Although the internal and external factors to position an online store successfully are many and different, there are common elements, applicable to most eCommerce.
In this article, you will discover what those factors are that you have control over and some useful tips that, if you follow them, will increase the possibility that your online store will appear in the first results of search engines like Google.
Search Engine Optimization, better known as SEO, is a set of techniques thanks to which your website better responds to the demands of search engines in order to improve its position on search results.
And it is it; positioning on the first results page of Google or any other search engine means not only a significant increase in visitors but also in sales.
Not being there, for many small online businesses, can directly mean closure.
How to run efficient SEO for an online store?
The optimisation of an online store involves carrying out a series of specific and measurable actions in a specified time. That is, with an established strategy.
Many of the advice that you will read here comes from Serendipity Marketing’s experience positioning online stores of all kinds on Google’s first page and from Google’s guidelines for webmasters – a series of rules which are much more than a compendium of ‘good practices.
Basically, it is what you must do to rank on Google, achieve good organic positioning, and not be penalised for violating their policies.
So, let’s get started!
Choice of keywords
The so-called “Keyword Research” is perhaps one of the most important tasks if you want to position an online store in the top 3 of Google results.
It is a great effort since you have to invest a lot of time, dedication, and patience, but to everyone you ask, they will tell you that it is essential.
People use words, shorter or longer, to find a solution to their questions or problems on Google and other web search engines.
Basically, Keyword Research consists of understanding, searching, and finding the words with which people may be searching for your product or service on Google.
For this, you must have very well defined your target audience and get to know it deeply – what they do, how they behave, how they feel.
If you want to learn more about how to get to know deeper your ideal clients, click here to check our complete Audience Analysis Guide.
With all this data, you would design your strategy to position and attack each of those keywords.
A positioning strategy for the most transactional keywords, attacking long tail at the beginning to end up as the most complicated keywords.
Information architecture
To position an online store, it is essential to have an organised page.
A good structure not only helps user navigation but also bots improving the crawling and indexing of content.
When creating an online store, the part where the organization is most visible is the Menu, so work on it.
The result of a correct information architecture increases the possibility that the user will find or recover the information they are looking for in a reasonable time. This is the findability factor that, poorly considered and together with poor functionality, poor aesthetics, and difficult accessibility, are one of the biggest reasons for frustration among users.
Take some time and think, is the content well classified? Does the web have a correct structure, description of these contents? Is there help in navigation?
The answer to these questions will tell you what to do.
Headings Structure
After Keyword Research and correct information structuring, it is time to look at the heading structure.
Better known as headings or ‘H’, headings are the best way to rank web content.
From the user’s point of view, it is something valuable as they better understand, find and assimilate the information.
From an SEO point of view, it means indicating to the search engines what keyword you want to position in that particular section and the importance it has within the website.
Check that there is only 1 H1 for each URL on your website and as many H2, H3 as you need. Try not to use too much h4, h5, etc., since the deeper the nesting, the less importance we are giving to that information.
Work the content
SEO for eCommerce has certain peculiarities.
If you want to get a good web positioning for an online store, SEO should be focused on capturing organic traffic to categories and product sheets.
So, the first thing in terms of content optimisation should go through improving the content of the product page and the content of categories and subcategories.
And although the content of pages such as ‘We’ are often not interesting for web positioning, they are important for image and brand consolidation.
These pages that do not position for a specific keyword but that can be useful at the business level, leave them for last, but work on them.
Internal linking
Improve the internal linking of your website. Not only with links from the content in the form of text but also through elements such as Breadcumbs or Breadcrumbs, which are very useful to rank the pages.
Other elements that can help you improve the interlinking of an online store are related products module, best sellers, news, etc.
Content indexing
Manage and control the access and indexing of the contents of your online store through files such as sitemap.xml and robots.txt.
Not all the content of a virtual store is interesting for positioning purposes, so you will have to give instructions to the bots on what to do in case they come across something that you consider useful or not so that it is tracked and indexed or passed through high.
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Loading speed
Neither users nor search engines like a web page that takes time to load.
Besides being a factor to take into account when positioning an online store, it is a key element to improve the online sales of your site, why?
Very simple, currently the competition is fierce and very varied and any opportunity you give a person to go to the competition, they will take advantage of it.
Think that a person who is looking for, for example, ‘Buy aloe vera for burns’ is not only visiting a website, he has several tabs open in the browser to be able to find what they want at the best price. If your website does not load, you are directly out of the game.
There are tools such as Page Speed Insights that will help you check the loading time of your website and that, also, provides you with a series of improvement points on which to work called ‘opportunities’.
Friendly URLs
If you want to position an online store, build the URLs so that they are understandable for the user and the search engines.
An example of a friendly URL is: domain + category + product
Avoid using strange characters such as underscores, accents, reference numbers (in CMS like Prestashop the product already contains an ID). This will make it easier to read for Google and with more accurate information for the user.
Optimization on mobile devices
The mobile is already part of our day-to-day. In many sectors, most purchases in an eCommerce are made through this type of device, so having the responsive version of your website perfectly optimised will not only intervene in a better positioning but also an improvement in sales.
After Mobile First, this has gone from being a recommended practice to being a mantra.
Google’s new indexing priorities have radically made us start to think mobile-first at the level of design, indexing, content, user experience, etc.
Following the Mobile-First philosophy is, therefore, key to positioning an online store.
Linkbuilding
Part of the strategy to position an online store is to perform a correct SEO work off page.
This strategy should be as natural as possible.
Do not focus on buying links (quality is more important than quantity), participate in forums of websites with authority and relevance within your sector, register in relevant directories at the business level, carry out contextualised exchanges, etc.
Create a blog
When setting up an online store the last thing you think of is the blog. However, the blog of a website is very important when it comes to positioning a good number of keywords and attracting a considerable amount of traffic to the web.
And by doing it correctly, you will not only get SEO benefits, but you will also get closer to the user, create a community and build and strengthen your brand.
Creating and sharing valuable information for users for free makes you consolidate yourself as the greatest expert and connoisseur of “what you do or sell”.
Server
Manage the server response optimally and hire a suitable hosting, where possible exclusively dedicated to your project or at least, to ensure that you are going to share IP with websites that are not “problematic”.
Indirect factors
There are indirect factors to position an online store such as Rich Snippets, optimisation of meta titles and meta descriptions, the use of social networks, among others.
It all adds up, so we advise you to also work on these SEO factors.
Google My Business
Positioning an online store locally requires optimising the business listing in GoogleMyBusiness.
The new strategic approach that Google values the most is to those pages that offer results related and adapted to mobile.
How can you get a specific positioning strategy for your online store?
Serendipity Marketing is a leading SEO agency London, delivering SEO and web design services London internationally, helping businesses to rank and convert in three languages: English, Italian, and Spanish.
Our unique approach, mixing marketing strategies and psychology science, allows us to generate specific positioning and converting strategies able to drive tangible results to any business.
Rely on a leading SEO agency London to get your eCommerce on Google’s first results page.
