A Guide to SEO for E-commerce Websites

Organic traffic is very crucial in the world of online business and eCommerce. However, it is getting tougher to rank higher these days. A huge variety of eCommerce platforms are out there and anyone can start a copy-cat store! SEO for e-commerce site will help. Here's how you go about it:

Focus on URL Structure

Page URL should have a profitable structure. The best strategy to follow for URL structures is:

'KISS' = Keep It Simple Store-Owner

The structure needs to be very simple, highly relevant and understandable by humans as well as search engines. Remember that a number of things may go wrong with this URL structure. One cannot get an  idea about a product just by looking at the URL. Now this can be very confusing for humans. If it does not contain relevant keywords for search engines, things are bound to get tougher.

The idea is to place keywords you want search engines to pick up on, right after your domain. This helps search engines understand what the page is all about. Once your product shows up in search results, Google will bold the keywords in the URL Hence, searchers know precisely what to expect when they click on your link.

Trust Breadcrumbs

These are navigational links that appear near the top of a page. Breadcrumbs help customers figure out where they are in your store. You are actually strengthening your SEO strategy by enabling them. These links build internal links to other pages on your website which further define your link architecture.

Boost Relevancy with Title Tags

This enhances relevancy to humans and search engines. A title tag is a brief description of product page  content. Main keywords need to appear at the start of the tag. This the acceptable title tag formula:

'Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Brand Name'

You can add brand name to secondary keywords if applicable. This will add uniqueness to each product page title tag. It solves the problem of having multiple products of the same type. You can add unique words describing your product to each product title tag. Also try considering other words that customers may search for.

Optimize Product Page

Focus on optimizing titles for product page. The title should be very descriptive and well optimized for search engines. Make the product / service obvious to anyone who sees it. Also try including keywords in H1, H2 and H3 tags. Although termed as weaker signals, these do count. Use of header tags in page content breaks it up and simplifies reading.

Description of Product

The product description is usually underestimated. This is a sales pitch and the best way to give your store an edge over copycats. Understand that there are too many eCommerce stores having product descriptions written by manufacturers. Using manufacturer written product description can play negative in most situations. For instance, descriptions get distributed to all of the other online stores selling similar products. This makes search engines see multiple websites with similar content. Duplicate content will invite penalty by Google. Also manufacturer descriptions are written in a fashion to sell the product. These simply describe the product specs and are extremely boring to read. Search engines likes unique and interesting content. Make it descriptive enough to help your customers while making a decision on a product. Lastly, use 'rel=canonical' tag to convey Google that a specific content is not duplicated.

Product Reviews

According to studies, it is revealed that over 70 per cent of individuals look forward to online reviews prior to making a purchase. In fact, they base maximum part of their decision on reviews. So if your eCommerce store does not have product reviews, just add them. Your target audience is hungry for product reviews. Additionally, search engines love product reviews!

Product reviews help your site get updated with fresh and unique content. It is free user-generated content and makes for a very affordable way of adding new content to product pages. These are also very effective in optimizing your product page for long tail keywords. Remember that customers leaving reviews may use similar keywords consumers are searching for! This will work for your advantage.

You can optimize reviews for product page SEO. Reviews add micro-data to a page. Micro-data gets displayed as a line of text under each search result. This ensures more context to your content. It helps customers decide if they should click on the result.

Social Media Buttons

Distracting customers from buying a product is the worst thing yoou can do to your site. So make your   customer first buy a product and share it later. Social shares send signals to search engines about the  popularity of the products. Each share is like upvote and an indication that your product is interesting enough for people to refer to their friends. Lastly, each share may bring back additional traffic to your site!

Product Images

Product images can help improve conversion rates for your online store to a significant amount. However, you need to optimize these well for search engines. So start off via using descriptive image file names and Alt tags. Make sure these incorporate important keywords. The alt text is alternative text used by browsers when they cannot render the image. A keyword-rich description is helpful for both search engines and humans. The image file sizes shouldn't be large enough to take a long time to load. This slows down page speed and make your customers drop off. The search engines will ultimately lower your ranking.

Product Videos

Did you know a video enhances understanding of your product among consumers? Also these videos drive viewers to actually try out / buy the product! Product videos make for an amazing tool for conversion rates. Also, these help you create a unique place in search results. No wonder millions of users flock to YouTube to know about a product, its uses and other demonstration related queries.

Uploading product videos to YouTube will work! Make sure titles, tags and descriptions are well optimized for your keywords while uploading. This is important to make your videos searchable on YouTube. When optimized well, these may even show up on a Google search!

Once your product is up on YouTube, imply embed it on your site. Also allow others to embed it. The more number of people embeds your video, more it will get ranked higher in Google.

Summary

Well, you won’t start ranking on the front page of Google, immediately. The process takes time. However, once you are successful in integrating SEO into your website smartly, your store will start emerging higher for some specific keywords. This will also help you beat your competitors. Good Luck!