There are around 20 million e-commerce sites that exist over the internet and in the next 15-20 years, it is expected that more than 90% of all purchases will take place via these online platforms. Most probably you’ve got an idea from this regarding how the startups like Amazon, Flipkart, etc. turned into the giant players of the market in a shorter span. Yes, the reason is the rapidly growing demand for online shopping. But do you know that apart from having quality products and foremost service what matters the most to dominate the e-commerce market? It is that your online store must appear at the top positions of SERPs – that’s where the scenario of E-commerce SEO comes!!
However, the process of Search Engine Optimization is crucial for all kinds of website but it has a more immense effect on eCommerce sites. This is because when it comes to online shopping, people often search for the required product on the search engine rather than searching for any particular e-commerce platform. Hence, it becomes necessary to rank your e-commerce website on the search engine’s top positions so that it becomes visible to the audience related to your niche prior to the other competitive websites and you can get better traffic and conversion rates. Meanwhile, if your site is not ranking at the top positions of the search engine then there is not any worth of it as it is said, the safest place to hide a dead body is Google’s second page. With the same concern, below we have mentioned 7 best SEO strategies that ensure the success of your e-commerce site.
1. Find Relevant & Optimized Keywords
Keywords are the leading player when it comes to eCommerce SEO, so you need to be very watchful and attentive while looking out for the keywords for your e-commerce platform. You should use those keywords that are highly relevant to your products. Before using a keyword for a product or category page, you must identify its search volume, cost-per-click, the user intent for using that particular keyword, or other factors. You can also analyze the competitor’s website as well to get keyword ideas. Meanwhile, you are recommended to use long-tail keywords as they often fit with the user intent and increase the conversion rate. For example, if your site offers men’s wear products then you can use keywords like – red cotton t-shirt for boys, blue round-neck men’s shirt, etc. There are various keyword research tools available that you can use for finding suitable and optimized keywords for your site. Some of these are listed below:
- Keyworddit
- SEMrush
- Soovle
- WonderSearch
- Keyword In, etc.
Apart from mentioning the keywords in product titles, descriptions, and other areas, you can also use LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords on the web page. And yes, do not try to overload or stuff the web page also with these keywords.
2. Establish an Easy Site Architecture
An Ecommerce site architecture concerns with the navigation process of your site, and how the website consists of the category or product web pages. It should be simple and easier to access for the users as well as for the search engine. There is a key rule that you must always keep into consideration while working on the site architecture – It states that each product page should take only three (or less) clicks from the homepage. Let us understand with it an example: There are two site architecture named as A and B given below:
Now you can see the site A architecture is very deep and hard to navigate. As it is not scalable, you are required to analyze and organize the things each time whenever you will add new categories or products. And the most impactful loophole is that in deep site architecture, the authority passed by the Homepage of your site is weakened till the time it reaches to the product pages. Whereas in the case of Site B Architecture, one can easily access the required page (product page) from three or lesser clicks. It, not only enhances the user experience but also ensures that the product pages get the relevant authority from the homepage and makes it easier for the search engine to categorize and index the pages.
3. Focus on On-Page SEO
On-Page SEO has always been the major factor for any website to rank on the search engine result pages. When we talk about On-Page SEO in terms of an eCommerce site, it majorly concerns with the process of optimizing the product and category pages to rank higher for the particular keywords and get relevant traffic and conversion rates. However, the techniques for On-Page SEO of an eCommerce site are somehow similar to any other website but there are some additional approaches as well that you must keep into consideration. Some of the major On-page SEO techniques for an eCommerce site are listed below:
- Use optimized meta titles and descriptions.
- Use short and keyword-rich URLs.
- Mention Product descriptions and include main & LSI keyword.
- Add Schema Markup.
- Do Internal Linking, etc.
Meanwhile, you can use authentic, relevant and high-quality images or other infographics to get better results. Also, while doing the On-page SEO for your Commerce site, do not only think about the ranking on the search engine but you must concern with the user experience as well as a good user experience will keep your audience recurring on your website.
