You are ready to launch your online store. Great! But are you really ready? If you are not utilizing every SEO technique to optimize your eCommerce site chances are your shop may flop. Have no fear. We are here to give you the 411 on everything you need to know, to make sure your business dreams become a reality.
Tip #1: Step Into Your Customer Shoes
Much like your own child, seeing the flaws in your business can be a challenge. It is critical that you “walk” in your customer’s shoes, to understand if your site is clear, intuitive, and creates the experience you want. Here is a good checklist to ensure the eCommerce SEO services you pick are fully optimizing your site:
- Navigation on your site should be clear and easy to follow
- Link product pages from a homepage as well as landing pages – this helps bots crawl your site so your customer can access your site from various searches
- Broken links are your enemy – when your customer clicks a link and get to a 404 error, chances are high they will leave your site instead of giving it a second chance. Crawl your site thoroughly so you don’t have any broken links
- Slow loading time – as a customer you know a site that takes forever to load is a pain! Make sure you have compressed videos and images to get each page to that loading time sweet spot about 3 seconds or less
- Responsive – More than 95% of people use their mobile devices to shop and purchase, Make sure your site is 100% responsive for all devices. The worst thing is attracting great targeted traffic who wants to purchase only to have them leave because your site isn’t set up for mobile.
Tip #2: Optimize Your Entire Site
Making sure your homepage is using SEO practices is nice, but if your whole site isn’t optimized you could be in big trouble. There are a lot of great eCommerce SEO services to consider.Use this list to check off everything you need to do to ensure your eCommerce site is 100%:
- Efficient Keywords – you have spent tons of time on the design and UX, what will attract and rank your site though are efficient keywords that target your specific audience. Thinking about your user’s search intent is a great way to establish which keywords your site should include.
- Anchor text – or the text that appears highlighted in a hypertext link is the one used to open a target web page (usually blue and underlined) These should be short, relevant, not too keyword heavy, and not generic. If you’re not sure which anchor text would be ideal for your content you can find a lot of free or paid anchor generating softwares that will save your time. For example, Linkio is designed to give SEOs the right anchor text to build next, by using insightful data that help in making better decisions. It’s flexible, automated and remarkably easy to use.
- Beware of Duplicate Content – this will kill your rankings. If your site contains content that is too similar or “borrowed” from other pages you will have big issues. This is a specific obstacle for eCommerce sits because of product descriptions.
- Product Images – a pic is worth a thousand words, so make sure yours are high quality, interesting, and unusual. Do include ALT Tags and descriptions with good keywords that will help bots crawl them so your images drive traffic from SERPs.
Tip #3: Know Your Platforms
Understanding SEO specific to eCommerce sites like Amazon, Shopify, and eBay, will ensure you are using the right strategies and maximizing your traffic to each. This is a great time to u with expertise in all utilize eCommerce SEO services that specialize in these niches. Here are just a few unique SEO considerations for eCommerce.
- Amazon has its own algorithm that drives its search bar. Make sure the SEO agency you choose knows how to use A9 so your store is ranking the way you need it too by optimizing listing titles, images, and product descriptions.
- eBay has its own algorithm known as “best match” to benefit you need a great strategy that will up your visibility so you can rank higher and get more sales.
- Shopify – the king of eCommerce sites gets $100 billion in sales. Yeah, billion. They have really good SEO basics built-in but using eCommerce SEO services will maximize your online stores’ potential. Things like using the right meta tags, optimizing product images, using analytics, and many more SEO strategies.
Takeaway
Creating an online store is an excellent way to make money, but without using great eCommerce SEO services your eComm dream may never see the light of day. Do make sure to look at your site from your customer’s perspective. If it is not mobile-friendly, the links don’t work, and your keywords don’t put you on the front page you’re in trouble. Make sure your whole site is fully optimized and consistently check analytics to strengthen your SEO. Choosing SEO experts is the best way to be successful in eCommerce as they specialize in unique and complicated platform algorithms as seen on Amazon and Shopify. Having a successful eCommerce business is possible if you follow these great tips.