As an online retailer, you might have spent thousands of dollars on your website and are now looking to increase traffic and grow your business.
This aspect is known as eCommerce SEO and requires professional preparation and planning as you need to choose the most optimum way from among many available to drive traffic to your website. Also, you are not just seeking any traffic, but quality traffic that comprises potential customers.
So how do you start with eCommerce SEO? Below are some easy and freeways that are also proven:
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List your products in Google shopping:
Google Shopping is a branch of Google AdWords and serves as a new way for online merchants to advertise and sell their products. It’s USP is that it appeals to buyers who are shopping on the internet for best deals. It has become popular lately because Google Shopping Ads has shown a 30% higher conversion rate than conventional text ads.
Build a solid social media presence
eCommerce SEO puts emphasis on leveraging social media to popularize your website and build an active audience who engage with your products and share their experience in the form of reviews and comments. Just putting up a Facebook page and doing a few random posts a week is not enough. You have to leverage the power of platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Sharpen your email marketing campaign
Instead of sending generic content that gets trashed away, build customized emails based on personas and profiles of your website visitors and stay concise with your content by focusing on the graphics. There might be mobile users, so optimize your content for those readers too. Ideally speaking, you should build an email list using a good CRM.
Focus on on-page SEO techniques
Most shoppers search Google when they are buying a product and therefore it is absolutely essential that your eCommerce store ranks on the first page of Google. You have to make the first page attractive, because if the first page is not attractive then visitors will go away. Some of the best-known techniques for eCommerce SEO are doing an SEO audit, optimizing graphic content, optimizing key landing pages with relevant targeted keywords, building internal links, fixing 404 errors and maximizing page speed and site speed. The last two techniques enhance user experience to a great degree.
Use long-tail keywords in eCommerce SEO strategy
Instead of focusing only on highly competitive keywords, it is better to use long-tail keywords where competition is less and results are substantial. These keywords can be obtained from Google analytics and cover not only head keywords, but are also good for PPC and on-page optimization.
Create a blog and put regular posts on it
This is a very good eCommerce SEO strategy as it establishes thought leadership and drives more people to your website, especially those who are looking for original thought, critique and suggestions. Blogs also update the website so that it gets indexed. Interviews with celebrities, reviews on a product or how to use a product are great ideas.
Start with influencer marketing
Build a circle of influencers who can endorse your products. Influencers have a large fan following and their product recommendation and endorsement can drive traffic to your site. Serious visitors might actually engage with your online offerings leading to conversions.
Ensure your online store is responsive
Very important! Ensure that your online store is responsive and what appears on PCs and laptops works equally well for mobile devices and tablets as well, or is at least suitably adapted.
Create eye-popping headlines
Use headlines that motivate visitors to click. Build keywords in your headlines and be clear, concise and to the point.
Build a voice in the community
Create your identity and associate that with your online retail store. Start telling stories, giving comments, sharing thoughts, offering suggestions on various forums, platforms and blogs that are popular. This will give credence to you, your products and ultimately your brand.
Conclusion
Using the above techniques measurable impact can be seen in website traffic leading to higher sales.
