What exactly is SEO? This question was something I often pondered upon. As time passed away, I came to realize the importance of SEO and then started working on it. Search engine optimization Or SEO is the improvement and alteration of our site to engage better traffic and increase the conversions rate. Making your site SEO friendly is something I highly recommend. This will increase your visitors, and also more visitors will engage in buying from you, Let’s dig into SEO guide for E-commerce websites.
We are very pleased to inform you that we have a proper professional relationship with more than 3000 different business activities which we made possible by providing them with satisfactory service, personal training workshops and one on one consulting. In my personal view, this is a great opportunity for me to work on where I am lagging exactly, and definitely, it will take me to the next level.
SEO has made a lot many changes, and basically, these changes were found because of constant changes in SERP.
As you know that SERP layout and tactics are making a huge number of changes. In their system by which passing day, it is more comfortable to confess about the search for the long term, which actually makes them make text.
I have made a conversation with a numerous number of customers and SEO’s where I have found that most SEO’s are getting it wrong by just misunderstanding. I have made many types of research related to this, where I have found that most SEO’s are going with short term tactics that may not be comfortable for you; hence this article will help you to keep yourself away from short term tactics.
If you want to become competitive in the field of e-commerce marketing, then this article is for you, which will take you through it. This article is not only related to e-commerce SEO, but it also gives more focus on e-commerce marketing and optimization. The article allows you to focus more on optimization instead of having a focus on the fundamental principle and strategy of sales, marketing, and solid business.
I have mentioned lots of action items in this article. Sometimes it may be positive but sometimes not, but I believe that we all should have a greater potential to create a powerful impact through small work.
I have included the various audio and related videos in it, which will give you a great experience because explanations through audio and video make it more interactive. Please be clear about one thing that bigger the site, chunkier the action articles, because it is practically comfortable to create SEO’S work for a seven-figure site within just three months.
Ideally, I have made this article in order to have an overall idea of e-commerce marketing and optimization. And definitely, I will take you through an easy, actionable tactic or necessary foundation related to SEO, which you can implement in your site.
If you have a doubt related to the above mentioned point, then don’t forget to add it in the comment box, which I will go to assess afterward, and I will clarify your doubts.
Local SEO vs. affiliate SEO vs. e-commerce
Before having an overall introduction about it, let’s try to understand the basic difference between local SEO, Affiliate SEO, and e-commerce. On this particular page, you can find relevant information and fundamental differences between them.
Affiliate and local SEO :
If you consider the example of local SEO, then it provides you around 5 to 10 services or products. And about affiliate SEO, it provides your number of keywords, but generally, it is less in number as compared to that e-commerce. For example, if e-commerce will offer you a keyword of around 1000, then it would be around 100 in local and affiliate SEO.
Generally, it is more difficult to handle and optimize more number of keywords without using a proper template, SEO technique, or automation because here we need to deal with more number of pages and keywords.
E-commerce sites:
If you consider the example of e-commerce, then you will find a large number of pages and keywords here as compared to that of other sites. Here we need to have focus on one thing that most of the keywords or pages are auto-generated from CMS, for example, cart, check out pages, and tag.
If you suppose you are using Shopify where you can see a lot many auto-generated pages that you can use to create a mess of keyword canalization.
In the case of a small e-commerce site, we can add issues more easily, but in the case of a more prominent e-commerce site, it is much more difficult without SEO techniques or automation.
SEO is not just about backlinks :
Most often, SEO’s can do their work correctly if they utilize the platform of e-commerce SEO. If you want serious SEO traction, in that case, you need to get it before chasing backlinks. On the page, SEO plays a vital role in the e-commerce site.
There are some on-site issues going on with our established e-commerce site, and this part, we need to take into consideration. The initial focus for on-page SEO is important in defining the e-commerce site. I handle backlinks last as part of the SEO strategy. You can have two things from backlinks like least control, and the correlation between results and links is not in a direct manner, which is considered as a more expensive part of SEO. But at the same time, you can find a direct correlation between links and results while using the on-page site.
Action steps
- 1. I have used a semrush audit on my site and which is my favorite one. Apart from semrush, I have tried numerous on-page audit tools. One special thing about the semrush audit tool is it provides an easy way in order to have a rank.
- 2. If you are facing problems or issues like the application of Content and cannibalization, then you can go through the site called sidelines.com, which is a fantastic tool.
- 3. You may go for using Littlewarden.com, which helps you to set up your account, and it has many benefits as you can continuously monitor your site, and also, you can detect problem-related on-page SEO, with the use of this you give rankings to your site.
Importance of e-commerce client SEO
It has been found that working with a smaller e-commerce site as a client may be more difficult. So I personally don’t work with such clients because they are very confusing and hectic.
If I am doing SEO with an e-commerce site, then it doesn’t mean that I am doing SEO only.
It is more challenging to provide them with the fast result and in case if the client is not that much mature then he may come to accept that you will make them rich overnight, but here we need to consider one thing ‘what budget they have?’ in such case you can give them comfortable answer like ‘how much you can spend ?’ and ‘how mature you are?’. Most of the SEO clients are expecting that SEO is free, and because of this, they start giving focus on advertisements, which is not a good thing.
Currently, paid ads in SERPs are half in number. If I want to improve traffic on my site, then I will go with paid ads as a marketing strategy, which will help to enhance my Competition and service at the same.
Do you think that only SEO is enough?
If your answer is yes!
Then you are wrong!
Because we should have e-commerce SEO.
E-commerce SEO:
Let’s look at the current status of e-commerce SEO. As you all know that SERP introduces new features every time to grow fast, so if SEO also wants to grow, then it has provided a specific approach to evolving faster.
According to my concern, SEO is growing much faster because ten years back, SEO was having only one ad word results, which were usually displayed at the corner of the page.
But now the SEO landscape has totally changed. It is not like the previous one.
In today’s scenario, there are differences involved in one single search result.
