A Step-by-Step Guide to Improving SEO For e-commerce Websites

To run your e-commerce store, you need to think out of the box to plan your SEO strategies. How to earn backlinks, how to attract customers, and turn them into leads. How to play with keywords, all these techniques you have to learn to gain massive ROI from your e-commerce site. This guide is here for your help.

Category: Business     Written By: Madiha Jamal

A Step-by-Step Guide to Improving SEO For e-commerce Websites

Having an e-commerce website is not a big thing these days! But to rank it on Google’s first page, that’s what requires a real struggle. And that is the milestone you have to achieve to run a successful e-commerce store. 

What’s the purpose of your e-commerce store if it doesn’t get any traffic and leads? It is like you have opened a fully-equipped shop in a desert and expecting to achieve maximum profit every month. That would be a silly thought of course! 

In the world of inbound marketing, the main thing is getting found online, and it is particularly challenging to master. And if you get noticed on a search engine, people will definitely see you.

About 36% of the people use Google or any other search engine to look for a product or goods to buy online. And the number is increasing with time. If you want to grow an e-commerce store successfully, you need to become an SEO ninja and implement some effective SEO strategies to improve the visibility of your e-commerce site

Here are some best SEO techniques.

Aim to rank #1 on the Google Search 

rank one on google

 

You can’t get anywhere if you do not have any goal in your mind. An essential thing you should do is to aim that you want to rank not only the first pages but to acquire the first rank as well. This is obviously not a piece of cake, but you need to aim big so that you can achieve big. 

As Google is continuously making changes in ranking strategies, you need to be more insightful about planning the best SEO strategy to rank# 1 on Google. If you get succeeded in acquiring the first place, it would be a jackpot for your e-commerce site.

Research conducted by Optify discovered that “websites that ranked number one on Google received 36.4 percent of average click-through rate (CTR), number two had a CTR of 12.5 percent; and number three had a CTR of 9.5 percent.” Search engine Watch reported that in 2011.

Do a wise Keyword research

search keyword wisely

After setting a goal, the next big thing and actually the primary element on which your whole SEO strategy is based is the Keyword research. If you want to kick things off, you need to do strong keyword research. Your Keywords are the building blocks of your e-commerce site to stand it out in the digital world. Without a keyword, you can’t optimize a product and category pages on your site. 

From your website architecture to URLs you need to take keyword research into account. Finding keywords for your products or products pages is the real struggle. There are many tools that you can use to find keywords that help you rank.

Pro tip: While doing keyword research, think of yourself as an end-user and use the keywords that your customers would like to use when they look for any product on google.

You can use Moz, Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, Google, Amazon suggests, or other tools to find targeted keywords.

For example, if you want to sell perfumes, you need to find it on Google what keywords people are using to look for perfume. 

Look for the idea in searches “People also ask”; I have found this for my keyword.  

Or see the 'related searches' at the bottom of the page. 

This research will help you come up with a strong keyword and when you come up with a keyword, watch out the keyword difficulty and search volume at Moz keyword tool on this specific keyword.

This is what I have found for my keyword on Moz keyword explorer. 

moz keyword explorer

 

Look for the search volume and the clicks on this specific keyword. Now you can set your keyword on your product page and optimize it to rank on Google quickly.

Focus on On-page SEO

 on page seo

The authority of your website is entirely dependent on relevancy and authority you built through content. You need to create content by playing smart with keywords. While you optimize for on the page, you need to focus what your target users might be searching when they use Google, Bing or other search engines. 

Make sure you use those keywords on your homepage to increase the chances of getting them to your page. On-page SEO revolves around two things; picking the best keywords to base each page of your site and optimize your page to make it clear that search engines find your page with those keywords.

Avoid keyword cluttering

For on-page optimization, don’t follow the old technique of keyword stuffing into your content to rank on search engines. This is not the smart technique because webmasters crank out the keyword-cluttered text is not exciting or deliver a horrible user experience. 

Use a specific keyword (avoid cluttering) to these places for On-Page Optimization.

The URL, page title, Meta description tag, on-page headings, the page content, alt tags to images.

You can also optimize your content with keywords while avoid cluttering. 

How? 

Use long-tail keywords in your subheadings, synonyms of your original keyword or you can craft an FAQ page as well to use long-tail keywords. If you add an FAQ page to your site in which you answer all the possible queries that might come in consumer’s mind, it will enhance the chances of ranking at No.1 position. 

 Streamline your On-page SEO by taking a step further

•    Work on mobile search

optimize for mobile search

 Google is accountable for driving 96% of mobile search traffic. (Jody Nimetz Co., 2018). So, mobile-friendly user experience should be the top SEO priority for your business. According to Google 2018 survey, more than 51 percent of smartphone users have discovered a new product while searching on their smartphone. 

•    Optimize for Voice Search

optimize for voice search

 According to Search engine land, 20% of voice searches can be made through Google`s mobile app and Android devices. The queries for voice search is increasing, and people are using it more vigorously.

Pro tip: For better user engagement add videos and infographics and make your content more visual to attract customers. According to research, the contents that are more visual with images and infographics get 94% more views than those who aren’t that visual. 

Get smart with Internal Linking

 internal linking

Links help in improving the trustworthiness and the authority of a website to search engines. Links help search engines connect the relevancy of a page with specific keywords that you use in a link’s anchor text.

Make sure you link all the pages of your website with internal links. It helps in boosting your e-commerce SEO by showing how pages are related to each other and increase the time on site by encouraging visitors to explore your site further. Linking to related products or blog articles can help improve e-commerce SEO and make your site more interesting for deep dives.

You can also add other sponsored products at the site that is related to the product your customer wants to buy; this smart internal linking helps the customer to dive more into your website pages and increase the time on site.

Create Backlinks 

 create back-links

Apart from internal linking, backlinks also help in ranking your e-commerce website. Google uses the backlinks to identify where your pages belong in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). Try to earn backlinks from high-quality sites; the more authoritative your website becomes, the more are your chances to stand out in the SERPs.

How do you get backlinks?

Earning backlinks is another tough job, but you can do it with smart planning. For your e-commerce store, you can gain backlinks with by submitting guest posts on blogs related to your niche. You can find the high-domain authority sites for guest posts by searching on Google. Just use the right keywords. Like “submit a guest post” or “write for us” or “contribute,” these keywords helps you to find the right sites for guest posting.  

Use Smart SEO tools to optimize your ranking

 smart Seo tools

Once you have optimized your e-commerce website for SEO, and plan out all the things, now you need the right tools to optimize your ranking on search engines. Whether you are a solo strategist or a part of an SEO team, these tools help you maximize your rankings. 

SEOmoz Keyword Tool

Open Site Explorer

SEOmator

Screaming Frog Spider

Open Site Explorer

SEMrush

Google AdWords Keyword Tool

Ubersuggest Keyword Suggestion Tool

Mergewords

Buzzstream

Citation Labs Broken Link Finder

Wrap up

Just as the fuel needs to run a vehicle, likewise your e-commerce website needs SEO to rank on Search engines. I hope this guide will help you streamline your SEO process and enables you to make smart decisions. And yes, of course, you can have the chances to earn #1 position on Google that you have aimed for.  

     Good luck!
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