SEO isn't a magic bullet and four leaf clovers aren't actually lucky, but these tips from Infomedia in Birmingham, AL about using SEO for your e-commerce website just may bring you some extra sales and a lucky pot of gold.
St. Patrick’s Day is filled with lucky charms, but how do you make that luck rub off on your ecommerce web design? Sadly, we don’t know any leprechauns who can help you reach that pot of gold — but we do have the next best thing. We’ve gathered a few easy tips that will help you use Search Engine Optimization to grow your ecommerce website. Put these golden nuggets to work for your business, and you just might find the end of the rainbow after all.
It’s not about what you THINK people are searching for, it’s what they are actually searching for
With online shopping being the American way these days, Google constantly gets requests for the products people want. The problem is, the terms people use for searching aren’t exactly streamlined. To meet people where they are, you need to build a little wiggle room into your SEO. When deciding what verbiage to use on your product pages, pay attention to how culture refers to the types of products you are selling. Take a few minutes to get in the heads of your customers and tailor your content to what you think they are searching Google for. Of course, your product descriptions still need to sound professional and fit your brand, but the point is to try to match the keywords people are using to search for your products so Google can lead them right to you.
Don’t abuse your keywords once you have them
Once you nail down the keywords you want/need to optimize for, you must use them carefully. Using the keywords as much as possible to the point that your content reads unnaturally is a rookie mistake and will take you down a few notches in rankings rather than boosting you up. This is called SEO keyword stuffing, and it’s a big no-no! Yes, the keywords need to be on the page, but use them with finesse and with intelligence.
It’s okay not to optimize EVERY page
When dealing with ecommerce web design, more than likely, your company carries lots of products, which in turn means lots of pages, product titles, descriptions, etc. If you calculate SEO optimization for every page, it’s no wonder that it can feel completely overwhelming. The good news is, not every single page has to be optimized. Focus on the products that you sell the most of, the products that people are looking for most often based on keywords, and the products you are hoping to feature in the coming days. Each of those pages needs to have a product title, a product description (not the manufacturer’s; we’ll get to that in a second), and good SEO keywords mixed in rather than repeated every other word.
Manufacturer’s descriptions aren’t doing your SEO any favors
Retail regulars know that the products you sell often come with product descriptions so that you know what they are and, in turn, can explain to your customers what they are. But when it comes to writing product descriptions for your website, use the manufacturer’s product descriptions as a guide; don’t copy them verbatim. Why? Think about how many other retailers are selling the same products that you do — if you use the same descriptions, you’ll be competing with these other retailers instead of rising above them in rankings. If you provide unique product descriptions, especially if you’ve utilized keywords in your descriptions, you’re ahead of the game! One golden nugget for you!
Be sure to track visitors using Analytics
Say your site is booming with sales. You have more shipments going out than you know what to do with. That’s awesome! But you’ll want to pay attention to your Analytics, because they tell you which pages customers are visiting. What are the entry points into your website? Are your visitors getting to you through product pages, your home page, or your about page? It’s important to work to attract visitors to multiple pages, because as your industry grows and changes, keywords will evolve, too. You want your site’s anchor pages (like Home, About, Contact), to be pulling in visitors so you’ll keep getting traffic, even when keywords change. This can also lead to a lower bounce rate, resulting in higher conversions.
Review pages are easier to rank than product pages
Consider yourself as the customer for a second. Before you buy a product, you want to see what others are saying about it, right? So you’ll probably Google the product and then tag the word “review” behind it and get a whole page of what folks are saying. When customers find reviews about your business on the Internet, two things are happening … 1) more traffic is being driven to your brand/website and 2) credibility is being built. Google sends a huge percentage of traffic to review pages, so if you’re not focusing on these pages, you may be missing out on some easy exposure. Start asking your customers to leave you a review, and make sure you respond to what people are saying (good and bad).
Images only matter for SEO if done correctly
It’s a common misconception that images don’t make a difference in SEO since they can’t be read as words on a page, but there’s only a little bit of truth in that. It’s true that Google can’t tell if a picture of a cat is actually a cat. But alt text and captions make this a little more possible (especially with ecommerce web design). You can definitely use images to boost your site’s keywords. Just be sure to keep your alt text and captions relevant, and — as always — don’t keyword stuff.
The bottom line for ecommerce web design
We may not have made you go to the end of a rainbow for a pot of gold, but we can’t help but feel like there’s enough gold here to fill up a whole pot. Happy St. Patrick’s Day, and we wish you all the luck in the world in building your ecommerce business! If you want to learn more about SEO and ecommerce web design, contact Infomedia today to set up a free consultation — we’ll walk you through the best choices for ecommerce, and we can help you find the keywords that will build your business.