Why should I do SEO for my ecommerce website and what benefits will it bring me?

• 80% of consumers like to research products online before they buy.
• 70% of online users have made a purchase online (Statistic from 2016)
• 35% of all ecommerce begins with the user searching on Google alone. This is a massive market that gets bigger year by year.

So what do you think, isn’t it about time you started thinking about SEO for your online business?

Let’s look at some of the things that you can start implementing today to increase the ranking of your product pages and drive lots more sales for your business.

Technical on-site SEO

The way your website has been created can play a huge factor in the way that the Search engines will rank you. Having a professional web development company write the code for your site in an SEO efficient way is a great start. Clean coding the page and making sure everything on the page is laid out in an SEO friendly way, helps the engines to index your page properly.

Your keywords can be placed in the product page URL, try to keep the URL as short as possible though. It is still good practice to use SEO friendly URLs instead of the page’s actual file name. This helps to give the user more description about the page before they click through to it.

The content on your page should have a H1 heading tag which clearly describes your product, and matches the meta TITLE and meta Description tags of the page. Further content subleaders should be used to help space out and separate content accordingly.

SSL Certificates (HTTPS)

Over the past year now, we have seen websites getting a distinct improvement in rankings after switching from HTTP to HTTPS by adding an SSL certificate to their website. This is particularly true when it comes to ecommerce websites.

From the moment you land on a website that you may potentially buy from, you want to see that the site is secure and that you can safely purchase products from them. Installing an SSL certificate ensures this trust level to your customers.

Even if you take payments from a 3rd party website, so technically SSL is not required on your site, you should think about install one, just to put your customers at ease. SSL certificates are relatively cheap these days, and your hosting company should install it for you. So, there is no reason not to make this a priority right now.

Mobile

60% of smartphone users have purchased online with their phone. What does this mean? Obviously, you are going to be losing out on lots of sales, if your website does not have a well optimized design for mobile devices. This means testing purchases yourself through your phone to make sure it is easy for the client to find your product. Then all the info about your product should be delivered instantly in an easy to read format.

90% of checkout processes are abandoned. So, you need to make sure the whole buying process is simple, quick and has no surprises. So, make it clear about shipping costs, and any other extra that the user may incur in their purchase.

Site Speed

All your website pages need to load fast for mobile users. They may not be on the fastest of Internet connections, so test page load speed across multiple pages to make sure there are no problems.

For SEO, page load speed is becoming more and more of an issue. Users do not want to wait around for a webpage to load, nor do they. So, if you are getting lots of quick bounces from your pages, then this is the first area to look at and run some tests.

A good page speed test like https://tools.pingdom.com will give you information on how to speed up your website loading time, and where any potential problems may lie.

Design

Your website design should be done in a way that is easy for the user to quickly understand how to navigate the sections of your site. And be uncluttered and relaxing, so the user is immediately put at easy in your online shop.

Make it easy to the user to find your product, with good site navigation and search functionality. Create the product pages with space to showcase your most important features, and make it clear how to buy and what is involved with the purchase and shipping if applicable.

Create a checkout process that is quick and easy to use. 30% shoppers abandon the checkout process due to it being complicated or too long. Forcing people to sign up as a client before they buy is one of the major aspects that put them off completing the purchase. So, let them checkout with the least clicks as possible, the less they have to think about it, the more likely they are to complete the purchase.

60% shoppers abandon checkout because they are faced with extra fees at the end, like shipping that were no obvious beforehand. So be clear from the outset about all costs.

Content

Your content can help your product page rank high in the Search Engines, you will need to write some engaging long form content, after doing some keyword research to find the main keyphrase and also some long tail keywords to rank for.

Your content must be unique to avoid any duplicate content issues. So never copy a manufacturers product description, or use an almost identical one from another product you have.

Write long form content for each product – You can go into details about the specs of each product, describe how to use the product. What are the benefits of using the product, and what are the key features. Added together you can quite easily create 1000+ words for each product like this.

Your product images should have keyword rich ALT tags and file names.

Reviews

People like to read reviews, and the search engines like to show stats of reviews in their search results. So, when a user is searching for a product that you sell, if there are stats of positive reviews listed right in the search page. This is a big help in increasing click through rate, which in turn helps with SEO and rankings.

Product reviews can answer questions that you may not have thought of, and can help your customers in choosing you to purchase from.

Social Sharing

Adding social share buttons to your product pages, can increase the amount of backlinks the page receives, and can drive more traffic. Layout these buttons so they do not distract form the buying experience, so keep them small and out of the way of your buy or checkout button.

Structured data

Setup schema micro data for your products. This is easier than it sounds and can bring you lots more traffic and help with rankings. You can add schema for your reviews, product info and prices to appear in the search results pages with your listing. This helps increase click through rate, as your listing in the search results pages will stand out more.

Internal Links

Good site navigation is critical with product pages. Your customers should find the right product as quickly as possible, and with product detail pages quite often buried deep in the site architecture, this becomes important for the SEO of the page as well.

So, creating Internal Links, direct to your product details page can give it a real ranking boost in the search results. If you have a blog, then this is one area where you can create a good, valuable link to your product page, passing page authority and bringing traffic to it.

You can use your keywords in the anchor text of internal links, just like you would for external links. This helps the search engines get to know the topic of the content on the page, and as such will help with ranking for that keyword phrase and other related terms.

Internal links to your product pages are free and easy to create, bringing value to your pages. Be careful not to create too many per page as this can look un-natural and will then not benefit the page you are linking to.

External Links

Acquiring quality backlinks to your web page is still one of the top ranking factors that all the search engines use today. Building natural links from a wide variety of niche related websites can boost rankings significantly, drawing traffic to your online shop.

It is good practice to build links to lots of inner pages on your website. So, creating links to your product pages is ideal for this. It not only increases the page authority of each page that is linked to, but also increases your overall domain authority as well.

Here is a list of ways to gain natural backlinks to your website that can be added to your overall SEO plan. You can also employ a professional link building company to buy backlinks for your website. When done correctly this will give you a huge boost in rankings, pushing you to the top of the search results and in front of your potential new customers.