By Brian Taylor
Optimizing the SEO on your e-commerce website is vital to selling more product. It will help your pages rank better on the search engines and keep prospective buyers on your pages longer, increasing conversions and sales. With that in mind we have put together a list of steps that you can use to optimize your e-commerce site’s SEO.
Read them, use them and watch them help increase your revenues greatly.
Concentrate more on each product page
Every single product that you have should have its own product page where as many questions can be answered as possible. It will need a great description, a unique title tag and unique description tags as well. Not only that but it should have relevant internal and external links and have all the social media sharing buttons as well so that it can be âsharedâ online. Think of every product page as its own website and make sure that:
- As many questions are answered about the product as possible so that a customer doesnât have to âleaveâ the page to finds an answer.
- All technical specs about the product are included on the page.
- The product title, the manufacturer of the product and the SKU are text, not images.
Take advantage of category and brand pages
These pages are very important. The average person is not going to be very specific when they first start searching for something online. For example, they wonât search for a âHonda Civic DL Sedanâ they will search for a âmid-sized carâ and then refine their search as they go. If you have a well done category page with all the possibilities listed someone whoâs searching will be taken to the category page first and then be able to refine their search right on your website without leaving. These so-called âumbrella pagesâ need to:
- Have all the basic info for each product.
- Have a descriptive category title on page and META.
- Include at least a paragraph of content describing them to help prospective customers know whatâs being shown as specifically as possible.
Create unique categories to group products
Even though you already have everything listed on your website you should create unique categories to be able to attract even more attention to specific items, like sale items at the end of summer for example. Most e-commerce sites wonât make a new page for âbikinis on saleâ but instead just make a ânoteâ on the existing webpage that theyâre on sale.
Better to create an entirely new category (and page) to display these items so that they wonât be scattered all over your site but will all be grouped and found in one location.
Heavily incentivize user reviews
This may be the most important step. User reviews are the life-blood of many e-commerce websites. Just like positive reviews about movies will have people lining up at the theater for a new flick, positive user reviews will attract people to your site through SEO. And once they land, they will help persuade them to make a purchase.
The best thing you can do to get reviews is to give your customers an incentive to leave one like an extra discount or something similar. The more reviews the better and, if possible (and it is possible) they should be placed on the product page itself for even more selling power.
If you follow these steps your website will attract, convert and sell more products so donât hesitate to start using them all ASAP and watch as your sales and revenues start to increase.
Brian Taylor is the VP, Business Development at Forix SEO in Portland, OR. a team of crack SEO experts with an impressive record when it comes to results, experience, and expertise. Forix offers affordable and ethical SEO services in Portland helping small businesses with their Internet marketing needs.