There is no doubt that the Covid 19 pandemic significantly impacted physical businesses, forcing an unexpected shift to the online world. This meant that e-commerce took a different shape as more companies looked forward to growing their web presence and expanding their customer base. The eCommerce industry is proliferating today, and more and more retailers are taking their game higher and diving into online selling. 2022 has more to offer to the eCommerce industry. Businesses will see tough competition in online selling and have to be on their toes to save their day. A good SEO strategy is a must in 2022 and even beyond to stay relevant and competitive in the future. Your eCommerce business has to adapt to the uprising trends quickly.
Search Engine Optimization is essential for all e-commerce websites. Reaching the first page is trivial, but attaining and maintaining the number one position is what is challenging.
Today SEO is an indispensable part of any successful marketing campaign. However, most businesses remain estranged from this reality.
Before proceeding with the nitty and gritty of an effective SEO strategy, you need to consider – Why is SEO so important for your business?
Google is a search engine, meant to satisfy users’ queries in the best possible manner. A website that optimally provides answers to all questions is the candidate for the number one position, according to Google’s algorithms. The visitor should not need to turn to another site for his queries.
SEO is a scientific art: – a compelling blend of technical aspects and the creativity required out of good design and User Experience.
Whether you are a renowned brand or you’ve just commenced your journey in the online world of business, this post will prove to be your guide and friend to sail you through the issues relating to SEO.
Here is some enriching strategy for all online marketers-
1. Research Keywords
A valid keyword should have the following attributes:
- They should be easy to rank.
- They should have an excellent search volume.
- Keywords should have a high rate of conversion.
For a keyword to possess these attributes, there is one thing that is extremely important to consider at the grass-root level – The buyer’s intention.
The buyer’s intention implies how serious a buyer is in making a purchase –
I.e., whether he is still in the research phase or is heading to make the final purchase.
Having heard so much about keywords and their attributes, the next question intriguing you must be – How do I uncover the best possible keywords for my website?
Well there are three sources to help uncover the most suitable keywords
- Using Amazon keyword Research – Amazon is a treasure trove to discover keywords because people visit Amazon intending to buy something.
- Researching keywords used by your competitors – Analyzing the keywords used by your competitors is an excellent idea. Rip off keywords ideas from competitors who have a better website ranking than you. Do not copy the keywords blindly.
- SEO tools – Ahrefs is an SEO tool that helps you in your quest for discovering the most relevant keywords, analyzing the keywords incorporated by your competitors, and build backlinks.
- Check whether the chosen keywords are relevant and catch the most eyeballs – Once you get the keyword data using Ahrefs, the next step is to select the aptest keywords in terms of buyer’s intention, search volume, and keyword difficulty. The Google planner can help you accomplish this task.
2. Website Architecture
When we talk about the Website Architecture, we are referring to the structure or organization of the home page, category pages and product pages. The structure should be such that it makes navigation simple.
Site architecture is considered good if it meets the following attributes;
- Simple and scalable
- Getting from one page to any other page should not take more than three clicks.
- Page URLs and subdirectories should be relevantly founded by thorough keyword research and analysis.
- The site should have good content to draw external backlinks, which further pass on authority to your product and category pages.
- Your home page should have relevant links to all your product and category pages.
Poor navigation hampers your rank on the search engine. Your home page, which is the most authoritative page, should divulge authority to the product and category pages.
3. On-page SEO
On-page SEO forms an integral part of your internet marketing campaign. On-page SEO helps search engines have a better understanding of your website. With this strategy, search engines can gauge the relevancy of your content to the people seeking a particular piece of information, using a specific set of keywords. So, On-page SEO can help attain better results for your online business.
Some of the vital elements comprising On-page SEO are:
- Choosing the right set of keywords for a targeted audience.
- Choosing proper Domain names.
- Metadata Optimization
- Creation of unique content.
- Optimizing other media elements, such as videos, images, and non-textual content.
- Optimizing the landing page/service/product pages.
4. Perform Technical audits for your eCommerce websites
Auditing is another vital part of the e-commerce business. It helps you to gauge whether your website is performing as per your expectations, giving you a fair idea of the areas of improvement. Regular audits need to be conducted to keep pace with your competitors and optimize your business.
Some useful tips for conducting website audits are:
- Check your content for quality, relevance, and uniqueness.
- Check your website to ensure its mobile friendly.
- Products should be organized appropriately on your website
- Check to see whether you are using the right platform.
- Check the speed of your website
- Check the ease of use of your website.
- Check your content for consistency.
- Check to see that the stock images have not been lifted from somewhere else, and they speak about your business.
- Take an insight into how the visitors feel about your website. Step into the shoes of your visitors and analyze what alterations are required to boost your sales.
5. Perform Local SEO
To boost local traffic, do the following:
- Feed-in your business details into Google’s database using Google My Business feature.
- Build local citations or backlinks from other local websites such as news outlets, social media, magazines, and press releases.
- Get links on local websites for better Domain authority and ranking high in the local market.
6. Content Marketing
Content marketing through blogging, articles and advertisements is the most straightforward strategy to boost your rankings and build backlinks.
A good blog post with the aptest keywords is an easy way to gain domain authority. The kind of content you portray on your site, consumers tend to think about you accordingly. If your content is interesting, informative and valuable, visitors form the same opinion about your brand.
Content marketing provides a rate of conversion that is six times more than any other marketing strategy. Video content boosts your ROI and increases your conversion rate.
Content marketing works to build trust and relationships and helps to make an informed purchasing decision.
Optimized content helps to improve your SEO efforts. Moreover, it is a cost-effective way to generate more leads for your business.
Here are a few steps to create a good content strategy to grow your business:
- Set your mission and goals
- Define your Key Performance Indicators(KPI’s ) for your content marketing strategy. Make necessary changes if required.
- Determine the best channels suitable to market your content.
- Decide on the types of content you will include, such as blogs, articles, video content, or infographics.
- Plan and create a content calendar to schedule the dates to put your content on different platforms.
This is a simple approach, but if you are publishing content in bulk, you can hire a team to manage the content-flow. Productivity and task management tools such as Asana and CoSchedule can be used to do this.
7. Link Building
Place links on sites that will generate traffic to your eCommerce site. Links will boost the ranking of your website.
There are six necessary steps to an effective link building strategy.
- Know who your audience is and how you can expand your audience.
- Make a list of websites that are liked by your audience
- Write fascinating content
- Match your content to other websites’ content
- Reach out to the owners of these websites
- Use social media to intensify and expatiate your content.
Consider link building as a strategy to reach out to a new audience or expand the existing one. You will have a higher ranking on Google.
8. Measure SEO success for your website
When we talk about measuring SEO success, we are analyzing its performance, to check whether our SEO efforts are yielding any fruitful results or are just a futile exercise. The performance can be monitored over some time. A gradual, small increase in the rankings are signs of an effective SEO strategy.
You can monitor your ranking in two ways:
- Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs.
- Set up an SEO dashboard in your analytics account.
Conclusion:
A sound SEO strategy can earn you extra sales within a very short period. Following this guide can step up your ranking on Google.
Great content will earn you links from reputable sources. Gradually, your brand will gain authority in business as your customers will be happy.
If your business needs any assistance on SEO, Simple Intelligent Systems will be pleased to help you. You can mail us or give us a call, and we will be happy to help.
