e-Commerce SEO Tips: How Online Stores Can Increase Their Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is a valuable marketing tool as every user visit is free and can result in a potential sale. If you own an online store, one of your main challenges will involve building a landing page to attract searchers and increase your online traffic. With this in mind, here is some guidance on improving your chances of generating more potential customers.
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic comes from unpaid searches, such as Google and other search engines. It’s vital for any online business since organic traffic represents 60% of the total site’s traffic.
You can increase your organic traffic by creating or improving your site content. Posting regular blogs is one way. Also, consider including long-tail keywords in your content to improve your search engine ranking.
Encourage customer reviews and promote them online
Around 9 out of 10 people consider favorable online reviews to be reliable. Moreover, they are also more likely to purchase a product or service from your store if other users have posted relevant recommendations.
For an e-commerce website, being able to easily access positive product reviews is essential for visitors. If your site has a customer review page, make sure you display related products and services to encourage potential sales.
You can also make use of product review tools, although you should only utilize platforms that are search engine friendly. For example, Google tends to ignore content it cannot understand — such as JavaScript codes.
Platforms that allow you to embed reviews into your site via HTML offer the following benefits:
- Search engines and users can read the product recommendations. This may mean higher search ranking or encouraging readers to buy.
- The performance of your long-tail keywords will be improved, resulting in higher search visibility.
- Your online leads and sales will increase since they can engage the readers to make a purchase.
Optimize your meta descriptions
The meta description is the short line of text that appears underneath your page title on the search engine results pages. You can incorporate important information in the meta to help persuade users to click on your page.
The meta description example
If your online store offers a myriad of products, writing the meta description can be quite a challenge. For this reason, if your business has the necessary resources, you should try to use unique descriptions for every product page.
You could also create a “concatenation schema” and a set of meta description rules to automate the process. A concatenation schema is an SEO guide for programmers to integrate some elements in the website and HTML code, including title tags and headings, body content, or ALT texts.
It is always a good idea to include the following variables in your schema: categories and subcategories, filters, product names and titles, brand, including model, style, color, manufacturing date, etc.
You may wish to follow a meta description schema similar to this:
- Find [Brand] [Model] [Product] at mysite.com
- Solve your [Problem] with our [Brand] [Product], available at mysite.com
Ensure the fast loading speed
A site’s loading speed has been a crucial Google ranking factor since 2018, especially in relation to mobile search results. Studies have shown that a one-second reduction in a mobile site’s loading speed can result in an average:
Faster sites have lower bounce rates
According to Springhill Marketing, your website should load within three seconds. Fortunately, you can use loading speed monitoring tools, such as WebPageTest, to check:
- Loading time (on PCs and mobile devices)
- Bounce rate
- Possible page speed problems
Switch to HTTPS immediately
If your e-commerce site’s URL uses the old HTTP, you should switch to HTTPS immediately. Since July 2018, Google’s Chrome browser has marked non-HTTPS sites as “not secure.” If customers have doubts about your site’s security, it may be difficult to persuade them to make online purchases with their credit cards. Furthermore, an HTTPS web address can boost customer trust as well as organic traffic.
Here are the following steps of converting an HTTP to HTTPS:
- Purchase and install an SSL certificate on your site’s hosting account.
- After installation, check and ensure all your website links are changed from HTTP to HTTPS.
- Notify the search engines of your site’s change of address by setting up 301 redirects.
While the steps seem straightforward, the process may be too complicated for many businesses. Consider delegating these tasks to your web hosting company or website designers.
Include or optimize voice search
The increasing popularity of Alexa, Cortana, Siri, and Hey Google clearly points to the benefit of using a voice assistant. Accordingly, you should consider adding voice answers to your FAQs page. To do this, you can:
- Use a schema format to make a list of the answers on your pages
- Check the usual online queries using the Google Search Console
Make sure you provide accurate information and that your answers are unique, detailed, and interesting to both search engines and customers.
Write unique product descriptions
Remember, you will be competing against countless other similar online stores. If you want your products to stand out from the crowd, you must write unique but engaging content that is guaranteed to attract customers.
Where necessary, you should try to identify any product pages that have identical or duplicate content, and rewrite them. In addition, make sure your product descriptions are well-written and a cut above those of your competitors. This will boost your chances of your products appearing in online searches.
The following product description includes key ring features as well as the enticing story of the stone it’s made of.
Source: Sivanaspirit
You should begin with your best-selling and most profitable products. If you are selling on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, use the manufacturer’s description. This will ensure that unique content is not being shared elsewhere on the internet.
Improve your site’s HTML codes
Without HTML, your website will appear as either a blank screen or a jumble of unreadable text. The HTML codes and elements enable users to review the relevant information they are searching for quickly. Meanwhile, search engines use your site’s HTML to:
- Learn about your content
- Determine its relevance
- Identify which users will benefit from the content
You should conduct a periodic review of your HTML and remove anything that is outdated, irrelevant, and slows your site’s loading speed.
Optimize your videos for Google
Studies have shown that more than 6 out of 10 customers will buy products they have seen in a social media video. Moreover, a combination of helpful video and text content can boost your organic traffic by more than 150%.
When making a product video, always include a transcript before posting it as this will enable Google and other search engines to understand what your content is all about.
If you intend to publish a large number of videos, consider the following steps:
- Upload them to free media platforms such as YouTube
- Place or embed the YouTube videos on your website with the transcribed text underneath
- Use headings to separate the different topics
- Break down the text into small paragraphs that are easy to skim
Promote your website content
Building links to your content can also significantly increase your organic traffic. However, you must focus on creating high-quality links. It doesn’t matter if the content is a blog or an infographic. It should make people want to link to it.
Conclusion
As an online store owner, you should never underestimate the power of organic traffic as it is an effective way of increasing your online sales. And, as a bonus, it’s free!
However, it does require some effort on your part. You must utilize content that both search engines and users can easily find. Whether you use a video or text, it should engage your potential customers and encourage them to make a purchase or at least consider doing so. There are various ways of improving your content, ranging from posting positive customer reviews to creating high-quality videos.
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