Now is the perfect time to start an ecommerce business. With an increasing audience of keen online shoppers and a myriad of valuable tools at your disposable, creating an ecommerce store has never been so easy, affordable and efficient, but you have to know the correct way to make it happen like that of a digital marketing agency.
As the ecommerce industry is already inundated with business people looking to run the marketplace, it’s only natural that those who succeed are those willing to do their research and put the power of search to good use.
One of the ways to optimise your ecommerce store to your advantage is through the use of effective SEO strategies.
Follow these steps for utilising SEO like a digital marketing agency and you will potentially take your store to new heights of success.
The Clever Use of Keywords
SEO is essentially based on choosing the right keywords for your store. Utilising online tools such as Buzzsumo can help you decide on which keywords your customers are searching, thus helping you align your site with their demands.
You may think that online searches are quite generic, but in fact it is quite the opposite. This is especially true when customers have already decided on a brand or model they want. Therefore, you should always include the brand/product names, as well as their sizes, in the titles.
If the product is already trending online, differentiating your keywords away from the product title can be very useful. Use long-tail variations (longer variations of a standard keyword) to differentiate what you are selling from the generic, high traffic version of that keyword.
Get to Know User Experience
One of the most important aspects of ensuring that your website ranks with Google is the way customers navigate your store. Google has a great understanding of how users behave with websites and this, in turn, effects rankings.
Google will penalise your website if customers don’t seem to enjoy hanging around on your site, so it is important to ensure that your website is user friendly.
For your website to rank well in terms of UX, you must ensure that your website is clear, quick, well-formatted and has simplicity in use. It is all based on how well your customers can navigate your site, from browsing all the way through to checking out.
You must be able to have answer to any question your customer has, as well as making the whole experience as seamless as possible. This is the best way to build customer-business trust.
Create Outstanding Product Descriptions
It is imperative that you have product descriptions for each item you are selling. The more fresh content you create, the higher your SEO score will become.
And, remember, it must be fresh, not copied from any other description. Google will heavily penalise any description copied from another supplier or the product manufacturer, so ensure your description is fresh and engaging.
Copying material is the sort of thing that can get a digital marketing agency into a lot of trouble, so why risk it yourself?
Always include your keywords, in both headings and content, to ensure that you’re optimising what products your customers will be searching for.
Selecting the Best CMS
You can save a lot of trouble by selecting the right CMS before starting your online business. They can help and guide you along the road to SEO success.
There are certain CMS platforms that assist the store owner in creating the right SEO system before you have to go back and fix any errors that happened originally. There are also a variety of ecommerce plugins already a part of certain CMS platforms that help create a custom ecommerce experience for the owner.
Just ensure that you choose a CMS you understand and that won’t require regular developer assistance/intervention.
How to Optimise Your On-Site Elements
There are many minor aspects of your site that can enhance your SEO ranking. Although they may seem minuscule, it’s important to understand them for the purpose of ranking well.
This includes:
• URLs: Create clear, relevant, succinct and highly descriptive URLs that make use of keywords.
• Image alt-text: Optimise your alt-text for images. This is the text that comes with your page’s images that Google uses to form an impression of what the image depicts. Optimising them will help Google to better understand what you are selling and, in turn, boost your rankings.
• Title tags: This is where you succinctly define what your store is about. It is imperative that it is written with your customer in mind as it appears in all search engine results pages. It should include your brand/product name as well as two major keywords.
• Meta-description: Using up to 160 characters to make your page sound as relevant and engaging as possible, the meta description is what appears under your title tag when searches are conducted.
• Internal links: Including links from different site pages allows the Google crawlers to understand your site and boost your rankings. This also works for customers, as they can easily go from page to page, thus enhancing their UX.
Whilst implementing an effective SEO strategy is a slow process, when it is done correctly it can be one of the most important ways to boost your chances of online success.
