In today’s digital age, even the most beautifully designed website offering the best products is useless if people can’t find it through Google or another search engine; the higher you rank, the greater chances that people will discover your brand. In this article we share some SEO Best Practices for E-commerce Websites.
In fact, if your e-commerce website is the first search result for a particular keyword, its average click-through rate can be around even 28.5%.
That’s precisely where search engine optimization (SEO) can help you. SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility on search engine result pages.
By implementing some of the best practices for SEO, e-commerce businesses can quickly improve their chances of being discovered by potential customers and increase their online sales.
SEO for e-commerce websites includes optimizing product pages, using relevant keywords, creating high-quality content, and ensuring your website loads fast.
If you’re curious about the details, keep reading below and prepare to take notes!
Table of Contents
Improving Your Website’s Speed
Slow websites can be a true nightmare. According to the data, 1 in 2 visitors won’t think twice before abandoning a site that takes more than 2-3 seconds to load. Moreover, 25% of online shoppers will be more than ready to leave a page if it doesn’t load within 4-6 seconds.
Slow pages are a source of customer dissatisfaction and can negatively influence their whole experience with your brand. But how can you speed things up? In general, you should be able to do some of the easier things yourself.
However, if something poses a challenge, don’t hesitate to contact a technical SEO agency for help.
Optimizing your images can be a good place to start if you want to DIY. In general, you should use only the largest necessary image size and, if possible, compress media files using tools such as ImageOptim (for Mac) or TinyPNG and Kraken.
Furthermore, it may be a good idea to determine how many plugins you use and eliminate the unnecessary ones. That’s because the more plugins are on your website, the more code is involved, which can slow the loading speed significantly.
You can also take advantage of caching. Caching is a process of storing frequently used data in a temporary storage area in order to improve the performance of a computer or website. Here, you can use free plugins such as WP Super Cache or WP Rocket.
Ensuring The Site Is User-Friendly
Apart from site speed, a user-friendly e-commerce website is essential for SEO. This means making the site aesthetically pleasing and easily navigable for your existing and prospective customers. This way, you can attract more visitors to your website, resulting in more traffic and high search engine rankings.
Generally, a user-friendly website has straightforward and intuitive navigation. You can achieve this by using detailed categories, labels, and menus to make it easy for users to find what they are looking for. Design product pages should also provide all the necessary information about a product, including product images, descriptions, prices, and reviews. Additionally, you should ensure the advertisements don’t interfere with the user’s view of the content.
Furthermore, you can organize your e-commerce website by using faceted navigation. It’s a type of navigation found on the site’s sidebars that allow users to customize their search. Matt Jackson suggests that faceted navigation is especially important to get right with e-commerce SEO, as doing it incorrectly can lead to infinite crawl loops and a bloated website index that can cause a Panda penalty.
Choosing the Right Keywords
Keywords are specific words or phrases used to indicate the content of a webpage. Search engines utilize them to help users find relevant information when they search for specific topics or products, Added Millenio Link, provider of link building services UK.
Therefore, incorporating relevant keywords into website content can help improve search engine rankings and increase the visibility of a webpage.
Keywords can be identified through research on the topics or products that users are searching for and should be used strategically in titles, headers, and body text to maximize their impact.
Here are some general guidelines you can follow when choosing keywords:
- Brainstorm a list of potential keywords related to your product or service.
- Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find related keywords and see their search volume and competition level.
- Focus on long-tail keywords, which are more specific and targeted, as they often have lower competition and higher conversion rates.
- Look at your competitors and see what keywords they are targeting and ranking for.
- Use Google’s autofill and “people also ask” features to find related queries and questions.
- Prioritize using keywords in your page titles, meta descriptions, and content headings.
- Avoid overusing keywords, also known as “keyword stuffing,” as this can harm your SEO.
- Monitor your keyword performance and make adjustments as necessary to continually improve your rankings.
Researching and choosing the right keywords is crucial in optimizing your e-commerce website. It’s a vital SEO component that improves your site’s online visibility, generates more web traffic, and increases revenue for your business. By picking the proper keywords, you can take advantage of the language your target audience uses to create valuable and relevant content, resulting in improved search engine ranking.
For expert guidance and optimal keyword selection, consider partnering with a keyword research agency like Sure Oak. Their expertise can help your e-commerce site gain a competitive edge, attract more customers, and drive growth.
Adding Creative Product Descriptions
A few years ago, a page with just the price, title, and photo of your product could’ve been more than enough. However, today each and every one of your product pages should also feature a thoughtful, detailed, and creatively written product description.
This can help you sell the product to your clients and convince search engines that the products are worth attention and should rank high.
Of course, product descriptions depend on the kind of product or service you sell. That’s why there’s no one-size-fits-all formula that you can copy and paste and call it a day.
It’s best to start by determining which details will be the most useful to your customers. For instance, you can include the measurements of your product, the ingredients list, and usage instructions.
Then it’s time to get creative. For instance, if you’re writing about a room spray, you can use its scent to tell a story. If it features notes of patchouli and sandalwood, it can help produce a sense of balance and make users feel as if they received a warm and soothing hug.
Ensure that they help the shoppers feel as if they were standing in the middle of a nicely decorated, cozy room, surrounded by the deep and mysterious fragrance your brand offers. Don’t forget to include the keywords you chose for the specific page!
Ensuring Your URL Structure Is Easy to Crawl
Last but not least, a URL can be a part of a great user experience, especially if it gives the visitors and potential clients a sneak-peak of what a given page is all about. This can also prove beneficial when it comes to search engines.
Overall, you should aim for a short and succinct URL that’s simultaneously descriptive. This may seem hard to achieve in theory, but in practice, it’s relatively easy. Let’s take a look at this example:
- com/productpage.11122233344/show
By looking at this URL, it’s virtually impossible to determine what it’s hiding. However, if this URL would look like this:
- com/collections/room-sprays
This URL is much more user-friendly. When your customers see this preview, they’ll know exactly what to expect.
If possible, it’s also a good practice to include keywords in the URLs. Still, if you decide to do so, try to achieve it in a natural way, and don’t prioritize keywords over user experience.
In Conclusion
As you can see, with the ever-increasing competition, the importance of SEO cannot be overstated. Luckily, by following the tips and strategies outlined in this article, you can improve your website’s speed, choose the right keywords, create high-quality content, provide better user experience, and ensure your URL structure is easy to crawl.
Remember that SEO is an ongoing process and requires continuous effort and attention. Regularly monitoring and adjusting your strategies will help you stay ahead of the competition and maintain your ranking in search engine results.
So, try these practices today and watch your website climb up the ranks of search engine results!
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