E-commerce is the future of retail and, as such, one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. Last year, we had an unprecedented pandemic, which caused a lot of people to stay at home and turn towards contact-less retail in order to stay safe. Now that all these people saw the advantages of e-commerce, it is unlikely for some of them to return to traditional retail, the way they used to before. The world of retail has forever changed.
The problem lies in the fact that a lot of vendors realize this, which makes this field more competitive than ever before. In order to stay ahead of the competition, an e-commerce vendor needs to learn how to increase its digital footprint. This inevitably leads to a bigger investment in SEO and digital marketing, in general. When it comes to improving your SEO, not everything is about increasing your financial investments. Finding out new, efficient trends and implementing these changes into your SEO program is just as important. Here are five suggestions to get you started.
Use long-tail keywords
When choosing keywords, the key thing to focus on is definitely competitiveness. Sure, most commonly used keywords are highly effective but they’re also quite competitive. This especially goes for single-word or two-word phrases. However, once you go past the 4+ word phrases, this is where you really start standing out. Keep in mind that you have two types of audience – robot and human. Long-tail keywords are favoured by both, seeing as how it enables those using the search option a chance to find exactly what they need in as few steps as possible.
So how do you make proper long-tail keywords? First of all, you can try to use Google Suggestions in order to get a general idea. You can also look for related articles and check their Q&A sections. For those who are more experienced and are willing to invest more time and effort into this, there’s always the option of mining your own analytics and query reports. Keep in mind that decent long-tail keywords may be found even in the most unusual of places. For instance, you could look up the item that you’re making the keyword for on Wikipedia. Here, you can check out the subheadings and check if there’s any categorization involved.
Learning how to effectively make long-tail keywords is really not that difficult of a task and it will greatly benefit you in the long run. The key thing is that you use proper tools for keyword analysis but also try to think like a member of your target audience.
Optimize all devices
The next thing you need to understand is that device optimization no longer means what it used to. Nowadays, people browse the internet from more devices than ever before. There are several solutions to this problem, as well as several means for you to make proper optimization. First, you can make a responsive web design that adjusts to all devices and screen sizes. Second, you can make several versions of your website, which is more effective but not more cost- or labour-efficient. Lastly, you can go mobile-first, which is an interesting concept that has numerous advantages. The choice is yours.
Remember that smartphones and desktop computers both have their value and their role in your online presence, in general. There are also tablets of all sizes and there are even some people who use smart TVs to browse the internet. In other words, there’s so much work to do. While mobile users are the vast majority of your traffic, you need to keep in mind two relevant things. First, the same person is likely to visit your site from multiple devices. Second, while larger screens (desktop, laptop and tablet) may have a smaller audience size, they still have a higher conversion rate. This is why they should not be discarded or their significance downplayed.
The device that your audience uses to interact with your online presence is a massive part of their overall experience. Neglecting this has the potential to ruin all your other SEO efforts. Therefore, it’s one of the first things worth your immediate attention.
Intuitive categories
One of the most relevant metrics worth is definitely the number of pages visited, combined with the average duration of the visit. Opposed to the duration of the visit, there’s the phenomenon of bounce rate. This is when people just enter the page, see that there’s nothing for them there and they just leave immediately. According to SEO Sydney Experts, the best way to improve this is to make it easy for everyone to find what they’re looking for. You see, stumbling upon the wrong category or product will cause people to leave immediately. This can ruin your average duration of the visit and increases your bounce rate.
As we’ve already mentioned, you have two types of audience – human and robot. On the one hand, you have a category system that can provide you with simple navigation for your human audience. On the other hand, you need to improve the website architecture in order to provide the same experience for search engine bots. This is why it’s so important that your technical SEO (on-site SEO) is up to the task, as well.
Regardless if we’re talking about regular visitors or bots, it’s pivotal that you make navigation as simple and intuitive as possible. It is also important that you introduce a proper category taxonomy.
Improve page loading time
The loading time on your website is one of the most important ranking metrics out there. Not only does it participate in the final score that your website gets, but it also affects the customer experience. Customer experience, in general, can be drastically improved with the proper use of analytics. Previously, we’ve talked about bounce rate and if your website fails to load within 4 seconds, as many as 25% of all your audience are likely to leave. Website optimization, however, is a matter of web development, which is why web developers need to play an essential part in your SEO efforts. Both web design and web development are relevant to your SEO efforts.
From the standpoint of your overall image in the e-commerce world, the efficiency of your site also affects your trustworthiness. As such, it makes a massive difference when it comes to your conversion rates. A slow and non-responsive website seems unreliable. Since you’re asking your audience to trust you with their personal information (credit card info, in particular), it is pivotal that they have full confidence in your brand. While a fast website is not necessarily a secure one, it is usually perceived as such. Sometimes, this perception is all that it takes.
In order to improve your website’s SEO, you need to improve its loading speed and responsiveness in general. There are several ways to do so and the most reliable way is to hire a professional web developer and have them perform an audit on your website.
Rewards for consumer reviews
Google My Business is the best way for your brand to increase its search engine visibility without even having people visit its website. However, people look up Google My Business snippet for two reasons. The first one is the basic info – things like address, work hours, phone number, etc. The second one is user reviews. This is a key stage in the decision-making process of your audience. The reason why this is so important is that people use these reviews to decide whether to do business with your brand. So, it’s incredibly relevant for the overall results of your marketing campaign. Other than this, it also affects your traffic (thus your SEO).
So, how do you get more consumer reviews? Waiting for organic reviews is not that reliable, seeing as how even people who are satisfied with the way you do business may not decide to write a review. Even return customers may not have this habit. Sure, you may ask them nicely but even this has a limited effect. The best way to do so is to try and incentivize this behaviour by offering a reward for your reviewers. This can come in a form of a point system that can be redeemed for a certain reward.
Remember, real people, leaving genuine comments on the subject matter are much more effective than reviews written by professional marketers. People can simply tell the difference, regardless of how hard you try to hide it.
In conclusion
The very last thing you need to keep in mind is the fact that your e-commerce business’s SEO is ever-changing. This means that you need to introduce regular changes, constantly re-evaluate your metrics and be ready to adapt. Also, it’s important to understand that all these changes to your digital marketing may take weeks and months before giving results. So, don’t be too quick to discard them as ineffective or change direction.
