In order for your e-commerce site to be profitable for the long run, it will need to get exposure in front of the right audience. One of the most effective ways to do this, of course, is to get your site ranking at the top of the search results for your relevant keywords and phrases. While there are plenty of different ways that visitors can arrive at a site, the majority of people are still using Google as their preferred search engine. This means that getting your e-commerce site at or near the top of the rankings for your targeted keywords and phrases can obviously lead to a massive increase in sales.
The problem is that SEO can be a real challenge for e-commerce sites. There are a few major aspects of the typical SEO process that don’t always work very well with e-commerce sites, and this often results in poor rankings and very little search traffic. Google, now more than ever, wants to see pages with unique and original content and a lot of it. Many product pages on e-commerce sites are very light on content with brief product descriptions, and in some cases, the content is duplicated across a number of different product pages. Link building is another major challenge because getting quality links to e-commerce sites and product pages is not an easy task.
In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at the topic of SEO for e-commerce websites. Everything that will be covered is very practical and can be realistically achieved to help increase traffic to your own e-commerce site, or for a client.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is an important part of the SEO process for any type of website, including e-commerce. You need to know what your potential customers are searching for, and what words and phrases they are using to try to find the types of products that you are offering. The are a number of different keyword tools that can help you with keyword research, including Google’s free Keyword Planner. More advanced tools like Long Tail Pro, Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool, and Research Central from Raven are also great options if you are willing to spend a little bit of money on tools.
By knowing the words and phrases that people are using while searching you can set up your product pages to be optimized appropriately. Without knowing what people are searching for you are basically just guessing, and you’re missing out on opportunities to attract a lot of visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.
Keyword research is quite a large topic that can’t be covered fully in this article, but if you’re looking for more detailed instructions on how to do keyword research,
Responsive Web Design
The percentage of internet users that access websites via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets continues to increase rapidly. Websites that are not user-friendly for visitors on a mobile device are losing sales. Most mobile users who come across a website that is hard to use on their smartphone will leave and go to another site. There are a few different ways to make a mobile-friendly site. You could create a separate site to be served specifically to visitors on mobile devices, but responsive web design is much better for SEO.
With a responsive design and layout, you can avoid issues like duplicate content that sometimes arise from separate mobile websites. Not only is responsive design good for SEO, but it also allows you to provide a positive user experience, regardless of the device your visitor is using.
Original, Descriptive Title Tags
The title tag is one of the most important on-page optimization factors, and it sometimes causes a problem for e-commerce websites. Each page on your site should have an original, descriptive title tag. The site should not have multiple pages with identical title tags, which is the case with some e-commerce sites. Make sure that you are giving each page it’s own unique title, and do not repeat it on another page.
In addition to being unique, the title tag should also be descriptive. Ideally, you want your title tag to match what buyers will be searching for, and be specific. For example, if you have a site that sells cameras you don’t want to have product page titles like “Digital Camera” or “Canon Digital Camera”. Be specific, like “Canon EOS 5D Mark III Digital Camera”. This type of page title is descriptive and will be more likely to be found by a search of someone who is looking for that specific camera model. The Amazon page title tag for this particular camera is “Canon EOS 5D Mark III 22.3 MP Full Frame CMOS with 1080p Full-HD Video Mode Digital SLR Camera (Body)”.
The title tags of your product pages should target the specifics, and for more general phrases like “Digital Cameras” or “Canon Digital Cameras”, you can use category pages or brand pages to go after the targeted keyword or phrase.
Original Product Description Text
One of the most common SEO pitfalls of e-commerce websites is a lack of original text on product pages. Google wants to see pages with real content, and content that is not duplicated on other pages. If your product pages have no text descriptions or very brief text descriptions, it will be difficult to achieve the search rankings that you want. Each product page should have a detailed product description in order to show Google that there is some original content on the page. Don’t duplicate the descriptive text for several similar products.
Taking the time to write unique descriptions for each product can take a great deal of time if you have a large site with a lot of products, but it can make a huge difference for your search engine rankings. If you already have hundreds or thousands of product pages with very thin content, start with the most important products and add more descriptive text as you are able. And going forward, be sure that whenever you are adding a new product page to give it an original, detailed description.
