7 SEO Best Practices for eCommerce Stores

At least 30% of traffic to online stores come from organic searches. ~ Kissmetrics

Let’s assume your store has a monthly turnover of $1,000. That works out to $12,000 per annum.

If the above metric is to be worked on, approximately $3,600 worth of sales from your store has originated from organic search. The best part is that, generating organic traffic is almost free, except for your time to optimize your store.

Annual sales: $1,000 per month * 12 months = $12,000
Sales generated from organic search: $12,000 * 30% = $3,600.

Now think! Isn’t it worthwhile to put your eCommerce store to gain more organic traffic? Yes it is. Higher search engine ranking will improve online visibility, which will increase traffic which in turn will boost conversions.

So how does one improve search engine ranking for an eCommerce store.?

To begin with, optimizing an eCommerce store for higher search engine ranking is vastly different from optimizing an ordinary website. There are more technicalities involved; both in the backend and frontend.

For a newbie, all this seem like an impossible mayhem. Worry not. We guide you through some of the best practices you can adopt to push your online shop up the ladder of search engine ranking.

Optimize Product Landing Pages:

A good product landing page in an online store will have proper heading tags, a well-written meta tags with keywords optimized and a combination of visual and textual effects.

Here the need to optimize keywords in landing pages is far more important than anything else, since they are the catchphrases that will bait visitors to the page.

Optimize Permalink Structure with Keywords:

The permalink structure or the URL of your landing page must contain the targeted keywords for generating maximum traffic. The permalink is permanent, hence ensure that the targeted keywords has enough weightage to drive traffic.

Write Genuine Product Descriptions:

It will be so tempting to Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V the manufacturer description available for a product. But remember, that will pull down your page ranking significantly.

Google needs to know that your website has original and high-quality content. Hence, the need to write original product descriptions. Optimize the product descriptions with relevant keywords that customers use to search for the product.

Here is how you can write a catchy yet original product description:

 

Include User-Generated Product Reviews:

At least 70% of online shoppers look for online reviews before making a buying decision. They help in convincing the customer to make a wise decision. Secondly, they also have a SEO vantage point.

A glimpse of how Amazon, the world’s most popular e-retailer has set up its review and rating system

User generated reviews will invariably contain product name which can double up as keywords. More the number of reviews with the keywords higher is the chances for the page to get a higher page ranking. Since each user review will be different and unique, they will be treated as genuine by the search engine. Talk about an easy way to drive search engine ranking.

Make Your Store a Safety Zone:

“One in every three people hesitate to buy online fearing theft of credit card information.”
~ Internet Retailer.

While eCommerce and mobile commerce seem to grow at astronomical rates, there is a section of the world which still thinks it is unsafe to shop online. In fact, websites like eBay, Target, Home Depot, etc. have been hacked in the past.

That said, it is evident that the fear of website security is still lingering around in the eCommerce industry. It is mandatory for online store to make their customer believe that their stores are indeed are safe zones to conduct financial transactions.

The security assurance of SSL certificates

Google in its 2014 I/O conference had hinted at plans to include website security and SSL encryption as ranking signals for search engine results. In fact, might soon start to tag websites without SSL encryption as “not secure” for visits. Needless to say it’ll drag down search engine ranking drastically for such unsecured websites.

Thus, the best way out is to configure your website with a SSL certificate. SSL certificates will give eCommerce websites the following benefits:

• Improves customer confidence
• Protects website from security threats
• Helps achieve higher search engine ranking
• Helps increase conversion rates

Go mobile:

Mobiles have become the first precursors for completed eCommerce transactions. They are handy, can be used anywhere irrespective of time and come with tons of features that are not commonplace in PCs or other devices. As a result mobile commerce has leapfrogged to consume a market share of eCommerce itself.

Mobile app figures from Flurry indicate that the mobile usage for eCommerce is growing at 81% CAGR.

Key takeaway: Make your online store responsive. It should be able to squeeze into any screen size, be it smartphone, tablet or a PC. Since most of the searches are being initiated from mobile devices before continued in any other medium, it is necessary for online store to be responsive to screen sizes.

If your website usability is good and the average time spent is higher, Google will consider it as a sign to give the website a higher page ranking. This will kick off a vicious cycle of traffic that will never cease.

Final thoughts

Don’t you want the sweat and effort you put in to build an online store to pay off? Then eCommerce SEo strategies are a never miss.

What we have discussed above in this article will help you optimize your website to some extent for higher search engine ranking. With more organic traffic, you will be able to get more bang for your bucks.

Do you have any more tips or hacks to improve the eCommerce SEO score for an online store?