Search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for eCommerce. This is especially true right now, with so many people still shopping from home and avoiding large crowds. You might think this increase in online purchasing would naturally trickle down to your business.
Your eCommerce site might get an uptick just based on the increased online sales. But you’ll also notice a lot more competition for that audience. There are many marketing initiatives to drive traffic, but SEO boosts your organic traffic. In other words, it helps you get found in search. And these are the customers you’re looking for – the ones who are already interested in buying what you sell.
You can run ads and campaigns with the help of the best eCommerce SEO services that are effective. But you have to realize that many customers won’t even look at advertisements.
5 Tips to Boost Your eCommerce Page Ranking with SEO
Most people recognize the importance of keywords to help customers find you by search terms. Keywords are important, but some other tips can help you boost your page ranking tremendously.
1. Improve Your Keyword Research
The biggest problem that companies have with keywords is that they’re using the wrong ones. Keywords aren’t as simple as just guessing what someone would search for. It’s also not as easy as running a quick keyword search and just grabbing the highest-ranking words on the list. Or the lowest ranking, for that matter.
Do some extra research on your list of possible keywords. See what your competition is using (and how well).
Once you have a narrowed-down list, check what the highest-ranking pages are for those terms. This will tell you what people are looking for when they search. Are they looking to buy? Or are they interested in reviews? Or are they searching for information in general? This will tell you what kind of content you want to pair with those keywords. Using the wrong keywords will increase traffic, but often with the wrong audience. It doesn’t do much good to bring in a lot of traffic that’s not interested in your objective with the page.
2. Optimize Your Homepage
Your homepage is your eCommerce site’s calling card. It’s also most likely to pop up on a search for your website. You want to make sure the keywords are precise for your target audience and your business. On-page SEO is essential here.
Make sure that your meta description is both accurate and enticing. This is the description of your website that shows up under your website name in the search engine, so it’s an important PR space, as well as a way to use your keywords.
Having an animated explainer video on your homepage will also boost your traffic and optimize your website. One of the perks of hosting an animated video is the fact you will be generating extra organic traffic as the video can be found on search results. You can upload your video to your social media platforms as well for optimum optimization.
You also want to spend some time making sure that your homepage is user-friendly. This is true for your entire website, but the homepage may be where searchers are looking to get a feel for your business. Make sure that it’s easy to navigate, and customers can easily find anything they are looking for (especially your products).
3. Product Page Optimization
So many eCommerce sites forget to optimize their product pages. You want to optimize the page itself. If there is written content on the page outside of product listings, make sure you’re following best SEO practices. Include your keywords, make sure your title and headers are optimized, and include a high enough word count to help your SEO on-page.
Each product listing should be optimized, too. This is your space to include keywords for the specific product and keywords that people might be using for that type of product. But the golden rule here is to make sure that the content is well written. Keywords are important, but not at the expense of great copy.
4. Optimize Those Images
For eCommerce, images are important. Your “shoppers” can only judge by pictures, so they have to be high quality. Image optimization is a little more than just the quality of the images.
Take advantage of features like tagging. Including alt tags gets your image added to Google images. You should also make sure that your image file is named using your keywords.
Finally, make sure that you have enough images of your product. For instance, if you’re selling clothes, purchasers will want to see the product from different views, front and back. If you’re selling something like jewelry, you might use something in the photo to show scale, like a coin or ruler.
5. Check Your Loading Speed
Your loading speed is an important part of your domain authority and ranking. Google and other search engines prioritize this because it plays into the user experience. If your site speed is slow, it’s a concern.
Some things that can bog down your site speed include excessive widgets, image sizes, and video. As a rule, you want to remove anything you’re not using and use the recommended image sizes for your theme/website.
Search Engine Optimization is a long-term commitment, but it’s one that reaps excellent benefits for eCommerce.