What Is SEO And How To Optimize Your Store

Search engines like Google are one of the main sources of traffic for any website. The key to getting the most out of this is to fully understand what SEO is and how to implement strategies to optimize the positioning of your store .

If you are researching what SEO is and how to work with it on your website, you are in the right place. We are going to tell you in detail what this key discipline in digital marketing is all about, with which you will be able to boost your online content.

The information and tips in this post can be used for any type of website . In any case, we have prepared a special section to talk specifically about SEO for e-commerce and all the optimizations that you can do in your Tiendanube .

Finally, at the end of this content we share an exclusive guide on the subject so that you can download it and always have it on hand to obtain better results every day. Let us begin!

What is SEO?

The acronym SEO means Search Engine Optimization that we can translate as Search Engine Optimization. SEO strategies are those that are put in place to improve the visibility of any website in organic search engine results .

In other words, the goal of SEO is to provide the best signals to search engines, such as Google or Yahoo, to appear among the first organic ads , that is, not paid.

With robust SEO strategies you will be able to increase quality traffic to your website —anything from an online store or a blog to a product's home page .

SEO in marketing is a tool that can help you in many aspects of your business, such as improving brand recognition and getting more sales . You will get your website to appear in the first results without investing in paid strategies.

Now that it is clearer what SEO is, we are going to take a brief look at its history to continue with the importance and advantages of implementing SEO strategies and tell you how to do SEO in your online store. Shall we continue?

The origins of SEO ( Search Engine Optimization )

Search engines as such were born in the 1990s , along with the rise of web pages. It is said that Wandex was the first search engine, since it emerged in 1993. Later others appeared, such as Google in 1996 or Yahoo in 1994.

These were and, in many cases, still are, the main source to be known on the web and get quality traffic. This is how brands began to think about how to improve web positioning , since this would translate into greater visibility and potential sales.

This is how SEO originates: as the study and implementation of strategies that help search engines show your website among the first organic results, with the aim of getting more and more visits.

How search engines work

Search engines are mechanisms that crawl web pages to learn about their content. Once this information is collected, they organize and order the sites in their results according to which they consider most valuable and relevant .

Then, based on the keyword —that is, the word or phrase the user is looking for— , the engine distributes and delivers the most useful content to the user.

The operation of search engines lies in two main steps: crawling and indexing.

Tracking

Those in charge of traversing and crawling the web are called bots . They move through the links , that is, they go from one link to another just as we users do.

This is one of the fundamental reasons why a good link structure is important. The fact that web pages have other sites linking to them will help search engine bots get to and crawl that content.

The tracking process begins with a sitemap or site map. This is an XML document that is sent to search engines in order to provide a complete list of the web pages that make up a site. With this guide, a correct tracking is favored.

Another important file is called robots.txt which tells the search engine which way to go through the website. This text file provides all the information necessary for crawling and indexing to occur correctly. Its most common commands are:

• Disallow : through which you can block the entire site, a directory or a page, or delete images.
• Allow : the reverse of the previous one, allows access to directories and pages. It can also be used, partially or totally, to write over the Disallow command.
• Sitemap : indicate where the sitemap of the site is located.
• Crawl-delay : Give instructions to the search engine regarding the number of seconds to load between each web page.

Indexing

When the process of crawling a web page is finished, the bot records all the collected information in an index or index . This is the indexing stage, where search engines rank scanned content based on quality, authority, and relevance .

Initially, to determine which was the best content in reference to a particular topic, search engines took as a reference the number of times a keyword appeared in the text.

Over time, this process of reading and organization was perfected and sophisticated with the aim of providing greater quality to the user. Currently, bots are capable of reading content in much greater detail.

For example, parameters such as originality in writing, publication date, useful visual or audiovisual content for the reader, page load speed or responsiveness are key to achieving better positioning .

Why is web positioning or SEO important?

The most important thing when talking about what SEO is and how to work on web positioning is to provide clear signals to search engines about what topic each of your pages deals with and, thus, reach your target audience, that strategic segment. to which your brand is directed.

