What is the Biggest SEO Mistake Furniture Store Owners Do?

There’s a simple mistake common amongst furniture store owners across the web. They have a lot of duplicate content. In fact, furniture stores don’t realize the value of good content. This neglect results in them losing a great deal of traffic and some attractive SEO opportunities.

Why do furniture stores have duplicate content?

Furniture stores tend to have similar product descriptions. For example, if you’re selling dining chairs from multiple brands, you might’ve thought of using the same description for all of them. Google doesn’t penalize websites for duplicate content. However, it shows that you don’t care much about the user experience. And search engines value user experience a lot. How to fix duplicate content? To take care of duplicate content, you should do these things:

Use Canonical Tags:

What are canonical tags? Canonical tags tell the search engines which version of the web page they have to crawl. Your product pages might have different versions. The canonical tags will inform the crawler which page they should cover and which they shouldn’t. Your different versions of the same product pages will then, prevent any kind of duplicate content problems. A canonical tag is ‘rel canonical’ in the coding language and you should insert it in your page’s source code.

Write Valuable Product Descriptions:

Improving your furniture store’s product descriptions is the next big thing you should focus on. Writing captivating and valuable product descriptions isn’t difficult. Here’s what Neil Patel suggests following while writing product descriptions:

Know who you’re selling to

Who buys your furniture? Is it home-owners? Or office bosses? It is important to target the right audience with your product descriptions. You should create detailed buyer personas and make sure that you keep them in mind while writing the descriptions. People read descriptions and a great one can lead to a sale. Product descriptions are also a great way to include keywords on your website.

Explain the features and the benefits

People wouldn’t know what is so special about the product you’re selling unless you inform them. This is a major problem amongst furniture store owners. If you’re selling a leather sofa, you should tell them about its enhanced durability, beautiful design and aesthetics. The product description should clarify the advantages of owning the product.

Do consistent branding

How is your brand voice and tone? Do you sound serious, professional, quirky or funny? It is important to keep these things in mind while you’re writing product descriptions. You don’t need to sound too funny or too professional, just a keep hint of your brand voice.

Keep them easy to read

These days, people skim through content. They don’t read every detail. So, you should keep your product descriptions easy to read and easy to understand. You should use bullet points, sub-headings and short paragraphs for simplifying your product descriptions.

Performing E-commerce Keyword Research

Keyword research is vital for the success of any SEO campaign. It directs your efforts and helps you understand where you should head next.You should keep buyer intent in mind while researching. A person searching for ‘wooden chairs’ might not be ready to buy chairs from you. On the other hand, a person searching for ‘buy wooden chairs in Sydney’ shows a clear intent that the person is looking to buy a chair. You can’t use keywords randomly. So here are a few places where you can find keywords to use:

Amazon:

Amazon is the biggest e-commerce platform on the planet. Everyone searching there is looking to buy something. You can use their search engine and use it to your advantage. Just put in a product name and see the suggest pour in. The suggested terms are what people search for on Amazon. You can use these terms and include them in your own website. That’s because people would surely be searching for these terms on other search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). Amazon is the best place for you to get buyer-intent keywords. However, the list wouldn’t be very long.

Google Keyword Planner

To enhance your list of keywords, you should use the Google Keyword Planner. You can enter the terms you want to target and it will give you a list of ideas. It shows how many people have searched for that particular term in the past and you can use this information to find the right keywords to target for. Remember the keywords you target should be popular but not too much.

Google Autosuggest

Another great tool you can use is Google Autosuggest. Open an Incognito tab in your Chrome browser (or a private window) and enter the term you want to target. Google will begin to show suggestions according to the most searched relevant phrases. Like in the following example, you can see how Google suggests some long-tail keywords for the term ‘buy furniture’.

Which form of keywords should you target?

There are two main forms of keywords: short-tail and long-tail. Short-tail keywords are of around three words such as ‘buy furniture’. Long-tail keywords contain more than three words, such as ‘buy furniture online in Mumbai’. You should target long-tail keywords because they get less traffic and are easier to rank for.

On-page SEO for your Store

You can’t ignore the technical aspects of SEO. Your furniture store should also focus on these technical aspects to target the right audience and rank higher.

Improve the Site Structure:

Have a simple site structure. Navigating on your website should be easy and free from any confusion. An easy to navigate website ranks high and helps your customers in finding the different pages. Just follow this rule of thumb: Reaching your home page shouldn’t take more than three clicks from any page. You should improve the URL structure of your website. Reaching point A from point B, in any case, should be a simple task for a new visitor.

Mobile Performance:

How does your site perform on mobile? If your furniture store doesn’t load quickly on mobile browsers, or if it doesn’t have a responsive design, it will not rank in mobile searches. Ranking on mobile search engines, however, has become essential. Google has started using mobile-first indexing and according to it, Google now checks the mobile site first and ranks the website accordingly on SERPs. That’s because most of the searches now take place on mobile devices. If you want to get traffic, you’ll need to focus on the mobile version of your furniture store.

Optimized Meta Data:

What is Metadata?

