eCommerce SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is all about increasing your site traffic and making them precious sales. Without traffic, there’ll be no sales and well without sales, there may not be a business for too much longer.
But today we’re going to solve that problem before it ever happens!
A successful business should master the art of SEO and the goal of this guide is to do just that.
Here are our top 8 SEO tips to boost your eCommerce business.
#1 – Website Structure
The simpler you go here the better.
Technology has made some great advances but sometimes being too flashy and complicated works against you. A simple structure makes it easy for search engines to crawl through boosting your ranking on SEO. It also makes the purchasing journey for customers quick and easy.
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Utilize Breadcrumb Navigation: Breadcrumb navigation is a type of site navigation that shows users exactly where in a site they are without having to check the URL. Breadcrumb navigation helps with the organization of your site while increasing onsite click-through rates of shoppers
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Have A Clean URL: Clean and readable URLs are more attractive and memorable for your visitors. They also help Google to improve usability and accessibility for your site by being intuitive and meaningful.
#2 – Optimized Product Pages
Your product page is your selling point for your business. Make sure to optimize every area of the product page this includes:
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Meta Titles
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Meta Description
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H1s
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Product Description
Focus on writing a meaningful and insightful product description for each product you are selling. Shoppers live busy lives and you must learn to catch their attention quickly and provide relevant information in a timely manner. You can do this by:
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Remove any jargon
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Keeping the description easy to read
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Utilizing bullet points to highlight particular features
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Speak to your target audience’s mindset throughout
#3 – Website Speed
A slow website loading speed sets an immediate bad tone for visiting customers and can severely impact the buying experience. There are many factors that can cause a slow site so there’s no point in trying to identify them all here. However, there are some fantastic tools to recommend:
Both these tools inform you of your site’s speed and provide insightful action items that can be fixed immediately.
#4 – Content Is King
Every eCommerce store should by providing and creating content. Providing meaningful content can entice customers to visit your site. Your content can be written, video, or audio as long as you are providing useful information to potential customers it will help your eCommerce SEO standing. How often you release your content is completely up to you, however, releasing at least every few weeks shows customers that your store is active and thriving!
Hubspot released a study in August 2020 showcasing some quantitative research on how often you should be pushing out content.
Did you know that only 16% of people actually read articles word for word. Most visitors to your website will scan the page and pick the piece they think will be most beneficial to them. If they don’t immediately see what they’re looking for many times they just leave.
To help your website’s readability:
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Avoid text walls
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Use bullet points
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Include clear headings
Bionic’s Expert Tip: Run your website content through a Flesch-Kincaid readability scoring tool such as Readable to quickly gauge if your page is easy to read.
#5 – Avoid Broken Links
Nobody likes when you think you’ve found exactly what you’re looking for only to be met with a dead page link. We’ve all experienced the dreaded “404 ERROR PAGE NOT FOUND,” we know how it feels.
Telling you to get rid of dead links might seem redundant but many many sites still have them. Routine maintenance and correction of these links should be a regular part of your software team’s duties.
Google will also rank your site down on its SEO rankings if your website includes too many broken links so it’s a win/win for everyone if we just get rid of them.
#6 – Secure Your Site
Nowadays many people are concerned about their privacy, and rightfully so. This means that many people browse using VPNs and Anti-Virus technology, that scan websites before the user enters them.
If your website isn’t HTTPS secure then it will red flag the user not to enter this site. Naturally, this isn’t good for business if customers are immediately told not to enter the store. Elevated produced an insightful article on how to get an SSL certificate and get your website secure.
The little lock symbol on the left of your website’s URL tells users if the site is safe and secure.
#7 – Optimize The Mobile Experience
Last year, Adobe Analysts released a report showing that more than 33% of last year’s Black Friday sales were made on mobile devices. This shows us then changing of the times and that we must also consider mobile optimization for our websites.
Optimizing your website for mobile users includes:
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Changing the UX and making mobile navigation easy
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Simplifying the checkout experience for a smaller screen
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Removing any pop up ads that may cover the entire screen
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Adjusting images and branding to fit mobile
#8 – SEO Keywords
If you thought you’d get to read through a full SEO article without seeing ‘keywords’ well, HA GOTCHA!
In-depth keyword research is essential for the SEO success of your eCommerce business. Keywords are the bedrock of SEO optimization. Having a strong keyword foundation can be the make or break your SEO efforts. If done properly from the start it can save you a lot of time. Keywords are words that are often searched by customers when they are searching for a product or service.
E.g A person looking to buy a car would probably Google something like “Car dealerships in my area”. Therefore the keywords here may be “car” and “dealership”. Google will scrap through every website looking for the closest match of these words for the user. You want to be at the top of that search result.
Now of course that is a hugely simplified version of keyword optimization but you get the gist.
To kickstart your keyword research why not try out a tool such as Google Keyword Planner. This software will allow you to find base keyword information for your industry. You can also collect the average monthly search volume of the keywords, the average Cost Per Clicks, and the competition words of that keyword in the world of SEM.
This should definitely get you started on the right track to SEO keyword success.
Conclusion
Mastering SEO isn’t an easy task, many people train for years on the subject and will still tell you it changes day by day.
But hopefully now by reading and implementing the 8 tips outlined above you can get to work on creating a fantastic fully optimized SEO eCommerce website.
If you want more information why not check out our other blogs on similar topics such as:
And don’t forget SEO is a worthwhile investment that will change your eCommerce business forever if done properly.
So get going, get optimizing!
