The idea of an eCommerce store will appeal not only to someone who wants to sell products online but also to an entrepreneur running an already-established business and keen to increase its reach and visibility.
It is why optimizing an eCommerce store is so important. Read on to know some useful guidelines that can benefit all retailers.
Table of Contents
SEO Tips For Retailers Starting An ECommerce Store
Impressive Homepage
To begin with, there is no better way to attract customers than to come up with an impressive, well-designed home page for your website. Visitors are likely to wait at a URL for only a few seconds, and it is all the time you have to impress them and get them to browse through your store.
So, you need a homepage that is visually appealing, easily navigable, informative, and relevant for your visitors, helping you to convert them into customers.
Target Keywords
You should know the words that your target customers are most likely to use to search for your products. These keywords need to be inserted into high-impact pages. To choose keywords, you must consider their relevance, search volume, ranking difficulty, and location-based popularity.
Using keyword tools can help you with this task. For example, Google’s Keyword Planner is a more budget-friendly tool, while paid SEO tools, like SEMrush, give better results. You should opt for low-competition keywords at first, and once the traffic starts to come in, your site gets better rankings. Using long-tailed keywords ensure higher conversion rates as they aim for niche audiences.
Search-friendly URLs
You should choose search-engine-friendly addresses or URLs that are direct and easy to remember. It is best to stay away from odd symbols and characters.
Optimize Product Pages
You must have product descriptions for each product that you sell, and these need to include their features, reviews, and customer FAQs.
Customer Reviews
These are likely to generate keywords for the content, and every review will ensure that your content is up-to-date.
Product Pages
Even the out-of-stock product page must be live as you should avoid annoying users with an unwanted 404 error page.
Moreover, search engines will consider these as broken links. You must have also a Thank You page as users like to be appreciated. Since it works as a personal greeting, chances of getting repeat customers to become higher.
Blogs
An eCommerce store can benefit from a blog because this keeps the audience hooked to it. These blogs typically cover the latest trends and make announcements. They can also be shared, helping to enhance the value of the store.
Optimize Categories
When your products share some common theme, you can try cross-linking. For instance, if you sell helmets, you may add links for boots and gloves as all are under the category of protective equipment.
Links to High Priority Webpages
You can link the main product categories to a blog post that has drawn many visitors. While there can be a section suggesting related products to your viewers, the number of these links should not be too much, or else, it will appear as a link farm.
Use Breadcrumbs
In terms of SEO, these help web spiders find their way to your homepage. They will show a series of webpages, starting from the homepage to the one that you are viewing now.
Improve Usability
The site must be easy-to-use and navigable so viewers do not abandon it and run off to another site. The site navigation structure has to be user-friendly with intuitive menus and predictive search features. The checkout process should be fast and involve fewer steps. You can have live chat widgets that allow you to sell your products to customers first-hand.
Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates
When page-loading speed is less, customers tend to leave their carts and shop elsewhere. The best way to stop this is by making sure there are very few steps needed for a buyer to make his purchase.
Build Creative Tools
When you have creative and useful tools on the site, it adds more value to it. It also promotes customer engagement, as buyers can do multiple things at one go. Also, exit pop-ups boost sales. So, you could include freebies, discounts, or sweepstakes as incentives for your buyers.
Accept Failures Humbly
Like any venture, an eCommerce store can fail because it is usually based on trial-and-error. You should try to implement the suggestions as best as you can and then set a budget and timeframe for it.
Shopify Apps To Help Retailers With SEO
SEO Booster ‑ SEO Marketing
This app comes free of cost and allows you to implement SEO on-the-go. The app lets you identify and resolve SEO problems in record time.
- SEO Image Optimizer also comes with a free plan and can boost Google traffic.
- Smart Image SEO is free and lets you automatically add Alt Text into images for products.
- Sitemapper comes with a 7-day free trial and produces sitemaps for eCommerce stores.
- Smart SEO allows you to automate your on-site SEO techniques to make them more search-engine-friendly.
- Shopify apps can help retailers optimize their websites
