SEO Best Practices for your eCommerce Store – Part I

We all know that Search engine optimization (SEO) can be the real deal breaker for any website and it is even more critical for the success of eCommerce websites, as SEO plays a major role in attracting, converting as well as retaining potential customers. However, performing SEO for eCommerce sites is highly complicated due to the presence of hundreds and thousands of product listings, which require regular updating. This is the reason why following a set of SEO best practices becomes essential in order to make sure that your site always performs at optimum levels.

Statistics Say It All

There’s no scope for errors when it comes to product pages optimization for your eCommerce store, especially when you are aiming for something higher than simply getting to the top spot on Google search results. Preferably, getting to the top three spots can significantly drive traffic to your eCommerce website. According to recent findings, on an average, sites ranked on first page of Google keyword search, attain an average click through rate (CTR) of approximately 71.3%. Whereas sites appearing on second and third page, combined – only get a CTR of 5.59%.

What is even more alarming is the disparity that can be seen between the top spots on first page of Google search results. The search result holding first position receives on an average 31.24 clicks, whereas the second position holder receives only 14.04 clicks on average (a drop by more than half of the first position). We could dig into the stats even deeper. However, we believe these statistics are enough to provide you with an idea of what all you will be required to put in to win the SEO battle for your eCommerce website.

Review, Research and Optimize

Analyze data, research keywords as well as competitors, and implement the changes required, based upon your findings. Failing to do so, guarantees that your listings won’t be successful in getting the first position on first page of Google search results. While review, research and optimization must continue on a regular basis to be successful, you must focus on three core areas before you can begin performing SEO to get your listings ranked higher on Google search results.

• SEO assessment: Begin by performing a comprehensive assessment of your website, so as to identify SEO shortcomings. While it is advisable to perform assessment for your entire website, you must pay special attention to your product pages. This is where majority of the flaws are detected and are also imperative to your website’s performance. Tools such as Screaming Frog can be used to crawl through your images, CSS, links, etc., so that you can identify errors, missing tags, duplicate entries and other issues that can have a negative impact on your site’s rankings.
• Keyword research: Keyword research plays a major role in getting your website ranked higher. Targeting wrong keywords can lead to driving low quality traffic and lower sales. Using the right keywords strategically can attract qualified customers and also boost your sales and conversion rates. Perform your research based on keyword relevancy, ranking difficulty and search volume. You may use long-tail keywords relevant to your products, as they have a higher exact-match search volume as well as a significantly lower difficulty ranking when compared to the competition.
• Competitor research: Analyze competitors’ website to prepare a list of keywords that are being used by them. Perform research to determine the keywords you wish to compete against. Also, figure out the architecture used by these competing websites. Primarily focus on their product pages to attain better insights about ways to organize your websites navigation.

When it comes to implementing and incorporating SEO Best Practices for your eCommerce Store, it’s definitely not possible to cover everything in one article. So, please continue with our post in the next article: SEO Best Practices for your eCommerce Store – Part II

If you have any tips or advice, you think our other readers should know about, please share them as a comment to this post. If you are looking for some help to optimize your eCommerce store, please write to us at info@data-entry-india.com and our experts will get back to you shortly.