20 Tips for eCommerce SEO Marketing
We all want to bring in more organic traffic into our stores, boosting sales without having to risk our money on paid advertising. However, while this sounds very enticing, it is always not that easy as eCommerce SEO can be quite challenging. This article, together with the subject matter experts over at runrex.com and guttulus.com, will look to help by listing 20 tips for eCommerce SEO marketing.
Have a well-thought-out keyword strategy
Keywords are key when it comes to SEO as they determine how frequently and where your eCommerce site will appear in search results when a prospective customer is looking for a product available on your online store. This is why you should have an excellent keyword strategy, using tools like Keyword Planner by Google to conduct research and find out the most popular keywords in your industry so that you can know which ones to use. If you are dealing with highly competitive products or services, you might want to use broad match keywords.
Set up your store on HTTPS
As per discussions on the same over at runrex.com, setting up your eCommerce store on HTTPS will also improve your SEO. This is because it is secure and helps protect your customer’s information, is trusted by Google, which means that it will improve your SEO, improving your rankings.
Add ALT tags
According to the gurus over at guttulus.com, using ALT tags in your site structure is another excellent way to improve your SEO. This is because, when you add ALT tags to your images, it allows bots to scan the alt text, which will improve your SEO. On top of that, adding ALT tags also helps visually-impaired and blind people understand your images, which is another major advantage as far as they are concerned.
Optimize your product pages
Your product pages also play an important role when it comes to your SEO, which is why it important to optimize yours based on your users’ search criteria. This means researching and finding out the key terms people use when searching for products like yours, and including them in your page, headline, page titles, as well as product descriptions.
Create dynamic meta descriptions
Meta descriptions appear directly below a page title in the SERPs, and while Google doesn’t read what you right on the meta description, your customers do, and if it impacts on them, it will impact on your SEO. This is the only information they have about your business before deciding if they will click on the link or not, which is why you should make sure that your meta descriptions are engaging and dynamic.
Ensure that your product descriptions are unique
When Google released its Panda algorithm, as discussed over at runrex.com, unique and engaging content when it comes to product description became a priority. This means that you should optimize your product descriptions, removing any duplicate content, and ensure that your descriptions are unique as compared to your competitors.
Be sensible with URLs
While it is important to add keywords to your URLs, make sure that you are sensible with it and that your URLs are communicating to your visitors the content they should expect to find on your webpages if they should click on the link provided. As per the gurus over at guttulus.com, this will not only increase the chances of them clicking on said URL, it will also improve your SEO, helping you go up the rankings as far as SERPs are concerned.
Keep an eye on your competitors
On top of your SEO efforts, you should also always be aware of what your competitors are doing to get the best out of your eCommerce SEO. As is explained over at runrex.com, there are tools out there that will help you keep an eye at what they are doing, their SEO strategies, helping you to know what is working and what is not, allowing you to optimize your strategies for the best results possible.
Keep your eye site speed
If your site is taking too long to load, then not only will this impact on your SEO, damaging your rankings, it will also put off your visitors, who will leave and not come back, particularly as you can be sure that they will have other options out there to explore. Work to ensure that your site loads as quickly as possible.
Use 301 redirects
If you delete a webpage on your site, or you have a discontinued or expired product, make sure you use 301 redirects to other alternative pages. This will not only improve your SEO, it will ensure that you don’t lose any of your SEO value as they will be redirected to other areas of interest.
Optimize for mobile
If your site is not responsive, then it will fall down the rankings dramatically as responsiveness is one of Google’s key ranking factors as discussed over at guttulus.com. Additionally, with people increasingly using their mobile devices to search for products and services online, if your site isn’t responsive, you will be missing out big time.
Get high-quality backlinks
As is discussed in detail over at runrex.com, backlinks are an important part of any SEO strategy, particularly since sites with the most high-quality backlinks are ranked higher by Google. So, and important tip is to build or get as many high-quality backlinks as you can, particularly if your peak season is approaching, to boost sales as well as to improve your rankings and SEO.
Don’t neglect your title tag
Your title tag is the first thing that people see when they see your business on SERPs and as such, you need to make sure that it grabs their attention and makes them want to click on the link provided. As is covered over at guttulus.com, make sure that your title tag is optimized, by ensuring that it not only includes the keyword as far as your brand is concerned, but is also between 60 and 70 characters, and is engaging and eye-catching.
Leverage social integrations
Another tip that will improve your SEO and earn you more organic traffic for your eCommerce store is including social integrations on your product pages. This will allow your visitors to share your offerings to the various social media platforms, bringing you more organic traffic.
Add live chat
People want their issues and queries addressed as soon as possible, and in real-time if possible, which is why simply adding live chat to one’s site has been known to increase conversion rates by as much as 50%. Increased conversion rates will increase sales which is a major ranking factor and as such will improve your SEO.
Focus on user experience
As the gurus over at runrex.com will tell you, SEO nowadays is all about optimizing for your customers, and not for the search engine. This is why you should optimize your site’s UX, and make sure that not only is your site easy to navigate and find features and products, the content therein is also easy to understand. This will also dramatically improve your rankings.
Use your product name in the meta titles
Another eCommerce SEO marketing tip that is recommended by the subject matter experts over at guttulus.com is using your product name in your meta titles. This will not only help your SEO and improve your rankings, but it will also ensure that your searchers get exactly what they are looking for, helping them with their search and increasing the chances of them clicking on your link.
Don’t forget long-tail keywords
According to discussions on the same over at runrex.com, long-tail keywords have got the potential to drive a staggering 20,000 more organic searches to your eCommerce store each month. This is why, an important eCommerce SEO marketing tip is to make sure you focus on them, particularly if you are just starting with SEO.
Update to SSL
Given that security is a major concern for most, if not all, online shoppers, Google views site security as a major ranking factor. Therefore, another eCommerce SEO marketing tip is to make sure that you activate your SSL certificate as this will give your site better security, helping you gain more trust among your audience, and improving your rankings as well.
Leverage urgency
Creating urgency is a great and extremely effective strategy in getting people to buy products and services. Try and create urgency in your product pages or even within your meta descriptions, and your sales will increase, and so will your rankings. You can increase urgency by letting it be known that a certain offer only has a few days to run, or that stock is limited, which will push your users to want to buy before the offer goes away.
These are just some of the tips that will help with your eCommerce SEO marketing, with there being more on this and other related topics to be uncovered by checking out the excellent runrex.com and guttulus.com.