There's so much to think about when it comes to selling on an ecommerce website but none of it matters if buyers can’t find your website. Most consumers’ start the online shopping process on a search engine so if your business isn't conspicuously placed on Google's first page, the chances are your ecommerce business won't be getting the sales it deserves. Low rankings on Google can be attributed to a few SEO blunders that should always be avoided. As a professional SEO agency, we know them all and make sure we never commit them but we also know that this isn’t common knowledge. We’ll bring you up to speed.
1. Data Encryption and Security Should Be a Priority
Implementing a solid, robust security plan should one of your principle concerns. Although many people think that they won’t be affected by cyber invaders, all ecommerce websites are susceptible to hackers and are at risk. Once a business’s security has been breached and private customer data has been exposed, that business’s reputation is irrevocably damaged. To prevent this, HTTPS security encryption using an SSL certificate is a necessity as it protects customer data whenever transactions are made.
2. Always Consider The Audience When Researching Keywords
Keywords are so important and must be focused on what the target audience is searching for. Delve into the mind of your consumers and make informed judgements on what your audience will actually type into the search bar. Your findings should show you that these are often long-tail keywords (more than three words). Once you’ve established them, make sure they’re featured on all the relevant pages and included in blog posts.
3. URLS Must Be Optimised With Keywords
Instead of having URLS with non-descriptive words or product numbers that will mean nothing to your consumers, use key words that relate to the product you’re selling on that particular page. Using keywords in the URL makes sure that search engines know what the page is about, as well as consumers.
4. You Must Use Industry Standard HTML
You must use industry standard html as the code of your website so it can be crawled and indexed efficiently by Googlebots. You can make the most of HTML code by optimising images on your website with appropriate ALT tags. Interestingly, it’s worth taking note that Google can’t read Flash code, so even if Flash features make your website look good, too much Flash negatively impacts your SEO.
5. Always Include Product Reviews
Reviews from other people legitimise your products and help establish you as a reliable supplier. Reviews play a huge part in convincing people to actually buy from you as most people consult reviews from other people before buying a product, especially if it’s expensive. Reviews also pass as content and put you in Google’s good books.
6. It Must Be Quick To Load To Maximise User Experience
Consumers are impatient. If websites take a while to load, they will simply get bored and visit a competitor’s website. The speed of your website is determined by a number of things such as having graphics and images of the highest resolution. This will contribute towards making your site load slowly which has a negative effect on your search engine rankings as it results in a higher bounce rate.
7. Do Not Spam Your Own Website
The days of keyword-stuffing are long gone. Google’s algorithms know when websites are permeated with irrelevant, random insertions of keywords and punishes websites accordingly. Not only does it have a negative impact on your relationship with Google, it’s also bad for user experience as users are much more engaged by helpful, useful content than boring, spammy text.
8. Make Sure You Include Plenty Of Internal Links
Linking your content back to other sources of content is an effective way of getting on Google’s good side. Including internal links to other relevant pages on your website or blog is a simple procedure and will improve your SEO by helping you establish yourself as a reputable source of knowledge. It also gives users even more helpful content to facilitate their online shopping process, reducing your bounce rate at the same time.
9. Avoid Duplicating Content
Google makes an effort to weed out duplicate content that has been deliberately repeated just to pad out web pages with keywords. Consequently, repeating content on your website is going to have a negative impact on your SEO so whilst it’s tempting and easier to do this, we strongly advise you not to.
10. Don’t Spend Too Much Time Obsessing Over Your Ranking
SEO is not the most important thing to focus on when it comes to ecommerce websites. The most important thing for you is getting enough people to visit your website that you’ll make substantial sales. This can only be done in conjunction with other marketing tools like social media, email marketing and content marketing. Without content marketing, SEO is almost futile. Equally, without a strong social media presence, establishing your website as a reputable online shop is difficult. There are so many different factors that determine the success of your SEO so it's important to use SEO as part of a wider strategy.
Although avoiding these SEO sins will make sure that you’re not stuck on page three indefinitely, to really drive your business to the top of Google it is advisable to use an SEO company that specialises in the area of ecommerce website design and marketing. That’s where we come in: our expert SEO practitioners will take your ecommerce business to the masses by incrementally pushing your business to the top.
However, we can’t just rely on SEO. In order to stay ahead of the game and stand out amongst fierce ecommerce competition, you need to use every marketing tool at your disposal to good effect. Our marketing packages comprise of all the elements of marketing you need to put your ecommerce store in front of your target audience. Get in touch to book a free consultation, we’d love to meet you.