Your online store is set to gain a lot from organic traffic from Google search results. With good search engine optimization, you can get a high ranking on the search engine results page, generating more clicks, some of which may be converted to sales. This organic traffic, if well targeted, can end up generating the majority of your sales.
As it turns out, optimizing your e-commerce store for the search engines isn’t vastly different from doing the same for a regular website. You still need to make sure you have plenty of backlinks and optimize for the relevant keywords. However, there are certain things about the structure of an e-commerce website that make it require a few other optimization tweaks that you may never consider doing for a regular website. Here are seven of them that will do wonders for your online store before you have to consult an SEO expert.
7 SEO Tips For Your e-Commerce Sites
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Internal Links
With e-commerce sites, internal links can be just as important as external ones. How? Well, these links give your site visitors the opportunity to navigate different sections of your sites and see all the products you have to offer.
You can have links to different product pages on your homepage as well as breadcrumbs on each product page leading back to the parent category. Don’t forget to also include links to pages for products that you mention in places like your store’s blog and “About” page.
Also read: 5 Link Building Facts Every Blogger Should Know
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Remember to Include Alt-Text for Your Images
Search engines won’t be able to see your images the same way your site visitors will, so it’s important to present them in a way that will make them easier to rank, especially on Google shopping.
To allow the search engine spiders to crawl your image, you can add alt-text to them. This text is meant to describe your images concisely so the search engine spiders know what the image shows. Make sure you do this for every image before you upload it; otherwise, it might be much more difficult to do as your catalog of product images grows larger.
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Customer Reviews
You should maximize positive reviews from customers as much as you can. For starters, it makes you seem more trustworthy to your customers, which increases your sales. Additionally, customer reviews act as a kind of product description for your products.
One of the big advantages of reviews is that they are authentic. They have been written by real human beings, describing what they think about your products. Search engines can see this and will give such reviews a greater weight when ranking your pages. So, take as much advantage as you can of these reviews.
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Create a Store Blog
A store blog has numerous advantages for your online store. As far as SEO is concerned, a blog allows you to make more keyword-relevant posts so you can get your store ranked for the right search terms.
Additionally, your blog can contain internal links to product pages for different products, and this helps with the internal linking. Google will also get the message that you’re running an active and dynamic website.
Other than that, a blog is an excellent opportunity for you to connect with your audience. For starters, it gives you a platform where you can post useful information for your audience while telling them about your products. It’s also a great place to talk about who you are and what you do beyond the “About” page.
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Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are an excellent opportunity to tighten your site’s SEO. Here, you should go all out. Be as generous as you can with words, adding in as many variations on the primary keywords as you can. Make sure it’s natural, however, so it makes sense. You’re still writing for people, not search engines. If you have a product description that’s unrealistic or irrelevant to the actual product, then you’ll probably lose customers, rather than gain them.
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Metadata
You can actually include SEO metadata for each page of your online store’s website. You should use this to your benefit. It helps you optimize each product uniquely so it gets its own fighting chance on the search engine results pages. You’ll notice your products, even when they’re in the same category, tend to need different types of marketing. Rather than go for blanket metadata for an entire category, go all out and breathe life into each product’s page.
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Don’t Include Duplicate Content
Search engines will penalize you for recycling content from the Internet. You need to avoid this, particularly with product descriptions. The thing about product descriptions is that they tend to use the same keywords for products on every store. Considering the millions of e-commerce websites out there it can be pretty difficult to get unique descriptions for your own products. Difficult doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, however, as duplicate content will hurt, rather than enhance your ranking on search results pages.
Also read: Unique Content And Bad Guest Posting Habits
Final Thought
SEO for your e-commerce site is much simpler in some respects than regular SEO. So, roll up your sleeves, get your head down, and give your online store the facelift it deserves. You’ll be thankful for it down the line.
Chibuzor Aguwa, thanks so much for the post.Really thank you! Great.
You are welcome. I am glad you enjoyed reading the tips