- Paid adword which are actually regular
- Google shopping
- Google maps
- Knowledge-based Chanel
- Paid google maps
- featured snippets
In order to keep yourself at the top, we can’t neglect one thing. I.e., SERP Is also adding features related to the location as part of the research. And most of the SEO’s are not realizing the importance of the same.
The Source of which you aren’t taking advantage of is Google shopping. It does drive not only traffic and modifications but also the simplest path to you so that you can shortcut your SEO by letting you:
- Find out which keyboard people are using
- Crack their internet
- Find out what kind of keywords which are converting
Prior to all, keywords that are converted are one which we care most about. We like to concentrate on quality keywords rather than quantity. The way Google is getting smarter, the SEO’s are getting slower and very low predictable, meaning, and we have lower control over it.
Getting any results from any SEO campaign requires easily 3 to 6 months in the present. Besides this, Adword is fast and fully controllable. You need to just turn it on today, and our ads are running within 24 hours. We will immediately have feedback after 1 to 2 days about what is going on in SERP and what is search demand. It’s not just SEO’s which are being fragmented, attending, and search demand is too.
Google is not a single player in the game, and you have Facebook, Amazon, eBay, and many more shopping websites. In the end, focusing on SEO is not enough anymore, but you need to concentrate on paid traffic, platforms outside Google, optimization in conversion, and complete sales funnel. A winning strategy has other traffic channels and optimizes the conversion. If you want a space in this in 2020, then you have competed to be at the top of the peak.
Funnels Ugh, vomit:
I am fed up with funnels and the funnel hackers. The funnel isn’t new, and they talk about the traffic on the front end. Above is a slide which is from the presentation which I presented in 2012, and it is useful today also and is one of my most liking frameworks as it indicates the fundamentals of being a ‘Funnel.’
In its core, really, e-commerce is just a game of numbers. Mastering the numbers helps to master this game. Conventionally, SEO’s spotlighted the front edge of re mentioned picture, rankings, and this developed ‘Leads.’ To continue the game in 2020, you should be familiar with other fragments of the game. Example:
- CTR (at all stages of the funnel)
- Rate of conversion (CONV)
- acquisition cost (CAC)
- The lifetime value of a customer (LTV)
It is not difficult to master above-listed elements, but it is about looking at sales from one edge to another and evaluating each and every single step of concerning the way.
Steps of action: In case you are not familiar with few of these components or lacking a strong clinch on a few concepts, you can prefer the book 80/20 Sales and marketing: The definitive guide to working less and making more written by Perry Marshall is very good for understanding these concepts and regularly, I read it again and again.
Google is a paid search engine with some free results. Irrespective of searches, Google is likely to sell advertisements. Change the thinking to get benefited by it. Shopping on Google: Well, it’s creepy to state this in an SEO article although you are not running Google shopping ads, you lack out cheapest and finest modifying traffic.
Keyword Research – The keywords are not sold, but the products and services are.
The research on keywords is done differently than the other SEO’s. The keywords are not sold, but the products and services are, so I start with services and products. There are sales of business done before touching keyword research or keywords.
MY keyword targeting process looks like:
Step 1 – Explain the product to be sold
Make a correct list of products and services to be sold with crisp and detail. Please make a spreadsheet by consuming less time, like maybe half an hour.
The lists created by my local SEO clients are very powerful, with one search term on each page. That means I need one page with the product’s Content and keywords.
Step 2 – the list should be prioritized
In order of importance, priorities the products after completing the list. This is to focus on the most essential products and services that will be sold first. If I do so, then I will be able to save more time and money, with the help of which I will be able to sell the most profitable product with ease.
Step 3 – Content matching the keyword
I then match the pages on the Website with the keywords. I need to create one if the page doesn’t exist.
I should have one page for every single product if the general approach is being considered. One page should deal with only one term searched. This is because one page can be ranked once for one product.
A page should be dedicated to it if we want to rank it for a particular product.
It is a super easy win and very simple.
Accurate keyword data.
The data which I get is given according to the word which averages on the top of average. But apart from this, I have better ways.
Google Webmaster Tools.
I should have a lot of keywords from Google webmaster tools, and this is when I have an existing website. Under the search analytic menu, there is valuable information about my keywords like,
- Impression data
- Board ranking data
- CTR (click-through-rate)
- Clicks from the SERP
This information tells me where I am lagging and also tells me about the opportunity like, if I have an average position like 5 or 8 and my keyword has a lot of impressions, I need to grab it as it is a great opportunity.
This will give me quick results. As I said, SEO is a long, slow process, and winning here means grabbing the opportunity.
Adwords
To get valuable keyword data, I also add Adwords. There is a huge amount of data inside the Adwords due to which I get details of the keyword for the specific location that I want to target.
It gives me an idea of what the search demand and behavior looks like as it provides 100% accurate data.
Hence without this, I never run an SEO campaign.
To refine my SEO campaign using data is an effective way; we can easily figure out by using Adword data from a sales perspective and attack the keywords. Until months, later, the mistakes made in SEO will be revealed as it is slow.
Adwords shortcut the process by:
- Revealing the buying terms
- Uncovering the wonderful ways of searching the products
- Correcting the mistake in the strategy of SEO.
- If you are not selling, then no use of being ranked first on Google.
- The sales are checked out by converting the keywords first.
- The video will tell you about the exact keyword data in Google Adwords:
Spy on the competitors’ work
Ahrefs is used to see where our competitors rank and which keywords they use.
It can also be reversed, that my competitors know less than what I am doing. This helps to look at what they are doing and also be beneficial to you.
So now you have an idea of keyword strategy. So before anything, create a baseline for your Content on the on-page first.
In the net section, do go through the content marketing to get your bases covered.
SEO intersecting with A Content Marketing Strategy
Without proper content marketing, I can not get away from establishing an e-commerce store in today’s world. Here you are not selling the keywords but selling the products and services.
Ask yourself these questions in order to provide the best service.
Before buying what really should a customer know?
What is the solution given by my products or services to the customer?
To get the maximum out of my products, what should the customer know?
Only applicable to the products above $100. So one should know the answers to these questions before they commit to buying any products.
