On average, Amazon is accessed by over 197 million users a month equal to over half the total population of the United States – so it can be hard to imagine competing against such a large giant.
However, 35% of all online purchases start at Google.
With the right tools and strategies, even small ecommerce businesses can get their products ranked in Google, and one of the key ways to improve your product search rankings is through technical SEO.
The following SEO tips will help you optimize your ecommerce website, to increase the visibility of your products in search engines, and lead to greater traffic and sales.
1. Specific, Long-Tail Keywords
Choose a specific keyword that accurately describes your product. It’s best to choose one with a low KD (Keyword Difficulty) and high search volume. You will use this keyword to optimize the rest of your page’s tags and content.
Long-tail keywords tend to have lower search volumes because they are more specific – but this can be a good thing. By matching what thencustomer is looking for with your keyword, a sale is more likely to be made.
Here’s an example:
You’re a skincare site, and one of the products you sell is toner. The keyword “toner” has a KD of 33 and a search volume of 26,000. Although the search volume might look enticing, being able to rank for a keyword with such a high difficultly is near impossible.
Instead, the keyword needs to be more focused on what your customer is looking for. If the toner is for people who suffer from acne, an more focused keyword is “toner for acne prone skin”. This better targets a specific type of customer, and has a KD of 7 and a monthly search volume of 300.
You can use a free tool like Ubersuggest or a paid tool, such as Ahrefs or SEMRush to help determine the best keyword.
2. Optimize Page Titles
Titles are the first thing users see when scrolling through results in a search engine before deciding whether or not to click on a link. That’s why optimizing your page titles are so important.
The following three tips will help to optimize your product and page titles.
Keyword
After you’ve chosen a specific keyword for your page or product, SEO best practices suggest placing this keyword at the very beginning of your page title. It makes your keyword the first thing the user sees, so they know exactly what the pages is going to be about.
For example, if your site is called “Clear Away Skincare” and your product is the toner mentioned above, your page title could look like:
Toner for Acne Prone Skin | Proven Results – Clear Away Skincare
Unique
Google doesn’t like duplicate content, so each page on your site should have a different page title.
Length
Depending on whether search engines are being viewed on a desktop or on a mobile device, if a title tag is too long, the whole title won’t be displayed in Google. That’s why we recommend the title be no more than 60 characters, to ensure your title displays properly in search engines.
3. Meta Descriptions
Like page titles, your meta descriptions should be unique. Although they do not contribute to your SEO ranking, meta descriptions should be attractive in order to entice users into clicking on your result.
There are several ways to do this including:
- Having a Call to Action: Using verbs such as “join, call, buy, shop”
- Including Main and Secondary Keywords: When users make a search query, matching keywords are bolded in the search result description. This helps alert users to the content of your page and whether it is relevant to their search query.
4. Fix Link Issues
A properly running site is important both for user accessibility and search engines. It is important to take care of 404 errors to give the best user experience and prevent users from bouncing off your site in frustration.
404 Pages
404 pages are common with ecommerce sites when products that are no longer in stock are deleted from the store’s site. It is important to redirect out-of-stock pages to the next most relevant page or the product category.
301 Redirects
Make sure 301 Redirects are being redirected to the most relevant page.
5. Duplicate Content
Google’s algorithm looks for unique, useful content, so it’s important to identify duplicate content on your site and fix it. This applies to title tags, meta descriptions, H1 headers, and duplicate pages. Having two versions of the same page, such as “www” version and a “non-www” version, is considered duplicate content. One should be redirected to the other to avoid any consequences.
6. Images and Alt Tags
All images on an ecommerce site should have an alt text that is clear and descriptive. Alt tags provide three different purposes.
First, they make sites more accessible for users with visual impairments and disabilities. Second, Google cannot accurately interpret what an image is just by looking at it, but providing an alt description tells Google exactly what the picture is without having to guess. A picture of Taylor Swift performing in Madison Square Garden could appear to Google as a “blonde woman with a microphone”, but providing an alt description tells Google exactly what it is. Third, providing alt tags help improve indexation for Google images.
Now It’s Your Turn
Try optimizing your site’s pages with the above tips. If you have a large site with multiple products, it can be helpful to seek aid from an eCommerce SEO agency for help and guidance. SEO agencies can help you decide which product pages have the greatest opportunity and are the most important to target and optimize.
Remember to optimize all of your ecommerce product pages by fixing issues and implementing the SEO tips above, and to remember to optimize your products and site pages moving forward.