4. Create Unique Product Descriptions for Each Product
It is the most ignored aspect when it comes to eCommerce SEO. And somehow it can be justified as an e-commerce platform can have a lot of products of similar category so it becomes quite difficult to write a unique description for each product. But the same descriptions lead to content duplicity issues that impact on your site ranking and decrease the traffic and conversion rate accordingly. And hence it becomes more essential to write a compelling and unique description for each product. Some of the tips regarding writing a product description are given below:
- Try to write product descriptions of nearly 1000+ words.
- Use the main keyword in the description for 3-5 times.
- Sprinkle the LSI keywords appropriately (without stuffing irrelevantly).
- Add modifiers like “Buy”, “Sale” and click-magnet keywords such as “50% OFF”, “Free Shipping”, etc.
- Highlight the specifications and important details of the product.
Also, do not try to copy the description content from other sites as along with the negative impact on SERPs ranking, it may also degrade the trust factor between you and the audience. Moreover, try to engage the users with your sites by asking them to write product reviews, service experience, etc.
5. Improve Site Loading Speed
Suppose you turn on your smartphone or laptop and go for some online shopping. You are looking for a wristwatch for yourself and hence type the related keywords on the search engine. In SERPs, you open the first e-commerce site and it takes more than adequate time to load and navigate. Now, what would you do? Definitely, you will close that site and go with another one. And that’s the turning point. Despite having quality products, valuable service, or other standard features, a slower loading site can cost you a huge loss of customer base. And apart from the user’s perspective, the search engine also indicates that site speed is one of the factors of their ranking algorithms that means the faster your site will load, the better ranking it will get by the search engine.
The significant reason for the slow loading speed of e-commerce sites is high-sized images. Although, e-commerce platforms majorly rely on product images so it is not recommended to compromise with the image quality and standard anyhow. Hence, what you can do is optimize the images and reduce the file size without degrading the image quality.
6. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Backlinking has always been considered as the most genuine and worthy SEO practice for a website. And in the case of e-commerce SEO, it becomes more crucial as if your platform is recommended to the audience by some authentic resources then it can generate huge traffic on your website. While building backlinks what you have to keep in mind is that the third-party resource should be authentic and linking should be relevant as per your niche as any spammy or irrelevant links can get your site penalized. You can start to build backlinks for your e-commerce site through various ways such as via using infographics on social media platforms, directory submission, using Q/A platforms (Quora, etc.) and many more.
The best way to getting high-quality backlinks is Guest Blogging as it is most preferred by the search engines. You can simply post the blogs related to your niche meanwhile you must ensure that apart from link building the posted content should be beneficial for the users. Another most preferred way of getting backlinks is to look out for the expired resources similar to your niche. What you have to do is identify these non-working sites and connect with the concerned person to offer them a replacement link.
7. Maintain Site Security
As an e-commerce platform deals with millions of user’s data and also, a large number of transactions take place on the platform every day so it becomes most important to maintain the security of the website. Moreover, considering the rapidly increasing cases of cyberattacks on e-commerce platforms such as leaking of financial credentials, account hacking, etc., users also become more cautious and prefer a more secure website. And yes, the search engine also takes the security level of your site into the consideration for ranking it on SERPs. The first and foremost thing you have to ensure is that your e-commerce site must have an HTTPS and SSL certification to protect sensitive data or information. HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) allows the browser to create a secure connection to the server on a standard port and SSL (Secure Socket Layers) appends an additional layer of security for the encryption of data.
Also, you must always back up the site data so that in case if the data gets damaged or disrupt, you can easily restore it without troubling the users. Moreover, you can remind your users to change their account passwords regularly and keep your website updated to minimize the risk.
These are some major SEO strategies for an e-commerce site that can help you to rank higher in the SERPs which further can get you more traffic and better conversion rates. So, don’t miss out on any chance and optimize your online platform to dominate the eCommerce market!!
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