Selling on the internet can be tough. One of the hardest parts of eCommerce is drawing traffic to your site. There are many ways to achieve this, from social media and email strategies to pure SEO.
However, these can often feel like a black box – many eCommerce founders find themselves stuck, thinking “How do I improve SEO for eCommerce?!”. There are hundreds of options when it comes to improving your rankings. We’ve compiled the 10 best SEO tips for online stores.
Whether you’ve been online for years, or are just starting – these tips will help boost your rankings and drive traffic.
Content Marketing
Content marketing provides a blank canvas to boost your rankings. You can insert the right keywords for your business throughout your content pieces, allowing search engines to pick up your site and push it towards the top.
SEO for online stores relies on two key factors: language and links. With content, you can use both in a way that drives customer engagement.
From blog posts to static pages, well-written content is a cornerstone for SEO. To quote Forbes: “SEO without content marketing is like a body without a soul”.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are the pieces of text that sit behind your page. They interact with the search engine to summarise what your page is all about.
As SEO is determined by algorithms, search engines crawl your page for meta descriptions to determine what your online store is all about. Then it can rank it accordingly.
Therefore, it’s essential that you invest in quality meta descriptions. For stores, you can do this for each of your products, collections, and pages. You need to make sure the search engine knows how great your products are.
Make it Mobile
These days, everyone has gone mobile. Everyone is making purchases from their phones.
The search engines know this. If your eCommerce store isn’t responsive and optimized for mobile, they’ll rank you lower. If you want to take advantage of the mobile revolution, make your store mobile to boost SEO.
Improve Your Backlinks
Backlinks are links from some other website to your page. For the search engines, they’re a good indicator of how relevant your page is. If everyone is linking to your page – your stores’ products must be popular, right?!
To improve SEO for your store, get your products mentioned in other blog posts. Maybe reach out to influencers and guest writers – make sure you get your product linked.
Alt Text
The best online stores are full of images. To boost SEO for eCommerce, make sure you have appropriate alt text for when your images can’t load. This is also super important for the visually impaired.
This lets search engines know that your images are relevant – so they know your page is legit.
Category Page Keywords
Large stores have many categories. These are great places to include keywords. Many people think that SEO keywords are only for product descriptions and blog posts – why not try them in your category pages?
These titles often have higher-order HTML tags, and so will be weighted higher by search engines.
SSL Certificates
The web can feel lawless at times. Therefore, search engines value security. IF you don’t have an SSL certificate, your eCommerce store may be flagged as unsafe – which can hurt its ranking.
You can ensure you have an SSL certificate by checking with your hosting service – this is essential for SEO.
Optimize your Wordcount
Search engines are like readers, they have a finite attention span. Or at least, this is one way to think about it.
Your blog posts cant be too long or too short. If you’re writing 1000s of words, your SEO rankings will suffer. You need to strike a balance between rankings and readability. We’d recommend no more than 2000 words for great results.
Change your product descriptions
Product descriptions in eCommerce stores are like salespeople in car dealerships. They’re essential for getting the job done and converting customers. But they’re also essential in boosting SEO for online stores.
Ensuring that your product descriptions read well, convert and have the correct keywords is the key to having the right product pages.
Front-load your keywords and keep them well researched for optimal results.
List on other sites such as Amazon
These days, the majority of product searches begin on trusted sites like Amazon. For your own eCommerce site, the big stores serve two functions: 1) they can be a strong sales channel, and 2) they are great for creating high-quality backlinks.
By listing on other sales channels such as Amazon or Etsy, your SEO rankings can get strong tailwinds from reputable links. This way, you can diversify your sales channels and boost your search engine rankings in one swift move.