According to Statista, 65% of eCommerce traffic comes from online searches. As an eCommerce seller, this data is critical as it shows what you are missing when you ignore SEO.
To have a competitive edge, you should pay more attention to SEO and come up with strategies that will help your website rank high in the search results pages.
What do you stand to gain when you invest in SEO? Well, plenty of things that include:
More leads
It goes without saying that when your website ranks at the top of the search results, it’s visible to more people. And with over half of eCommerce traffic coming from search engine hits, when you rank high, you are in front of those looking for your products. Automatically, this means more money in your pockets.
While some people will buy from you, some will create accounts, leaving you with their contact details. You shouldn’t ignore these people. Use the details they leave behind and promote to them. You never know. Maybe all they need is a little nudge, and they hit the buy button.
When promoting, use the products that they added to their cart, as these are mostly the ones they are interested in.
You have a better user experience.
SEO isn’t only about squeezing keywords in product descriptions—you also need to ensure that your website is easy to navigate.
When you invest in SEO, you have a great website that people can easily use and easily find the products they are after.
Lower paid Ads costs
Many eCommerce owners focus on paid ads, but studies show that 70-80% of search engine users ignore them.
When you rank your website high on the results pages, you don’t need to pay for the ads, as your target customers can easily find your website organically.
This means that you spend less on paid ads, which increases your bottom line.
You create lasting value.
When you launch a paid ads campaign, your campaign is as valuable as the time it’s running. Once you stop it, it doesn’t generate money and becomes valueless. This isn’t the case with SEO.
The content you build with SEO stays on the site for a long time, and its value continues to grow as the content ages. The value of the content can be as long-lasting as you want it to be.
Improve brand awareness
Since your website is visible to more people when ranking high, more people get to know about your brand, and as more people know your brand, the more money you stand to make.
Ecommerce SEO best practices
You must observe a set of strategies to get the most SEO benefits for your eCommerce website. These strategies include:
Have a good site structure: As mentioned, one benefit of SEO is that you get to give your customers an excellent user experience. This experience comes from having a good site structure.
As you develop the site structure, think not only about the people reading your content. Also, think about the search engines. As a rule of thumb, create a site tree that is easy for the search engines to read and understand.
Think about the URL structure: Many people think the URL doesn’t affect SEO, but studies have shown that it has a role in search engines and people. An ideal URL should be short and shouldn’t have capital letters, spaces, or dates.
It’s wise to include your keyword and product attributes in your URL.
Don’t write duplicate content: Creating quality content is hard, but to stand a chance on the search engines, create a valuable resource. You also need to work hard and ensure that the content you generate is unique.
It’s common for eCommerce stores to have similar content on different URLs. Search engines heavily penalize such content, and you should remove it from your site.
If you can’t, manage it using canonical tags. These tags help search engines understand that you only have one version of the URL that should be indexed, even if various versions of URLs are displayed.
Secure your site: People will enter their credit card details into your website, and chances are high that they won’t trust your website if it’s not secure.
Google and other search engines tell your visitors that your site is insecure, which can make them doubtful, and you end up losing business. You don’t want this, do you?
Work with your hosting provider to provide a security certificate that makes your site secure and more trustworthy.
Make use of breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs are internal links at the top of the page, allowing the user to return to the previous section or even the homepage. When creating the breadcrumbs, think about the ease of navigation and the indexing of the pages.
Always include keywords in your breadcrumbs to hit two birds with one stone.
Enhance your product descriptions: Your descriptions play a vital role in your SEO strategy, so you should be as strategic as possible with them.
Besides making them as detailed as possible, also include your target keywords. Of course, don’t overstuff your keywords, as it can lead to you getting penalized.
Noindex the shopping cart: It’s common practice to stop search engines from indexing your shopping cart. Thankfully, it’s easy to do as all you need to do is set them to “no follow” noindex” or use the C-robots tag.
Hiring SEO services
Optimizing your eCommerce store for search engines has plenty of perks, but you need to work to take the coveted top position.
If you have the skills and time, you can do the optimization yourself, but if the optimization tasks are too overwhelming, hire an SEO professional to help you.
An Ecommerce SEO agency will help you analyze your industry’s competitiveness and then develop a strategy that will work for your business.
When hiring SEO professionals, don’t hire the first one. Interview several agencies and only settle for the most experienced.
You don’t want to work with people that don’t know what they are doing and will drive your efforts into jeopardy, do you?