The eCommerce industry is quite competitive as compared to others. In order to compete with your competitors and win this race, it’s time to work on the SEO strategy for your store. 

If you are running an eCommerce store or managing a store and not getting enough traffic, conversions, and sales then this blog is for you. You will get to know the mistakes that you may be doing which further breakdowns the store’s traffic.

Therefore, avoid the below-mentioned SEO mistakes if you want to grow your eCommerce business online:

Mistake1: Improper keyword research

Most of the eCommerce business owners research and find out the keywords that are relevant to their business. But here they forget about the keywords/phrases that the targeted audience will actually use to do a search for such products.

Let’s understand this with the help of an example:

Suppose if you are selling computer accessories and you choose generic keywords like a laptop, computer, mouse, etc then you can never reach your targeted audience. 

In order to reach them, you need to be more specific in terms of keywords like Dell laptop, HP laptop, wireless mouse, etc. Thus, choose your keywords wisely in order to win the race!

Mistake2: Unoptimized Product URLs

This is one of the biggest mistakes that most of the eCommerce business owners make. They don’t give much importance to the product URLs. But it is important to make your product URLs SEO-friendly.

SEO-friendly URLs have two major benefits; firstly it is considered by Google as one of the ranking signals and secondly, it makes your website look more good.

It is a fact that clean URLs are clicked by the majority of people as compared to the URLs that include any symbol/score/dates. 

Most people focus on meta tags because they are visible to users and if they are good then users visit their website. Along with this, URLs are also visible to the users and if they are not user-friendly then people will think twice before visiting your website. Thus, optimize all of the product URLs of your website in order to increase the traffic.

Mistake3: Duplicate Content

The issue of duplicate content can easily rise in the case of eCommerce websites. This is because eCommerce sites have many identical products with little difference in terms of size or color. Also, the meta tags of the product pages are similar sometimes which raises duplicate content issues. 

This is not good from the SEO point of view because Google considers it to be the duplicate content found on the pages. As per Google, content is considered to be one of the ranking signals. 

If duplicate content is found on your website then you have to face traffic and ranking loss. Google doesn’t like to show the same content on different pages because its main focus is to give the best information to the users.

You have to find out the pages that have similar content and fix the issue by changing the content on each page. Also, work on the meta tags and make unique tags for each of the product pages. This is vital to rank your webpages on Google at the top position.

Mistake4: Broken Links

Google is making updates from time to time in order to improve the search results for its users. If you have a page that includes broken links or showing 404 error then it’s time to take the step forward and make the improvements.

Broken links are not a good signal because it gives a bad experience to your audience and also gives a red flag to search engines. So, if your website has this issue then it is essential to fix it as soon as possible.

Mistake5: Ignoring Website Loading Speed

According to searches, it is found that 60% of online shoppers are buying products from those websites that took 2 to 3 secs to load. Importantly, it is also considered by Google as one of the most important ranking signals.

If your website takes time to load then users will bounce back from your site which will increase the bounce rate of the website. This is not good at all for the growth of your eCommerce store online. 

The giants of the eCommerce industry like Amazon, Myntra have 2 secs of website load time. So, analyze the factors that are behind the high loading time and fix them. You can use tools like GTmetrix and tools.pingdom to check the high loading speed factors.

Mistake6: Not Mobile Friendly

Nowadays, everyone is using smartphones and they use it to search queries on Google. It is vital to optimizing your website for mobile as you optimize it for the desktop because the number of mobile users is increasing day by day. 

Let’s understand its importance with the help of an example.

Suppose the users search for a product via mobile that you have in your store. If your website is not mobile-friendly then it gives a bad experience to the users and they bounce back from your site. This will decrease your traffic, organic ranking, sales & conversions.

Therefore, it is important to make your website mobile-friendly for increasing the chances of sales & traffic.

Conclusion:

It is a good idea to start an eCommerce store to sell the products online and increase brand authority in the market. If you want to be at the top position in SERP, then avoid the above-mentioned mistakes and increase the website traffic, organic ranking, and sales. 

SEO is a popular way of marketing that helps brands and businesses to grow organically by achieving top positions on SERP.  The higher the site can rank on SERP, the chances of getting more traffic increases. 

According to research , it is proved that the organic results are clicked 90% more than the paid results. One of the major benefits of SEO is that if you get ranked at a higher position in SERP, then you will get more traffic and sales without investing much money. 

Before starting to implement SEO strategies on your ecommerce store, it is important to be aware of the fact that “SEO is simple in theory but it is quite competitive in terms of practice”. This is because Google has defined different factors for analyzing and ranking a website on the top position in SERP. 

So, let’s talk about the effective ecommerce SEO tips that will definitely enhance the sales of your online store.

Tip 1: Keywords Research

Keywords are basically the search queries that people use to search for something on Google. It is vital to find the best and relevant keywords for your website because it is the foundation of the SEO strategy.

Now, there are two types of keywords; branded and non-branded. Branded keywords are beneficial for you as they will give you better conversion because the customers that you get from these keywords know about your business and specifically looking for your company.

From the above statement, it is clear that you will get good conversions through branded keywords but that doesn’t mean you need not to focus on non-branded keywords.

