eCommerce SEO Tips

Ranking on a search engine results page (SERP) is crucial if you want searchers to find your eCommerce site. Websites with great SEO strategies appear on the first page of search results and acquire more traffic, resulting in more conversions. Without an SEO strategy, people are not directed to your website because it does not show up in organic search results.

We understand it can be difficult to rank on a SERP if you don’t know how to correctly optimize your site for SEO. So, we put together a complete guide to ranking in search, and we're here to provide you with useful eCommerce SEO tips so that your eCommerce website can gain more exposure, leads, and conversions.

SEO Tips

• Crawl your website
• Conduct an SEO audit
• Show your unique value proposition on each page
• Secure your website
• E-A-T
• Optimize for mobile
• Optimize your pages
• Optimize alt text and image names

Crawl Your Website

If you want your site to be ranked in search, your site must be indexed. To crawl means to see all of your website pages that search engines have indexed. For an overview of these website pages, you can use tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs or Moz.

Be sure to export the results into an Excel or CSV file after crawling your website. Then, focus on the URL, page title and page meta description to better optimize your webpages for SEO.

Conduct an SEO Audit

Since you already optimized your URL, page title and page meta description, you now have a template that serves as a basic index of your website. Recognize the current location of your existing web pages and arrange your web pages so that they’re structured how you’d like. Be sure to note whether the page you’re examining is a homepage, part of your primary or secondary navigation menu, an internal page, etc.

Show Your Unique Value Proposition (UVP) On Each Page

It is easy to overlook a UVP. However, having a UVP on each page of your eCommerce site is crucial to a positive customer experience. 

Customers want to look at your page and easily identify the benefits they receive by purchasing from you. For example, your UVP for your homepage could be “Free Shipping on $50 Orders.” UVPs can even be more simple and goal-oriented, like “gain trust with customers” or “show expertise.”

Secure Your Website

73.9% of eCommerce websites are hacked for SEO purposes. Secure your website so that hackers cannot access your web pages and customers are not bombarded with random, irrelevant ads. Hackers will add links to random sites which will ultimately ruin your hard-work and compromise your ranking on a SERP.

E-A-T

Google wants to be positive that the links and sites they display on their SERPs have a high level of expertise, authority and trustworthiness, or E-A-T. Be sure that your eCommerce site represents E-A-T and then communicate it to Google.

Establish your expertise and communicate it to Google by finding out what your audience is searching for and meeting (and exceeding!) their needs. When it comes to establishing your site’s authoritativeness, links from relevant and authoritative websites are a huge factor. 

Mentions, whether in the news or on authoritative websites in your space, are things to venture towards. Lastly, having positive customer reviews on places like Yelp, Facebook, Google My Business and more will help Google believe your eCommerce site is trustworthy.

Optimize For Mobile

Did you know that over 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while conducting a search on their smartphone? If your eCommerce website isn’t optimized for mobile, you’re putting yourself at a serious disadvantage. 

If you don’t know how well your site is optimized, HubSpot’s Website Grader is a great tool to check your mobile responsiveness. And to take things a step further, Google’s AMP format reduces load time and improves mobile search rank, further optimizing the mobile experience for users.

Optimize Your Pages

When it comes to your eCommerce site’s product pages, place keywords with high search volume into not only H1 and H2s, but also meta descriptions and body copy. This will help your website appear in SERPs for specific product searches. Additionally, track what users are searching for directly on your website by enabling the Site Search feature in Google Analytics.

Optimize Alt Text and Image Names

Alt text describes an image on your eCommerce website to viewers who are unable to see them, and it aids Google in understanding the context of an image. Use appropriate alt text for images to help search engines understand how your image and content relate to each other.

When creating alt text, be sure to avoid using dashes. For example, if you’re eCommerce website has an image of waffles, acceptable alt text would be “waffles” or “waffles with strawberry and syrup.” Unacceptable alt text would be “waffles.jpg” or “waffles-with-strawberries-and-syrup.”

Additionally, image file names are a small but additional factor when it comes to SEO ranking. If you’re uploading your personal images to your site, avoid the typical file names like “IMG2497.jpg” and instead, opt for something more readable and user-friendly. 

Here is where dashes are acceptable. Save your waffle image as something along the lines of “waffles-topped-with-strawberries” before uploading the image to your website.

Conclusion

Optimizing your website for SEO can be an invaluable decision in increasing your eCommerce website’s exposure. We hope you are eager to complement your strategic efforts with these eCommerce SEO tips.

If you have additional questions or want help creating an SEO strategy for your eCommerce website, reach out to us through the form below.

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