Many new online e-commerce sellers ask us this question – “How can I reach more customers online?”
The answer is simple, you just need to let people know about your new online store.
“How can I do this?”, other than those online advertising methods we’ve covered in our previous post, today we will cover only tips on SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization.
SEO is the process of improving your website visibility and ranking in search engine. So the higher you rank, the more traffic and customers you will be getting, simple!
1. Do your product keywords research
Know what your customers are looking and searching for. Do not be lazy about naming your product or putting your product code as your product name. People will search for “Grey T-shirt” instead of “GT-0021”, so make sure your product name makes sense.
Use analytical tools like Google Keyword Planner to research for high volume keywords for your industry. Try to put those high volume with low competition keywords as your top priority, as they are easier to rank as compared to those which are highly competitive. Also go for long tail keywords that make sense, such as “long sleeve grey tshirt” instead of only “grey tshirt”.
2. Meta Title, Description and URL
Most e-commerce vendors fail in this category, as their product URL consist of unknown characters or junk codes such as http://mystore.com/product-56883.html, http://mystore.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=65, this makes absolutely no sense to search engine crawler, or even human.
The worst case is your e-commerce provider is not giving you the access or control over these URLs, that means you can do nothing about it as long as you stick with these vendors.
Your URL should be keywords related and separated by “-“, such as https://demo.jumixdesign.com/shop/dining-room, https://demo.jumixdesign.com/shop/dining-room/bed-a1, this tells the search engine what is the product category as well as the product “bed” for “living room”.
Meta Title and Meta Description is also very important, make sure you key in all of those and do not duplicate these even you are lazy. If you have a lot of products and really have no time to do all of these, consider to outsource it to a SEO agency or use e-commerce vendor which provide automatic Meta generators in their system, such as the one offer by Jumix Design.
3. Never delete old items
Most sellers tend to delete off all the “out of stock” items when they are no longer selling them, this is a BIG MISTAKE! You should never delete any page or product if they are old or if you are no longer selling them. In fact you are deleting off the SEO juice that these old items have given to you over time, especially if they were already well ranked for their keywords.
What should you do with these items? You can hide them from your store front so customers won’t be frustrated that they keep seeing out of stock stuffs, then put in an alternative or “new version” of that item as a recommendation or in related product column if you have one. If you are going to restock these items, set in a function which customers can tick “Inform me when it is available” so they can be informed when the products are back on.
4. Optimize your content and image
Most product resellers or dealers like to use the image and product description straight from their supplier’s website. This is another BIG MISTAKE that cause your rank to fall. Google will label this as duplicate content, as what your website written are just a copycat version of your supplier’s. Well unless your supplier do not have a website and you are using content from an offline source, then your content will be safe.
If you would like your product to appear in Google Image Search, make sure you rename your images to something relevant to your product name. If the image is a t-shirt, rename the image file as “grey-tshirt-001.jpg”. This can help when someone search “grey t-shirt” in Google image, as your product will likely to show up if the keywords match.
Renaming all images can be a tedious process, so always consider to adopt an automation system from your e-commerce vendor’s choice.
5. Utilize user generated content
If you really have not much to talk about your product or content to show off, you can add user generated content. Allow user reviews and comment on your product. This can help to add more content and value automatically to your product page without having to do anything at all. Also allows users to share your product and publish their reviews on their social networks account, this can help to increase your SEO social signals.
Having good customers reviews on your products may help to boost the confidence of other potential customers, acting as free testimonials for your online store.
6. Make sure your site is secured
Just this month of writing, Google has announced that they are giving better ranking for sites which use HTTPS / SSL on their website. You can read about how HTTPS is use as a ranking signal here. SSL not only gives you secured connection when users are transmitting sensitive information to your website, it also help to boost customers’ confidence as they can rest assure that their data is secured and in goods hands.
Now that we confirmed SSL also help to boost site ranking, you should really secure your e-commerce online store with a SSL certificate right now.
You can purchase and get your SSL certificate installed by us from as low as RM99/year.
We still have a lot to cover on the topic of SEO tips for e-commerce online store, however all the above mentioned are the tips you can make good use of it now.
You will surely see a rank improvement for your website once you have adopted all the tips above. If you need any help, please do not be hesitate to contact us.
Sanz Teoh
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