With 9.5 million households in Australia shopping online, simply having a website or some other form of online presence will not cut it. Businesses need to have a proactive eCommerce marketing strategy to make their business visible and attract potential customers.
In the digital world, the key is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. With the right SEO strategy for your eCommerce business, you can stand out and get more conversions.
eCommerce SEO Best Practices
An SEO-optimized website can make a big impact on your business’s reputation and bottom line. Here are eCommerce SEO strategies you should consider implementing:
Building a Strong Foundation: Website Optimisation
Your website is the digital storefront of your business. It is your shop window, your sales representative, your racks, and your billboard. Use SEO strategies to optimise your website to ensure that it provides a seamless experience and valuable content for your customers.
Create a User-Friendly Website
A website that is easy to navigate and visually appealing is crucial both for attracting users and ranking on search engines. A well-optimised website improves user experience, leading to longer session durations, lower bounce rates, and higher conversion rates.
Likewise, search engines favour websites with good user engagement metrics, deeming them more useful for users with similar queries.
To create a user-friendly site, establish a clear structure with well-organised categories and subcategories. Use intuitive menus and internal linking to make navigation easier for visitors.
Visuals also play a crucial role in usability – use a contrasting color scheme to make text more legible.
Don’t Neglect Schema Markups
Schema markup is a structured data vocabulary that allows search engines to understand your website’s content better. By adding schema markup to your pages, you provide explicit information about your products and services. Improved understanding by search engines can lead to better rankings for relevant search queries.
Choose Simple URL Structures
Worrying about the URL may seem like nitpicking, but a clean and descriptive URL structure can be a great deal of help for users and search engines to understand the contents of your page before they even see inside it.
Thus, a clear URL structure helps improve click-through rates and, in turn, positively impact search engine rankings. Moreover, a well-structured URL architecture can help with internal linking and website navigation.
To take advantage of URL structures, avoid overly long or complex URLs, but incorporate relevant keywords to signal what the page is about.
Eliminate Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can confuse search engines (and users) about which page to show to users. Pages with duplicate content can cannibalise each other’s keywords, diluting your website’s authority.
Identifying and removing duplicate content can be a beneficial SEO strategy for an eCommerce website. Cleaning your website of duplicate content can improve your website’s overall performance, as well as avoid penalties from search engines.
Take the time to identify and consolidate pages with similar content. Use canonical tags to specify to search engines your preferred version of a webpage if multiple versions exist.
Optimise Website Loading Speed
As a user, you know how frustrating it is to use slow-loading websites. Users tend to exit slow-loading websites quickly, which can negatively impact your SEO. In contrast, a faster loading speed can encourage users to explore your website – and products – longer, leading to lower bounce rates and increased conversions.
There are several tactics to help improve your site’s loading speed, such as compressing images, minimising HTTP requests, leveraging browser caching, and optimising code.
Craft Compelling Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are a great opportunity to impart relevant information to convince potential customers to purchase the item. It also provides an opportunity to insert keywords to help boost your website’s rankings.
However, for product descriptions to be effective, make sure to use clear and descriptive language. Highlight the products’ or services’ key features and benefits while using relevant keywords without compromising readability.
Enhancing Online Visibility: SEO and Content Marketing
Understand how people search for information, and leverage this behavior to maximise your website’s visibility online.
SEO leverages users’ behavior when seeking information to provide the best content and maximise a website’s visibility online. SEO services for eCommerce websites can help you better understand your target audience, search engine rankings, and help create long-term strategies.
Incorporate User Intent in Keyword Research
Keyword research is the foundation of any SEO strategy. You need to identify the terms and phrases that your target audience uses to find products like yours. This endeavor is always informed by the customer journey.
Understand user intent and target relevant keywords so you can create content that addresses your audience’s needs. This strategy can help you provide useful information and, in doing so, increase your website’s visibility in search results.
Leverage the Power of Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are more specific, and therefore, longer keywords. They tend to reflect more specific intent, typically a higher purchase intent. As such, they also tend to generate less traffic, but the select traffic they do attract is highly qualified.
These types of keywords can have a positive impact on your business’s conversion rates, so it would be smart to target them as part of the SEO strategy for an eCommerce website.
Create High-Quality Content
Sharing valuable information to your target audience can help attract organic traffic, build your brand’s authority, and establish your business as an industry leader. Naturally, it also helps your website rank for a wider range of keywords and improve user engagement.
After pinpointing the most relevant keywords to your target audience, produce valuable, informative, and engaging content that responds to their needs and interests. You can create blog posts, how-to articles, product guides, and video content for your e-commerce website.
Tap into Local SEO
If your eCommerce business caters to a specific geographic area, or has a physical store that does, you may reach more people by optimising your website for local search. Local SEO can help you attract customers in your area and increase traffic to both your website and store.
To boost your local online visibility, claim and optimise your Google My Business listing, encourage customer reviews, and use location-based keywords.
Build Backlinks Naturally
Backlinks, which are links from other websites to yours, help build your website’s value and reputation. They are a crucial ranking factor as well, being a signal of one’s credibility as a source of information.
For eCommerce websites, building backlinks can also help reach a wider range of audiences that may fit their targeted profile.
Backlinks can be built by creating high-quality content marketing and then engaging in guest posting and outreach.
Engage with Customers: Social Media and Email Marketing
While SEO focuses on organic search, social media and email marketing play important roles in supporting your eCommerce SEO strategy. In particular, these can help drive traffic, build brand loyalty, and boost sales. Here are strategies for social media and email marketing:
Select the Right Platforms
TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), Threads, LinkedIn, Pinterest – with countless social media platforms available nowadays, it’s essential to focus your resources on the ones where your target audience is more active.
Prioritise the platforms that offer the best opportunities to reach your target audience and create engaging content.
Create Compelling Content
High-quality content is essential as well for engaging your audience in social media and email. However, the design or structure is often quite different from blogs and articles.
For social media and email, this involves crafting messages that resonate with your target audience and encourage interaction. For email marketing, this means using compelling subject lines followed by clear calls to action.
You can use a mix of text, images, and videos to make your message more appealing to its intended audience.
Leverage User-Generated Content
User-generated content is a powerful tool for building trust in the context of social media. Social proof carries a heavy influence amongst people and can convince them to buy your products or services.
Encourage your followers to join in the conversation and post about their thoughts and experiences with regard to your products or services. You may then use user-generated content to demonstrate the quality and credibility of your business.
Improve Customer Retention with Post-Purchase Follow-up
In the interest of nurturing relationships, another eCommerce SEO strategy is a post-purchase follow-up strategy. This practice can help increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Both email and social media can be utilised by eCommerce companies for their post-purchase follow-up. If a customer purchases via social media, the business may engage with customers after the purchase asking for feedback or by sharing product usage tips.
Similarly, the business may send emails, such as welcome emails or order confirmation emails. Emails may also be used to seek feedback from customers or offer promotions.
Crafting SEO Strategies for eCommerce Sites
SEO is a long-term strategy that requires patience and persistence. By employing these SEO strategies for eCommerce sites, you can improve your business’s online visibility, build a community, and drive sales.
Understanding SEO and the best practices in the field is key to unlocking your online eCommerce store’s full potential. An SEO services company can provide the expertise and tools to give your business an advantage to rise up to the top of the search engine results page and convert more customers.