The coronavirus pandemic has skyrocketed the popularity of the e-commerce world since last year. But, generating new consumers has become challenging due to competition and rising acquisition costs. You certainly don’t want to ignore a low-cost option to improve your business.
Here is a list of ecommerce SEO practices that your team has probably already implemented:
- Use important keywords
- Optimize product pages
- Avoid cluttered, complicated URLs
- Use alt text in product images
- Let customers write reviews
- Focus on local and voice search optimization
- A big NO to duplicate product description content
- Let a top-notch copywriter create short SEO optimized product descriptions
A lot has already been debated and written about the above steps. Thus, we have compiled a list of significant but often ignored ecommerce SEO best practices to help you up the ante. No worries, these can work with most e-commerce platforms.
- Keyword strategy with a focus on navigational, informational, and commercial intent
Search engines determine the user intent based on the choice of phrases in the search query. SEO practitioners categorize keywords into three categories, commercial, informational and navigational.
As the word suggests, commercial keywords highlight the user’s intention to make a purchase. For example, “buy Bournville Cranberry,” “Bournville Cranberry price.”
Informational keywords indicate the user’s intention to learn more. They contain words like “tips,” “how to use,” amongst others.
Navigational intention consists of phrases related to location, brand, or product.
Studies suggest roughly 80 percent of internet searches are informational, followed by 10 percent each for transactional and navigational. However, it is best to maintain focus on all.
Keyword tools like Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console can help find relevant phrases. You can also analyze your competitors’ stats along with their list of keywords.
- Add a blog to your e-store
It sounds crazy, but most e-stores do not have a blog. Such e-sellers are simply ignoring the best SEO practice that can lead to improvement in profits.
There is no doubt that e-commerce entrepreneurs have to manage a lot of aspects single-handedly. But that’s not a good reason to leave the most crucial part of content marketing aside. A digital marketing agency can handle content requirements, including blogs that play super-hero for your ecommerce SEO strategy.
You can consider publishing exclusive product reviews, how-to content, tips, and blog posts based on answers to frequently asked questions. Long-form content written around your audience’s intent, with a CTA button leading to your product pages, can do the trick.
- Adding long-tail Keyword variations in blog
Long-tail keywords have the potential to drive a considerable amount of organic clicks. These phrases can bring high-quality leads compared to short ones.
Questions can also make it in the list of long-tail keywords. So, creating content that answers these questions can do wonders.
- Core Web Vitals
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), First Input Delay (FID) are the three signals.
In simple terms, these factors focus on page loading time, page responsiveness, and the way a website displays on various devices. With CWV in place, you can consider most of the UX issues as fixed.
The ideal CLS should be 0.1 or less. The FID needs to be 100 ms or less, while the LCP should not be more than 2.5 seconds.
- Minor issues that can trigger major traffic loss
- Minifying CSS, HTML, and JavaScript
Removing unused code, unnecessary formatting, and code comments can help increase page speed. Your developers can use UglifyJS and CSSNano to complete the task quickly.
- Reducing redirects
Avoid linking your page with another page that has a redirect. For improved user experience, ensure your redirects have minimum resistance in the path.
- The expiration date for browser cache
Web and mobile browsers collect certain information from sites. The feature eliminates the need to reload entire page content when the visitor comes back to the website. Several tools can help setting an expiration date for this cache. Using the option can help ensure your visitors do not use the cached version of the site.
- Defining proper crawl rate
The crawl budget indicates the number of pages that are crawled and indexed during the specified time frame. Work with your SEO team and set a crawl rate to ensure important content is crawled and indexed by Google within the available budget capacity.
- XML SiteMap
XML Sitemap helps Google find website pages; it guides search bots in detecting pages that you want to be ranked.
The sitemap should be in XML document format. It should include details for all the pages on your site. Submit the same in Google Search Console.
- Internal linking of pages and related products
Internal linking has not become obsolete practice. It is essential for e-commerce sites as it makes indexing pages easy for search engines.
Internal linking needs to be incorporated strategically. The practice helps improve the e-store rank in Google, Yahoo, and Bing as well.
Connect the internal links to pages that have authority.
- Using HTTPS
You surely don’t wish to overlook security issues. It is another factor that can likely impact the website experience, traffic, and conversion.
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) protocol ensures secure data exchange between the store’s server and the user’s browser.
HTTPS facilitates a safer environment for data submissions, financial transactions, and other communication. It offers protection against man-in-the-middle attacks that hackers launch via insecure networks.
Websites with a combination of SSL 2048-bit key certificate and HTTPS can get an added advantage in search results.
- Significance of AMP & PWA pages
Internet users prefer browsing using their mobile devices. Your site needs to be responsive because visitors using mobile browsers may zoom on the product or pinch. This is where AMP and PWA come into the picture.
Progressive web applications (PWA) offer a native app-like experience without the need to download the app. The PWA version of the site works, looks, and feels the same as the desktop version.
Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP offer higher performance and engagement percentages.
Super-fast rendering of mobile web pages is possible with AMP as it restricts JavaScript, HTML/CSS. Businesses can create clean, streamlined, and relevant versions of their web pages and ensure a lightning-fast mobile experience.
Your web developer or digital marketing expert will be able to guide you when it comes to choosing pages that can turn into AMPs.
On a final note
Has your e-store recently reported a sudden drop in traffic? Perhaps, it’s time to change the digital marketing strategies and make technical tweaks.
