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SEO guidelines for e-commerce product pages
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In today’s world, while digital experiences and multi-channel platforms are constantly evolving, customers are nowhere behind. The way your customers shop online is changing every day. In such a competitive age of omnichannel eCommerce, your content should be unique and engaging enough to urge users to purchase your products across multiple devices. For your content to be easily available for customers, you need to improve your site’s Search Engine visibility across platforms.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
SEO for eCommerceis the process of driving traffic to your online store by increasing the visibility of the website or webpage to users of a web search engine. “Search” is one of the biggest sources to increase traffic. In fact, nearly 60% of all the traffic on the web begins with a Google search. Adding traffic from other popular search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, etc, 70% of all the traffic originates from a search engine.
In e-commerce SEO, and the algorithms used for it, are constantly changing, as the search engines which use a variety of algorithms are changed and updated daily. An eCommerce site requires the same amount of attention when it comes to Search Engine Optimization as any other informational website. Having hundreds of optimised products in your eCommerce store will be of no good if the individual products are not search-friendly. Your ranking in search engines plays a crucial role in helping you thrive as a marketer and boost the growth of your business.
Here we will tell you a few of the most important dos and don’ts of a good SEO strategy for your eCommerce store. Let’s get started!
Do-s Of An eCommerce SEO Strategy
Describe the product in a creative way
Write a unique, compelling and detailed product catalogue optimization description for each product that you own. Make sure not to copy-paste the description of a product from the manufacturer’s site and instead write one of your own. Write product optimization descriptions that are at least 150 words in length. Identify frequently searched and relevant keywords associated with your product SEO and incorporate them and their variations. It is a good idea to make product descriptions SEO friendly.
Make sure the meta description and title tags are included
Adding meta descriptions and title tags on each web page of your online store are extremely crucial to help you with SEO eCommerce. These are descriptions that are placed on each page so that Google knows what these pages are about. While it is important to keep these as unique as possible, you should also mention the specific product in your meta description and the title for better optimization.
Your website should contain customer reviews
Including customer reviews on your eCommerce website can act as gold for your business. Positive reviews on your site can help grow your organic rankings on Google. Showcasing customer reviews not only increases the authenticity of your eCommerce store, but it also leads to higher conversion rates among customers.
Make Your Website FAQ-Friendly
For any eCommerce owner or any other business owner, the audience is everything. To keep your audience well-informed about your store, adding an FAQ section is crucial. Without an FAQ page, your visitors would need to contact you in person and wait for a callback. Honestly, most of your audience doesn’t have that much time to spare. An updated FAQ page will not only save your audiences’ time but also your time and will also help in making your website more efficient.
Text can be added to infographics, podcasts, and videos
Yes, visual content (like infographics and podcasts) is an awesome way to get traffic and backlinks.But they have one big problem:Google can’t understand ’em!That’s why I recommend adding plenty of text to go along with your infographic, podcast or video. Refreshing old pages is also a good tip. Do you have a bunch of blog posts on your site collecting dust? If so, you can probably improve your rankings by updating that post. added more external links to authority sites:
organising the content into sections to make the steps easier to follow:
writing a new title and description:
(Note: As long as you publish your updated content on the same URL, you don’t need to worry about duplicate content.)And those 3 simple changes quickly shot my page up to the top of Google for my target keyword: Which led to a BIG bump in that page’s search engine traffic:
Implement User-Generated Content
The UGC (User Generated Content) idea is simple: consumers post content (video clips, pictures, testimonials, reviews, and blogs) that is publicly available online through social media and other sites, regarding your store, brand, or product.
Generated organic content can be either a positive or negative experience with an online store or products. As part of your smart eCommerce strategy, UGS can help you gain more leads to your website, because UGC is 2.4x more likely to impact people’s purchasing decisions than influencer content.
Increase eCommerce Search Usability
Does your eCommerce platform record or analyse what customers are searching for? If your online store system is able to track this, you are probably having effective navigation and search capability.
To optimise the UX of your online store even more, organise your web store for these two main groups of potential customers:
- Visitors who know what they want to buy.
- Visitors who only want to browse.
Customers who know exactly what they are looking for want to find the right information as quickly as possible. Designing a high-performing search experience is a key feature for your users because if users can’t find what they are looking for, they will buy it from another store.
The second category is potential customers who just want to browse through the online store and compare items. They will use navigation menus and move between product categories and pages. To make their experience smooth, organize the menu bar and categories in intuitive, easy-to-use sections.
