stipulated budget.
Hence, SEO is withstanding as the only tool proven to boost traffic for an organic revenue generation without spending too heavily.
This post will educate you about the commonly used eCommerce SEO strategies (significantly, the correct way to use them for optimization), helping you boost your performance in eCommerce SEO.
The rule in the eCommerce industry is that you are missing out on sales if you’re missing the clicks. Today, just featuring on the first page of the search engine isn’t good enough; the eCommerce player, which ranks #1, rules the industry; it’s as simple as that. Therefore, you need to have that first position on the podium every time. According to a study, impressions from the 1st position on the search engine page are almost double that from the second positioner.
Did you know: As per the U.S. Department of Commerce, e-commerce sales in 2015 were $341.7 billion for the year. With a 14.6% increase compared to $298.3 for the year 2014. Indeed indicating the value of SEO for eCommerce websites.
This cut-throat contest indicates many things that need to be taken into account from the SEO perspective.
Frankly, if you don’t hold a clear, winning eCommerce SEO strategy, you are surely losing out on the brand impression, thereby losing many clicks and sales. To the layman, this explains the importance that the #1 ranked enjoys.
Ecommerce SEO is a process of creating maximum visibility for the eCommerce company’s products and services. As your keywords rank higher, your eCommerce company products will feature on the top of the page, beating other competitors. The higher ranking will make your link most clickable, providing optimum traffic to your eCommerce website.
Anybody doing anything in the SEO industry will be well aware of Google’s role. Well, the search engine giant has the most challenging job, the one to rank. If your business does not appear at least on the first page of the search results, you are losing many potential customers as they are clicking on your competitor’s website because you weren’t ranking. Known for its quality search result, it has to provide these results to over 80K users every second.
The same goes for an online eCommerce company; there are many things that you need to do well to rank well and stay visible on the search engine result page. Strategies starting from research- keyword, and competitor research works, website architecture, UI, and UX for the website.
eCommerce keyword research is more of a goal-oriented task now. You have to decide upon the set of keywords that will be most effective for your eCommerce website. There are kinds like a commercial, informational and navigational. As a study, 80 of every 100 searches are informational; whereas, the other two categories hold 10 each.
A meta on a website describes the content on it; this works like a mini-advertisement and promotes the page proposition; encourages a browser to click. Tips for writing some magnetic meta descriptions that work:
Meta is short, within 155 characters; hence be as specific as possible. Show what the website has to offer and how it is beneficial to the user.
A good, engaging web page content can be created using 3 significant ideas, which are as follows:
Pro tip 1: Create a unique feature within your SEO for an eCommerce website that makes your products easily shareable to multiple platforms; this will be handy for link building.
Appearing on a SERP with a Schema Markup is not only attractive and informative, but it also proves that the eCommerce website is trustworthy.
According to the Search Engine Land study, SEO eCommerce search results with schema markup have a 30 % increased CTR (Click through rate) compared to those that appear with it.
However, be cautious about what you include in the schema markup; it can get complicated and have a reserving effect. Include basic information such as Name, Image, Description, Aggregate ranting, and offers along with Price and Currency.
Did you know: Shopify SEO services help over 1 million eCommerce businesses grow with over 2 million active users worldwide.
Keep a count of the number of pages your eCommerce website will have and the number of pages that the users will navigate.
Having dynamic URLs might be an attractive idea, but the same turns out to be a demerit for your customers, primarily if your business deals with multiple products and their categories.
Even if your eCommerce website doesn’t face a 404 error issue, there’s no harm in knowing the solution under SEO for an eCommerce website.
Redirecting a 404 page with a 301 redirect or having a permanent redirect in place is the best way to solve it.
The 301 redirects will pass around 90% of the clicks to a new page similar to the searched product. Hence, solving the problem that has no ill effects on the traffic.
Pagination is presenting content in segregated smaller sections with help of ‘next’ and ‘prev’ tags. These tags enable search engines to understand the link between pages and the content.
While implementing pagination under eCommerce SEO, add meta name and content tags to all pages in the paginated series except for the first page, ensuring that the 1st page gets indexed.
Pro tip2: You can offer FREE Coupon Codes to achieve healthy link building for your eCommerce website
Add the rel= “canonical” tag to all original product pages; by doing this in your eCommerce SEO, you inform search engines about which products you want them to show.
In the case of no rel= “canonical” tag, there will be duplicate products on display.
With Google shedding importance to mobile-friendly for a healthier ranking, mobile optimization for an eCommerce website has become inevitable.
Page speed is an essential part of the successful run of an eCommerce website.
Though these are just a few eCommerce SEO strategies in the vast topic of guide to eCommerce SEO; they rank among the most effective ones, providing an instant positive hike in the way your eCommerce website behaves on the SERPs.
Including these in your SEO for eCommerce plan can create wonders for your eCommerce business within a shorter period. Of course, along with these, do not forget to implement the standard practices such as having advanced shipping rules and so on.