#1 Treat 404 Errors Smartly

You may already know that 404 errors (Page not found errors) are bad for any e-commerce site. A good number of broken links can land a bad impression on your users. You will want to keep the number of broken links as small as possible. Still, some will remain on your website. They can occur because a product is no longer available or maybe the page was removed for some security issue. In any case, you should keep checking your website a number of times to find 404 errors. But what if your visitors stumble upon one of these pages? What will you do then? Then, you will need to experiment a bit. Take a look at Amazon’s 404 error or the ‘Page Not Found’ error:

That cute dog will remove the frustration from the visitor of the page not being there. By following a similar approach, you can ensure that your broken links do minimum damage. Put a cute looking picture on the page or write a delightful message with an apology. You can experiment with the appearance of the page to keep it interesting. But remember to follow the theme of your website.

Your broken link should not lead the user to an alien place, which is completely different from the rest of the website. The fonts and the background should be similar to that of your original website or the home page. This will help your visitors remember that they are still on your website. Following this strategy will help your website in preventing bounce backs. Bouncebacks are a major reason for sites to lose rankings as Google penalizes sites for a certain quantity of them.

Point to Note: Fix your broken links and have an attractive 404-error page

#2 Your Sales Start from the Homepage

The fundamental concept to keep in mind is that your sales process starts right from the homepage. You should display the attractive offers as well as display the bestsellers of your site on this page.

This simple implementation will help you in multiple ways:

1. Less Bounce back:

Bounce back is the act when a visitor clicks away from a page very quickly. Most of the times, it occurs because the page didn’t load properly or if it didn’t offer any value. Having your homepage display such deals will help you in avoiding bounce backs. You will be able to keep a higher number of visitors for longer durations.

2. A Sense of Urgency:

The sense of urgency has helped businesses, both offline and online, multiple times in boosting sales and attracting customers. You can make the visitor aware of your ‘soon to close’ deals on the homepage.

Even if the visitor doesn’t know about your brand or company, he or she might develop an interest in your products. This, in turn, can get the visitor into checking your entire store.

3. Your Sales Pitch:

Compare your store’s sales process like that of a conventional sales professional. The sales professional will show the customer with the best products and deals to engage him or her.

Similarly, your homepage will begin your sales pitch. When the visitor will see the best offerings, the chances of it becoming your customer will increase tremendously.

Point to Note: Show your latest offer and/or best selling products on the homepage of the store

#3 Optimize the Product Descriptions

Your store’s products descriptions can make you win as well as lose customers. Online stores tend to have many similar products with similar product descriptions. On the other hand, your store might have duplicate product descriptions. The cause of the product description problem can arise because of the product seller. The descriptions are mostly posted by the sellers and if one seller is offering products on multiple sites, the chances of having duplicate product descriptions become very high.

You will need to check plagiarism in your product descriptions by using checker tools. You can use Copyscape or Grammarly’s plagiarism checker for this purpose. Both of them are effective measures. I recommend you to use Copyscape as it is the industry standard for many professionals.

Apart from plagiarism in your descriptions, you should also look for opportunities to insert keywords. Descriptions should be informative and easy to understand. High-quality product descriptions can boost your page’s SEO considerably. I recommend you to use copywriting techniques in product descriptions as well. By keeping them simple and persuasive, you can enhance the conversion rates as well.

Search engines check the content of websites thoroughly and keeping it high-quality and user-oriented will help you boost your rankings substantially. Another thing you can do with your product descriptions is to change their theme. Many stores follow a specific theme and keep the tone of the descriptions accordingly. Take a look at the description below:

See how well it connects with the user and helps in depicting the product’s benefits. While descriptions are great for conversion, they will make your website rich with content too. You can use LSI keywords and short tail keywords for better results too.

Point to Note: Improve your product descriptions; they are a great tool to boost SEO

#4 Get Back-links to Gain Authority

Back-links are essential for websites to rank high. A number of high-quality back-links can show you amazing results because they are a part of the SEO factors search engines look for. Getting back-links isn’t a much difficult task. You can contact influencers to post your store’s link on their platforms. Another thing you can do is to do guest posts on some blogs. Look for blogs in your niche and contact them for guest blogging opportunities.