From the SEO optimization of your site, search engines will reward your content by making it increasingly visible to the most relevant audience for your product or service.

Let's go into more detail on this point, why is SEO so important?

• Increase the visibility of your brand because users know your website in their searches of interest.
• Give guidelines and help improve the quality of your site . Good SEO practices provide invaluable guidance on the things that users value most on web pages. By implementing optimizations you provide a better user experience.
• The achievements and benefits are long-term . Sites with robust SEO strategies manage to position themselves and maintain a good level of awareness in the long term. Of course, it is necessary to constantly monitor and improve, but each achievement lays and strengthens the foundation of a well-ranked site for much longer.
• It can be measured and monitored through both free and paid tools, depending on the task at hand. By being based on numbers and metrics, it is easier to understand the current situation and establish measurable objectives.

📝 These strategies to get quality traffic organically can be complemented with other paid techniques . To learn more about this, we invite you to read about SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

The advantages of implementing SEO strategies

Part of understanding what SEO is lies in being aware of all the advantages it has for any website. In this section we will see the main benefits of working with SEO strategies:

• It allows you to implement effective inbound marketing strategies , that is, those by which you can reach your ideal client through content related to your market niche.
• Positioning of a brand as an authority or reference in the field. If you offered solutions and quality content on previous occasions, it is very likely that you have remained in the user's memory for future searches.
• Increase in sales opportunities . The higher brand recognition, the more chances to increase your conversion rate .

If you have come this far , you probably already want to know what the most important SEO strategies are to get down to work and start optimizing your website, online store, blog, etc. Let's dive right into the subject!

SEO for e-commerce: the 10 key strategies

The most relevant SEO strategies are divided into two main categories: SEO on-page and SEO off-page . This has to do with the process of sophistication and advancement of search engines: there are more and more relevant parameters to measure the quality of websites.

We are going to know both how to do SEO for e-commerce and for any web page.

SEO on page

On-page SEO (that is, “on the page”) refers to all the actions that we implement on the website and are visible within it . In general, these are techniques that we can control and execute, that is, they depend on ourselves.

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research or keyword research is the first step in on-page SEO. It is about understanding what are the searches carried out by the users to whom your brand is directed .

A good free tool to do this is Google's Keyword Planner . From detecting these searches, you will be able to define the structure of your website and which keywords each of its URLs are oriented to .

For example, if you sell mates and complete sets, you might find a relevant keyword “matero kit”. If so, your product category page could be optimized to rank your business for this keyword .

We recommend you delve into this topic:

2. Generation of original and quality content

The next step is to create original content, both in terms of creativity and that it is unpublished . Writing a quality text, expert on the subject you are dealing with, is one of the best signals we can offer to favor the positioning of a website.

The textual content of the page must name the keyword that you selected as the main one . Although it is good practice to repeat it to make it clearer to the search engine what the main keyword of that content is, it is important not to make it too repetitive.

At this point, common sense applies: try to think as a user if that word is being repeated in a robotic or ridiculous way throughout the text, or if it appears naturally every time it is named, due to the coherent progression of the text.

Quality writing will be especially important in SEO for stores, for example, in the description of a product or service.

3. Optimization of graphic content

Users and, consequently, also search engines value positively the inclusion of images and videos in web content . Mainly if they are present to provide clearer information or go deeper into a topic.

It is a good practice, then, to include images as long as they are optimized for SEO . This is mainly due to three factors:

• Lowest possible weight : in this way, the page loads faster and you also gain chances that the image will position in the Google images section. You can compress your images without losing quality in tools like I love IMG .
• Keyword included in the file name , ideally separating the words by hyphens. For example, “kit-de-mate”.
• Alternative text that is clear and contains the keyword . This contributes to the accessibility of your site because it allows browsers optimized for people with blindness to "read and describe" what is in the image. For example, “Flowered pot kit on a wooden table”.

4. Structuring and hierarchy of content

One of the most relevant signs of on-page SEO for search engines are the titles and subtitles of your web page .

