Among the different strategies you can put into practice to make your e-commerce work, SEO is indisputably essential. Indeed, SEO for e-commerce is like a shop window: if the display is catchy and convincing, the client will enter the shop. If the SEO strategy works, the user will visit your e-commerce site to purchase.
We have all changed the way we shop compared to the past: we do not directly pass from research to purchase, but we evaluate the thousands of alternatives the digital world enables us to consult throughout a constant search for information.
This puts e-commerces in front of a challenge, on one side, and an opportunity, on the other. The challenge is to succeed emerging among a lot of competitors, but the opportunity is users can find you and choose you more easily, taking advantage of the benefits a good SEO strategy offers.
First of all, what is SEO?
SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of strategies, based on the selection of keywords and content writing, aimed at organically ranking one or more pages of a website inside the search engines.
Basically, when a potential customer is surfing on a search engine such as Google, it is also thanks to SEO if your e-commerce is on the podium of the first pages appearing on their search.
In this way, the visibility of your website, its traffic and, lastly, sales will increase.
Precisely for this last reason, today it is essential to implement e-commerce SEO. If every website needs a good ranking on search engines, this is even more the case for an online shop that, in order to increase sales in the middle of a cutthroat competition, needs all of the means at its disposal to be noticed.
E-commerce SEO practical guide: why is SEO important for e-commerce?
#1 SEO vs Paid Campaigns
When a user finds you thanks to SEO, it means your e-commerce appeared on their search engine because they looked for you, therefore that your offer perfectly meets their needs. The customer finds your product or service in a spontaneous way, differently than what happens with Paid Campaigns, and this immediately generates a positive vision of your brand.
#2 Easier sales process
The fact that users were looking for you when they found your online shop ensures that, when they land on your e-commerce site, they are warm leads: users who are already interested in your product or service and willing to buy it. If the information you give is satisfying, the sales process will be way easier and it is likely that the sales will be completed almost by itself.
#3 How do your competitors behave?
SEO is an incredible instrument: if your competitors do not use it and you do, the competitive advantage arising from it is almost immediate. What if your competitors adopt a SEO strategy? Then you must roll up your sleeves to rank your e-commerce better than theirs, to optimize your contents so that they appear before your competitors’ ones on SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
#4 Multi-functional contents
Increasing traffic on your e-commerce through SEO is a strategy to bring visits also to the other pages of your website and to your other channels. Backlinks, very useful for the purpose of SEO, may also lead potential customers to other pages of your choice, allowing you for example to do up-selling and cross-selling activities, or to send them to your social networks, giving them the possibility to obtain more information about your Brand before purchasing. Moreover, why not use all the potentials of such valid content as the indexed one? You can revive it on your socials, giving the content double life and also giving it more visibility.
So, how to optimize an e-commerce?
5 best practices for your online shop:
#1 Know your targetThis will allow you to intercept their interests and to be able to answer all the questions even before you are asked to.
Indeed, the user is looking for a Brand that not only offers a quality product or service and at an affordable price, but that is in line with their values, ideals, and that satisfies all of their necessities. In this way, you will generate a positive sentiment in the customer, who will automatically see you in a favorable light, and will be more likely to choose you against your competitors.
#2 Structure your e-commerce in a simple and intuitive manner
Also in this case, your objective is to understand the user’s necessities and desires. When we are looking for something on the Web, we need explicit answers, clear and simple to be found. Also your e-commerce has to be structured this way.
(Attention! “Clear” does not mean incomplete. In order to improve your ranking on search engines, prefer long product descriptions, detailed and thorough. You can also use your reviews to show your e-commerce reliability.)
#3 Your e-commerce has to be mobile first (or mobile responsive) and safe
A mobile friendly e-commerce is a more visited e-commerce: how much do you use your computer to shop, compared to how much you use your phone? Very little, just as the majority of your potential clients!
#4 Optimize the images
It happens to everyone to search for a product through images: this is the very reason why you cannot avoid inserting a keyword in your ecommerce images’ ALT tag.
#5 Adopt a specific e-commerce SEO strategy
Here’s how to do SEO for e-commerce sites: unlike other websites, an e-commerce needs to prefer transactional keywords (not informative ones!) to effectively position through SEO. Indeed, the user who is looking for your shop is not only interested in information, but also and most of all to purchase.
Get off on the right foot
Did you know that there is a platform that allows you to build a tailor-made e-commerce, based on your necessities and objectives? Thanks to Shopify and its integration with Hubspot, you can start from scratch with your online shop or you can develop it in order to make it a successful e-commerce, best handling your catalog, your orders and most of all your customers. In this way, you will increase both the visits to the shop and your sales thanks to the integrated SEO function (that also gives you SEO tips for e-commerce sites!).
Now that you have understood that a SEO strategy is essential to increase traffic on your e-commerce, don’t waste time!
In Ander Group, thanks to our multi-sector experience with the best SEO tools for e-commerce, we are at your disposal to optimize your e-commerce and make it peerless. Let’s have a coffee together!
