Did you know the E-commerce industry has been growing constantly and seeing exponential growth from years 2008 to 2020?
As I see it, eCommerce has experienced steady sales that have projected to increase from 1.3 trillion in 2014 to more than 4.5 trillion by 2021.
With such staggering figures, I think e-commerce is the only industry that has become exceptionally globalized and crowded with plenty of stiff competitors.
Thanks to Statista, we are successfully able to find that Asia is still winning the race by dominating the e-commerce arena, as North America stands second with more than $749 billion.
This means, if you want to survive the wave, you need to take advantage of that fastest growing industry in the world.
However, I must say it’s not that easy especially without search engine optimization. If you want to build a great Retail & E-Commerce empire, you need to consider powerful SEO methodologies that bring valuable sales and leads in a short time.
Let’s dive in deeper to explore the right e-commerce SEO formulas and fundamentals that catapult your rankings in search engines.
Let’s focus on the site structure first
First things first- I think site structure is one of the most critical components to consider before proceeding further as it plays a vital role in enhanced user experience and your overall search engine position.
So, obviously, you need to make it right.
But there is always one mistake most of the e-commerce store owners make, they tend to make the site structure “too cute & charming” that create the whole appearance complex and overwhelmed with unnecessary elements.
What should you do to make it ideal, user-friendly, and easy to navigate?
The best thing to make things work effectively is, make your product pages easily accessible and findable. They should just be 2-3 clicks away from the landing page.
Because the more clicks your audience makes, the more chances to lose conversions.
So, breaking down all the products into relevant categories is the best practice that helps people discover everything easily without wasting a minute.
Perform in-depth keyword research
Another trick is to consider Google’s related search features, enter your desired keywords, and then scroll down to the bottom of the search engines.
This can help you discover more relevant search terms.Keyword research is another most important step in the whole process that can either make or break the reputation & ranking of your e-commerce store.
Now there are multiple ways to manage this process. You can either rely on Google Keyword Planner that helps you yield perfect keywords that are most commonly used by your target audience or prefer some online tools & software that almost give accurate results.
But you know what, I love to go outside the box to gain increased visibility & understanding about the perspectives on online shoppers.
That’s why I prefer using Amazon.
Because the fact is, Amazon is one of the big competitors in the industry as they accounted for most of the e-commerce sales in the last 2 years.
But do you want to know another practice that helps you know what your online shoppers are looking for than relying on Amazon Suggest?
Just enter some broad search terms into the search box, and find an impressive list of keyword ideas that are mainly targeted by your audience
Product page optimization
After finding some relevant keywords for your store, it’s time to implement them on your website and put them naturally on all the product pages.
But wait, before doing that, it’s important to consider some basic Local SEO principles that could help you rank highly in search engines.
Focus on the URL
In order to begin with this, focus on the URL first. It should be price, short, and succinct with proper keyword insertion.
As Backlinko suggests, three or five words are enough to add to the URL.
Never forget your H1 tag
As we all know well that header tags have a considerable weightage in SEO.
So, it’s ideal to include your major keyword in the H1 Tag of all the product pages.
Compelling descriptions
If you want to get the most out of your store, then its essential to create compelling and keyword-rich product descriptions.
This would help Google figure out some more important details about the product that you want to appear at the top of SERPs.
But the thing is, I have seen most of the e-commerce shops skimp on such particular area.
People craft product descriptions that have nothing useful to highlight, have duplicated features or so incomplete information without the addition of keywords. This makes your website worse, honestly!
If you want to surpass all the tough competitors, you need to create effective product descriptions that feature all the basic keywords to elevate your ranking in Google.
When it comes to the length of your description, I often see lots of debates.
Some experts recommend 300 words are best for description, and some suggest using 1000 words are great to rank high.
Let me clear this misconception today.
Using 100-120 words for your description is an ideal length that even makes more sense and gives users complete information about the product without going deeper.
In the end, I must say that your description should be detailed, keyword-rich, and interesting with all the unique selling points highlighted significantly.
MetaData
Now the last thing is metadata.
Just like you add all your keywords in your meta description on all the pages, you should also consider this for every product page as well.
The ideal length of metadata should not be more than 160 characters in length.
Addition of positive customer reviews
As Jeff Bezos says
“If you build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful”.
This means if you generate as many positive reviews as possible, you can easily build a strong customer base that does not only appreciate your products but also recommend it to others.
Because the point is, your customers help build strong trust with your shoppers as well as increase the credibility of your shopping store.
In fact, more than 85% of people said that they trust reviews and personal suggestions before shopping online.
This would skyrocket your conversion rate and overall revenue.
Secondly, they would offer some great product information through additional texts by a genuine audience. Some of them may even include keywords unintentionally that could help search engines understand what content you have on each product page.
Even studies found that online reviews have a 10% more impact on search engine rankings.
Importance of social media marketing for SEO
While we see a great debate on social media marketing impacts on E-commerce SEO, we cannot deny the benefits it offers.
- The number of tweets counts: now just like backlinks, the more the tweets, the more influence Google search rankings.
- Twitter account credibility: If tweets are coming from an authoritative Twitter account that has a number of followers, search engines consider the whole website a reputable platform.
- Facebook page likes: Google cannot detect Facebook likes, but it analyzes the number of page likes your page receive and then rank the profiles accordingly.
- Facebook shares: Facebook shares look quite similar to backlinks; they have quite a strong impact as compared to likes and followers.
- Pinterest: As Pinterest is becoming the more popular social media channel, Google analyzes pins as stable social signals and consider them as a backlink.
So yes, social media marketing is extremely necessary to grow your business among strong competitors.
Following such logic, it makes sense to incorporate social media buttons on each product page as it also gives users a more chance to know everything about the product by a real audience.
Bottom line
I understand getting more traffic, increasing brand reputation and finding relevant leads for your e-commerce store is a challenging job.
But it’s not impossible!
Sometimes, you just need a little focus and more useful strategies to boost conversions and click through rates.
As you can see, there are a lot of amazing factors and components that contribute to the success of your e-commerce store.
I know you must be thinking it’s too overwhelming, but the truth is, when you break-down all the steps and following everything in an organized manner, you can easily manage things in no time.
So, just take a start from fleshing out the structure of your e-commerce store so it becomes more navigable, and then consider other tactics for firm growth and sustainability. After that, image optimization, site speed, security, and performance are other secondary elements that matter for exceptional growth.
Always remember SEO matters for your e-commerce store as much as it matters for any other business in the market. So, if you think you can win the competition easily without implementing strong strategies, think again!
There are still lots of techniques I might miss, if you have any tips and suggestions in mind, let’s share with me and comment below.
