8 Ways to Optimize Your Ecommerce Website
When you’re a new online business, how do customers find your site? They Google items in your store, and if your site is optimized for those items, it will show up in the search results.
The concept of online search is simple, but showing up high in search results is less so. There’s significant online competition in almost every market, so if you’re not an established brand, it can be challenging to get organic search traffic.
What you need is a better focus on optimizing your web pages for search. Here are a few things you can do.
Focus on Landing Pages
When customers search for products, you ultimately want them to end up on your landing page. These high-value webpages are designed to inform the customer about a product and close a sale. Focusing on landing page improvement is a first step in ranking higher in search engines.
The design should be consistent with the rest of your website and the content should be high-value and promotional. For example, if your ecommerce site sells CBD products, your CBD gummies page might feature information about CBD benefits and the superior taste of the them versus other product forms. It would include a clear call to action that encourages consumers to buy.
Quality content is the most important factor in your landing page design, but other elements like keywords, a custom URL, secure backlinks, social media integration, and other features will help make your pages searchable.
Make It Mobile-Friendly
Nearly all websites have shifted to mobile-friendly design, but there’s a learning curve in this avenue. Business owners are aware that they need responsive design in today’s mobile-centric market, but many mobile sites need improvement.
One of the most important factors in online search is site speed. If your website takes more than three seconds to load, you risk losing visitors, and bounce rates hurt your search rankings. Additionally, your website should be easy to navigate and undistorted on small devices. Otherwise, Google will penalize your site for low quality.
Post Consistent Blog Posts
Most websites are equipped with the ability to write and publish blog posts – all you need to do is activate it and start generating high-quality content. This is your ticket to increased searchability through Google and other search engines.
Focus on developing blog posts featuring both timeless content and newsy articles. This will appeal to both trends that could generate high traffic on your blog and customers seeking answers to age-old questions in your industry.
Set up an editorial calendar to help you maintain a consistent posting schedule. Intermittent posting makes your blog look bad to potential customers, and Google doesn’t like it either.
Create a Linking Strategy
If you want to bring more search attention to your website, you need a link-building strategy. Link-building is currently the most effective marketing tool that convinces search algorithms to rank your page near the top. SEO agency Newcastle is providing a high-quality link building service that will help you to rank for your keywords.
In order to move up the ranks, your goal is to get links to your website on high-authority sites. To do so, you might establish author accounts on various high-DA websites where you can write guest post with your website naturally linked within.
Your on-site blog posts should also have links to high-priority pages. The use of good links within your posts will make your site appear more credible, a cue that the search algorithm looks for when determining rankings.
Use Video
Currently, blog content is the gold standard for generating better SEO search results. However, video is making rapid strides in this market. Videos are among the most popular forms of online content with the average consumer watching videos from brands up to 45 minutes every single day.
About two thirds of video watchers also consume a video in its entirety, increasing the time they spend on your website. The longer they stick around after entering a search query, the better you’ll look in the eyes of Google.
Additionally, videos are now showing up in search results. Google has introduced a search carousel that features videos to answer search queries. Generating video for the benefit of your brand and products can not only captivate your target audience but also lead to greater website optimization.
Have a Social Strategy
The search landscape has shifted in recent years to encompass not just major search engines like Google and Bing, but also social media platforms. This is particularly true for consumers looking for brands that they’re interested in buying from. About 80 percent of social media users have reported using social media to search for products and services at least once before.
This underscores the importance of having a good social media strategy. You should have a presence on a few platforms. Go where your customers are. If you’re targeting a millennial audience, you should have a Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter presence at the very least.
Optimize your profiles on these pages to showcase your brand and direct traffic to your website. Just like your blog, you need a consistent posting schedule to attract the attention of consumers and search engines.
Additionally, the more followers you have on these social platforms, the higher your website will rank. Focusing a significant amount of your marketing efforts on social media is not a bad strategy.
Personalize Web Content
Search engines prefer website content that’s optimized for a target audience. It enhances the user experience and often results in returning visitors. This is very good for your search rankings.
Your advertisements should also be highly personalized to the audience. This ensures that your ads only reach those who are most interested in your products, meaning you won’t waste online space and advertising dollars on those who aren’t going to click on the ads. More clicks equals higher rankings.
Establish Trust and Authority
Consumers establish loyalty only with brands they trust. This requires a pattern of authoritative content and high-quality interactions. If you’re successful, you’ll earn repeat visitors and word-of-mouth-marketing that will skyrocket your website traffic.
One of the best ways to establish trust with your customers while boosting your searchability is through customer testimonials. A Nielsen survey shows that three quarters of customers look for suggestions from others when making a purchasing decision. If they like what they find, they’ll head to your website.
Getting people to your website and converting them to customers is the best thing you can do for optimization. As more customers enjoy your products, your website optimization will advance as a direct result.
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