Some ideas to create any type of Content:
- Buyer’s Guide
- Blog Post Series
- PDF’s
- Video Series Podcasts
This improves conversations and doubts before buying, also simultaneously saving plenty of time. The useful Buyer’s Guide that I have created can be linked with prospects.
This will help in better ranking in SERPs and capture lead closure, and with this, I can have a good content marketing strategy.
Quality content development service should be used, which knows SEO will avoid waste of time, resources used on making Content. This, most importantly, saves my money and helps me to work smartly.
To go through the actual sales process is necessary to have a good strategy. Hence the clients who are not aware of the process should be educated to make them aware.
One of my favorite books, named Insight Selling by Mike Schultz, is a wonderful book educating the people about selling the products on the web.
Old school pressure based tactics and old fashioned methods are used for promoting internet marketing. Hence I can see a lot of unnecessary more time consuming, nonsense like timers and countdowns, which is a complete waste of time and considered hogwash, and that is not useful.
Short term techniques will wear out your objective market whenever utilized too assertively. Nobody wants an over-assertive sales agent. Rather than utilizing obsolete strategies to force deals, set the efforts to make sense of what issues your items or services resolve and discuss that with your potential buyer.
With the insight of making a sale to clients, you will have a grip on their sense and how to fulfill and match their purpose better, particularly the purpose behind search terms and specific keywords.
Generally,SEO friendly Content promotion gives you a remarkable web-based business technique to position higher, attain more traffic flow, and sell better.
Basics of CRO ( Let alone button colors and AB testing, most of the websites are not coping with the basics )
Leave A/B testing, altering button colors, features, or even anything else, and almost all websites are feeling the loss of the nuts and bolts.
The Simplest approach to know about CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) is making sense of what individuals need when they’re exploring your site and offering them with it.
Here’s a basic index of the most common CRO components I have to maintain on your site.
#1 What about the contact details? Did you include a contact number?
Most basic, did you include a telephone number? Telephone numbers will help conversion rates on web-based businesses regardless of whether one calls it or not.
Utilizing a 1-800 toll-free phone number, makes your organization look greater and is a great method to support CTR in the SERPs –and by including 1-800 number into the meta tag and title tag, so it appears in the SERP and You can observe a strong CTR and natural traffic flow.
Does your options menu incorporate a direct link navigating the contact us page? Else, in what ways will your clients get in touch with you? Most of the time, this is totally absent OR vanishes as the site gets explored on cell phones. It’s useful to incorporate a tagline in the header as well, responding to these inquiries:
- Who are we?
- What actually do we do?
- Why would it be a good idea for you to pick us?
- How can we assist you?
Keeping contact information and a tagline may sound basic or self -evident. In any case, they are essential components most of the web-based business sites are still not focussing at.
#2 Ensuring My Site Compatibility Across All Electronic Devices
Most often, you’ll have an idea about how your page resembles a Desktop. Be that as it may, what about a tablet? A cell phone? Ensure the site opens appropriately over every one of these gadgets.
The pattern where components can run without much of a stretch escape with footers before headers or body tag content theme that simply doesn’t bode well. One basic issue is the contact us page is absent from the main menu on the desktop screen or vanishes altogether on a cell phone. Ensure contact information is available consistently and afterward optimize the contact us page.
#3 optimization and audit of Contact us page
Keep in mind. Center is not simply new prospects or customers who are searching for your contact us page. Your Contact Us page resembles a visiting card for your business, so ensure you’re taking advantage of it!
At very basic the page should comprise of :
- In case you are a physical retailer, and you need the location to be accessible by all (*if you need this freely and publicly accessible). Generally, we attempt and include it in the footer of the, so it displays on every page of your site and can be accessed easily.
- Embedded Google Maps or your link on Google Maps (ensure when somebody looks through your business location and business on Maps that the correct location displays!). Ensure you insert the Google Places map and not a generalized location.
- Your business’ postal address (in case different to the address or on the off chance that you don’t have a road address)
- Telephone number(s) – the lesser numbers, the better. There are some sites that give more than ten telephone numbers for each staff employee, which is very confusing and obviously illogical.
- Your organization name and business name (if your organization name is separate to the business name) – again, clients and providers will require this data every now and then, and there might be little search engine advantage to having this on the web.
- A form to contact you – we lean toward email contact form, especially if a ton of inquiries are getting submitted. Utilizing a contact us form permits the requested inquiry through email to be organized better and gets all the data one needs beforehand.
- A Mailing Address (optional) – for the most part, we tend toward a Contact Us Form, just particularly if you have multiple departments and mailing addresses. A form structure, as opposed to posting ten distinct addresses, enables a much more clean, more clear client experience.
- Ensure a working contact us form
On the off chance that you have a form structure on your site may not be working. So ensure when someone hits the Submit button on the form, it should really work accurately, and the same inquiry should be received by someone In my organization.
- What befalls on inquiries if there is an email issue?
This is an aspect that is quite often disregarded. In case you’re having email issues, and an inquiry posted through the form page on your site gets blocked or vanishes, what action was taken on that inquiry? Does it basically vanish?
- Who is dealing with inquiries, and how would you ensure they’re taking care of inquiries suitably?
- Reception and administrator staff aren’t salesmen, and for the most part, they’re an inappropriate individual to deal with inquiries – dealing with inquiries ought to go to sales or client support staff. It is one reason why we recommend contact us Forms rather than a mailing address on the contact us page as it permits me to include a drop-down box for the sort of inquiry and pipe inquiry type to the proper email.
#4 Abandoned carts
Deserted carts mail triggers when a customer adds items to their web-based shopping cart. They leave it stranded and forget checking out. This email is an opportunity for you to send a reminder mail to complete what they began. Almost all abandoned carts emails are done inaccurately, and if something similar was included in a physical retail shop would appear similar to this.
An individual enters into a retail shop and gets a lot of items. He/she stroll around for some time before they leave the shop without actually buying something. On exiting the store, the salesperson pursues him down the road shouting offers and offering low to lower costs until the client feels driven into purchasing something or gets completely annoyed, angers up, and informs some of his friends regarding this unpleasant experience.
