According to you, what action plan should you put forward to reach out to your target audience? For that, you need to have a strong online presence and this can be achieved through effective SEO strategies.
Ecommerce websites are well known to create a virtual marketplace where buyers and sellers interact with each other. If the buyers feel that a particular product would satisfy their needs, they are more likely to make a purchase. Therefore, it is very much clear that an eCommerce website operates solely for online buyers who are actively searching for various products on the internet.
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Therefore, Having an effective SEO strategy for your eCommerce website would make it easy for online users to discover your website on the internet. Hence, it will enhance the visibility of your website in Google search results and will attract a lot of users who are searching online for a particular product.
Relevance of SEO for your eCommerce website
You are already aware of the fact that a marketplace is nothing without the footfall of the customers. If you are providing a person with the products that they actually need, this way you are turning a potential buyer into your loyal customer. But what if the buyers are not able to discover your shop due to any reason? As a result, your potential customers would look out for some other option to fulfill their needs and you have lost an opportunity to provide them with the best product experience.
The same is the case with your eCommerce website. If you are unable to reach out to your target audience, there are very few chances that a person would make a purchase from your website. Therefore, you would need to come up with effective SEO strategies so that your website becomes much easier for users to discover in the Google search results.
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Considering the immense competition of various eCommerce websites for the first rank in the Google search results, it becomes important to rank your website higher in the search results. As per the website on the first page, the click-through rates of the first three results in Google are 39.6%, 18.4%, and 10.1% respectively. That accumulates to a total of 68%. This means that more than half of the online users click on the first three results only.
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Having said that, Your website should rank in the first three results so as to make a huge impact and draw more user attention. For that to happen, your SEO strategies should be well aligned with the ultimate objective of ranking your website in the top three results.
Best SEO strategies for your eCommerce website
1. Looking for the right keywords
The first step in any SEO strategy is to look for keywords that people are using when searching online. As per the website of the search engine journal, more than 3.5 million queries are performed in a minute by the users. That means Google searches have a lot of potential as they can provide your website with loads of traffic.
This forms the basis of whether your website would be displayed if the users search for a specific keyword. This can be done by optimizing your website around the search terms that the people are searching for.
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For instance, if people are searching online for a smartwatch, you need to think strategically that what can be the other keywords around the same search intent. It may include the best smartwatches, upcoming smartwatches, and smartwatch brands. You would need to target those keywords which people are using to make a purchase. Accordingly, you would have to optimize your website for those keywords.
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As a result, your website’s name would be displayed in the Google search results if its description matches the user search intent. That means your website is relevant to the user’s query and thus, it would tend to rank much higher in the search results. Besides, you also need to ensure that you are measuring the success of your keyword strategies with key performance indicators.
2. Providing your customers with a first-class experience
Once the users start to click and visit your eCommerce website, now it's time to provide them with the best experience. Your website should be so designed that contributes to more of a positive experience for your users scrolling through your website.
For providing your users with a top-class experience, you need to consider all the aspects of your website. These include website loading speed, pop-ups, using an SSL certificate for your website, and a search bar to know about a particular product on your website.
It is important to optimize your website so that it loads quickly if the user clicks on it. A website that tends to take a lot of time to load will most probably make the user click on the back button to find some other website. Adding to it, your website should be empowered with an SSL certificate which highlights that your website is safe for browsing. Moreover, If users are willing to purchase any product from your website, that SSL certificate is the icing on the cake which induces trust among your potential customers. This could help you to retain your customers for a long duration of time.
One of the major issues that most users face while scrolling through the website is unwanted pop-ups which tend to disrupt the flow of the users. Make sure to eliminate any pop-ups which may provide a negative impression of your website to the users.
If all these factors are considered and taken care of, then it can be assured that your users are returning from your website with a positive experience and they are most likely to refer to your website in the future.
