For e-commerce brands, search engine optimization (SEO) is no less than a blessing. By implementing it, such companies attract new customers and also boost sales. Above everything else, a well-planned SEO strategy helps business organizations attain targeted goals within a fixed budget.
No doubt, SEO is a rewarding strategy, but you need to spend both time and effort to reap its long-term benefits. Given the importance for businesses, e-commerce companies look for ways to save both. So, they look for win-win SEO strategies to effectively attract potential customers and boost sales within a fixed time and budget.
If you are looking for ways to devise such strategies, then you have landed in the right place. Read on to know more about it in detail.
Steps to Draw a winning SEO Blueprint for E-commerce Brands
1. Find out the right set of keywords that represent your products
For the SEO of any other e-commerce store that operates independently, a list of essential keywords is a must. It can either make or break the deal for a successful SEO strategy.
When it comes to the selection of keywords, a lot depends on what you want. Generally, the main purpose of selecting keywords for running an SEO campaign is to get into the first few pages. You might want to get to the top spots of the first page of Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
But there’s more to the selection of keywords than making it to the top list of the search pages of Google.
You might also want your e-commerce website links to be there for queries regarding the products of your e-commerce business. If it is about leather shoes, you would want your potential clients to come to your e-commerce business website by searching for queries involving leather bags.
Also, you must use long-term keywords. Because they provide direct answers to potential clients’ questions, they bring in more traffic to an e-commerce website.
You can get the long-tail keywords for the e-commerce business of your brand by following some simple steps. The steps below will guide you through.
Identify the fundamental keywords linked to the products and arrange them on a list
If you own an e-commerce business, you can begin your journey towards crafting a winning SEO strategy by arranging the products of your business in the form of a list. You might want to rearrange the products under different categories for the sake of convenience.
Now think of some terms related to those products and categories and jot them down on a piece of paper. Ideas may not come to your mind straight away. However, there are ways to further simplify the task. One such way is to make different lists for distinct segments of products.
If your business deals with a purse made of leather, you can choose to go with the following terms:
- Leather purse
- Handmade purse
- Handmade leather purse
Think about preparing a similar list of products, depending on the products of your e-commerce brand. The list of terms that you work out in this way will be your keywords.
Insert the chosen keywords in Google’s Keyword Planner
After jotting down the keywords, the next thing you need to do is look for a free tool to set them up. To help you fulfil this requirement, Google offers a free and effective solution in the form of its Keyword Planner. It ticks all the right boxes of needs without costing a dime.
All you need to do to use the free tool is to create an AdWords account. It takes a normal sign-in process to start using the tool. Don’t worry about the cost. Signing up for and setting up an Adwords account is free of cost.
One advantage of inserting the queries into the tool is that it splits them up to suggest ideas for several other keywords. As a result, you will be able to generate more content ideas to create useful content. It will help you bring in more meaningful traffic to your e-commerce website.
You are likely to have a better conversion rate if you get visitors to your websites who are interested or willing to invest in your products. You can choose long-tail keywords with a sizeable search volume from the suggestions shown by the tool.
Sometimes too many suggestions can confuse you regarding the selection of the best keywords. If you land into such a situation, consider using tools such as Ahrefs and Moz. Also, you can consider using other such tools. With these tools, you can get an insight into the keywords that can boost the rankings of the pages of your website.
2. Pay Attention to Technical SEO
Before you start making efforts to rank the pages of your site with keywords, you need to bear a few points in mind. As is the case with the other webmasters and SEO-professionals, you might also want to provide your customer with the best user experience.
Paying attention to the aspects below will help you accomplish the task with finesse.
- Speed: Loading speed plays a critical role in attracting new visitors as well as retaining the existing ones to an e-commerce website. The standard duration for the pages to load is somewhere between 2.5 and 3 seconds. A slower loading speed than this duration can affect customer experience and SEO rankings as Google takes it seriously.
- HTTPS: Sites secured by HTTPS and standard SSL certificates appear to be more credible to visitors. Consequently, they feel more confident about sharing their confidential data after going to the checkout page on such sites. They may refrain from going to the checkout page on sites that lack this feature. Businesses are stressing this issue lately, i.e., to make their sites secured and are hence looking to hire dedicated developers who can provide them a secured website.
- Simple URLs: Flat and clean URLs are easier to understand for both Google and your potential customers. Pages with URLs that indicate the title and name of the product have better chances of grabbing one of the top spots in terms of rankings. As far as possible, avoid using dynamic URLs. If using it is necessary, then try including good keywords in the URL’s first section in a way that they are legible.
- 301 Redirects: Sometimes, you may need to take down a page on your site for maintenance purposes. It is important to make sure your customers are redirected to a different page by setting up 301 redirects. Otherwise, your customers will see the familiar “404 Not Found” notification which can turn them down and prevent Google bots from indexing the page properly due to improper crawling.
- Sitemap: Sitemap is important from the standpoint of the crawling of Google’s bots on your site. The bots are more likely to understand the floorplan of your website if you list its elements properly as blog posts, informational pages, categories, and products.
3. Fine-tune the On-page SEO of Your E-commerce Site
Crafting the contents of the page of your website is important to rank in the search engines. If technical SEO lays the foundation for a website, on-page SEO helps it stand out on its feet in the presence of several websites on the Internet.
You can control this aspect well by paying attention to the following elements:
- Keywords: Black hat tagging and keyword stuffing techniques have lost relevance nowadays. So, try including keywords with the title of a product and its URL in a way that they look natural in the content. Also, follow Google’s SEO guidelines to avoid any penalty due to keyword stuffing.
- Blog: You can answer the questions or queries in the minds of your customers regarding your products and at the same time also promote your product using blogs. You can either choose to do both separately or do them at a time through relevant blogs. Striking the right balance between both forms of blogs is important to win the trust and confidence of customers.
- Usability: Navigation, high-quality images, detailed product descriptions, and user reviews are some of the vital elements that promote usability on a site. Google rewards user-friendly sites with higher rankings as such sites help Google provide its users with what they want. Sites with user-friendly features not only motivate regular visitors to revisit them but also draw the attention of new visitors.
- Internal linking: Internal linking promotes user engagement on a website. By including relevant links to the pages of your site in your blogs, you can help readers get redirected to those pages effortlessly. It augurs well for leading customers to the sales funnel. Google loves to reward sites with internal linking as it helps visitors in making informed decisions as customers.
- Mobile: Mobile pages are important for e-commerce sites due to the increasing number of users of smartphones. Google has been stressing the importance of mobile page rankings for quite some time. Given how mobile pages are surpassing desktop pages, the load time for mobile pages will soon become one of the important criteria for rankings.
Are you looking for assistance to plan a winning SEO tactic for your e-commerce business?
Crafting a winning SEO tactic may include focusing on the basics, but there is more to it. Expert professionals can help you accomplish this task with finesse. Our experts are happy to help you with it. We have a proven track record of guiding our clientele to success with effective SEO strategies and tactics. Want to know more? Reach out to us now!
