Getting traffic to your eCommerce store can be difficult if you don’t have a good grasp of how SEO works these days. A lot has changed in recent years and anyone who hasn’t kept up has been left behind.
The good news is that a few simple strategies can help you to improve your eCommerce SEO so that you’re able to get that hot buyer-ready traffic that you need to keep your revenue flowing. Let’s take a look at six eCommerce SEO tips that will make a huge impact for you.
1. Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
If your site isn’t mobile friendly then chances are it’s getting buried in the search results. The reason for this is that Google has rolled out its Mobile First Indexing algorithm. This means that sites that are mobile friendly will get pushed to the top, while those that aren’t get buried.
Converting your site to be mobile friendly isn’t hard in most cases, and if you’re with a platform like Shopify or Amazon then you don’t have anything to worry about. If you do need to do the conversion yourself, make sure you use a mobile friendly test to see if your site displays correctly across all platforms.
2. Targeting Unique Keywords
Keyword research is a must for any SEO plan, but let’s face it, most of the obvious ones are probably already being dominated in Google. You can overcome this problem by thinking about what makes your store and your items unique, and what keywords people would use to find what you’re selling.
This can be price related keywords such as “cheap,” or “luxury,” or quality related keywords like “top-quality,” or “clearance.” This is just the tip of the iceberg, there are tons of keywords you’ll find if you take the time to really think about it.
3. Remove Duplicate Content
Similar products may have similar pages but if they’re too similar then Google is going to penalize you. Take the time to make sure that each product has a unique description and title that won’t trigger Google’s duplicate content penalty. Above all else, make sure you’re not copying text from other sites word-for-word.
4. Optimize Your Images
Believe it or not, your images and how you handle them are a big part of your SEO. The first thing to remember is that you want to give each of your images a description, preferably using your main keywords for that page. This will help Google to identify and rank your pages for those keywords.
You also want to try and avoid using stock photos if possible. While this used to be a legit strategy, Google is starting to turn against stock images because they can be found in multiple locations across the net. Either use original images, or use stock photos that are relatively obscure. You can use a reverse image search to give you an idea if a stock photo is being widely used.
Here is a quick checklist of things you should be doing for your images:
- Create a unique description
- Don’t use descriptions for smaller images like buttons
- Make your descriptions short
- Don’t use keyword stuffing
- Make the description accurate
5. Redirect Out of Stock or Discontinued Items
Having a dead end on your site is bad for business, and SEO. If you have an item that’s out of stock, or that has been discontinued, you can redirect that page to a similar item.
This will improve your internal linking structure, and help you to make sales that you may have missed out on.
6. Do Regular SEO Audits
SEO is constantly changing because Google and the other search engines keep updating their algorithms. This makes it a long term strategy that needs constant upkeep in order for it to remain effective. The good news is that there are apps and software that make doing SEO audits easy.
If for some reason you don’t want to do the audits yourself, there are always SEO companies that will do it for you. You can even hire white label SEO firms that operate under another company like Semify. Of course, it is recommended to use keywords like “Semify reviews” to see how they’ve performed for other clients.
In any case, the sooner you get started with SEO the better. It may take a while to start working, but when it does you’ll have all the buyer ready traffic you need to grow your business.