It’s insane. However, that is the manner by which most abandoned cart mail arrangements are made.
#5 live chat feature
Live chat features are incredible for attending to client requests immediately. We incorporate live chat features quite often, particularly when working with customers. Drift is a magnificent live-chat tool that is super easy to use and has a lot of other features related to marketing.
Utilizing assertive chat messages is an incredible method to connect with clients depending on what they’ve accomplished, where they originated from, and other significant measures. Drift offers an excellent client interface, making it simple to use. The best part is that it gives you an alternative to giving the device a shot for nothing so I can test it out before actually using it and paying for it.
#6 Remarketing
This is the way toward creating a promotion before past visitors to your site while they are browsing somewhere else on the internet. It’s likewise key to more conversions.
Both Google Display Network (GDN) and Facebook Ads remarketing are savvy and cost-friendly features to maximize indulgence of targeted audiences and pursue them to buy your product. Facebook Ads are increasingly getting costly as an increasing number of organizations use them, so I undoubtedly need to search GDN for remarketing. In-person, I use the two to cover for my bases since they appear in distinct places.
#7 Take images and photography seriously.
Using top-notch quality pictures or photographs is so significant for your site page. You ought to avoid using DIY photography.
We will thoroughly explain the significance of photography in the next part.
#8 Website Speed is Important!
I will discuss this part in a different section beneath- Website speed is an important piece of web-based commerce conversion optimization.
#9 Regularly conduct a thorough checkout
Too important and simple, however frequently overlooked, you should go through checkouts regularly. Purchase something, ensure the procedure is consistent, work without blunders, and the messages the framework makes good sense! Likewise, you should ensure that abandoned cart messages are really working appropriately.
Your Website isn’t just a value list – Smoothen Up Your Website and Ensure You Sell The Clients.
In the present day and time, you have to realize how to sell the client. Numerous websites you see are simply a celebrated value list! The present clients are quite a lot more refined and have such a significant number of choices than they did only a couple of years ago. To ensure a certifiable association with them, you have to realize HOW to sell.
In this segment, I’ll center around the main theme: How to address clients’ needs or requirements. For that, you have to incorporate the appropriately targeted Content. Here’s a more intensive look at what that implies.
What is the “Appropriate” Strategic Content That Will Help you in making Sales?
Any settled e-commerce site requires to have targeted Content on their pages that presents an incentive to the client. All things considered, what is there to distinguish you from the other person selling something very similar to you? To put it plainly, putting data that doesn’t focus on the clients’ needs or requirements won’t do much for you. Here are some normal errors I observe:
- Having very minimal Content on a page
- Several keywords on one page
- Items list with details of manufacturers
- Category Pages with no other content, only a list
- of items
- Posting low-quality content that seems like a robot composed it.
Ultimately, if your Website comprises a random list of products, their descriptions, and prices, you will struggle to secure a position. On the off chance that by one way or another you do rank, it will be tough for you to convert guests into clients.
That is the reason focusing on your Content is quite crucial.
Most importantly, when you’re making Content, focus on keyword content coordination. You just need ONE keyword target for each page. One thing to keep in mind about your Content on an e-commerce page is that each page is a landing page. Also, in case you’re recruiting a top-notch content supplier to make various pages – ensure you provide details on which keyword is designed for which page. Each page is possibly the first page the visitor observes – the category pages, item pages, Home page. All may be a potential landing page, which implies each page needs targeted Content that solves questions successfully. What’s more, by appropriate Content, I don’t mean a lot of text that looks useless. There are key components you shouldn’t miss on your website page.
Here’s a fundamental checklist of the key points you have to remember for the pages of your Website.
- Use Good-Quality Photos and Videos
Whenever you’re putting photographs or recordings on your internet business website, ensure they’re of top quality. In case you’re selling your own items, posting a video for each item can function effectively. Using professional pictures is significant on the grounds that that is all the client depends on, and it can influence your visitor conversion rate.
Excellent photographs that show the item with minute details take advantage of emotional purchases. Sensible reasons are things like free shipping, product features, and price. You require BOTH to make the deal.
2. Offer Useful Information Like An User Manual
A whole lot of websites we go over have items pages that have basically replicated manufacturer’s depictions. This particular strategy isn’t adequate and does little to help with your visitor conversions. You must keep a say over messages you want to deliver. Try not to go with the manufacturer to sell for you. One more thing you can do is go on the manufacturer’s Website and download their recordings. Put them all alone on YouTube channels or upload them on your Website.
For recordings with a ton of talking, use Rev to effortlessly get transcripts ready. Add the transcript to the video while uploading on YouTube, which will help to position your page and video. In the case that it’s a long video, convert the transcript to a PDF that clients can download.
On the off chance that there are user manuals or item descriptions, offer a downloadable PDF to the visitors on your Website client can download easily from your Website. Thus by this process, they have all the data they’ll require without looking somewhere else.
Provide the page text
It’s quite significant to have real content on your page to assist you with a higher position. Regularly we see customers who may have a ton of descriptions in the photographs, yet no content. This is particularly important for supplement or nutritional e-commerce sites.
Rather than essentially utilizing photographs with text, convert the data in photographs to content on the page. In addition to the fact that it is better for SERPs, it’s simpler for the client to use. Other content components that help put text on-page include:
- Cancellation terms and conditions
- Subscription Charges
- Shipping arrangements
- Shipping Charges
- Anything else your client may have issues with
This sort of Content is crucial in helping the client settle on a buying choice. Remember it for each item page to put out your Content and get ranked higher.
4) Clarify the modes of payment accepted
Make sure that candidates know the modes of payment accepted on the payment page! Giving this detail might break or make the sale. Think about the following :
You obviously know what modes of payments you’ll accept; however, your visitor doesn’t, unless you tell them.
Demonstrating the basic 1, 2, 3, 4 steps, that’s how we accept payment, how to order products and how shipping works, and so on, are likely to enhance conversion rate with your visitors.
