Having an online store is one thing, but ranking well organically in search engines like Google is a major project in itself .
Although e-commerce SEO strategies have parallels with traditional SEO, to be as effective as possible you should take a more targeted approach. Below, we'll cover eleven basic e-commerce strategies and SEO techniques that remain relevant and effective.
How to optimize the referencing (SEO) of your online store in 11 steps?
Most of these techniques can be performed by you or a member of your team. However, you can always hire an expert in creating online stores to give you a hand.
1. Boost SEO with unique and engaging product descriptions
One of the most basic yet often overlooked e-commerce strategies, writing unique product descriptions that build your brand, engage your audience, and educate your buyers will set your store apart from your competition in a meaningful way for search engines. research and your customers.
Great product page copywriting is even more valuable if you sell products that can be found on hundreds of other online stores, as many of these stores will copy and paste a product description directly from the manufacturer, resulting in thin and duplicate content on dozens or more sites. Whether your products are available elsewhere or you are the sole supplier, writing unique and engaging product descriptions optimized with your target keywords will increase your organic rankings. If done right, it will do this while simultaneously improving your conversion rate.
2. Write optimized content for your online store (Keywords)
Content is still the king of Google 's ranking factors and will remain so.
To do this, you need to target long-tail keyword variations in your products and in your blog content.
As we said before, you must be very detailed in the descriptions of your categories and your products, without forgetting to use good words and its variants to optimize your SEO on the page (OnPage).
Having a blog on your online store will help you produce more informative content for your readers and fetch more visitors through keywords.
For eCommerce stores, your blog should take advantage of long-tail keyword variations targeting your products and categories. Your blog content can include product reviews, comparisons, market news, how-to articles, and more.
For example, if you sell running shoes, you should write articles about running, jogging, how to choose running shoes, create a resource to help people know what size shoes they need, etc.
OnPage SEO helps you get targeted, relevant traffic to ensure that visitors who come to your online store through search results are high-quality leads.
So, the first thing to do is to find good keywords for your online store. Once you've done your homework and found the keywords you want to rank for, you need to strategically incorporate them in various places:
- Page title
- Headers
- Subtitles
- Paragraphs (especially the first ones)
- Product Description
- Image file names
- Image alt tags
- Meta title and description
URLs
Several keyword research tools are available on the market (free and paid). Example :Google Keyword Planner (Free).
UberSuggest
SEMrush
Ahrefs
3. Use Structured Data for Improved Search Results and High CTR
Have you ever wondered why some Google results seem to contain more information than others? For example, have you searched for a product and noticed that some product pages display star ratings for reviews directly in the search results? These improved results are usually the result of the webmaster's implementation of structured data on these pages.
Structured data will not only help improve your listings, but can also help you get those results and captions featured in the SERPs. When you launch your online store, it is important to choose a CMS optimized for SEO. For example, with WiziShop , you benefit from many markups implemented by default: organization, website, product, breadcrumblist, etc. Remember to analyze your CMS in detail in order to create a successful online store for natural referencing.
4. Mobile optimization is a must for SEO
Optimizing your online store for mobile devices has become increasingly important every year for over a decade. If you're running an e-commerce store, you need to prioritize the mobile experience over the desktop experience. This means creating a responsive website that adapts to the size of the device accessing it.
For almost three years now, Google has been telling us that they are moving to the mobile-first index . If Google is prioritizing the mobile experience, it's up to your e-commerce store to do so too.
This means that when Google ranks your website, it pays more attention to your mobile site than your desktop site. Since the majority of e-commerce buyers begin or end their purchase online, you MUST focus on the mobile experience.
A good place to start is to connect your site to the Google Mobile Friendly Testing Tool .
5. Increase Site Speed and Reduce Page Load Times
Page load speed is an increasingly important part of Google's algorithm. Having a fast website will dramatically improve your rankings and user experience.
You should focus on the user experience, but you should consider that how fast your site loads is part of that experience. Take action to make your website the fastest among your competitors.
Make sure your images are properly compressed for use on the web, otherwise large image files could cripple your site. Also be on the lookout for CMSs that can force larger versions of product images when compressed versions would suffice. Use cache management systems on your site. The majority of CMS offers you easily configurable plugins to properly manage the cache of your e-commerce site.
Tools to test the loading speed of your pages:
Google's PageSpeed Insights (insight from Google's point of view)
GTMetrix (overview of Google, Bing and Yahoo)
GTMetrix example:
6. Encourage customer feedback and engagement
Structured data to display things like reviews in the SERPs is great, but if you have 2 reviews on your page, it doesn't look so good!
Create an incentive program to encourage your users to leave reviews. This strategy should extend beyond reviews, as you should prioritize engaging your past, present, and future customers as much as possible. In the e-commerce game, repeat customers are extremely beneficial and online customers respond to incentives.
7. Prioritize good ergonomics and structured navigation for your online store
Your online store website structure organizes your pages and content into a system that is both logical and navigable for search engines and users. Poor website architecture makes it difficult for search engines to crawl and index your pages, while users will find it difficult to access the information they need and perform meaningful actions on your website.
User experience is still a hugely overlooked aspect of online store owners today. Focus on creating a website that is easy to navigate, especially on mobile. Trace the path of least resistance from the homepage to the checkout. Structure your categories and products well.
This will only improve your conversion rate, but should also improve your organic visibility. Google pays attention to whether or not a user returns to search engines after visiting your site, and site usability and navigation play a huge role here. If you get keyword rankings in Google but all that traffic goes back to Google to find a better website, Google will assume that your website is not a great place to send traffic with the requested query.
8. Optimize the conversion rate (CRO) for your e-commerce
We cannot stress enough the importance of CRO or conversion rate optimization.
Using analytics data, AB testing, video recordings of actual browser sessions, you can work meticulously to improve your conversion rate. Sometimes simple changes including changing the CTA text and button color can make a difference. However, CRO is much more than that and sometimes requires a skilled professional with an analytical mind. CRO is one of the easiest ways to increase your online sales numbers!
9. Internal links between relevant products, categories and resources in your online store
Internal linking is an incredibly important and effective SEO strategy. Focus on placing relevant internal links on page copy and articles for humans, not search engines, and your site will thank you. As long as you don't stuff keywords or place irrelevant links, internal linking on your site is a natural way to help Google better understand your website and its content.
10. Properly manage out-of-stock products on your e-commerce site
Never just delete a product (or category) from your website. There are several strategies to consider, but none of them involve simply deleting the old page. Here are some options to consider, depending on the circumstances.
- Leave the product page in place, just add a message that the product is discontinued. Add links to relevant products in old product pages on the page description.
- Remove the old page and implement a 301 redirect to the most relevant new page, whether it's a new similar product, a blog post about the old product, etc. Whichever most relevant page can replace the old URL should be used.
11. Leverage video and YouTube to boost your store
Remember tip #1 is to write unique and engaging product descriptions, including videos on the product page is a great way to be more engaging, especially when it comes to unique videos and original and not borrowed from the manufacturer.
Don't forget about site speed and technical optimization tactics! Make sure your videos don't bog down your product pages. You can try tricks like making sure all the important elements of the page load before the video loads, so your users can still view the page without having to wait for the video to load.
You can choose to host your own videos or embed YouTube videos. The advantage of embedding YouTube videos is that it can become a marketing tool in its own right, if you're willing to invest resources for high-quality video production.
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