Your website’s search and navigation functions need to be well-designed and user-oriented in order to be effective and help improve the overall experience customers have on your eCommerce site.
Optimise Shopping Cart Functionality
To prevent customers from abandoning their shopping carts, you should ensure that your shopping cart functions well and is easy to navigate. The way to understand weaknesses is to analyse the performance frequently. Evaluate your analytics data to see at which stages customers tend to drop off and brainstorm ideas on how to improve them. Then, use A/B testing to determine which solution has the highest potential to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
During the optimization process, pay attention to the user journey. Clear the checkout page and remove distractions and/or possible places to exit. This will prevent any confusion during the checkout process. Plenty of conversion studies have shown that the fewer clicks during checkout, the higher your conversion rate will be.
Improve Your Social Media Strategy
The social media strategy your eCommerce marketing team prepares should be connected with your content strategy. This means repurposing your website content across your social media channels, as it will guarantee you a larger audience and boost your visibility.
Social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are usually best for an eCommerce marketing strategy focused on selling products, however, don’t underestimate the power of Facebook, as the social media giant has over 2.89 billion monthly active users.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but here is a basic list of general guidelines you can check to follow in order to create the best customer experience on social media:
- Post daily and consistently.
- Consider an automated tool to make sure your posts are on track.
- Always use images when posting, even on Twitter.
- Leverage video.
- Do not spam.
- Do not use social media for promotions only, engage with your customers.
- Use analytics to track your audience’s engagement.
- Test multiple social media strategies before picking the right one for your overall eCommerce marketing strategy.
The social media strategy your eCommerce marketing team prepares should be connected with your content strategy. This means repurposing your website content across your social media channels, as it will guarantee you a larger audience and boost your visibility.
Social networks such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are usually best for an eCommerce marketing strategy focused on selling products, however, don’t underestimate the power of Facebook, as the social media giant has over 2.89 billion monthly active users.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but here is a basic list of general guidelines you can check to follow in order to create the best customer experience on social media:
- Post daily and consistently.
- Consider an automated tool to make sure your posts are on track.
- Always use images when posting, even on Twitter.
- Leverage video.
- Do not spam.
- Do not use social media for promotions only, engage with your customers.
- Use analytics to track your audience’s engagement.
- Test multiple social media strategies before picking the right one for your overall eCommerce marketing strategy.
Create Landing Pages
With the development of personalised landing pages with a unique copy, your eCommerce business strategy will successfully increase the chance of attracting more customers who are willing to buy your products. Create specific landing pages for the different groups in your target audience. Outline your buyer personas and use analytics to determine the general demographic segments you are catering to.
HOW TO BUILD HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGES THAT DRIVE SALES, SIGN-UPS OR SUBSCRIPTIONS?
Here are some suggestions:
- A landing page should have only one single purpose and only one CTA (Call to Action) button. This doesn’t mean you can’t have multiple buttons, but they should all lead to the same conversion goal. Conversion rates decrease if the buyer’s attention isn’t focused well enough.
- Create clear, user-friendly designs for all of your landing pages. Only the clickable elements should guide the visitor to the desired goal. It is a good idea to hide the navigation bar at the top, as well as social media icons or elements that can distract the visitors.
- Focus the content around the main conversion goal. Make sure that it has a seamless flow, is related to your target audience, and that it includes relevant keywords for SEO purposes.
Don’ts Of An eCommerce SEO Strategy
Failure to set clear SEO objectives
It should come as no surprise that you need clear goals to succeed with SEO.
But many business owners and marketers run SEO campaigns without having any goals. They believe that doing SEO will increase their traffic, which in turn will increase their sales.
The problem is, things are not always quite that simple.
For your SEO efforts to pay off, you need to understand what you want to achieve. Is it better quality traffic, more organic leads, or more sales you’re trying to get?
Not taking search intent into account
For example, if someone types “digital marketing” into the Google search bar, that probably means the user wants to know what digital marketing is. So the user has informational intent.
But if the user was searching “digital marketing services”, that would probably mean that the user wants to hire a consultant or company that offers digital marketing services. This is a commercial keyword. To answer the search intent behind this query, you need to provide details about your marketing agency and the services you provide.
If you fail to satisfy the searchers’ intent, you won’t be able to rank for very long.
Not paying attention to mobile traffic
If your website is not mobile-friendly or mobile search is not part of your SEO strategy, you might be leaving money on the table.
