Like any other business or industry, SEO is an integral part of an e-commerce web development because it helps the website to rank on the google search engine which as a result helps businesses to secure organic and fully convertible leads. Moreover, having your web suite fully visible on the google search engine can build customer trust towards your business. It puts the online store at the front for your potential customers and chances are people only tend to click links that appear in the first 10 searches of Google search engine. In this blog, I will share some of the best SEO practices for eCommerce website development that you need to keep in mind if you want to create brand awareness. So start taking notes:
Table of Contents
Keyword Research
Choosing the right keywords that have appeared on google several times, is essential for ranking your eCommerce website. Because these are considered the terms that potential customers have used to search for similar products and chances are that will search you using the same word too. Since keyword search is not that easy, therefore, there are many different SEO keyword research tools available in the market to make your life easier. Tools such as semresh, or Ahrefs have everything you need to narrow down your search as they help you search only the specific keywords along with their difficulty level. Speaking of, where the difficulty level is higher, the competition is higher as well, and it’s pretty challenging to rank your site on the same keyword so start with mid level difficulty and slowly raise your bar.
Focus on Long-Tail Keywords
There are two types of keywords i.e. long tail and short tail. The long tail is like a complete statement such as ‘what is SEO, whereas the short keyword is ‘SEO’ – as the names suggest. Most people are making use of long tail keywords, therefore you should direct 70% of your focus on the long tail and rest on ranking short tail keywords respectively.
Ecommerce Graphic
Provided by Straight North
Optimize Your eCommerce Web Page Titles
Optimizing the main title of all the eCommerce web pages is important. It appears on the header in big bold letters – it is the main heading of the page. The title appears on google search engine results, and that is what’s going to lure people in. but also, this is very keyword search is important. You may want to use a keyword in the title to make it rank and also the title should not seem as if you have tried to stuff a keyword – instead, it should look natural and as unique as possible. Moreover, make sure the H1 header is applied to the title – because it’s one of the rules of SEO for ranking.
Structure your URLs
Another important thing that you should keep in mind is to make sure your web page URLs are structured -meaning that they follow SEO guidelines. You need to optimize them too. Make sure to have a keyword in the URL as well on which you are trying to rank the page. You also need to ensure that your URL is similar to the page title – you don’t want to have a different page title and an entirely different URL. because it’s not good for SEO but also it would impact customer’s trust negatively.
Meta Description
The meta description is a summary of the page usually in 160 characters that appear under the main title on google search. It is a crux that defines what the page is all about. You can write meta descriptions without editing the code and straight from the WordPress backend. Meta descriptions are critical for SEO. Therefore, you need to make sure that your meta description also has a keyword, especially primary keywords. A thoughtful and meaningful meta description makes the potential customers click the link because just by reading the description of 160 characters they will know if the page has what they are looking for. The meta description is important for every webpage and even blog post, so keep in mind with your eCommerce web development.
The Website Copy
Website copy actually sells your product. Your product description is yet another important part of eCommerce web development and SEO. Since title and URLs should have the primary keyword, your web copy can also use secondary keywords but then again you have to make sure that keywords don’t seem stuffy. A mix of both primary and secondary keywords makes your website possible to rank. Moreover, use easy English language with at least a readability score of no less than 8. Make sure to have small sentences with keywords strategically placed throughout. For accessibility, you can break down longer paragraphs into smaller ones and use bullets to highlight important points. Make sure to have consistent headers.
Web Loading Speed
Last but not least, your website should take more than 3 to 4 seconds to load because it took longer than that, chances are your customers might leave and may never come back which will negatively affect your bounce rate and higher bounce rate and never good from the SEO perspective. Therefore, whenever you decide to move forward with eCommerce web development make sure to check the web speed both on desktop and mobile to ensure it matches the standard.
Conduct Competitor Analysis
For ranking your site in top results you need to make sure that you have done your homework – and by that we mean to ensure that you know everything you need to know about your competitors from an SEO perspective and otherwise. Check the keywords they are ranking on, which pages, and how many. Competitor analysis helps also when you don’t know where to start.
Website’s Architecture
Your website’s architecture is one of the most important aspects of SEO. Speaking of it should be simple and not very complicated. Because it sure does play a huge role in search engine optimization. Make sure the hierarchy of your website is proper – your eCommerce site should have a navigation bar at the top, then comes the main header that has H1, followed by a small description with a secondary keyword. Then there go the other sections of the website with keywords strategically placed throughout. Make sure to have a call to action at the end and after 2-3 sections just to reinforce people to buy your product. At the bottom of the home page, you have your footer. The footer and the navigation bar stay the same. Speaking of navigation bars, use the sticky navigation, the one which stays intact in its place even when the user is scrolling down the page.
Strategic Linking
Internal linking is yet another important aspect of SEO and eCommerce web development. You need to show that every page on your eCommerce website is related to the other. It brings cohesion. Moreover, it can also take people to other pages that they might ignore at first.
Conclusion
Sometimes people tend to ignore the importance of SEO but the truth of fact is that SEO is as important as putting up a website or following the UI and UX design for a higher customer experience. Moreover, oftentimes, businesses think that all they need to survive in the market is paid advertising – although it is true to an extent yet getting organic visitors to save time and loads of money spent on ads that do not seem to be giving any result.
