If it was 5 years ago and you wanted to buy an air conditioner, what would you do? You probably asked a few people and went to the cooler sellers to ask the shopkeepers about different brands to find the best choice according to your needs and budget. But now it’s not 5 years ago and you don’t need to ask anyone anymore.
Now we use Google, blogs, Instagram, user comments on virtual pages, and in a word, the content produced in the internet space, and we look for answers to our questions among them. Our work has a very important reason: now many products and services can be found only and only in the Internet space.
If you have something to sell, you don’t need to go and rent a shop. You can easily visit the website. Your website is your shop. The place where buying and selling is done and the customer goes to it to get information about the goods, services and yourself as a seller is your website.
This article from the collection of SEO training articles about E-commerce or Electronic Commerce or Internet Commerce means doing business on the Internet. When buying and selling (anything) is done on the Internet, which is most of the time through a website, we step into a new field with its own possibilities and requirements. E-commerce is a complex and vast world of which shopping sites and online auctions are only a small part.
When your shop is your website, what should you do to be more visible to customers or internet users than other websites? What techniques and tricks will help you to attract and keep customers in this new space? This article will teach you the most important and most reliable trick: Ecommerce SEO or ecommerce SEO or store site SEO or internet store SEO.
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Importance of online store SEO
When you offer your goods and services on the website, or you are very well known and the customer comes to you by writing your brand name in Google, or the customer is looking for a specific product or service and searches the name of that product or service in Google and reaches you. . Of course, it doesn’t always come to you; maybe it will reach your competitor. Because Google puts your competitor in front of the customer sooner!
Of course, you might say to yourself now that we are doing something to make the customer come to us from the beginning! Finally, we use social networks. We advertise on various popular sites and thousands of other ways. There is no reason to worry about Google’s opinion about our site and Google’s ranking of our site.
If this is what you are saying, you should be told that you don’t know anything about the world of business and internet businesses! It is better to ignore the site and go looking for a shop rental. Whoever says this has no knowledge of today’s world and the future. It does not realize that the customer’s behavior has changed. Today, if someone wants to buy a nail clipper, he goes and searches “buy nail clippers” on Google!
Your competitors are also advertising and using different advertising tricks. But you should know and you must know that gaining the trust of the customer (user) is a difficult, complicated and time-consuming task. This is where Google comes to your rescue.
Do you know why? Because whether you like it or not, people trust Google and the answers it gives to their questions, to a large extent.
Therefore, you should optimize your site for Google. SEO is a collection of different principles and methods that help sites gain Google’s trust. When Google’s trust is gained, Google will show that site to the user earlier than others. Among those general principles and methods, there are tips and actions that store sites and online stores must follow.
Therefore, among the set of SEO techniques, there are techniques that are necessary for store and internet sites and basically any site that wants to attract customers and sell something. It is necessary to attract customers, so that when a user wants to buy something and has not even heard the name of your site, he comes to your site and makes the purchase.
By following the ecommerce SEO tips, your ranking will improve on the Google search results page, and this means that when a user searches for “buy African violet flower bouquet”, Google will show your site to the user first of all and on the first line.
Ecommerce SEO must-haves
First of all, one thing must be specified. Ecommerce SEO is not something apart from website SEO. SEO ecommerce provides those SEO techniques and principles that are very special, necessary and useful for store sites and online stores in one package and together at the disposal of store site SEO experts.
For example, one of the basic principles in SEO is that the speed of your site, whether it is a store or a non-store, should be fast. According to Google, when the speed of your site is low, the user will be dissatisfied, so Google will also be dissatisfied with you. Therefore, the SEO of any site that you have, you should know that it is necessary to work on improving its speed.
Let’s go to the ecommerce SEO package. Here, step by step, the steps that bring a store site to the first line are listed. So, if you have an online store and you want to optimize it so that Google trusts it and directs the user to it, go step by step with this list.
The first step in ecommerce SEO: keyword and competitor analysis
You must know your business well. What products do you sell? What is the best category for your products? How much do you want to pay for your site? Which stores are your main competitors? How did your competitors categorize their sites? How many pages does their site have and what are the main titles of these pages? What words did they use to introduce the products? What are the contents of your competitor’s blog site? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s site?
First of all, take your time and find the answers to these questions. Then, based on the answers, specify the pages of the site and determine the main keywords of each one.
In determining the keywords, you should consider their difficulty (competitiveness) and the number of monthly searches. From now on, specify the relevant words and topics for the contents of your blog site. In SEO, it is the principle to choose words that are most related to your products and business, with high and medium monthly searches, which are not very difficult and not very competitive.
Note: Keywords depend on the type of business and products you offer + what words your main competitors used and are using.
