Want to flip an eCommerce store? You’ll need to implement a solid SEO strategy. And the good news is that you won’t need to be a computer whizz or a marketing guru to increase the value of your online asset. The intricacies of SEO may go over your head in the beginning. But with a little help from Google, you can create an effective strategy to grow your business and double your return on investment.
To help you get started, this article has six SEO tips for an online store-flipping business.
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Identify Profitable Keywords
Finding the right keywords is the key to getting your e-commerce website to rank and increase traffic. To successfully attract your ideal customer, you’ll need to identify the search terms your consumers are using. Approximately 35% of interested buyers lookup “product reviews” before directly contacting a store. If your e-store doesn’t use the right keywords your website won’t rank for your product’s search terms.
So how do you identify profitable keywords? Keyword research may not be enough to find long-tail keyword variations to use. But a quick competitive analysis of the keywords your competitors are paying over $1 CPC can point you to some profitable phrases.
Categorize Your Store’s Pages
All the pages in your e-commerce store are essential for your success. From the About, Service, and Product landing pages to the multitude of blog content and product reviews you frequently upload. With so many pages, it’s easy for site visitors to get confused and turn to your competitors.
Categorizing your store’s web pages like this: main page -> product category -> subcategory -> product, makes navigation a breeze. Your pages will be linked together in the most efficient way possible. Consider also using breadcrumbs or a navigation bar that collapses into menus for easier access to categories. When customers can purchase any product in two or three clicks, it increases your chances of making a sale.
Use Actionable Keywords In Your Metadata
Many e-commerce stores use a template meta description for all their products. Which is understandable given that some stores sell hundreds-if not thousands- of products. And although this method saves on time it won’t optimize your individual pages.
Ahrefs recommends you take a more hybrid approach. Where you use actionable keywords in the metadata of your most important product pages. And then create meta tags for each category, subcategory, or brand in your store based on the initial meta description. That way all your products will have unique descriptions optimized for search.
Build Mobile Landing Pages
Quoracreative estimates that 48% of buyers use mobile phones as the first point of contact in a search. While nearly 50% of searchers switch to a competitor’s website after a bad mobile experience. Given how important mobile is to your customers, you need to give site visitors a mobile-friendly website so you won’t miss out on customers.
Building mobile landing pages is the first step. Mobile users will have a slightly different view of your website’s desktop version. One that focuses more on content than visual design. Such that the call to action on every page stands out. Don’t forget to make sure your desktop web page redirects lead to the mobile equivalent, and vice versa.
Build Links To Your Store
When it comes to ranking web pages, Google cares about two things: content and links. So if you want to build links to your store then every content on your website must (1) link to external sites and (2) link to internal product or category pages you want to boost. But the second part only works if you link to relevant pages.
Resource pages are great external sites to link your content to. You can find them on Google by searching “inurl:resources + Z”. Where Z is your product, topic, or industry. Plus, also reach out to other store owners in your niche to ask for backlinks in the form of guest blogs.
Most of the world’s population is on social media. So although links on social shares don’t pass authority, a shout out from an influencer can do wonders for your web traffic.
Audit Your Site for Errors
Any SEO strategy is incomplete without an audit. It’s the only way you’ll know the current standing and quality of your e-commerce store. Which puts you on track to getting the best SEO results in the least amount of time.
Use free tools like Beam Us Up to find broken links, missing metadata, or duplicate content- which are all bad for SEO. You should also ensure that there’s only one browsable version of your site. If possible, choose the encrypted HTTPS version- it’ll slightly boost your website ranking and offers a better user experience. A comprehensive audit tool like Web Ceo can also come in handy in finding broken images or server malfunctions.
