Any ecommerce website relies on search engine optimization (SEO) for its survival and success. After all, if people can’t locate your website, they won’t be able to make online purchases.
In order to achieve a high ranking in search engines for the specific keywords you are targeting, it is necessary to adjust and optimize your website accordingly.
To learn how to attract visitors to your website and convert them into buyers, please review the following tips on ecommerce SEO.
1. Using Keyword Research to Optimize Your eCommerce Site
Keyword research is an essential process in which relevant search terms related to your business, services, and products are identified, enabling you to incorporate them into your content. This enables your content to align with users’ search intent, making keyword research crucial. To conduct keyword research, Trone utilizes trustworthy online tools like Moz Pro Keyword Explorer. To determine the most advantageous keywords to focus on, brands should assess factors such as search volume, ranking difficulty, and organic CTR.
Once you have identified your targeted keywords, it is crucial to optimize the meta title, description, header, and content of your landing page. This optimization allows Google to comprehend the nature of your products and align them with suitable search queries.
2. Building an SEO-Friendly Site Structure for Your eCommerce Site
The site structure refers to the arrangement of pages on your site and the connections between them, aiming to reduce the number of clicks needed from the homepage to access the most significant pages.
Site structure is important for both SEO and user experience. To ensure that users can easily comprehend your site and locate the desired products, it is beneficial to engage a UX specialist in designing your site structure. Particularly if your site contains numerous products, implementing breadcrumbs can enhance user browsing speed and effectiveness.
- Homepage: Amanda’s Coat Factory
- Product Category: Jackets
- Product Sub Category: Insulated & Down
- Product Page: Long Hooded Down Jacket
Once you have established the structure of your website, the next step is to generate an XML sitemap for your site and then submit it to Google via Google Search Console. An effective site structure facilitates Google’s ability to thoroughly crawl your site and properly index its pages.
3. Including Content on Your Product Pages
Google gives preference to websites that have a substantial amount of content and is more inclined to display product pages that provide more information. To optimize your product page content, it is important to incorporate your targeted keywords, include product reviews, and include internal links to related products. Additionally, it is recommended to include product descriptions, specifications, and alt image tags. To prevent duplicate content issues, it is advisable to ensure that each landing page has unique content.
4. Structured Data for Product Pages
Adding structured data to your product pages enables Google to categorize and index your content, resulting in an improved display of your products in Google SERP through enhanced rich snippets. Once structured data is integrated into your product pages, it is advisable to test the schema markup for any errors or warnings.
5. Fixing Technical SEO
Technical SEO focuses on enhancing technical aspects of an eCommerce website, aiming to develop a more efficient, easily navigable, and secure platform. A high number of site errors can potentially reduce the visibility of an eCommerce site on search engines as Google tends to prioritize websites with superior technical SEO.
What Are the Most Common Technical SEO Errors?
- Non-HTTPS
- Missing XML Sitemap
- Slow Site Speed
- Missing or Incorrect Robots.txt file
- Missing Canonical Tags
- Broken Links
- 404 Errors & Redirect Chains
- Duplicate Content
6. Optimize your product images for search engines and customers
One of the main mistakes to avoid on any ecommerce site is using low-quality images, as images are an excellent on-page SEO tool.
Similar to how people prefer to see the food prior to placing an order, they also desire to observe the product from every perspective before making a purchase.
To optimize images for ecommerce, start by ensuring that the pictures you upload are high quality. However, be cautious not to exceed 100KB in file size, as it could negatively impact your website’s loading speed.
First, if you want individuals to come across your ecommerce website through image search, make sure to include alt text on every image that contains a relevant keyword. Furthermore, refrain from using generic file names like “image 1” and opt for descriptive words that accurately portray the product.
7. Improve your website speed
One way to improve your website’s search rankings and increase organic ecommerce traffic is to prioritize enhancing its loading speed.
When reading any SEO checklist, one will notice a significant emphasis on website speed due to the high expectations of customers, particularly when shopping on an eCommerce website.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights can be utilized to check the speed of your site.
Here are a few steps you can follow in order to enhance the loading speed of your website:
- Optimize images and reduce file sizes.
- Don’t use too many plugins.
- Choose your website hosting service carefully. Website hosting like Bluehost or another Bluehost alternative is preferable.
- Use a plugin to save a copy of your website on users’ browsers. That way, it will load faster the next time they visit.
- Use lazy loading so your product images don’t load unless the user scrolls down to them.
- Ask your developer to eliminate any unnecessary code.
8. Optimize your website for mobile
Google released its mobile-first indexing policy in 2019, thereby increasing the credibility of websites’ mobile versions. Moreover, during the fourth quarter of 2021, mobile devices were responsible for over 50% of worldwide website traffic.
If you fail to optimize ecommerce pages for mobile, it is equivalent to wasting money.
The ideal scenario would involve creating a website that has a responsive design, meaning it will adapt and adjust to fit different screen sizes as per the user’s device.
Make sure to go through your entire website on a mobile device and: – Verify that everything is functioning properly on mobile – Check that all pages and features are accessible and compatible with mobile devices
- all images and videos are displayed correctly,
- the website loads fast,
- all text is legible, and
- there are no on-page ads that might not work on mobile.
It is also important to consider that the user experience should be consistent across different devices. Users should be able to access the same content on both mobile and desktop platforms.
9. Optimize your URL structure
URLs are crucial for ensuring a positive user experience and enhancing your ecommerce SEO strategies. They not only provide information to site visitors regarding the content of a link but also inform search engines about the webpage’s subject matter.
When paraphrasing the text, focus on breaking down the ideas and restructuring the sentence while preserving the original meaning. Avoid including lengthy URLs with only numerical values and no relevant keywords. Please share a step-by-step thought process for rephrasing this text maintaining its meaning, without adding or removing any information.
To maintain the same meaning, the text can be rephrased as follows: Consider yourwebsite.com/diffusers/white-ceramic-diffuser as a suitable URL for a product page showcasing a diffuser made of white ceramic.
By adding the keyword to the URL, you can enhance your site structure, increase your ranking, and attract more potential customers to your products.
