15 SEO Tips for ECommerce SEO
Every online marketer knows that good SEO requires many things. There are some recommendations specific to the needs and environment of e-commerce companies that any business conducting transactions online today should be aware of.
Following are 15 SEO tips that your e-commerce business should engage in:
- Mix Up Your Anchor Text
“Click here”, “learn more” and “contact us” have their place on your site but find opportunities to utilize more descriptive anchor text throughout as well.
- Write Your Own Product Descriptions
It might be tempting to use copy provided by manufacturers but that is exactly what your competitors do. Creating your own descriptions sets you apart from the competition and avoids the nasty duplicate content problem.
- Optimize On-Site Search
Make it easy for people to search within your site. Leverage predictive text and other technologies to help this.
- Promote Social Sharing
Pinterest has proven how people love to share exciting products with others. Encourage your site visitors to do this by embedding social share icons on product pages.
- Encourage Reviews
User reviews give you natural and fresh content—two things Google loves. When you take the extra step of responding, your engagement ratings also benefit.
- Track Page Errors
How many times have you been frustrated by a “404 error—page not found”? Don’t let your customers face this. Google Webmaster Tools easily gives you the information you need to address these issues.
- Beef Up Security
Stay on top of security by always making sure your site offers the latest in privacy protection, information security and checkout security.
- Create Strong URLs
Make each one directly relevant to the page content and unique from all others.
- Think Mobile
There is a whole Google algorithm devoted to mobile friendliness. That alone should make it clear to you that this matters.
- Get Visual
A picture’s worth a thousand words and a video…well, that may be worth a million. Every product should have good imagery and video where possible.
- Keep Image Size Down
Optimize your product images with keywords in the alt text for each one and keep an eye on file size as a way of minimizing page load times. Utilizing zoom features can help with this.
- Update Stock Status
Nobody wants to add a product to the cart and get all the way through to the checkout phase only to finally found out the product is not available. Put this information up front to keep the customer experience positive.
- Create Good Internal Links
You likely have related products on your site. Use these to create the type of healthy link structure that Google—and customers—love.
- Be Easy to Use
A logical navigation makes your site easy to visit for customers and easy to crawl for search robots.
- Leverage Seasonality
Keywords related to short-lived events tend to be less highly competitive, giving you an opportunity to stand out during these times.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of everything you should do for e-commerce SEO but can be considered a great starting point.
The common thread among all of these tips is a focus on the customer. At the end of the day, your job is to help that person find what they need quickly and with minimal or no hassle. When you do this, they will buy—and Google will notice.