Today, more than 50% off all traffic comes from mobile devices. And that’s why Google tends to favor mobile-friendly websites.
To prepare your website for organic traffic from mobile devices, you’ll want to ensure that your website is responsive and that it loads in under 3 seconds. Mobile-friendliness and pagespeed are important ranking factors.
Don’t ignore mobile optimization if you actually want to increase your organic website traffic.
Relying on old-school SEO techniques
Google is constantly developing their search algorithm. As a result, SEO is also changing.
The strategies that were working well 10 years ago are no longer effective. So if you want to stay on the top of Google SERP, you need to keep yourself updated and use modern SEO for eCommerce product page techniques.
These days, old school SEO techniques like keyword stuffing and private blog networks (or PBNs) are greeted with penalties rather than rankings.
That’s why you should keep yourself updated on modern SEO best practices and keep an eye out for new updates, changes by Google, and shifts in the industry.
Purchasing backlinks
Backlinks are among the most important ranking factors. But If you’re buying links to boost your website rankings, you might end up with a penalty from Google. This means you’re not only wasting your money but also potentially ruining your website’s chance to rank on search engines.
According to Google, most sites that sell links don’t actually boost your rankings. That’s because in reality, most link-builders and link-sellers all have the same list of sites from which they sell links. The good news is that Google also has the same site lists, which means they’re able to devalue these sites.
If you’re still not convinced, hear me out. Even if you haven’t gotten a Google penalty for shady links or techniques yet, it doesn’t mean that you’re safe. Your website may still get a penalty today for links that you built years ago.
If you still want to pay money to get links, I would recommend that you hire an SEO services company that can acquire top-tier links in your niche without breaking any of Google’s rules.
Ignoring other forms of content
Doing SEO for text-based content can feel difficult because every site and blog is doing the same thing.
In 2021 and beyond, it’s good to remember that content doesn’t necessarily equal the written word. There are other content formats (think videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars, and images) that you can use to rank on Google and drive organic traffic to your website.
Many people prefer watching videos over reading. That’s why you’re probably seeing more videos on social media feeds as well as on Google SERP. These days, videos are the content format with the highest demand, and I would guess that the demand will only increase in the near future.
And if you still need convincing, consider this: based on my experience, video content takes less time to rank on Google and YouTube than text-based content does.
Neglecting branded search engine optimization and content marketing
SEO is not just about ranking higher on Google. It’s also about building a trustworthy brand.
Today, Google favors sites that are genuine, trusted, and popular. This is Google’s E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trust) concept. Google determines the EAT of a website by using a combination of various data points and algorithms.
Here are a few ideas on how to demonstrate your expertise, authority, and trustworthiness:
- Make sure your SEO strategy also includes ways to increase brand-related searches
- Try to get featured on top media publications
- Provide information about your company, like location (address), author bios, recognitions, and awards won
Filling your website with keywords
Adding keywords to all your content is extremely important. However, keyword stuffing can end up being dangerous for your eCommerce store. Adding an excessive number of keywords doesn’t really help your customers. While writing the content, think about your reader base instead of thinking about Google. Think about what they are searching for and what they want to read on your webpage. This will help you in keeping it natural, without hampering the quality of your website’s content.
Unresponsive website
Your customers won’t stay on your site if it takes too long to load. People will hardly spend a few seconds on your website, not minutes. There are high chances that you will lose out on customers even before they open your website pages if you don’t take care of slow loading time. If you want to provide a satisfying experience to your searchers, you cannot allow for a long loading time. On average, a desktop page should load in less than 3 seconds, while a mobile page should not take more than 2 seconds to load.
Unresponsive website
Copying content from your competitor is the worst you can do for your eCommerce store. You definitely should check out the competition to stay in line and draw inspiration, but copying keywords from their content will only rank you lower on google search. Make sure you come up with unique keywords. In case you want to look for high-searched terms with low competition, take a look at the keyword planner tool in Google Adwords.
Customer Experience is the most important aspect you should focus on. If your customer has a reason to come back to your website, there are high chances your website will rank higher on google search results.
conclusion:
To get results from your SEO efforts and to rank higher on Google, you’ll want to avoid the mistakes I’ve detailed above. Additionally, you may want to run an SEO audit for your website once a year or once every six months to help you spot — and fix — any possible problems.
Anjali Tiwari
- December 29, 2022
- 10:00 am
- No Comments
