Being online has become second nature for most of us. Information related to anything is on our fingertips… just a Search away. So for most people, Google or any other search engine is the first stop when they consider buying something. Studying this rising trend, Google made some certain changes when it comes to displaying results. The first two results are paid or sponsored results and a slider of products follows them and then the organic search results are shown.

The competition has risen to such extent that unless your brand is present in the first few entries, people may not be aware of its existence. While paid leads are a great way to draw in interested leads, it is not a cost-effective method and may soon break the bank. So, it is important to optimize your eCommerce store to draw in more organic traffic.

In this article, we shall be focussing on different steps on how to improve Organic Search Visibility for eCommerce.

What Do Organic Search Results mean?

There are two ways you can bring in prospects to your store via online search:

1. You get suggested by Google
2. You ‘pay’ to get suggested by Google

In the latter case, you instruct Google to suggest your store as the top result when the user searches for certain ‘keywords’.

Unfortunately, you alone are not targeting the specific lead or target audience, so Google has the upper hand on how much it will charge and hence gives the top position to the highest bidder. This type of marketing is called Paid ad marketing

On the other hand, when you have optimized your store very well, Google’s algorithm thinks that your link is the right suit for a certain keyword and will automatically suggest it when someone searches for it. Since these leads are coming through the organic way, these leads are called Organic leads and the search results are called Organic Search Results.

Any link that Google thinks will answer the user’s search query is considered to be an organic search result.

You can improve the ranking of your store link by the following optimization methods:

• Reveal the most thorough answers to the widest range of questions around the topic.
• Use better images, videos, or examples to explain your points.
• Provide a better user experience via a faster site, a better mobile experience, a more intuitive interface, etc.
• Get people talking about (and linking) to you.

For eCommerce, that means writing thorough, vivid product descriptions with beautiful, eye-catching photography and plenty of reviews to help visitors make purchase decisions.

How to Improve Organic Search Visibility

The search result ranking or your brand visibility in organic search results cannot happen overnight or over the course of a few weeks as well. But there exist certain eCommerce marketing strategies that can help you improve the visibility of your eCommerce store.

Ecommerce Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first step in an eCommerce SEO campaign. If you get this part wrong, one of two things will happen:

• You’ll target keywords that are too difficult to rank for, and you won’t make it to page one.
• You’ll rank for keywords that don’t get a lot of traffic or don’t cause customers to buy.

Neither of these situations is ideal, which is why eCommerce keyword research is so important — it will ensure you target keywords that are fairly easy to rank for, have decent search volume and have high conversion rates.

To choose the best keywords possible, you also need to factor in buyer intent (aka “commercial intent”). If you have competitors who rank higher than you in search results, you can use their site to steal keyword ideas.

Conducting Competition research is a very easy and quick way to find which keywords to target. Ubersuggest is a great tool to use for it. All you need to do is insert your competitor’s website and it shall list some of the keywords that they are ranking on as seen in the example below.

However, do NOT blindly use the same keywords as your competitor! Just because they outrank you, doesn’t mean they’ve chosen the best keywords — they could just have a higher domain authority (DA) than you.
You can also use it to conduct keyword research and conduct an SEO audit by yourself.

Now that you have your keywords at hand, it is time to optimize your site structure with the chosen keywords.

Optimizing your Site Pages

The Ecommerce site structure is how you set up your navigation, category pages, and product pages. At its core, it’s about getting the best, most relevant content in front of users and reducing the number of times they have to click to find it. To improve your site’s SEO, you have to strategically incorporate these keywords in various locations:

• Page title
• Headers
• Subheaders
• Paragraphs (especially the first few)
• Product description
• Image file names
• Image alt tags
• Meta title and description
• URLs

Many people overlook page URLs, meta titles, and meta descriptions because they aren’t “visible” on a page.

A well-designed site architecture helps organize your pages for improved usability, ranking, and conversion. The golden rule for determining the site architecture is that no page should take more than 3 clicks to land on. But on the other hand, the deeper your pages go, the lesser link juice is passed on from the homepage. So, as shown below, the page arrangement should be such that the pages of the same category (product pages) should come under a category page and landing pages should be directly linked with the homepage.

(Source: Neil Patel)
By using a variety of anchor text choices, you can improve the ranking for your top keywords: Not only can you create internal links for related items to upsell and cross-sell on product pages, but you can also add them to your blog posts.

However, make sure you’re not overstuffing your pages with internal links as it’ll make Google suspicious of your website.

Optimize for Mobile

52% of online searches are made from mobile devices. Unless your page is optimized for the mobile, there is a big chance that you are missing out on great conversion opportunities. If your online store isn’t optimized for a fast and seamless mobile user experience, not only will you be penalized by Google but you’ll also lose out on other factors that could boost SEO, such as long dwell times or low bounce rates.
Optimizing an e-commerce site for mobile is no longer just a matter of squeezing all the content into a smaller screen. Some of the common factors to take care of when optimizing for mobile are:

• Page Speed
• Site design or layout
• Site errors

We have discussed this in our previous article. Be sure to check it out.

Building Stronger Content

Google likes fresh content because it’s an indicator that your website is active and relevant.

Publishing blog posts frequently helps you stay on search engines’ radars. It gives your customers more ways to find you and more reasons to return to your site.

When your articles are useful to your visitors, they’ll spend more time on your site. This signals to search engines that your content is relevant. Blogging is also a great strategy for capturing search traffic with long-tail keywords, which account for 70% of all online searches.

When you publish blog posts for your online store, you should:

• Optimize each post for one or a few keywords, especially those that aren’t used for your main pages
• Make sure it’s of high quality and reader-friendly
• Avoid keyword stuffing, which is penalized by Google
• Make it easy for visitors to share your posts with social sharing buttons
• Add internal links to spread “ranking power” around your website and make it easy for search engines to crawl and index your site
• Consider using a content upgrade to capture leads

Opt for Google Shopping

When you type in a product name on Google search, you’ll see a series of images at the top of your search result — above the other paid ads.

Listing your product directly with Google Shopping is the fastest way to get in front of potential customers who are already looking for the products that you sell. To list your products on Google Shopping, you need a free merchant account on the Google Merchant Center.

Once you register from there, you can upload product data and put your website in front of millions of shoppers. In addition, you can take advantage of Google’s location-based technology to drive online shoppers to your brick-and-mortar store with features like “in-stock” availability checking. When you upload your product data, make sure to use high-quality images, and follow Google’s image guidelines. You also want to optimize your product data feed by uploading as much information about your products as possible.

Wrapping Up

SEO ranking is increasingly becoming based on good usability as search engines keep updating their algorithms. So, optimizing your online store for organic traffic is an ongoing effort. You have to constantly respond to changes in the market landscape and search-engine algorithms. If this seems a gargantuan task and you need someone to manage your store’s Organic Search Visibility, all you need to do is get in touch.

Related Articles

• Common eCommerce SEO Mistakes You Need To Rectify
• SXO: Optimizing The Search Results For A Better User Experience
• 6 eCommerce SEO Tips That Can Multiply your Sales

The post Steps on How to Improve Organic Search Visibility for eCommerce appeared first on Blog | QeRetail.