A successful online store hinges on three main things: a brilliant website, products that solve real problems for your target audience, and an eCommerce fulfillment service to get those products to your audience. Of course, those three things alone won’t be enough to get your business off the ground.
You need to do a whole lot of research and planning first, and once you’re operational, you need a marketing plan that includes a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. The following five points are crucial to developing an effective SEO plan for an eCommerce business:
Table of Contents
1. You Can Keep It Simple
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you first start researching SEO. However, you can keep things simple by focusing on the following six fundamentals:
- Gaining natural, non-spammy backlinks from high-authority websites;
- Ensuring your Core Web Vitals (CWV) ticks all Google’s boxes for a great user experience;
- Keeping your page speed at a high and healthy level;
- Ensuring your web content contains relevant keywords and phrases (written in a natural way);
- Ensuring the content on every page of your website matches what searchers would expect to see;
- Adding UX features that make navigation easier and more enjoyable for your customers.
2. Your On-Page Content Isn’t Just For Humans
You may think that the product pictures and videos should do all the talking in your online store. However, Google’s bots can’t read these things the way they can text. They use on-page copy to understand what a page is about and whether it’s a good fit for any given user intent. Of course, your copy must be written for humans first and bots second. However, it’s a mistake to not think about the bots at all.
3. Mobile-Friendliness Matters
Google has been placing an increasing level of significance on mobile-friendliness. So, over the coming months and years, sites that don’t perform well on mobile devices can expect to see their rankings fall as a result.
Research shows that people are increasingly comfortable making purchases on their phones, so you don’t want to lag behind on this trend. Fail to keep up, and your sales could suffer.
4. Dodgy Seo Tactics Can Do More Harm Than Good
There are plenty of “SEO gurus” and unscrupulous agencies out there who will happily take your money in exchange for creating backlinks. However, what they’ll conveniently fail to tell you is that the quality of the backlinks is what matters most.
Links from websites with low Domain Authority and high Spam Scores can send your website plummeting in Google’s estimation. So, if you do work with an SEO expert, insist on clear reporting and transparency in their work.
5. Small Details Matter In The Seo World
If you’re not a particularly detail-oriented person or simply don’t have time to write meta descriptions for every page of your website, consider hiring an expert to help you out. A reputable digital marketing agency can handle details like image alt text, meta titles and descriptions, keyword-friendly product descriptions, and all the other details that can make a world of difference to your search engine rankings.
Keep these things in mind as you design your SEO plan, and your online store should soon have the extra juice it needs to reach the top of the rankings. SEO isn’t easy to master, but if you focus on delivering a quality experience for humans first and bots second, you’ll be on the right path.