5) Using Template for saving time
It’s known to everyone that pages that long tend to rank better when compared to shorter pages, thus including information to every page helps. Few details that have to be on several pages could easily be templated (such as shipping or payment details).
Use VA add detail that’s templated on each page or in the CMS. Just edit your templates to add it.
Be very careful with nutritional products in adding the list of the ingredients. Sometimes, that’ll break stuff such as Google Shopping because they are really sensitive to such details.
6) Inspect your Competition’s work.
See the top-ranked pages of your competitors or rivals, which will provide you with an idea of what to add to plan your Content. Look at the top-ranked pages or those who pay for Adwords.
Tools that tell you about the missing keywords are also available. They even tell you what Content your rivals possess, but you don’t. And Cognitive SEO and Vectorfy keyword tool will give you an insight into the content gaps present in your page and fill them.
7) Pre-Buying related questions are to be answered
Your customers will have some pre-buying questions, and they’ll want answers before buying, especially in case of technical or in case of complicated offers.
Your part is to give that detail on the page itself if it is with a YouTube video or some Buyer’s Guide etc.
NEVER ever push the customer towards some third party for details. Merely linking will lead them to some video on YouTube, and that might mean losing your customer into the void of YouTube.
An example of a complex buyers guide is here on our site.
We haven’t built this relying on keywords, we have rather picked up some questions that customers usually ask before purchasing.
8) Sell Customer
A slide is here from a presentation in the year 2012 (thanks to 2012 Brendan). Three, Therefore, principles are still used by me as the sales checklist. Every time I work with any site or have a direct conversation with a customer, this checklist or framework comes in handy to be sure that we’re moving the customer at every contact point, down the sales funnel.
Three main elements are needed by a visitor to purchase:
A desire or want or need to have it (want could be what service or product provides or does)
There has to be trust – in your company, services, and products.
Money – Real as well as ROI (easier method to hack it, is to provide payment or finance options or plans.)
Your site plus your Content has to see these three boxes for sale. If you check these boxes better, your conversion rate would be higher.
To understand where the customers and the target market are presently placed in reference to the sales funnel is important for effective marketing. The behavior of people varies depending on their position on the funnel if they’re at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom. SEO is extremely successful when it comes to targeting people who are in the middle/bottom or at the bottom of the funnel. Google Display Network and Facebook ads are better for the ones who on the funnel are on the top or middle/top.
If you aren’t good at selling, then the resources mentioned below are my favorites, and they’ll surely help you:
Insight Selling
Spin Selling
Persuasion
Influence – The Persuasion psychology
Be a real BRAND or business – Get links, Boost Conversions, get a high rank, and have “Point of distinction.”
“Brand” is a very abstract notion that can be explained easily in the form of audio; however, to summarize it, in a world filled with dropshipping websites and copy cats of FBA knock offs, the importance of Brand has increased.
Thankfully, Google wishes to rank brands and businesses and websites that are faceless. Because it’s Google algorithm’s big part, there isn’t any need to brawl it. Then it’s appropriate to be the Brand. You’ll come to know from here how powerful branding effects on assisting you in differentiating.
Communication should be clear on what the Brand is based on
Prior to e-commerce, customers went to a physical store if they had any questions or wanted to verify any product. Everything has shifted online in this e-commerce business. Thus, you are working with a distinct landscape.
Sometimes in SEO, there is a confusion that the Website is actually a business; however, the truth is the opposite. A business possesses a website, even though the business is online.
For instance, you do not own a website that sells guitars. Rather, you own a shop of guitar runs online. It is a mindset yet important to differentiate. When mental framing changes, you are likely to answer questions such as:
What is your business all about?
What is it based on?
After it should be clear to you what your services and/or products stand for, after that, you can differentiate your Brand with copycats as well as your rivals. Having a brand that stands for any particular thing assists your conversion rates by providing your customers with a reason to buy from you.
Imagine – people are lavishing drop shipping sites right and leave. On FBA, there are many copycat products. Once the product is live, there’ll be ten copycats showing up. Thus, why is it important to have a brand?
It makes you, as well as your business, stand different. A brand brings your customer back so that you can have conversions repeatedly because they trust, like, and know you. It can be your product’s quality, customer service, timelessness, or anything else.
No matter what that is, find it, and communicate it clearly with the customers. With time, your customers will trust your Brand and also feel the difference when buying from any other place. There are obviously many different ways powerful branding can affect the business positively. Look here what it can do for SEO.
The Brand Terms should be guarded and Utilize to cut off the Competition.
The Brand is central to any e-commerce business; with time, it determines the reputation of you and your business—the reason why products such as Apple charge more and beyond what their rivals ask for similar items.
If you have built a positive reputation, you should be conscious of your branding terms in the search engines. To most businesses, these brand terms hold the most value, are easy to rank and highest converting.
With regards to SEO, having a well brand provides us with easy links also, despite the kind of client or sites you have. Firstly, our focal point should be the brand search terms plus what the results of SERP appear for that brand term.
These brand terms are strong enough that half of the SEO industry flourishes because some attention is given to the Brand SERP. Sometimes, SEO can beat the actual Website of the business!
Thus, you’ll have to see SERP keenly for the brand terms. For seven to eight-figure businesses, this holds exceptionally true. People looking for the Brand of your WANT product from you or they are even halfway across the buyer’s cycle, they only desire more details from you.
Firstly, in Google Webmaster tools, see the brand search terms. See the data as well as how frequently people search for your Brand. Some wonderful and weird queries will also be visible to you that’ll be there with search terms used by people.
The most usual is by country, and specifically for brands that are US-centric. People look for brands near them, which is easier to serve. A page should be made by you for such a country where your site is being looked at by people, and it should include:
Yes, we provide worldwide shipping, or Here are the local dealers.
In a nutshell, you’ll have to know what is up with the brand terms of yours in the search engines plus be careful of them. In case you discover common questions in your search questions, then build Content in order to answer the queries by customers.