Non-branded keywords are also important for you because they will introduce your business to new customers who are looking for some products/services that you are offering. These keywords help you to expand your market share and increase your brand awareness online. 

Once your market is expanded, then those new customers will get to know about you and they begin to search using branded queries. Therefore, consider both types of keywords.

For doing keyword research, you can use Google keyword planner, SEMrush, ahrefs, ubersuggest, keywords everywhere and choose the relevant & best keywords. 

Once you finalize the keywords, place them in the meta tags, heading, product descriptions, Image alt texts, and URLs for the effective results.

Tip 2: Engaging Content

It is essential to understand what type of content your audience is looking for before creating it. Remember one thing, that you are communicating with your audience through your content. So, include a blog section on your ecommerce website and create the content which is useful, informational, and engaging.

Before writing content, do some research about the type of content related to your niche that people are looking for. To do that, you can check your competitors blog section and also use Google, ahrefs, buzzsumo, Google trends to take the idea about the trending topics. This will help you to compete with your competitors and win the race!

While writing content, make sure to avoid mentioning unrealistic expectations or facts as this will mislead your users and they may not come back to your website again. 

Just focus on creating the type of content which helps to build your brand authority in the market and cultivates the trust of your audience on your brand for the long term. 

Tip 3: Social Media Integration

Nowadays, every business has created their accounts on different social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter because the majority of the people are present on social media. They are spending most of their time on these platforms and this is a great way to connect with new customers & increase the sales.

Whenever a new customer connects with you, the first thing that he will do is to check your social media platforms. If you are active over there and post regularly new content then the chances of sale increases because the customer begins to trust you. 

Be active on your social media and interact with your audience as this will help to build strong relationships with your audience. So, integrate the social media platforms with your website and do free advertising of your products.

Tip 4: Product Page Optimization

In an eCommerce store, product pages are very important. To optimize them, firstly find out the most relevant keywords for each product page of your website. Once you find out the best keywords then include them in the product description, meta tags, and heading tags.

Remember one thing, in order to boost your SEO strategy, it is vital to optimize each individual product page. This will help the potential customers to reach your products online easily.

Tip 5: Explore Business Globally

Maybe at this point, you are not a big ecommerce store. But you dream of expanding your business at a global level. It is obvious that to reach there, you have to invest some money on paid marketing & ad promotions. 

Before investing money, try something that is free of cost and this will also help you to judge whether you can compete with your global competitors or not. To do that, reach out the international brands like ebay and amazon and see whether they allow you to sell products. 

Just list the products & services in a portal and see if they can be accepted on an international level. Apart from this, you will know which markets are the best for targeting.

Tip 6: Image Search Optimization

Nowadays, image function is widely used by the people to search for some product. The basic idea behind this is that when users search some product on Google then they will check the images and the product which they like the most, click on it and buy it. So, optimize your products for image search. 

Suppose you are selling “summer dresses” and if you optimize your products for image search then you will get more conversions & sales. 

For optimizing products for image search, you have to add the focus keyword on “Img alt tag”. The “Alt Tag” describes the picture in a web content. So, include the keyword in it in order to show up in the image search.

Tip 7: Link Building

Link building is one of the most important parts of the SEO strategy. But remember one thing, the quantity of backlinks doesn’t matter if they are of bad quality. Only high-quality backlinks matter!

By high-quality backlinks we mean that the sites that you link to and receive links from must have good reputation and traffic. So, focus on getting backlinks from high-authoritative websites.

Tip 8: SEO-Friendly URLs

URLs play an important role as they are the building blocks of an effective site hierarchy. The URLs don’t include any symbols (? , +) or score as it has a negative impact on the ranking of your website. 

While creating a SEO-friendly URL, follow the below tips: 

1. Include keywords in the URL.

2.Avoid using superfluous words & characters. 

3. Make them short.

4. Avoid using dates (like 2020, 23, etc).

5. Help with navigation.

6. Go with HTTPS.

Tip 9: Customer Reviews 

Nowadays, customer reviews are very important to businesses. This is because they will help to build the trust of your new customers in terms of your products/services. If the reviews on your products are good then you will definitely get the more number of sales. 

Online reviews play a major role in the decision making process of a buyer. Before buying any product online, the users check the reviews so that they can get to know more about the product and then make their final decision. 

Tip 10: Reduce Website Load Time

One of the major ranking factors is load speed of the website. If your website is taking more than 3 secs to load then the user will bounce back from your website. This will give your user a bad experience about your website.

The longer your website takes time to load on the user’s browser, the more your bounce rate will increase. The higher bounce rate is not good for your website as Google considers it’s a bad signal which will affect your ranking badly. So, reduce the load time of your website in order to get more customers and good ranking in SERP. 

Conclusion:

Ecommerce niche is quite competitive as compared to other niches. Due to increase in competition, the small businesses or startups have to face a lot of problems in building their brand, getting traffic, and conversions. 

In order to overcome this problem, you can implement a SEO strategy which is created by doing proper research and analysis of the market.

While there are a lot of ranking factors that are considered by Google in ranking a website, it is important to focus on staying relevant and targeted. Produce constantly unique and fresh information for your users so that they can stay connected with you in the long run.