It’s critical for online entrepreneurs to understand search engine optimization (SEO) and that implementing just a few changes to your site can improve your SEO. This can generate a higher ROI and drive more organic traffic to your site.
SEO is a constantly evolving digital marketing channel that requires time and maintenance to ensure you’re effectively implementing it to your site. As an SEO professional with over 10 years of experience in the industry, I’ve been able to help a number of prestigious brands achieve an increase in sales and revenue from optimizing their websites. Here are some quick tips for any e-commerce business:
Conduct keyword research.
On-page SEO is the optimization of content and code on each page of your website in order to improve its search rankings. To ensure you’re utilizing words that will effectively support your content and marketing strategy, you’ll need to conduct keyword research.
Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to analyze where a page should rank in a Google search. LSI is a system used by search engines to analyze other words relating to your search. This provides a better understanding for search engines like Google and its users. This is where keyword research comes in. You want your site to rank as close to the top of Google as possible when your target market is searching for the product or service you have. Producing content with the right keywords is what will help your site rank higher.
As an e-commerce entrepreneur, you’ll want to put yourself in the shoes of your buyers. Think about what they will be searching for. How do you want your consumers to find your business? Once you have brainstormed these search terms, you’ll want to research them to see if they will successfully help your site rank. Conducting a quick keyword search with free online tools like Ubersuggest, Google Keyword Planner or KWFinder can show you how popular your search terms are by looking at their monthly search volume. This is a great way to give you a guide on the content you might want to produce for your site and which keywords you will want to utilize and target to rank higher.
Improve page speed.
A slow page load time negatively impacts your SEO. This can also impact ROI and user experience. Ensure you’re improving your page speed. There are many steps you can take to go about this. However, there are a few simple adjustments you can make to your site right now to increase the speed on your site:
• Optimize your images. Your images don’t need to be any larger than what is necessary. You can reduce the file size by uploading lower-quality versions of your images in the right file format and compressed for the web. This can have an immediate and drastic effect on your site speed.
• Enable browser caching. This will speed up the load times for your repeat visitors by storing elements of your site pages in a cache.
• Optimize your plugins. If you have a lengthy list of plugins on your site, deactivate or delete the ones that are no longer required on your site or are slowing your site down.
Optimize product descriptions.
You want to ensure your product descriptions are optimized for SEO.
It’s a good idea to keep the descriptions of your regular products to a 300-800-word length and over 1,000 for your high-selling products. The descriptions for these high-selling products should contain at least 3-5 links. A description that is too short indicates that you’re likely missing out on implementing your content with valuable search terms. You want these pages to have the best chance of showing up in a relevant search. I have found this to be best practice due to my own SEO tests conducted on client sites, and have seen a massive jump in organic traffic and keyword ranking using the above method.
You want to use researched keywords focused on user intent for each of your product descriptions, as the content on each of your pages will vary and you want to attract winning searches.
Implement unique meta descriptions.
Your meta description is the first piece of copy that users will see on Google before they choose whether or not to click on your website. This description is a tool that you can use to attract the clicks of searchers that come across your site. In my opinion, your meta description should be written for the end-user, including main keywords and a call to action.
Example: [Enticing product headline, including the main keyword for the page] + [call to action]
Optimize your URLs.
A vital factor for improving the SEO of your e-commerce site is to optimize the structure of your URLs.
Your URLs should be as clear and concise as possible. They should contain relevant keywords and should not include numbers or spaces. If your URLs are clear and organized, you’re on the right track.
For example, if your e-commerce shop is selling red phone cases, you should write the dedicated page URL like this: https://yourdomain.com/red-phone-cases
Here’s an example of what not to do: https://yourdomain.com/index.php?=21890=yja=?p=256
Design for the mobile experience.
In today’s digital landscape, there’s a good chance that most of your consumers will use mobile to make a purchase on your site.
Engaging smartphone users can be easy for e-commerce sites — and in the long run, help you stay at the top of search engine results. It’s important to ensure your SEO and website is optimized to cater to mobile users.
Implementing minor adjustments to your e-commerce site can be done by any entrepreneur. Following these tips and tricks can help you to simply drive organic traffic to your site and increase your ROI, putting you on the path to SEO success.