Starting an eCommerce business can be a great way for up-and-coming entrepreneurs and creatives to earn a supplemental or primary income. However, if you aren’t attracting high-quality traffic to your online shop, you won’t be able to enjoy those big paydays. The good news is that drafting a smart SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy can funnel buyer-ready traffic to your website without spending a fortune on paid traffic sources.
If, for some reason, you find the task of devising an SEO strategy for an eCommerce business to be too overwhelming for you, consider partnering with an industry expert like Searchbloom (searchbloom.com/ecommerce-seo/). These SEO experts possess insider knowledge that will help you revolutionize and optimize your eCommerce site.
With 75% of online traffic settling on first-page results, boosting your ranking on search engines like Google should be a top priority. To help you increase sales as an entrepreneur, you should review these powerful SEO tips for eCommerce businesses.
Choose buyer-ready keywords
Understanding your target audience is a vital step in creating an online store that converts potential customers. Researching your target audience’s needs is also a crucial SEO strategy designed to increase online traffic to your eCommerce site.
Sure, there are a variety of keyword tools out there engineered to help a business owner identify which keywords to rank for. However, in some cases, it’s best to research your niche and use your intuition to figure out what keywords your competitors are ranking for on Google and other search engines.
By targeting the right keywords, you can attract potential customers searching for the product you’re selling. This kind of buyer-ready traffic converts a lot better than cold traffic and will increase your conversions and total sales.
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly
Nearly half of all Internet searches are performed on a mobile device these days. If your eCommerce store isn’t mobile-friendly, you could potentially be looking at 50% fewer sales. Fortunately, designing a mobile-friendly eCommerce store is incredibly simple since most platforms where you create your site, like Shopify, have this option built-in. Others, like eBay and Amazon, are already mobile-friendly.
In your SEO strategy, you’ll need to realize that Google and other search engines are actively boosting mobile-friendly sites, as Google admin wants to grant their users the best experience possible. A mobile-friendly page will almost always rank a webpage that isn’t responsive on mobile devices.
Optimize other on-page SEO factors
There’s more to on-page SEO than just keywords and mobile-friendliness. Google and the other search engines will factor in elements such as meta data, image compression, site structure, navigation ease, and even your load times. While optimizing may sound like a hassle, all you have to do is design a user-friendly site.
Keep in mind that while most programmers set up these eCommerce platforms with the factors mentioned above in mind, you’ll still need to do your part to ensure a clean site design. If web design isn’t your expertise, you may want to consider hiring a professional to spruce up your site and verify that your pages operate smoothly.
Avoid Duplicate Content
There’s been a lot of confusion about duplicate content over the years, but the truth of the matter is that if you have duplicate content on your site, it will count against you when Google and the other search engines determine your ranking. Avoiding duplicate content may seem relatively easy in most cases. However, when you’re selling a variety of similar products, producing unique content may be difficult.
The best way to maneuver these obstacles is to modify the wording of each product listing slightly. You can also use a duplicate content checker to ensure there isn’t any dupe content on your site. If you notice that your pages aren’t ranking in Google the way you expect, checking for dupe content should be one of the first things you do.
Redirect discontinued product pages
If you have a page for a discontinued product that ranked well in the search engine results, you don’t necessarily need to delete it. Instead, you can link it to a similar product available on your site. This way, all that “SEO juice” the article stored will still be working to your advantage and helping you boost sales.
If you’re unable to link this discontinued product page to a comparable product, you’ll want to delete these pages immediately, as dead pages are digital dead ends that can bar your site from achieving first-page rankings. Speedy removal of these faulty pages will help you ensure that Google doesn’t penalize you for them.
Better SEO equals more revenue
It’s no secret that the more well-developed your SEO strategy, the more money you’ll make with eCommerce. SEO is a complex, multifaceted concept, but it’s relatively simple in execution once you understand all of the steps you’ll need to complete to optimize your eCommerce site, such as verifying mobile-friendliness and debugging your pages. With the support of an SEO expert, achieving higher rankings on search engines can be relatively simple.
That said, SEO can also be time-consuming. If you are truly feeling overwhelmed, you may want to consider hiring an SEO firm to handle the heavy lifting and devise a well-calculated SEO strategy. These experts can optimize your site and also conduct regular SEO audits to make sure that your SEO isn’t becoming outdated due to algorithm changes within Google and the other search engines.
Conclusion
In any case, SEO is a must for any eCommerce site. The sooner your redefine your site’s SEO strategy, the sooner you’ll notice increased revenue flow for your eCommerce business.