In case that Content is not there with you, there are chances that somebody will make that Content, and you’ll miss the chance. Few ways are there to acquire real estate in SERP and also protect brand terms. Now we’ll see how SEO techniques could be applied to e-commerce businesses such as yours.
Hold Local SEO Techniques in order to cut the competitors off in SERP.
Because we are “real business” having a name, address plus phone number (also known as NAP), so we can easily hold any localized SEO techniques on our e-commerce website as you could for affiliate websites. After having a NAP to your Website and easily you can get them easily such as :
- Google Maps
- Apple Maps
- Bing Maps
Maps can provide you with costless links. If you don’t do it, you’ll be crazy. After you’re there, you can easily acquire local citations too. Citations are affordable links costing just $2 to $3 for a link.
Many businesses possess quality citations from 70 to 100 that are accessible, stay for longer-term, and dirt cheap. We generally use BrightLocal however, SEO Butler and Web 2.0 Ranker are affordable and good options to get local citations.
Usually, our e-commerce clients who are performing great are combined locally as well as e-commerce. Another advantage is that on maps, they will rank higher even when the listing begins to activate search terms or words in their local area – state, city, country, and suburb even internationally.
Localized SEO techniques are very cheap and are a simple method to achieve solid backlinks if you are even not by classic, meaning a real, local business.
You might have seen that when some maps listing pops up in the knowledge panel, it takes half of the search result. This means that aggressive managing of Maps listing could overpower SERP rivals for brand search words, thus assisting in protecting your real estate in SERP.
In a nutshell, after utilizinglocal SEO techniques, you could reach on Maps. However, you require genuine contact details.
Some other simple Links…
2nd plus 3rd tier websites, Social properties are simple methods to get links and increase social shares on the web. Thus you should grab it :
- DailyMotion, Vimeo and YouTube ( upload videos to the Facebook page of yours and to all these three platforms)
- Twitter (You should connect it to Facebook if you’re not posting natively)
- Pinterest (make sure to pin every category and product of yours)
- LinkedIn (You should connect it to Facebook if you’re not posting natively)
Do dig in SERP; also, be sure to claim every social property appearing for your rivals and even your aimed terms too. You’ll often come across simple links such as guides of eBay buyers. Knowem.com is also used to get pillow links, thus making this procedure easy and good.
After you frequently post on your social platforms, you’ll surely rank higher plus overcome your rivals who try to rank by brand terms that are yours.
Where ever possible use automation. For instance, Twitter connects to YouTube as well as Facebook; hence, if you post on one platform, it will get posted on others as well.
Many such platforms are, in fact, 2nd as well as 3rd tier websites that fail to acquire much social following, yet still can provide value with regards to SERP real estate as well as pushing links plus Content available on the web. Develop sharing on social media using Zapier or IFTTT network.
Keep in mind, where SEO and content marketing meet, that is the point where you’ll gain the most. Thus, don’t pass over what’s cooking in social networking sites because it possesses a strong effect on rankings; it can even provide you with important links.
Must Do’s for Branding
I have provided you with details regarding branding now; we’ll analyze it step by step.
Firstly, see your business with the site rather than business as a site. After you think that way, it’ll bet you’ll be easier for you to build a powerful branding strategy.
See if your phone number, address, and company name are right and in place. After looking like “real business,” you should use the trump card of local SEO techniques, although you aren’t really local according to classic meaning.
After that, claim social platforms all over the web. Usually, when we reach free links and brand property, we perform the top layer – such as Apple Maps, Bing, and Google – manually.
After that, we make use of tools plus services Known and BrightLocal to do affordable links.
There might be obviously a subset or subgroup of bottom tier things that require manual work in order to make them ranked. However, if possible – insertion by hand is the greatest property and paying for a service or using automation for the ones that are less valuable.
In a nutshell, after having a powerful strategy, it’ll be easier for you to discover methods to acquire traffic sources, look at the breach in SEO strategy of yours, and acquire many links. One of the breaches might be if you possess a review funnel in order or not.
Reputation plus Reviews Matter- acquire a Review Funnel in position.
Reviews are elementary mostly for e-commerce space so as to acquire customer’s trust.; thus, in this way, they can purchase goods from you easily. Let’s backtrack and see the record of three objects that everyone requires to purchase:
- A wish or need and demand to obtain it
- Faith in you – your company, products, plus your services.
- Money – Both perceived ROI as well as real
Favorable reviews are the fastest and the finest way to raise trust with prospects of a company along with what one is selling. They are best for one’s prestige, reviews elevate SEO (mainly local), and refine CTR for both Adwords and organic searches.
As everyone knows, a good CTR increases one’s rank. So how will you tap into strong outcomes of the reviews of customers? Therefore, the steps for providing reviews to enhance one’s e-commerce are :
1) Firstly, fix unliked reviews
If one is getting unliked reviews at the time, it’ the initial thing one requires to address prior to getting more reviews. The web magnifies attitude. If one is getting unlike reviews, it generally means anything is broken or bad; no quantity of marketing or SEO can secure those elementary problems.
Before one observes the setting review funnel in order, see honestly where one’s business is currently. If it is a common business, online marketing will make it much more common. But if it is working great, then fine marketing will cast it even finer.
Don’t ruin your business by hardening your game with key elementary problems. Correct the basic cause of unliked reviews prior to running after more reviews.
2) Arrange the Review Funnel
All e-commerce businesses want a review funnel to get a worthy reference on autopilot. Like all points in this article, the utmost businesses do it badly.
Most businesses obtain product reviews wrongly and land up spamming customers. For instance, they will call on a rank of 0-10, how probably one is going to refer the product to one’s friend? This is not a productive way to gain good reviews.
The plan we made has created thousands of reviews, plus it’s simple to do. Order ships after 14-21 days, or when one foresees that a customer would have collected the product, automatic email should be sent, with subjects such as, “Did you collect the product you placed? ”
You are now just tracking to know if it has reached on time or not and giving a chance to the customer so that they can tell you if they are satisfied. It is also an amazing method to tell them your issues before they give a negative review.