This will work only if you have some valuable information to give. Otherwise, you should stick to contacting influencers. Getting back-links from authoritative sources can show instant results on your site’s SEO.

This strategy is especially beneficial when you are about to have an upcoming sale or important change on your store. You will be able to get back-links with ease when you are about to start a sale.

Point to Note: Focus on getting back-links from multiple good sources

#5 Use Keywords Smartly

Keywords are the most precise tool to boost your site’s rankings. I have seen many websites failing in getting organic traffic because of their poor choice of keywords.

With the recent updates, choosing the right keywords has become much complex than it used to be.

The following set of tips will help you in this regard :

1. Use long-tail keywords to boost your SEO results. If you want local traffic, then they will help you greatly. With the use of LSI keywords, you can enhance the results as well.

2. LSI keywords are synonymous words that are used popularly in your niche. The market has many tools which you can use to get LSI keywords for your website. While using these keywords, you should remember to avoid stuffing.

3. Over-use of keywords can be quite harmful to any website. Google penalizes websites which have too many keywords. LSI keywords should come naturally in your content.

4. A great way to use keywords smartly in your website is in the anchor texts. They are the highlighted texts which provide links to other pages of your website. Instead of using ‘click here’ you can use keywords.

5. However, don’t repeat the same keywords as anchor texts in multiple pages. It will harm your website’s rankings too. Instead, keep the number small for every keyword.

6. Using keywords in your meta descriptions will help you as well. The effect might not be as much as the others but it has been felt that it helps the websites.

7. You can use the Google Keyword Planner and Moz’s tool to get keywords for your store. Keyword research is important and you should do it carefully.

8. Look for keywords which are in demand but have not been used by many websites. It will require some hard work but there are always such keywords in the market.

While you are using keywords, you should remember that they are only a part of your SEO implementations. Your focus should be on enhancing the content-quality to ensure it offers value.

Point to Note: Use Keywords in anchor text and meta descriptions. Do extensive research

#6 Blog Often (or Start Blogging)

I can’t stress enough on the importance of content marketing. Your e-commerce store will become a strong brand if it begins to blog. I recommend you to have a blog on your store and if you already have one, then post high-quality content.

Blogging helps you connect with your audience. Your consumers will also have something else to do on your website.

You can blog about anything related to your niche. If you provide food products, you can post relevant recipes. If your store is about fashion, then a blog about clothing and grooming tips will definitely help. The main goal of your blog should not be of selling. It should be about providing value to your audience. If you are hesitant about blogging yourself then you can hire some writers to write content for your store.

A blog will also help you in increasing the content on your store. With search engine optimized posts, you will be able to enhance the rank of your site considerably. The quality of your audience will also improve as you will get interested people through them.

You should post on your blog regularly. It will help your site remain active as Google favours websites on the basis of recent content. If your competitor posted something a month ago and you posted content last week, your site will rank higher. Blogging is an exhaustive topic so I will not delve further. However, you can find other relevant articles about this topic on my site.

Point to Note: Blog often (or start a blog) on your store with high-quality content

#7 Don’t Forget Store Optimization

You can market your products on Amazon too. It is one of the biggest search engines for online products. If people want to buy something, they prefer to search on Amazon. You can post your products there and avail the benefits of their large audience.

You will easily get links from them and attracting buyers will also become easier. Throughout this article, I have given examples of how Amazon has great e-commerce SEO. By selling there, you will automatically avail these benefits.

It is important to keep in mind that you have a separate website. Amazon should only be a part of your strategy. You will benefit more if you attract customers to your store. But doing so will become easier if you are able to attract traffic from there. Listing your products on Amazon will give you access to its audience. Did you know that 38% of online product searches are performed on Amazon?

This means more than one-third of the online buyers are using this website.

Point to Note: List your product on Amazon and get backlinks

#8 Provide Images and Videos

High-quality images are a must for modern online stores. Good images which depict the product clearly will help in making your site user-friendly.

Don’t overdo it, however, because images of big sizes take more time to load. Therefore, use clear images of not too great sizes. You should use multiple images for different products.

