Employing solid SEO practices is critical to making the most of a company’s online presence. That is why SEO agencies serve just about every industry. But what they do in ecommerce is a little bit different. E-commerce SEO is rooted in some of the same principles as standard SEO, but things need to be adjusted to account for how ecommerce operates.
That being the case, ecommerce SEO is a little bit more difficult to master. There are some things you must learn that do not play into standard SEO. A case in point is the on-site search engine. An ecommerce company that sells on Amazon needs to optimize for both external search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) and Amazon’s on-site engine.
Companies that don’t sell on Amazon do not have to worry about that ‘extra’ search engine.
Although mastering ecommerce SEO can take some time, there are things any online retailer can do immediately to boost SEO performance. Here are just five of them:
Optimize Product Pages
Optimizing product pages is the practice of building said pages in such a way as to ensure they rank as highly as possible both on- and off-site. Webtek Digital Marketing, a Salt Lake City, UT and Austin, TX company that provides ecommerce SEO services, says product page optimization starts with product descriptions.
Descriptions should be as detailed as possible. They should be rich with keywords as well. Of course, writing good product descriptions starts with comprehensive keyword research.
Optimize Category Pages
Both customers and search engines appreciate categories. Organizing products by category just makes it easier to find what you are looking for. But like product pages, category pages need to be optimized as well.
That’s accomplished through descriptive text that offers the right keywords. A word of warning, though: category pages should be descriptive enough to make them useful but not filled with fluff.
Maintain a Good Site Architecture
Site architecture is essentially the way visitors and web crawlers find their way around a site. Given the potential for ecommerce sites to have hundreds or thousands of products, site architecture is critical.
Maintaining a good site architecture is one of the most effective ways to ensure that web crawlers index the entire site.
Site architecture can take some time to learn. But once an online retailer figures it out, keeping things in order is relatively simple. Once the architecture is set up properly, you just stick to it with every update.
Work on Link Building
Link building is something else ecommerce operators can work on. It may not be so critical for retailers who sell on mega sites like Amazon and eBay, but it is particularly important to those sellers who maintain independent websites.
The goal of link building is to generate links on other sites, links that point back to the ecommerce site. There are lots of ways to do this, including guest posting and paid advertising.
Create Non-Retail Content
This last tip is something ecommerce operators tend to ignore to their own detriment. Here it is – create non-retail content. We’re talking blog posts, guest posts, videos, etc. All such content improves SEO performance across the board.
There is no reason ecommerce operators cannot take advantage of it.
Ecommerce operators struggling to drive traffic and sales might want to look into their SEO practices. Companies like Webtek offer specialized SEO services for ecommerce.
If the money is there to pay for it, ecommerce SEO services are worth investing in. They really can make a difference in both generating new traffic and driving sales.