Great are the emails which are penned down in a personal way, as if you’re writing to a pal who ordered online from your store. A natural process should be followed, such as, “Hello, your order arrived? Is it unbroken? What are your thoughts about it?” A review template is here which can be copy-pasted, it really works well.
Now that you know they’ve got it, ask them to give feedback, what is it that they liked or is there anything that can be improved. After that only, you should ask for the product review.
Your customers should be directed to Facebook, Google Maps, product page, or at any place where you would like to take the reviews. Links can be added sometimes to all platforms, if they are extremely happy and satisfied, they’ll place reviews on every platform. However, be sure that they’re happy and satisfied.
Automating this process of review will give you testimonials. It will even expose potential problems with your business. These issues should be known to maintain your reviews’reviews’ quality and even star ratings.
After you get a pattern receiving positive reviews (great job!), this is what you ought to do.An exact template is here where we have used to get thousands of reviews throughout the web.
3) Acquire Snippet of reviews to appear in SERPs
In the e-commerce world, reviews are very crucial, specifically for SEO. Acquiring snippets of reviews to appear in meta details in SERP, more clicks can be attracted – specifically if you possess stars more than a rival with higher ranks.
Now, if the review rating stands strong yet you do not get #1rank, you can acquire traffic more than the initial listing in case they lack stars or reviews. Attach reviews on such platforms :
- Adwords
- Google Shopping
- Google Maps
Fill the SERP using these review listings specifically to brand the search terms. Brands having rivals in SERP regarding brand terms will have to be attentive to get review snippets to appear in searches.
Theme or CMS that are older might face problems with markup. See that review markup is there on product pages as well, so that review snippet also appears in search results. A simple method to see if your page is backed up with authentic markups is by using Google Rich Snippet Tester.
The video attached will inform you about the essentials of Google Rich Snippet Tester it will also take a look for reviews at schema markup:
4) Have all the Reviews collected at one place
Reviews increase the reputation of your company and customers will start trusting your business, services, or products they are purchasing, and the expected results. Positive reviews will give you SEO traffic. Thereby, it’ll assist you in selling more.
If customers have trust in you, price competition can be beaten very easily and other small objections that customers could have. An amazing method to show the best endorsement is by bringing them to the main page of customer reviews.
Zapier or Mailchimp is what we usually use; however, many e-commerce systems possess a built-in review funnel. A link to an example of ways we use review plugins so as to make a central page for reviews page for our customers.
Few CMS’s even allow setting every review. You can even use a VA to inspect every review to be sure that they are appropriate and put them manually on the page.
To have someone who inspects reviews before they are being posted is necessary. People sometimes even give requests for customer service in reviews that don’t belong there. Therefore, you’ll have to catch hold of those.
In a nutshell, reviews are necessary, yet online marketing enhances sentiment; therefore, it’s important to fix negative reviews.
Set a review funnel if your business is doing well to automatically acquire testimonials so as to not waste time doing it manually. Always remember, firstly, provide value to customers only then ask them to give reviews.
SERP layout and tactics change greatly with time. In my opinion, it is safe to speak that search is for a long term here – this has brought me to another point.
On-Page SEO for E-commerce
I’ll not indulge in details here except to repeat that an On-Page is important for e-commerce SEO, this is the price of entry till rankings, it doesn’t matter the number of backlinks you own if the on-page SEO is bad everything is useless.
A guide on Onpage SEO by Matt is an amazing beginning point.
- I would like to include a few things which are particulars of e-commerce :
- Semrush SEO audit tool is great, and it’ll expose every issue that you would miss otherwise.
- The Google website:domain.com search is very strong.
- Noindex pages which should not be there
- Fix canonical problems
- Do away with all the issues regarding pagination. Pagination is SEO, also the conversion of death.
CTR Secret
Initially, we must be eager about CTR (click-through rate). CTR is the only tool in the market rather than Adwords, which gets minimum attention.
In the world of Adwords, as straightforward as trading the topmost and baseline copy of your Adwords Ad all over can lay hold of CTR increase from 1 % to 2 % – which is a 100 % upgrade, or in different words, multiply the same advertisement traffic.
I hesitated a little about writing this section. Since we are mostly going to launch an item at any time this year, the product will ideally focus on CTR optimization and is insanely powerful.
CTR is simply a footnote outside of PPC and Adwords, which is remarkably weird
In recent times, most of the SEOs are only focussed on rankings high. There is the wrong concept that if one is “in top results in google search” that I drive maximum traffic. Don’t go with this concept.
Let’s use a general concept here:
Organically Generated traffic = Ranking better and scoring a click.
Therefore, focusing entirely on rankings makes you lose nearly half of the traffic puzzle that is organically generated.
The same concept applies to Social Media.
Here, people assume that the more your share = the more traffic or scoring a click. This concept is also false.
Social Media generated traffic = getting shares AND scoring a click,
Again, focussing entirely on sharing on Social Media and don’t emphasize on CTR, you are leaving behind the maximum portion of the traffic generated in Social Media.
Here is an actual example to understand it:
Let go through of my ideal examples of the actual world outcome by focusing on Click Through Rate for an Organically generated search.
This is our financial services industry client-serving with a complete slot of the global audience. They were ranked high for their keywords. They had a proper content marketing technique that was properly conceived. They were doing regular podcasts and having a proper YouTube channel with 100+ videos. Their marketing strategy was also better. They approached us for an SEO based review of the site. We recommended them to edit & rewrite the meta tag description of their Website as their site was ordinary in terms of CTR point of view. They were doubtful about our concept.
To remove their doubts, we approached them with a test. We proposed that we will edit and rephrase the meta tag description. We selected their blog articles and the top twenty pages that are ranked by pageviews/traffic. We do nothing more than rephrasing their meta tag description.
Now, see the results they got for their organically generated traffic:
There was an increase in their organically generated traffic, with none of the extra added backlinks. This increase was 50 % more than their current traffic. This increase is entirely due to meta tag description optimization.
With this strategy their rank gradually begin to do this;
It was a pretty surprising outcome. However, this was not an utmost example. This similar result can be found with our total clients, e-commerce sites, Local SEO, affiliate sides, information product websites.
