Ecommerce SEO: A 21-Point Checklist to Help in the Optimization of Your Online Store
Do you know the fact that SEO has the highest ROI of any ecommerce marketing campaign but most online shops are put together with little to no consideration of search engines? You need to require constant effort and a stream of income. SEO efforts to keep your business upfront — once you rank, you practically make sales on autopilot with no recurring expense.
Ecommerce has been the rising industry over digital networks for the past couple of years now. The pandemic has only added to the importance of having eCommerce services available for your store, as the essential survival instinct for all businesses. In the times of today, if you want your business to survive, you need to have an eCommerce store for it.
The ability to discover products and services over digital channels has been a service that’s ahead of its time. For a customer to be able to not only browse but also order a product from their brand of choice from over and across the world - phenomenal. The eCommerce industry has given users the ability to carry fine judgement while investing their time and money for a product or service.
But why is it important to optimize an online store?
SEO is carried out for both businesses and eCommerce stores for one major reason - higher ROI and an incessant increase in the amount of traffic directed to your website. Competition is available for all businesses in all industries, and the internet is no exception.
For online outlets, the competition is much higher than we’d like to believe. With millions of businesses available at the click of a button, the worldwide market isn’t one for the weak-hearted. To get your eCommerce business recognized amidst the cutthroat competition, it’s important to opt for SEO for eCommerce stores to get your business recognized.
Look at it from the eyes of the customer - if you come across an online store that’s well-designed and filled with informational content, you’re likely to prefer that particular store over the rest. Indexing your website can get you to the top of Google SERPs, landing you in the hearts of the consumers as the traffic on your page increases alongside your CTR.
To help you along your journey of eCommerce SEO, we’ve built this checklist of tasks you must perform to gain results for your online store:
1. Before you Begin, Ensure your Website is User-Friendly
Although working on your website’s traffic is important, it’s much more crucial to work on the basics first. Every customer judges a business by its website design. If your website isn’t clean and easy to navigate through, you will end up losing more customers than you gain. Making your website user-friendly will eventually help you in search rankings.
2. Once you’ve Worked on Web Design, it’s Time to Focus on Mobile Optimization
After you’ve finished working on your website’s design, it’s important to remember that most of your traffic will be driven through mobile phones. If you’re unable to reach your niche on mobile search engines, you will end up losing more than 48% of your potential buyers. Mobile optimization is important if you want to reach all your customers.
3. An Ecommerce Store is Nothing Without an SSL Certificate
If you, as an online store, cannot give your customers the basic necessity of a secure payment method, there will be no reason for any user to entrust you. If you want to build your credibility as an eCommerce outlet that can be trusted, an SSL certificate is essential.
4. Security’s Done - it’s Time for Keyword Research
For eCommerce SEO to work flawlessly, there’s no doubt that keyword research is important. Carrying out thorough research of the keywords that work in your industry can help you understand your market and target audience better, whilst also allowing you to incorporate what’s necessary into your landing pages and content.
5. Don’t Limit your Research, Target your Competitors
For any business, it’s important to carry out a reasonable amount of research on their competition. If you don’t look at the way the rest of the market is working its way to the top, you will not be able to identify the strategies that you can implement. Competitive research can also help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, allowing you to know what you need to focus more on.
6. Once you’ve Done your Research, it’s Time to Build Content
Content marketing is the most important part of effective marketing, especially for SEO. From the descriptive content that you build for your products and services to the content of the landing pages, if you build innovative content, there will not be a single dull moment for your customers as they browse through your website. Guest posts, eBooks, brochures, and more are also included in this part of the process.
7. Build an Informative Blog that’s Related to your Market
Customers tend to approach eCommerce outlets when they’re looking for the solution to a problem. Building an informative blog that answers the queries of the customers by relating the solution to be your store’s product or service, can help you get discovered before your competitors, allowing you to lead the race to the top of Google SERPs. How To’s, answering market queries and more are the key methods to tackle this pointer.
8. Don’t let your Website be Buffer!
A customer will not give your website any more than 3 seconds to load. If you fail to capture their attention within this timeframe, you will not only end up losing a customer, but you might also drop from Google SERPs. Loading time is currently one of the leading causes of page abandonment. Don’t let your website be abandoned, optimize your website’s speed.
9. Perform a Thorough On-Page SEO Audit
An on-page SEO audit can help you identify all the errors on your website. Namely, it can help you get rid of:
- Duplicate content
- Duplicate title tags
- Duplicate meta descriptions
- Missing ALT and title tags
- Local SEO incorporations and more
10. Register your Business on Online Lists
An online listing of your business is important to help you get discovered on search engines. Once your business is registered on listings, it will help Google identify you as one, allowing an easy crawl to help you get to the top of Google SERPs.
11. Create a Sitemap for your Business
A sitemap is essentially an outline of your entire eCommerce business. By submitting your sitemap to Google, the search engine will be able to gain an understanding of your business's primary purpose. This helps your business to rank on search engines since it helps them review your store and place it in respective searches.