3. Optimizing your product images
You might be having unique and high-quality images of your products that can be collaborated with compelling descriptions to increase your website’s visibility on the internet. Some online users search for a particular product’s image on Google. These searches are carried out to get a basic idea of the aesthetics of a product before they decide to purchase it.
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This can be taken as an opportunity to drive more users to your website. As per Brafton, 63% of the total users are most likely to visit the website after carrying out an image search. This means image searches can be termed as a reliable and easy source for getting online traffic.
To get the users to your website, you need to fully optimize your product images. By optimizing, it means describing the product images including your target keywords for which the users are searching online. Including the keywords is a great way to match the user search intent as it tends to increase the relevance of the shown results with the search query. This is known as the ALT tag which describes how the images are related to the user search query.
Taking the same example of a smartwatch, Let’s say a person is searching using it in the image section of Google. If you are selling a smartwatch and your provided image for that has been optimized with the keyword “smartwatch”, then there are high chances that your image would also be shown in the search results. Furthermore, the same person would visit your website to get a brief idea of the product features.
Therefore, it becomes important for you to consider optimizing your product images for the best results and that will ultimately increase your visibility in the search results. All in all, optimizing images for search intent has to be one of the essentials of SEO strategies for your business.
4. Giving an effective structure to your website’s URL
The structure of an URL is an important aspect when it comes to formulating SEO strategies. URL forms the link to your website on which the user clicks to skim through your website. An effective URL structure includes your target keyword and is not too long.
Google bots always go through the URL structure before they actually index it and later, show them in the search results. You can provide a structure to your website’s URL which will describe your website in an effective manner. So you would need to include those search terms for which your website would receive traffic and is easily identified by the Google bots.
On the other hand, your Website’s URL should also be user-friendly. Having said that, it should also be easy for the users to identify your website once they see its URL. If your website’s product information is relevant to the user search query, then you can expect the users to spend a considerable amount of time on your website. As a result, they are most likely to make a purchase.
5. Sharing your customer reviews on your website
If a customer purchases a product from your website, they would like to share their experience after purchasing it. Customer reviews are quite essential when it comes to the success of your eCommerce website. You must be aware that most online users tend to go through the previous reviews and ratings of the products before opting to purchase them.
To your surprise, the website of web fx revealed that 90% of the customers would like to purchase those products which are having reviews along with them. These reviews provide your potential customers with much better insights into how these products can be useful to them. Moreover, there are high chances that the user reviews may include those keywords for which you were also optimizing your website. Therefore, it further increases the visibility of your website on the internet helping you attain the SMART Goals of an online brand presence.
So it becomes important for you to consider customer reviews which can provide you with a golden opportunity to attract more potential customers. Eventually, the users would trust your website if they want to purchase anything.
6. Developing a mobile-friendly website
Did you know that as per Statista, more than 90 percent of the internet population use mobile devices to surf the internet? Having said that, can you really afford to not ensure that your users get a magnificent experience while accessing your website through smartphones?
With the advancement of technology, eCommerce platforms are not only limited to computers and laptops but mobile phones are now very much capable of displaying these websites. Having said that, most people are accessing these websites through their mobile devices and this trend is most likely to continue in the future.
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It is important for you to note that laptops and mobile devices are totally different. Hence, how you design your website for laptops differs from designing it for a mobile device.
Moreover, Google tends to crawl those websites which are having its mobile version and eventually rank them in the search results. Therefore, it becomes extremely important to make your website mobile-friendly which will lead to more users on your website.
For providing your users with a positive experience on their mobile devices, make sure that your content and product images are well optimized for mobile phones. This way you can ensure that most of the mobile users on your website would have a great experience while scrolling through the product list.
Conclusion
To sum up, eCommerce websites are crucial in this digital era as more and more users are using these platforms to search for and purchase their preferred products. To get the long-term benefits of a growing online audience, effective SEO strategies are a must for your eCommerce website to make it easy for your target users to find your website. This will ultimately lead to enhanced visibility of it in the Google search results.
