SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of increasing both quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. It plays such a crucial role in E-commerce Marketing, but not many businesses are aware of how to deploy it. In this competitive business field, SEO will help make your brand visible and even attractive to customers as well as stay on the cutting edge of the SERPs (Search engine results pages). This article specifically focuses on SEO for eCommerce on Shopify – a proprietary platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. It also acknowledges whether Shopify is SEO-friendly or not. 1. Importance of SEO for e-Commerce SEO is a process that examines how search engines operate, the computer-programmed algorithms that regulate search engine behavior, what users look for, and what search terms or keywords they enter into search engines. Nowadays, Google is considered the King of all websites in the world. Therefore, what every store owner longs for is their brand site can appear on Google’s result pages, particularly the first one. Forbes (2017) has reported on the value of search results rankings that “The first page of Google captures 71 percent of search traffic clicks and has been reported to be as high as 92 percent in recent years.” Therefore, SEO will be the perfect solution for your website to obtain better rankings on Google in particular and other search engines in general, irrespective of what kind of your business. Visibility to customers It is no wonder that SEO becomes indispensable to all e-commerce stores because of its amazing benefits. First, it is pivotal in helping customers find you. In other words, it would improve your organic search visibility on the search engines. As afore-mentioned, Google has accounted for the lion’s share of profit-producing traffic. Hence, the higher rank your business websites on Google search results, the more possibility that the people visit it and potentially be converted into customers. Cost-effectiveness The second benefit is that SEO is an economical way to improve your bottom line. In this intensely competitive e-commerce market, if you can drive traffic to your websites to a greater extent than your competitors, you still have a chance to win the throne. A large number of owners thereby have spent a fortune to pay for website traffic, which is not cost-effective at all. Thus, especially when your budget is tight, the traffic from organic search when employing SEO tactics is driven without charges. Long-term strategy Last but not least, what SEO brings to your business is long-lasting, which is an investment in long-term performance as its effectiveness won’t pause when the campaign comes to an end. Each SEO project firmly focuses on the content, design, or technology that makes up your site and helps it to retain SERP ranking once optimized. 2. E-Commerce SEO checklist It becomes apparent that users have to know what elements and steps are needed to do SEO for their website. Here is a concise checklist that will help you to level up your e-commerce SEO strategy. 2.1. Conduct Keyword Research Top-searched keywords and terms related to your business are some of the most crucial elements in improving your SEO strategy. They can help you to understand search queries and popular terms that your customers are looking for. Two important factors indicating the effectiveness of your keyword are its search volumes and competition. Thereby, keywords are classified into 3 categories, depending on their length. First, head keywords, which usually just have 1 or 2 words and have a high search volume and also competition. Next, body keywords consist of 2 to 3 word phrases with a good search volume and competition, not high, not low. The last one, long-tail keywords, are four or more words with a low search volume but less comparative. So the more suitable ones you can catch and use, the better. A popular tool to research keywords is Ahrefs which can be used to conduct research about SEO and competitors, topic analysis and keyword, SEO audits, and much more. 2.2. Get Unique Title Tags for Website Page Unique title tags should be used on every page of your website no matter what your eCommerce business is. The more exact the keyword in your title tag is, the more your website’s visibility click-through rate in organic search results is. 2.3. Include Keywords in Heading Tags The most prioritized content on a website page is usually the H1 heading. Hence, the H1 on each page of your website needs optimizing to be unique to the page’s topic. However, if you want to keep your content readable, do not overuse keywords as they are unnecessary in headings. 2.4. Reference Keywords in URLs Your URL is the most easily noticeable feature for Google and oftentimes users. An easy-to-read URL facilitates users and search engines to understand your page’s context; thereby, help your sites rank higher in organic search results. Besides, repetitive keywords and superfluous words like “the” and “and” in URLs should be avoided. 2.5. Optimize Image File Names and Alt Text Alt-text is how Google understands an image’s context, which can describe the image to help the visually-impaired readers. This helps search engines understand more about how your images and content are related. Moreover, you should also be concerned about image file names whose title needs to be detailed and user-friendly. For example, if you sell ice creams in two flavors which are Blueberry and Chocolate, the name of the photo describing your product should be kept unique so that Google and other search engines can differentiate between these two different flavors and increase their online visibility. 2.6. Deploy Rich Snippets When your website appears on a search engine results page, the title tag, meta description, and URL are shown. Once using rich snippets, search engines are able to display more specific information about the web page such as 0-5 star ratings, reviews, price, and product availability. Although rich snippets are just temporary, they can improve your ranking in organic search results. 2.7. Run Your Page Through Moz Page Grader Moz Page Grader is an SEO checker providing instant analysis and reports to help users improve the on-page SEO. You will be able to see how well optimized your page is for the target keyword and how competitors rank for them, thereby improving your content. READ ALL HERE: DECRYPT: Is Shopify good for SEO? Do you know?