12. Build Backlinks for your Business
Incorporating backlinks onto your website is important to help you get discovered from different mediums. You can use the broken-link method, backlinks through different infographics, testimonials, content promotion, guest posts, and much more.
13. Build an Email Subscriber List with the Help of a Newsletter
For businesses to keep their customers interested in their brand, it’s important to keep them engaged and informed through different channels. An email subscription list can help your customers be informed about the latest products, services, and offers that are ongoing in your eCommerce store.
14. Generate an Accurate Call to Action
For your eCommerce store to gain the recognition it needs, you need to fit your store with accurate CTAs. Begin with a simple placement of the ‘add to cart' option on your website. If you want to explore more options, you can give the customer access to adding products into the cart with the help of a simple click on the search bar. Product promotions and well-knit offers must be presented on the landing page of the website.
15. Explore the Options of Influencer Marketing
Influencers, bloggers, and models are currently the leading chains of influencer marketing, but the question is - “What is influencer marketing?” Simply put, influencer marketing is a part of the extensive topic of social media marketing that allows brands to collaborate with bloggers and influencers to perform endorsements and product placements in their posts.
As an eCommerce outlet, interacting with micro-influencers is recommended. If you collaborate with multiple micro-influencers, you’ll be able to save money as well as reach more potential customers than you’d expect. If you’re able to give the influencer their space and work their magic naturally, the product placement will seem like a part of their daily routine rather than a brand deal. Work your way, naturally.
16. Social Media Presence is Crucial for Every Business
For every online business, whether it be an eCommerce outlet or a local company, it’s important to set up a social media presence to get discovered. In the times of today, every business outlet, no matter how big or small, starts the crux of their networking through social media.
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are considered to be the most important parts of social media marketing. Setting up your social media accounts can help your business gain brand credibility as well as high domain authority over the internet. Once your business gets discovered by customers on multiple platforms, it’s likely to be a well-established brand in the eyes of the customer.
17. Build your Ecommerce Business’ Credibility by Switching to HTTPS
Say, a customer is on your website and the first thing they notice is the absence of a secure network connection. If you want to build your credibility furthermore in the eyes of your audience, you need to be able to give them a sense of security when they access your website. Even though you might believe that the SSL certificate is enough for an eCommerce store, switching to HTTPS can help you further establish your domain’s authority.
18. Promotional Campaigns are Important - But One Must Know When to Stop
Ecommerce businesses need to promote the latest deals and offers on their products with the help of email marketing. However, it is equally important for businesses to know when they need to stop. If you bombard your customers with emails or brochures (in some cases, even mobile notifications), the consumer will begin looking at the messages from your store as unwanted notifications.
Spamming a user will only lead to unsubscriptions. Work your eCommerce magic and understand what the ideal amount of emails or notifications should be.
19. Track the Cookies - Follow Remarketing Campaigns
Remarketing is said to increase the sale of a product by 400%. No customer ever invests their money in a product or service within the first go. It’s highly likely that a curious customer will look over your competitors before they purchase your product - many don’t even buy the product after placing the item in their cart.
A remarketing campaign will allow you to market your product to a potential buyer even while they’re looking over your competitors - allowing your product to create a long-lasting impression on the consumer.
20. Ecommerce Automation
If you want your business to grow more and continue doing well, you might like to consider eCommerce automation or upgrade what you already have. This will free up a lot of your time and allow you to focus on other aspects of the business. A good eCommerce automation strategy lets you simplify the complicated parts of your business, without sacrificing your usual high standards as far as customers are concerned.
However marketing automation is itself a big topic to cover, you need to know it elaborately. Only then you will be able to save time, money, and focus on the parts of the business you prefer working on rather than the tedious, repetitive tasks.
21. Last But Not Least, Build Customer Loyalty
For an eCommerce outlet, there can be nothing better for the business than customer loyalty. Although high-quality products are considered to be an essential part of building a successful relationship between a business and a customer - but are high-quality products at fine prices enough?
While this might have been true a few years ago, businesses need to give back to customers in the times of today. Giveaways, promotional offers, coupon codes, and complimentary gifts to loyal customers are a crucial part of building a successful business-to-customer relationship. Build your customer loyalty and you will be able to see the intensive growth of your business for yourself.
SEO and eCommerce are Truly a Magnificent Pair
With the way that SEO and eCommerce businesses complement each other, one might believe that the two were made to co-exist. For example, eCommerce businesses strive to provide to their customers as soon as they are greeted with an issue.
Many eCommerce sites started providing E-signatures or electronic signatures feature to their users, to provide more reliability and security on their purchases. New updates of google are checking the security factor more to get an eCommerce online store into the rankings. On the other hand, SEO helps in making this dream come true.
Every business has a different way of implementing an eCommerce SEO strategy for their independent digital marketing campaigns - these are a select few of the methods that we implement. Even though you might feel confused and overwhelmed by all the details involved in the process, the only thought that must concern you is that user experience.
Fine user experience is one of the most important parts of a digital marketing strategy. If you focus on providing your customers with a memorable experience, you needn’t worry about the steps. To build the strategy of your dreams, hire an ecommerce SEO agency that can help you. Contact Clickmatix for more information, today.