In recent years, the dramatic rise in the eCommerce industry and online shopping has increased online retail sales to $26.7 trillion. Hence, it’s no surprise that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective tools for aspiring eCommerce entrepreneurs.
The better their SEO optimization is, the greater the reach of their business and the rate of conversions. Also, people are opting for buying online because of convenience, so you don’t want to miss out on this trend.
But are you doing SEO properly to tap into this wave of eager prospects? Read on to find the top three SEO tips to skyrocket your eCommerce business.
Tip #1. Work on Your Keyword Strategy
To have your products or service offerings rank high, you need to opt for long-tail keywords, keyword phrases with three, four, or more words in them.
The thing is that these serve many functions. For example, if you’re selling beauty products, you cannot just use the phrases beauty products or best cosmetics, as they’re generic. You need to adjust them to your niche and user intent. If a prospect is interested in buying nail polish, consider using a keyword such as beauty products, cosmetics, nail polish or nail polish cosmetics, and so on.
Likewise, if you’re running an eCommerce site but offer SEO services, consider the difference between SEO advice, eCommerce advice, and SEO advice for eCommerce businesses. So, the latter is more relevant to what you’re selling and accurately represents what a prospect might be looking for. Besides, in SEO, relevance is nearly everything.
Just keep in mind that long-tail keywords make it easier to capture the user intent and, thus, increase qualified leads and conversions. As a last note, using difficult keywords for ranking might be better to gain traction, as they seem to increase ranking potential.
Tip #2. Optimize Your Product Descriptions & Category Pages
Using the same descriptions as the manufacturer isn’t a smart way to gain traction. In fact, this doesn’t get you anywhere when it comes to search engines and user intent.
And there’s a good reason for this: The manufacturer is probably already a great retailer ranking with that specific description. So, if you decide to duplicate it, it will be held against you since duplicate content doesn’t rank.
Sure, crafting SEO-focused product descriptions takes time, but it’s worth it. Hence, make your descriptions appealing to consumers and, while on it, aim to answer any questions they may have about your products or offerings, too. Of course, you could try to spam keywords, as well, but by doing so, you risk losing conversions, as people might deem your descriptions suspicious.
Except for product descriptions or product reviews, consider optimizing your category pages, too. Most marketers spend too much time optimizing their product descriptions that they completely forget about optimizing their landing pages. And these are critical to SEO ranking since they are among the first stages of the buyer’s journey.
Think of your category pages as an effective method to bring prospective consumers to your eCommerce store to solve their pain points with your products.
Last but not least, ranking for keywords that reflect the first stage of the buyer’s journey, Awareness, is easier than ranking for the later stages. This lets you gain the attention of prospects early on and build their trust to increase the chances of conversion.
Tip #3. Don’t Try to Rank for Everything
To succeed in eCommerce, you don’t need to offer good quality products and know how to present them. Consumers expect to find what they need quickly in the digital world without spending too much time searching. Otherwise, they leave without converting. So, if you don’t narrow your categories, it will be hard to rank for anything.
What you should do is be specific with your offerings and try to show prospects that they’ve arrived at the correct product page. In other words, being specific can make the difference between conversions and increased bounce rate.
A good piece of advice is to create sub-categories for your products in the order people search. For example, product brand > product category > specific type of product. Hence, using the previous example with the cosmetics, that would be Prada > beauty products > nail polishes.
Conclusion
If something’s certain, eCommerce has exploded, and the eCommerce businesses that succeed in this competitive field do so with SEO.
Adjusting your SEO strategy can make the greatest difference to your eCommerce store’s success. So, don’t ignore it, as it’s an integral part of today’s market.
The above SEO tips can enable your website to reach its ranking potential and increase the number of conversions beyond expectation. Use them or reach out to a professional SEO content strategy solution for complete peace of mind if you don’t feel confident with your SEO skills.