It is about organizing and structuring the text from a general title (also called “H1”, as an abbreviation for Heading 1 ) that contains subtitles (H2, H3 and so on). This also helps to rank information , both for the user and for search engines.

Depending on the level of detail of your content you will put more subdivisions within each section. It is key that these titles contain both the main keyword and the secondary ones that you defined for that URL.

5. URL optimization

Another of the best practices in SEO for e-commerce is the correct composition of the URLs . Again, it is about creating simple links, easy to type and memorize and, mainly, to include the keyword.

Instead of creating links like https://www.qined.com/23541 an optimized URL would be https://www.qined.com/t/seo

1. Meta tag optimization Last but not least, we find the meta tags. These are lines of code that tell search engines what the content of the web page is about . The most important ones are:

• Title: explains and anticipates the content of the URL. You can name the brand or not, but it is important that it contains the main keyword of that content. The maximum recommended length is 60 characters or 600 pixels.
• Meta description : is a summary or previous description of the web page in question. It must also include the focus keyword and a length of no more than 145 characters or 960 pixels is suggested.

The mention of recommended extensions is because if you exceed that number of characters, search engines often cut off the text in organic ads. In this way, you can lose visibility or a keyword for your business can be left out.

To measure and test the number of characters and pixels in your titles and meta descriptions , we suggest you use a free tool, for example, Mangools .

SEO off page

Off-page SEO (that is, "outside the page") includes strategies to promote your site on URLs outside of your domain , be it social networks or other websites that are related to your business.

In this case we are going to focus on link building actions , that is, incoming and outgoing link building techniques that provide authority and relevance to the website itself.

1. Get inbound links

Incoming links, also called backlinks , are those that are on a third-party domain and lead to your site . As links on the internet work as "votes of confidence", having quality links to your website favors your positioning.

2. Make content alliances

You can partner with other brands or even influencers to write guest posts on other blogs on topics related to your niche . In these contents the idea is to negotiate the inclusion of some backlinks to your website.

3. Generate easily linkable content

Another good way to do SEO is to design useful content for other websites that can "spontaneously" link to it. For example, designing an infographic or creating a great vlog , other sites can link to it to complement the content on their pages.

4. Network

It is about associating yourself with other businesses more or less close to yours and its market segment to implement synergy actions that can benefit both parties .

Whether through link exchange or collaborative content creation, this can give your website a boost in visibility and even reach new audiences.

How to optimize SEO in Shopify

As you saw, there is a lot of potential for growth in web positioning . Within this guide on what SEO is in general and, specifically, how to do SEO for e-commerce, we come to the moment of zooming in on Shopify.

Among the SEO strategies for e-commerce , there are many that you can implement if you have our platform! From editing the URLs, titles and descriptions of the products and their categories to optimizing the images. We tell you everything in this section.

The main optimization actions in what is SEO in Shopify lie in the fact that you can edit all these parameters yourself , to improve the positioning of your sales website in the most strategic way for your business and particular niche.

• Title and visible content of your category and product pages . Write explanatory titles and descriptions, where it is clear what you offer and all its characteristics.
• Meta tags and URLs of all the pages of your online store . From the home of your business to each of the categories, products and content pages.
• Create additional content pages that provide more information about your business or industry. We bring you the tutorial to generate content pages .
• Submit the sitemap to Google to help track your online store. We tell you how to upload the sitemap in this step by step.
• Create a blog with content of interest to your audience and link it to your online store to promote traffic to it. Learn to integrate your blog to your Shopify.

As if this were not enough, the time has come to share with you our specialized content on SEO for online stores. We invite you to download the following e-book to learn everything you can do with SEO in Shopify :

In addition, we want to bring you some key tutorials related to the SEO of your Shopify :

• First steps in SEO for e-commerce: How to get my store to appear in search engine results?
• SEO optimization: What are the advanced SEO options of my products?

If you have a Cloud Store or are thinking of creating one, don't wait any longer! We have a robust platform with which you will be able to customize your online store according to your brand and our support team is present to help you with any questions. Cheer up!