Ecommerce SEO Guide for Beginners

Last Updated on September 20, 2018 by Kuldeep Bisht

Virtual stores are gradually replacing brick and mortar stores. In fact, the global ecommerce industry was valued at $1.915 trillion in 2016. Step out of your comfort zone and get into action mode. Sure, there is a lot of competition, but success is possible by driving more traffic to your ecommerce site and increasing sales. I’ll tell you how to do it.

The most foolproof method to achieve success with ecommerce is search engine optimization (SEO). Use the tips given below to ensure you’re sending the right signals to Google and setting your e-business up for SEO success.

Focus on Your Ecommerce Homepage

Homepage is the most visible part of your ecommerce site. Focus your SEO budget and efforts here.

• Include a homepage title tag. Make sure it contains the name of your business along with the main keyword phrase you wish to target.
• Write your title tag under 70 characters and in a way that appeals to visitors when they view it in the search results.
• Include a 160-character meta description for the homepage that shows up below the title in the search results. Write it in a way that generates interest about your ecommerce site.
• Make sure your homepage content provides sufficient details about the products and services.

Optimize Your Product Pages

Your business relies on product pages for conversions and sales. Keep these remain optimized at all times. Focus on these key areas:

• Add common keyword phrases or search terms to your products.
• Add meta description for your products. Make the first sentence the main selling point in long product descriptions so the information gets prominently displayed on social networks and search engines.
• Do not forget to add images; otherwise, customers might not trust your site. Optimize the images on the product pages so that they depict the item from as many angles as possible. Use image alt tags to make your product images a vital SEO enabler.
• Make your customer feel confident about buying products from your site by adding videos to the product pages. Include basic details about your product, a step-by-step usage guide, and user testimonials in the video. Check these video SEO tips.
• Build up buyer confidence by inviting shoppers to add product reviews to the pages.

Rid Your Site of Duplicate Content

Set up your site properly, so that it does not generate thousands of pages containing thin content.

• Determine which pages are to be indexed.
• Fix all indexing issues. Add canonical URL tags to dynamic pages so that Google focuses on the actual content pages in your website while ignoring other versions.
• Configure the URL parameters using Google Search Console so that you tell the Googlebots how specific URL parameters should be dealt with.
• Use noindex, follow meta robots tag in case of dynamic pages so that they are not indexed by Google.

Research Your Competition

Check your competition to find out how they are optimizing they are websites. Learn a lot of their secrets by going through their websites. Make sure you notice the keywords being used, and then analyze them.

Find out which keywords your competitor is using to rank on both paid and organic search. Be sure to check out their landing pages as well to find out how specific keywords are being used to optimize those pages. Choose low competition keywords and optimize product pages for them, to beat competitors. Check out Niel Patel’s detailed post about competition analyses.

Use the aforementioned steps to effectively optimize your ecommerce SEO for attracting more users and generating more sales.