The second step in ecommerce SEO: site analysis and its problems
Speed speed speed, security security security! Both the speed and security of your site should always be high. Fortunately, your hand is open and there are many techniques (depending on the type of your site, WordPress or custom designed) to optimize site speed. Both your site must comply with security protocols and the payment gateway for online shopping must be secure.
There are other problems that may make the user unhappy, such as 404 & 302 errors. All site errors, of any kind, should be identified and resolved. If the store site is not new; all images and internal links should be optimized.
Weak blog content should be deleted or updated. Duplicate content should be optimized. If more than one content is written for a keyword (that is, keywords are common in several content), Keyword Cannibalization has happened. A very serious problem with the site and its content that, if not fixed, will kill all your efforts to rank for keywords.
The design of the store website (UX) is also very, very important. The store site must be designed to be user-friendly. If the site is not fresh, problems with its user experience design should also be identified and corrected.
The third step in On-Page SEO: ecommerce
Everything on all pages of your site should be optimized; It means content, photos, titles, headings, meta descriptions and even the page address. The content that is written to introduce the products should be concise and useful and at the same time comprehensive. The product introduction page should have the information that is important to the user and what he is looking for.
This content should be original and don’t forget that you can use users’ comments to write it. Another important point is that this content must be SEO. In the content of the important pages of your site (product introduction pages), keywords that have been previously researched for each page of the site and each specified product should be used.
The address of each page (URL) is as important as the content of that page. You should not let the page address (URL) become too long and incomprehensible.
Another subcategory of on-page SEO is internal link building and sitemap, which should be done based on SEO principles. Don’t neglect page snippets. The user first sees and reads the snippet and then clicks on your site. (Snippets are those things that are shown to the user under the link of your site on the Google search results page.)
The fourth step in ecommerce SEO: external linking
Now that everything on your site is optimized and built in principle, you should make external links for it (its pages and contents). External linking is in the realm of Off-Page Seo. (Off-Page Seo itself is a complex and nuanced world.) The most important thing to know about external link building is this: Don’t buy links. Do not take links from unreliable sites. Do not get links from yellow sites.
Look for the most relevant sites with your business and products. Do not ignore the sites that introduce a specific type of products, for example, cosmetic products. Find the most reliable ones and get links from them.
Just don’t forget that you should not get links from low authority sites. Also remember that you should use different embedding. Don’t link to just a few pages.
You should have a specific strategy for external link building based on your business and according to the cost and time you have.
The fifth step in ecommerce SEO: Local SEO
Another subset of SEO that is useful for SEO of store sites, especially small and local store sites, is called Local SEO. Suppose you have a flower shop in Karaj. You have just launched online sales and a website. How likely is a user (customer) to buy from you when they find you on Google? Very little! Finally, the shipping cost will increase.
Your site must have a contact us page. In the information of this page, the exact address and coded landline number should be written. You should also add the map to this page. The user should be able to find you easily on Google Maps.
The whole point of local SEO is this: when a user searches for “coffee shops on Canada Street” or “flower shops in Canada” and you didn’t tell Google where your address is and your competitor’s store site did, Google will not show you to him who is looking for a coffee shop on Canada Street. . In this way, your business has lost a customer and maybe several!
There are a few other things you need to do: First, generate regional content. You can include content related to history, important events or places of interest in your blog site. Second, build links on sites related to that area and related to your business (reputable sites, of course).
The sixth step in ecommerce SEO: SEO strategy
You started an online business two years ago. From the very beginning, you followed all the tips related to the SEO of the store site. Today you are the first line. Does this mean it’s time to give up on ecommerce SEO? Done? Don’t you need to take care of the speed and security of your site anymore? Analyzing the competitor is no longer important?
No! You can never consider store SEO finished, even when you’ve taken the first line. Do you know why? Because old and new competitors are looking for your position. Because Google is watching you every moment. If you drop for a while and don’t follow the mentioned tips, Google will take the first line from you.
So your store site must have a long-term SEO strategy:
- The speed and security of the site should be checked every day.
- Your blog site should be regularly loaded with quality and SEO content.
- Your blog content should be updated regularly.
- The keywords of each page should be chosen with care, foresight and research. Always watch out for Duplicate Content & Keyword Cannibalization.
- External linking should continue.
- Google algorithms are constantly updated. You should be aware of those updates and adapt yourself (your site) to them.
For example, social networks and social signal became important for Google. So you should also look for a strong social signal. Put your business’s social network address (social network link) on all your pages. Don’t forget Social Media SEO.
Again, for example, the design of the site’s user experience (UX), the user’s convenience in working with your site, and paying attention to the mobile version of the site are becoming more and more important for Google every day.