It’s easier than ever to set up an eCommerce website and start doing business. One of the biggest challenges you are going face, however, is how to attract people to your site. SEO or search engine optimisation plays a substantial role in this and getting it right can mean the difference between success and failure.
Here are some simple tips and tricks to improve your visibility online:
- Be Mobile Ready
It’s important to note that more of us access the internet, particularly online shopping, via our smartphones. Since the iPhone hit the market ten years ago, we’ve gradually fallen in love with being able to shop, play games, watch video and search the web while on the move, wherever we are. Your ecommerce site needs to look just as good on a mobile device as it does on a desktop pc. If it doesn’t, you’ll be missing out on a lot of important traffic.
- Focus on Download Times
With improvements in technology and connections over the last decade, we’ve also become a lot more impatient. It may sound like a small thing, but the time it takes your pages to download is vital. Visitors to your site are likely to press the back button if your site takes more than a few seconds to appear. Download speed for your site should, therefore, be a priority.
- Include Reviews
Search engines such as Google love new content and customer reviews are looked at as updates to your site. They also help improve the experience of users and so are seen as important in setting the value of your site and its ranking.
- Optimising Your Content
Traditional methods of improving SEO shouldn’t be ignored, including aspects like keywords. Organising your content with meaningful product descriptions and separating into easy to navigate category pages is also something you should be focused on. Including H1 and H2 title tags on your pages can have an impact as can making sure that your meta data (the information that appears in search results) is well thought out and meaningful.
- Original Content
The latest Google algorithms that determine your search ranking are focused on original content. That’s not just what you write but media such as video and images. Choosing stock product descriptions for your ecommerce site, therefore, can have a detrimental effect on your visibility. Try to write your own content rather than copying from another source, however expedient that might seem.
- Building Links
This can be something which works against you, particularly if you believe that more is good for your business. Google still likes inbound links but wants them to be from reputable sources. Choosing spurious link building strategies can be harmful to your business but creating relationships with brand ambassadors and reputable sites who will connect to your site can be powerful if done correctly.
- SEO Tweaks
There are plenty of small but standard SEO processes that might not make a big difference to your ranking but are none the less important. These include:
- Adding keywords to anchor text on a page.
- Including 301 redirects for pages that no longer exist.
- Optimising images and videos included on your website.
- Utilising your site map to prioritise certain pages.
- Modifying the Robot.txt file to streamline web crawling.
Ensuring that you have the right SEO strategy in place can be complex, challenging and nuanced, especially for start-up ecommerce businesses. It helps to work with a third party to ensure that you cover all the bases and develop a site that ticks all the boxes when it comes to online visibility. Doing so can increase footfall and improve conversions for your business.