Metadata tells search engines about the content present on your website. The meta description, title tag and the meta tags you use for your website, all are a part of its metadata. Both title tags and meta descriptions influence the click-through rate (CTR) of a website. The higher the click-through rate you have, the higher you will rank in SERPs. You should include 1 or 2 keywords in your meta descriptions. Also, make sure that you categorize your website’s pages properly.

Internal Linking:

Internal linking refers to adding the links of other pages in a particular page of your site. Be sure to add some internal links to your furniture store’s pages. If you can, use keywords in the anchor text of the links. This means if you’re linking to the page of ‘fabric sofas’, don’t say, ‘check our fabric sofas here’. Instead, say, ‘check our fabric sofas’ and hyperlink the term ‘fabric sofas’. This is a simple fundamental but it significantly improves your furniture store’s SEO.

Off-Page SEO and Content Marketing

Now that you have taken care of the on-page elements of your furniture e-commerce store, let us take a look at the off-page factors. To perform off-page SEO for your furniture store, you’ll need to do content marketing.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is the process of providing valuable information to your customers and building trust. It raises brand awareness and makes your brand a thought leader. About 70% of people like to know about brands through valuable articles than ads. This stat clarifies the importance of content marketing. How does content marketing help in SEO?

• It increases the quantity of content present on your website
• It helps you reach more prospects
• It increases the number of keywords you are targeting for

How to do content marketing for your online furniture store?

A common method is to start a blog. You can write about the products you deliver or give interior design tips on your blog. You can also start a podcast, or create videos, depending on your available resources. Your goal with content marketing should be – Providing value to your audience.

Local SEO (For Brick and Mortar Stores)

If you have a physical store, this section is for you. To drive local traffic to your website, you should concentrate on two things:

• Your Google My Business Page
• Your Brand Activity

Even though local SEO is a huge topic, we’ll cover it in brief here:

Your Google My Business Page

Your GMB page is your business’s identity on Google. It helps the search engine in recognizing your business. If people search for your business (or relevant products) Google will present your business in the SERPs. That’s why you should concentrate on optimizing your page. You can set up a Google My Business page here. Once created, make sure that you add accurate information about your business.

Your Brand Activity

How much active is your brand? Are you present in the local business directories? Do local bloggers talk about your business? The answers to these questions can determine how good your brand’s local presence is. You should concentrate on getting citations in local blogs and directories. Engage with the local community, stay active on social media and provide valuable content. Doing these simple tasks can help you boost your local SEO.

How to Rank Higher than Your Competition?

Apart from discussing the basics of furniture e-commerce SEO, it is vital that we focus on your competition. To get ahead, you should first understand how they fare. To do so, search for a key phrase you rank for (in a private window). Take a look at the results and you’ll see your competitor’s websites in the SERPs. Do they rank higher than you? If they do, then you’ll need to analyze their website. If they don’t, then repeat this process for another key phrase. Analyzing a competitor’s website is easy. Use the following tools:

SEMRush:

SEMRush is an incredible SEO tool. You can enter the URL of the website you want to check and select the area it is ranking in. Then, you’ll see the keywords this website is ranking for as well as its sources of backlinks. Use this information to find out which other keywords they are targeting.

BuzzSumo:

BuzzSumo is a tool which tells you about the most popular piece of content on a particular topic. You can enter the key phrases you want to target such as ‘bedroom decorating tips’ and find out the different articles which drive the most social shares and engagement. With this information, you can generate content ideas for your store’s marketing while understanding what really works in the market as well. Next, create valuable, insightful, engaging and regular content for your furniture store. You should create social media posts, blog articles, guides, etc. to get the best results. Why? Because publishing quality content regularly will make your site look better than your competition. Google (and other search engines) will see your site as a trustworthy and authoritative one. As a result, you will begin to rank higher and get more traffic.

How to Get the Right Traffic for your Furniture Store?

Imagine your furniture store gets a million visitors the next morning. What happens next? What is the benefit of attracting millions of visitors? If the visitors don’t purchase a product from your site, all the traffic is useless. Therefore, your online furniture store should focus on getting quality traffic.

Here are a few suggestions:

Target Long-Tail Keywords:

Instead of targeting ‘chairs in the UK’, you should target ‘buy chairs in London (or city name)’. Long-tail keywords signify the buyer intent. Target the right long-tail keywords and you will get more qualified traffic with less effort.

Utilize CTAs:

Your website’s CTAs (call to action) should be easily visible and clear. They shouldn’t have any vague terms. For example, you should use ‘Buy Now’ instead of ‘Place Order’ for your order submission button. Why? Because it is clear and easier to understand.

Keep it Simple:

Don’t overcomplicate your website. You don’t want to overwhelm the visitor. If your web pages load too many things at once, it will take more time to load and distract the visitor from buying. Both of these effects are harmful to your site’s CRO (conversion rate optimization). Make sure that you don’t make this mistake.

Summary:

If you sell furniture online, following these tips won’t be any difficulty. Just make sure that you keep things easy for your site visitors and help them along the way. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us. Do you own an online furniture store or are you planning on starting one? Let us know about it.