With every passing year, eCommerce SEO only becomes more complex as Google changes and refines its algorithm. Unless you are keeping close tabs on the world of search engine optimization, there’s a good chance that you’re not implementing all of the possible techniques to ensure that your website is ranking as well as it could be.
There are dozens of ranking factors that determine whether or not your website will make it onto the first page. While you can’t be expected to keep track of them all, there are a few quick techniques you can take advantage of to give your website a boost and make it more SEO friendly.
When adjusting your website for SEO purposes, it’s always worth remembering that you are providing content for your users before anything else. You want to go out of your way to make sure you are providing optimized content that will help your users make informed decisions and enable them to find what they need while browsing through your website.
By engaging your users and guiding them through to conversion, you are sending the best possible signals to Google that your content is optimized and that it is high-quality. User experience is considered to be one of the single most important ranking factors as of right now, so all of your changes and SEO improvements should be to this end. When users land on your website, you want them to be able to easily find what they need and feel secure if and when they decide to make a purchase.
Add Keywords to Your Product Descriptions
One of the most effective ways you can quickly improve the overall SEO of your eCommerce website is to go through your product descriptions and flesh them out a bit. One or two sentence descriptions that lack any relevant keywords or punch are not going to catch the attention of the search engines, and do little for your users either.
To make your products stand out, you should aim to have no less than a solid paragraph of rich copy for each of your products that includes the primary keyword you want to rank for that relates to the product in question. You should also carefully infuse the text with one or two related keywords that bolster the relevancy of the text, which is helpful for gaining an edge in the eyes of Google.
Your product descriptions should be one part sales copy and one part valuable information. Don’t neglect this area of your online store, because even if you’re not working hard to optimize your product descriptions, other store owners in your niche certainly are, and will be reaping the rewards for doing so.
Create an HTML Sitemap For Better Navigation
You likely already have an XML sitemap generated and uploaded to your Google Webmaster Tools for the benefit of the search engines, but have you considered putting together an HTML sitemap as well? While not as common, these are beneficial pages on your website that can help anchor users when they are confused and also give search crawlers a bit of extra guidance when navigating your site.
If you are a bit lost as to what an HTML sitemap entails, it’s essentially a simple webpage that displays all of the primary pages of your website in one place for easy access. This includes product and blog categories, as well as all of the secondary and tertiary pages of your navigation.
An HTML sitemap can act as a way to lower your bounce rate by providing your users with a way to find what they are looking for when they are feeling lost, and also creates easy access to harder-to-reach areas of your website that may be inconvenient or impossible to reach through the primary navigation, such as older blog posts. In terms of effective eCommerce SEO practices that can positively impact your website, this is one you can’t ignore.
Add Reviews and Social Proof to Your Website
Search engines are placing greater emphasis on the importance of social proof and authority as ranking factors. This is because users want to know that when they visit a website, that it is reliable and trustworthy. Reviews are probably one of the most effective ways of weeding out bad products and scams online.
Likewise, social proof is often a vital component of a successful website because everyone knows that if your brand is worth mentioning, you’re going to have followers and fans on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media websites.
Everyone has to start somewhere, so no matter how popular you are at the moment, it’s important that you begin to show social proof on your store so your visitors can get a grasp as to how open and honest you are as a business owner. Make sure you enable reviews and once you accrue a few good ones, place them on your home page proudly. This will send all the right signals not only to your users, but to the search engines as well.
If you are interested in hitting even more ranking points and making sure that your online store climbs the ranks in Google, you may want to consider our eCommerce SEO services. We are search engine optimization experts that know what it takes to drive traffic to eCommerce sites just like yours. Get in touch with us today if you want an elite team of digital marketing professionals in your corner.