For product demos, you can use videos. Showing a video demo about your product can help you enhance the SEO as well as the conversion rates.

Point to Note: Use good images and videos for your products

#9 Keep Checking the Conversion Rates

I know SEO is about attracting visitors, but if your visitors are not converting into customers, then your efforts are going in vain.

And by converting visitors into customers you will ensure that your website keeps getting repeat visitors. Repeat visitors are essential to keep the organic traffic healthy and consistent for a website. If your store doesn’t get steady traffic, then it alarms the search engines. Websites with consistent traffic get support from search engines because they are perceived as trustworthy.

You can use Google Analytics to help your site in this regard. It will give you the necessary insights into your visitors’ behaviour. Finding out about your visitors will help you develop your future marketing strategies as well.

Don’t hesitate in experimenting to optimize the conversion rates. Whether you give your product descriptions new headlines or change the colour of the buttons, any steps to improve conversion rates will work.

A great method to improve conversions is by showing relevant products to the customers. Amazon uses this method effectively through its recommendations:

They show relevant products to the customers. It will not only help you boost sales, but it will also help you to enhance the usability of the website. Improving the user experience can go a long way in boosting your website’s SEO.

Point to Note: Aim on improving conversion rates as they help SEO

#10 Take the Help of Social Media and Paid Ads

Maybe your store is new and so, it is not ranking for many keywords. In order to gain the initial visitors and get rankings, you should take the help of social media platforms and paid adverts. Both of them are great tools for attracting visitors and enhancing the rankings of your website.

I have divided this section into two parts so you can understand them better:

1. Using Social Media Platforms:

Though it is an exhaustive topic, I am sharing some insights here. First, you should choose the right platforms for your store depending on its niche. A florist will benefit from Pinterest and Instagram, whereas a paper seller might benefit from Twitter or Facebook.

There are different strategies for every platform which you should keep in mind. Try to stay active on multiple platforms as it will help you in understanding your audience as well as reaching them.

If your store has a blog (read #6), have social share buttons available on them. You can use social media ads to drive traffic to your website too.

2. Using Paid Ads:

PPC campaigns are a great way for you to get the initial visitors to your store. Release some engaging PPC ads targeting your audience-specific keywords. It will help you further into attracting a number of visitors to your store.

You can use native ads for this purpose as well. On the other hand, if your store has spent some time in the market, then you can use retargeting ads. They cost more than the others but their conversion rates are higher.

Both of these suggestions aim to help your site get an additional number of visitors. When search engines will see your website attracting visitors, it will rank your site higher.

This method will help you in the times of low search volumes as well. Your site will be able to keep a consistent amount of traffic and so it will have better SEO.

Point to Note: Run ad campaigns and use social media to attract visitors

#11 Make the Site Easier to Use

An easy to use the site is much better, nay, a lot better than a good-looking site. In my experience, a good-looking site can do more harm than good. On the other hand, easy to use websites have higher rankings in search results. Google tests the usability of every website. If it finds that accessing different pages on your website is a little cumbersome, it will penalize you. And you don’t want that.

I suggest you have distinct categories on your website. If you have a large range of products, then create sub-categories. You should have separate sections for male and female products as well. If you can create distinct pages with unique descriptions for the male and female sections, then it will help your site further. You should remember to submit the Sitemap to Google.

The important buttons on your site should be easily visible. The checkout symbol should always be available. This way, you will be able to convert more of your visitors into customers, which can become your repeat visitors.

Point to Note: Simplify your website as much as possible and increase usability

Conclusion

E-commerce SEO doesn’t need to be too difficult. As Google and other search engines are updating their technologies it is important for us, to stay alert and keep up with the market.

You must have seen that most of these tips focus on making the website better for the users. Whether it is the accessibility or the content-quality, your store’s aim should be on helping the users and providing them value. When your website will focus on providing consumers with the best experience possible, many of these tasks will get done automatically.

With these tips, your store can easily boost its rankings in search results. I hope you find them helpful. If there is someone who will benefit from this list, feel free to share it with the same.

Apart from that, you can tell me your thoughts on these tips. Do you find these suggestions helpful? If you have any tips, don’t hesitate in sharing them with me. I would love to hear from you.