Out of sight, out of the shopping list.
Believe it or not, that’s exactly how people shop today.
Long gone are the days when customers used to come to your store searching for your products.
Options have multiplied manifolds.
Competition has become cutthroat.
If people don’t see your online store, they won’t come looking for you.
You need to be visible to be able to make sales.
Now that’s possible only when your e-commerce store ranks on the top of Google’s search results.
After all, 48% of buyers start their purchase journey from a search engine, like Google.
With that, it is established that e-commerce SEO is important.
The next step requires you to learn SEO best practices for ecommerce sites.
If you want to solely focus on selling, you can avail SEO services and let experts deal with SEO.
If you want to perform SEO for your ecommerce product pages on your own, here is the most comprehensive ecommerce SEO checklist.
E-commerce SEO Best Practices – The Most Comprehensive Checklist
The checklist doesn’t contain any exclusive tips, hacks, or shortcuts. This isn’t a cheat sheet.
But the checklist does contain time-tested strategies that will help you achieve double-digit growth in your sales figures and soaring revenues.
Bookmark this checklist and strike off the steps you have implemented. And keep coming back until you strike everything off the list.
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Use HTTPS
It is an accepted sign of security. Not just in the eyes of Google, but your customers too. If your site isn’t secured, Google won’t rank you higher. And even if you do everything else right, rank high, and customers land on your page, they’d bounce away when they see ‘Not Secure’ in the address bar.
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Increase page load speed
People don’t have time. They’d leave if your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds. Increasing page load speed should be your top priority. It is a part of technical SEO for ecommerce. Removing useless Javascript and CSS code and optimizing images and media are some of the things you can do.
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Don’t overlook mobile optimization
Shopping doesn’t happen in shops anymore. Whenever people need or want, they can shop. Using not just their desktops but through their mobile phones as well. If your site doesn’t load right on mobile, customers aren’t coming back. Expecting them to switch to their laptops to view your online store is foolhardy.
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Build backlinks
Backlinks are at the base of SEO. And that goes for e-commerce SEO as well. If your product page doesn’t have enough high-quality backlinks, it is unlikely to rank. Now, backlink building or off-page SEO for ecommerce is not something that can be achieved within a day. And neither is it a child’s play. You’d most definitely need experts for that. Get professional SEO services.
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Write good meta descriptions
Meta descriptions that contain keywords help you rank higher for relevant search queries. But that’s not the end of their utility. They also act as trailers that give visitors a peek into what’s inside the link they are about to click on.
If your product page meta description includes just keywords stuffed one after the other, it will repel the buyer. Thus, defeating the purpose of ranking higher. Compelling meta descriptions are like sales associates at the entrance of your store. Unless they are good, your CTR and sales won’t grow. Once your CTR increases, you can expect a rank boost too. That’s a sure win-win.
And yes, don’t forget about your meta title while you are at it. Being dedicated to writing those 60 to 70 characters will help hold your prospective clients’ hands and bring them from the search result page into your sales funnel.
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Add Alt tags
The text describing the images and media content you use on your site is called an alt tag. It is a classic case of – we know it, but forget about it.
Search engine bots cannot crawl images. To understand what the image is about, they need written information. Using your keywords in alt tags for the product images on your website helps Google understand the context of those images. It helps you rank your pages in image search and boosts ecommerce SEO. Plus, alt tags help the visually impaired people in your target market group understand your page better while using the ‘Read Aloud’ feature on their devices.
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Add e-commerce breadcrumbs and streamline your site structure
For starters, make sure no page on your online store is more than three or four clicks away from your homepage. A clean site structure and clear navigation help users move around. And Google’s bot understands flatter site structures better. This ensures proper indexing and, thus, better ranking.
Then come the breadcrumbs. With breadcrumbs, you can help your customers know where exactly they are in the site hierarchy. And they can also navigate to other product and category pages with ease. The results? Better ranking and more organic sales.
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Set up 301 redirects
When you discontinue a certain product category or variety, the SEO prowess of that page doesn’t have to go to waste. Setting up a 301 redirect to another in-use product page can transfer the SEO value from the old page to the new one. This helps your in-use product pages rank higher, faster.
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Keep your URL clean, beautiful, and logical
Most people think that the answer to the question, “How can organic sales be improved?” lies in some tech-heavy tasks. But it is actually the little things that matter. If your product and category page URLs contain keywords and are based on the navigation level, they are likely to rank higher for relevant keyword searches.
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Add social integrations on your product pages
Wondering how do you increase organic traffic on my ecommerce website? Let your current visitors do the needful. With social integration, you let your present customers share your product with prospective customers. And that increases the digital footfall on your e-commerce store. An increase in organic footfall will directly translate to an increase in organic sales.
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Add sitemaps and robots.txt files
Google’s crawlers are machines. Agreed. But if you make their jobs easier, they’d reward you in some way for sure. With sitemaps and the robots.txt file on your site, you help the crawlers find all index-worthy pages and links on your site with ease. And with that, there is no chance of some of your product pages not being indexed. This has also historically shown an increment in page rankings.
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Don’t forget local SEO
If you have a physical store, increasing footfall there is also an increase in your organic sales, right? Claim your Google My Business listing. Add your address to your website. Get local backlinks from other businesses, yellow pages, and business directories. This will boost SEO and thus, sales.
Not sure you are adept in the art of local SEO? Avail of expert local SEO services, but don’t forget about it.
Even if you don’t have a physical store and exclusively sell online, your ecommerce sales will go up with local SEO. It works similar to telling prospective customers that they can buy XYZ products online from your store instead of hitting the local shops.
Pro Tip: Other than optimizing your website and online store, also optimize your marketplace stores. Experts can help optimize your Amazon storefront, for example, within a couple of hours. But the boost in organic sales from that channel will last much longer than one accounting year.
Adopt The Best Practices Today And Start Getting Organic Sales Soon
Upon proper implementation, these SEO best practices can help you increase your organic ecommerce sales.
How to ensure proper implementation?
Trust the affordable SEO services extended by agencies like Uplers. Their diverse team of experts will perform ecommerce SEO for you while you just focus on fulfilling orders on time.
Contact them now to get your plans off the ground at the earliest.