Allow Customers to Leave Reviews
Customer reviews have been proven to increase the number of sales made. Some studies even show that negative reviews can have a positive impact . Not only will reviews help to increase the likelihood of a purchase from your visitors, but they can also be good for SEO. Reviews from customers will add more content to your product pages and give them a better chance to be found in searches. The text added through reviews can be especially helpful for sites that don’t have very much text in the product descriptions.
Rich Snippets
Rich snippets can help your product pages to stand out on the SERPs, and to be more helpful to searchers. Basically, rich snippets add information to the search results. There are several different types of rich snippets that are applicable to e-commerce sites, and you can see a few of them in action in the search below. You can see that bhphotovideo.com is using a rich snippet to display the rating and number of customer reviews on this product. Lower in the search results you see that imaging-resource.com and adorama.com are also using the rich snippet for reviews, and they are also showing the product price through a rich snippet. Rich snippets can also be used to show if a product is in stock.
The technical details of setting up rich snippets will depend on what e-commerce platform or CMS you are using. Some Shoplift review apps, like Yotpo, feature rich snippet integration. Yotpo is also available for Big commerce. WordPress users can add rich snippets with the help of the All in One Schema.org Rich Snippets Plugin or the Rich Snippets WordPress Plugin.
Use a Blog
One of the best strategies to improve the SEO of an e-commerce site is to add a blog. Blogs are great for adding original content to a website, and also for attracting links and encouraging social media interaction. Getting links to blog posts may not directly send traffic to the product pages, but these links can help to improve the authority of the domain, making it possible for all pages to rank higher.
Blog posts can also be used very effectively to rank for specific keywords or phrases, and then to lead visitors to relevant products on the site. You can use blog posts to write product reviews, publish case studies and stories about customers who have used the product, provide tutorials that show how to use the product and more. With some creativity, the blog can be an excellent tool to attract targeted visitors.
Social Media
Social media and blogging go hand-in-hand. Regardless of whether you are using a blog or not, your e-commerce site needs to at least have a presence on major social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Since we’re looking specifically at the topic of SEO and improving Google search rankings, also having an active presence at Google+ is a good idea.
Having social media sharing buttons/widgets on product pages can be good or bad. Sure, it would be nice if visitors shared your products with their friends, but these buttons and widgets can also be distractions that take attention away from the goal of a purchase. What can be more effective is to integrate your blog with social media to attract more new visitors, and then try to use the blog posts to lead visitors to your product pages.
Another way to leverage social media is to integrate it with reviews. Yotpo (for Shopify and other platforms) allows your customers to post their products reviews through their social profiles, which is a great way to get exposure for your products.
Meta Descriptions for Higher CTRs
The meta description isn’t really useful for improving your rankings in Google, but it can be very effective at enticing searchers to click on your link instead of the others that are showing up around you in the results. A good description will tell the searcher about the content of the page and will encourage them to click. If you are not entering meta descriptions for your pages they will be automatically generated and you’ll have no control over the description that is displayed on the SERPs.
Going back to our example search from earlier, the screenshot below shows the description that is being displayed for canon.com’s page for a search related to one of their most popular cameras. The description that shows up is talking about a firmware update, not exactly something that is likely to grab the attention of most potential buyers. A description of the actual product would be much more effective.
Page URLs
The URL or permalink structure for your product pages is also an important factor. Ideally, URLs will be friendly to both humans and search engines. That means that by looking at the URL a human visitor should be able to get a good idea of the content of the page, and it should contain some keywords that will help search engines as well. The URLs ideally should avoid excess characters, if possible.
If you haven’t yet started your e-commerce site, be sure that you choose a platform that allows you enough control over the permalinks. Some platforms create terrible permalinks that will not be good for humans or for search engines. Shopify, Bigcommerce, and WordPress all give you control over the page URLs.
Product Images
Attractive product images will not only help your products to be more appealing to potential customers, but they can even have an impact on traffic and SEO. As social networks become increasingly visual, having awesome product photos and images will allow you to get more traction with your social media efforts. Attractive images will be more likely to be shared by your visitors. Photos can also be used to build links from visual-oriented sites.
In order to maximize the impact of your images and photos for SEO you should add an alt tag to each one. Ideally, the alt tag will include descriptive text that also includes your targeted keywords or phrases. If possible, you should also use these keywords and phrases in the file names of your images.
Source: Vandelaydesign
