Owning an e-commerce site entails so many complexities and site owners soon become pros! But when it comes to gaining organic traffic, many give up because it’s a constant nag that needs to be addressed. It’s not a set-and-forget sort of thing.
Though it seems like a daunting task, driving in organic traffic is not rocket science. You just need to know what you should concentrate on specific and you’ll get the hang of it.
How to promote your eCommerce website organically?
Organic traffic is free and it comes through search engines like Google. Therefore, it’s known as Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. Now, many people believe SEO to be a process wherein you match keywords to the user’s search queries, but it is way bigger than that.
Google is the biggest player in the market, and therefore, the world plays by their rules. Google’s ultimate intent is to be the best search engine for the people. Therefore, it uses hundreds of algorithms to determine which would be the best result to display for the user’s search query. While there are many factors to consider, the main thing to remember here is to satisfy the user and add value to their queries.
Every piece of content you put up on your website will hold permanent value for your brand in terms of establishing authority, increasing your website real estate value and drawing in more traffic. Therefore, you need to be careful about what gets published and use the right strategies.
SEO and eCommerce sites
Now, SEO is said to have the highest ROI, more than any other marketing campaign in the eCommerce world. Therefore, it is a go-to for many websites. However, with eCommerce, it becomes a whole different ball game since they function under very different conditions and have distinct practices. While other sites can just publish a blog or have pages and pages of content, an eCommerce site has to focus on product listings, while content takes a backseat.
So here, we’ve broken it down for you and concentrated on the SEO tips that work for eCommerce:
1) Focus on unique product descriptions
It’s easier to just copy and paste the manufacturer’s description, since writing a unique one for each product is simply not feasible. But these descriptions are the main content of your site and can match search queries which will seriously boost traffic.
Another great tip is to add the right product tags and attributes to every product. This helps answer basic questions of the consumer on the characteristics of the product.
Use this space to insert relevant keywords but ensure it’s weaved in naturally and not forced. Redundant or bad tactics can seriously damage your SEO efforts. The trick is to keep it as real as possible and it will pay off.
This may seem like an insurmountable task, but luckily in today’s world, there’s a tool for everything. Using one like Tagalys helps you generate multiple unique product listings in just a few seconds.
2) Link building strategy
Now, many site owners go out there and just get as many backlinks as they can, without caring if the site is relevant to them or not. This is a black-hat SEO practice and comes with penalties. The right way to do it is to build a solid backlink profile by getting links only from trusted sites. You also need to ensure the link makes sense and is relevant to the reader.
A genuinely good way to get backlinks is to put out content which people will refer to in their own articles. Statistical articles/reports get a ton of natural backlinks. eCommerce sites have access to such data that tells the world what percentage of visitors abandoned their shopping carts, how many purchased with a credit card, what’s the most popular products, etc.
Collating it and publishing a report and articles around it builds authority and gets you more visibility as people reference your articles. SEO experts also recommend a time-space between 30 days to 6 months to exchange links.
3) Internal Linking Strategy
Interlinking pages and products is a good way to promote more of your site to your visitor. You can prolong the session of the consumer on your website by strategically placing links to other pages of yours. There is no limit on how many interlinks you can have, but ensure whatever you do, it’s relevant and useful for the user.
4) Optimize your internal search
Your internal site search is SEO’s little sister and can’t be ignored. Although this doesn’t necessarily promote your site, it works in favor of giving the customer a good experience so that they revisit and recommend.
A search option is one of the best ways to help customers navigate easily and find the relevant product they want with minimal time spent. You need to optimize your product categories to be more searchable in your site search. You can also experiment with meta keywords and title tags. If it’s all too much, there are eCommerce site search tools available to help you optimize your internal search results to increase conversions.
5) Dive into technical and on-page SEO
There are a few steps you can take here. First, if you haven’t already, learn to use Google Analytics and Google Search Console. There are free quick courses from Google available online. These tools are essential to any website and will give you deep insight into how you well your site does in organic results.
Second, you can run an audit on your site by crawling it using tools like Beam Us Up or Screaming Frog. This helps audit your site and find broken links, duplicate content, missing alt text, etc. You can also keep track of pages with errors through Google Analytics.
Third, ensure you use target keywords, have original content that’s structured according to H1, H2, H3 format. Use custom meta descriptions and optimize your title tags to be around 55 characters. This is because, in search results, anything exceeding this might get cut off.
SEO, when done right, can massively increase your visibility, traffic, and conversions. It’s a great way to promote your eCommerce site especially since it cost you nothing but a little effort!
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