How to do optimization for an organically generated CTR or SEO based CTR?
- Every meta tag description must be unique to make each of the pages unique.
- There must be regular use of power words, FAST, FREE. Also, use regularly ALL CAPITALS for significant words. Don’t forget to highlight the significant words like “HUGE,” “FREE,” or “MASSIVE” and make them capitalize. Although this process cannot be done in Adwords as Google doesn’t allow, it can be a great way to increase organic search.
- Selling the sizzle! Present the meta tag description as a tiny sales mail with the ultimate goal of driving more clicks.
- Never make meta tag descriptions very long to adjust in the space. But, use all the available space.
- Do not repeat words and use “and” instead of the “&” symbol. Commonly speaking, CTR increases if there is a product item name or a slight variation of a product item name in a meta tag description.
- Include a contact number in the meta tag description to grab an edge over the hard Competition in the current marketing scene. If you provide an e-booking service rather than pure e-commerce which many of your competitors don’t have a phone number in meta tag description too.
- To analyze extensively into your organically generated CTR and different CTR opportunities.
- CMEs like WordPress and Shopify with a plugin like Yoast SEO shows a default snippet preview. But Magento and many others don’t. To solve this issue, we created our tool.
Example: Before
Example: After
Socials Media and CTR
Most probably 50 % of the websites with which we were working on are facing problems in the open-graph tags or just missing them completely.
It is a relief that Facebook has this tool that shows how a website looks as shared on a platform like Facebook or a platform that works with open-graph tags like Twitter, FB Messenger, WhatsApp, Slack, and others.
Rules of Social CTR:
- Make sure the slightest having a default open-graph image desire that is designed for CTR throughout the Website.
Let’s discuss this with an example:
- Yoast SEO plugins are the best-matched plugin if you tend to use WordPress. Make sure you have differently written Facebook descriptions and titles AND a custom generated open-graph images for the desired pages.
- Use a CMS that allows inserting actual open-graph tags. There are several CMS that doesn’t have a default facility that you can get by installing any third-party plugins.
- Tools like Buzzsumo are very beneficial if you start from scratch. With Buzzsumo, you can with ease, notice your unique Content, and also work on them.
- To create high quality, clean looking open graphs images, you should also use Canva.com.
Website speed counts
I can complete the whole day just talking about site speed. There are bulk and vivid ideas online with a regular flow of posts or messages on different groups on Facebook about the topic page speed insights. You must have also seen any of those posts.
Speed is the most important. But there is a negative deliverable that with a high speed, you don’t gather rankings and conversions. Also, you lose them at a slow speed. Most SEOs are working with the wrong mindset.
But Our approach towards speed working a nutshell is :
It is both dumb and old concepts to wasting time on page speed. It is also missing lots of major things. The loading of the page feels instant in under a second.
You are focusing on a rendering speed with Pagespeed insights that are not a big victory with this modern scene. The site is slow if you sense it loads slowly on a smartphone despite any tools you use.
- You are supported with HTTP2 in your ideal hosting, which can be tested. HTTP2 requires HTTPS to operate. You can see a comparison of speed between Http2 and Http 1.Cloud CMS as Shopify or Bigcommerce will give you HTTP2 support after pinning Cloudflare in front of your host even if it already doesn’t contain it.
- You can use Cloudflare as your DNS hosting. Cloudflare is one of the fastest DNS hosts in the internet world. You can check DNSperf or the CDN, which has the maximum PoPs around the internet world, making it the fastest among its competitors. (Speed of DNS hosting is not checked by Pagespeed insights).
- If you are using WordPress, you can use PHP7 in the place of PHP5.6. PHP7 is 2 to 3 times faster than others, which gives your site a ~30% improvement on side speed. Even more increase of speed on WooCommerce. (The Pagespeed Insights is unable to check the version of your PHP).
- Smush pictures with WP Smush it or equivalent to it.
Pagespeed insights recommend you to use lossy compressions, which means (less quality, less file size). But you should not do that in primary marketing or primary commercial environments. Here we prefer lossless compression, which means (less size, less quality). As we discussed that photography is preferably the ideal way to increase maximum conversion for e-commerce/SMB/SEO
(Regardless of your thinking, lossy compressions are not good. It also impacts the image quality, which further impacts your marketing quality.
There is a remarkable picture audit tool by Cloudinary which notify about the images compression to its limit using cloud-based picture optimization.
- You can make use of caching if the host doesn’t provide it. The fastest caching plugin is W3 total cache, but you have to learn how to use it. The WP Rocket is more divable but comparatively not quick. (Pagespeed insights would never notify you about this).
- Disable the tracking code and unused plugin.
- Never apply any sort of lazy loads, transition effects, fade-ins, soft loads, or any fancy crap your theme provides. It adds on delay to the website render & also in the perceived data.
- Banners always kill the conversion, so eliminate the use of banners.
Quick Links:
- Top 10+ Best Dropshipping Themes (Increase Sales 200%)
- Earnest Epps Course Review: High Ticket Dropshipping Possible??
- 10 Reasons For Starting an Ecommerce Store With Magento
- Ultimate Guide to High Ticket Dropshipping (Step by Step Guide)
Conclusion: The Definitve Guide To eCommerec SEO
It is always easy to study with the giant index of the ways and tips one “must” implement, strangely people don’t. It is the main reason for putting some of the techniques into action. By using these techniques, you will always be most of your main competitors.
Most of the people don’t understand e-commerce SEO and due to which they remain a mystery to the online marketers. Depending upon the short-term techniques will never let you succeed. The scenario of online marketing has changed a lot in recent times. You have to opt for the new technologies & tools to win presently.
You always want your e-commerce SEO to be far better than it’s the current state. You have learned to focus on unique strategies or core fundamentals that are supported and time-tested by marketing principles, reliable business, and sales.
Stuck somewhere- just begin with one.
We have a single core technique to implement SEO strategies. If you follow one of the actionable principles or tactics of this article, then reading this will enrich you as a valuable investment.
