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SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of improving a website so that it is able to maximize the amount of traffic and visitors that it is receiving.
SEO is particularly important for ecommerce stores, as the quality of search engine optimization can make or break a store. You can spend countless hours finding the perfect product to sell, but if your online store is poorly optimized for search engines, it will be noticeably difficult for potential customers to find you.
"There are plenty of great website that will analyze your site's SEO for free."
The main tell-tale sign of poor SEO is when your site doesn't show up on the first page of Google results, even when you use major keywords from your site. However, if you want more detailed gauge of your SEO, you can do a site wide SEO analysis/audit.
Some websites might charge for this, but we don't recommend paying for SEO analysis since there are plenty of great website that will analyze your site's SEO for free.
We recommend Ubersuggest SEO Analyzer Tool by Neil Patel. You get 3 full SEO reports every day completely for free, which includes a detailed list of all your site's SEO issues, along with detailed information about your site's speed.
You can also use SEOptimer. SEOptimer analyzes your site quicker, but is slightly less detailed then the Ubersuggest SEO Analyzer Tool.
I have spent the past 5 years developing ecommerce stores, so I have seen people try all kinds of ridiculous methods to try and improve SEO.
But after numerous experiences with SEO, these are the top 5 ways which I have found to effectively improve a site's SEO.
"Alt tags are awesome because they allow for your images and videos to boost your SEO."
Alt tags are an alternate way for you to describe texts and videos using text.
These greatly help your site to appear higher on the rankings of Google and other search engines (let's be honest, no one really uses Bing anyways).
Alt tags are awesome because they allow for your images and videos to boost your SEO, since their alt tags are picked up by text based search engine systems.
"If you run an online store, I recommend routinely updating your product descriptions."
Have you ever wondered why you rarely come across websites from 10-15 years ago when you search for something?
That's because search engines sort through billions of sites to pick out the new and relevant websites. Search engines will actively filter out your site if they feel like your content is old and therefore no longer relevant.
To avoid this, ensure that you are always producing new content. This is relatively easy for blogs, but more difficult for ecommerce stores.
If you run an online store, I recommend routinely updating your product descriptions. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but this little change helps your store stay fresh and relevant in the eyes of search engines.
"Remove any unnecessary videos or images with high resolution from your website's home page."
According to QuickSprout, almost half of website visitors will leave a site if it doesn't load in 3 seconds.
This ruins your SEO ranking because the average time spent on your site (which is an important factor of SEO) is much lower than it should be. If you improve your website load time, you will also be improving your SEO.
Most sites meet this 3 second loading mark, but if yours doesn't, I recommend removing any unnecessary videos or images with high resolution from your website's home page. This is a great first step to improving your site's load time.
If your site still isn't as fast as you like, I recommend reading this article by Terakeet that deep dives into how to improve your page loading speed.
"Use the mobile phone view option when building your website."
According to recent data from Google, over half of Google users now originate from mobile. So it is crucial to ensure that your site not only is visually pleasing on mobile devices, but also easy to navigate.
The minority of sites that are well optimized for mobile shoot up in the SEO rankings since mobile users stay on their sites for longer.
But how can you make your site mobile-friendly?
I recommend using the mobile phone view option when building your website. This option is available for the majority of website builders, including those for ecommerce (like Shopify).
This allows you to see what mobile users would when they view your site, allowing you to make your website easy to navigate on the phone.
"Change your titles so they are clear, concise, and interesting."
Nothing boosts your SEO like increased site traffic. And nothing boosts your site traffic like attention-grabbing page titles.
Now, I'm not saying write completely clickbait titles and mislead people into visiting your website - this will definitely just harm your SEO. But most ecommerce stores either write uninteresting page titles, or don't write any at all.
I recommend changing your titles so they are clear, concise, and interesting. And make sure to include as many relevant keywords as possible (okay, not too many, it still has to make sense).
The most important thing about SEO to keep in mind is that keywords are key. If you have quality keywords, your SEO should be just fine.
Hopefully these 5 methods were easy and straightforward, and I hope they work well for your ecommerce store.
We would love to hear any feedback you may have. Please send us any questions as well.
