2 Crucial Ways SEO Boosts E-Commerce Sales

E-commerce is an incredible opportunity for brands to expand their reach further than their local area. It’s becoming a highly prevalent way for consumers to purchase products and services, giving them the chance to buy what they need from wherever they are. However, without sales, an e-commerce enterprise will fail. Digital marketers celebrate SEO for increasing traffic to a website, but often it’s overlooked as a solution to boosting e-commerce sales.

HubSpot’s research discovered SEO, in September 2016, was the top inbound marketing priority. It’s common knowledge that the higher you appear in the SERPs, the more traffic and by association, the more sales you will achieve.

There’s so much more to SEO for e-commerce than merely appearing in the number one spot on Google. SEO can be effectively used to convert leads who land on your site in a variety of ways, but how do you use SEO in the best way to boost your e-commerce sales? We will outline the techniques below.

Quality Link Building

Link building isn’t a new SEO technique, but it is one technique which appears to focus entirely on raising a website through the SERPs. However, link building is an incredible technique to harness for boosting e-commerce sales – as long as it’s a highly authoritative, high-quality link.

Search Engine Journal states;

Links serve as a reflection of the quality of a page’s content, as long as they are natural links.

For e-commerce, link building offers an opportunity to showcase your products on a variety of sites, but it does depend on specific aspects.

• Offer helpful advice
• Create compelling, interesting articles
• Showcase your product as a solution
• Write content people actually want to read, rather than what you want to advertise

A common setback many e-commerce entrepreneurs face when creating high-quality content is that they focus too closely on their product, what it does, and how it can help a consumer.

What is an exciting tip to use, however, is your content does not need to tie into your product specifically. Instead, write engaging content on a subject which is somewhat unrelated to your brand. By implementing this method, you can build your authority on a range of topics, and hook readers in to come back for more. For a clothing e-commerce retailer, branch out from writing solely about fashion trends. Create content relating to a summer holiday, and place a natural link to your site, using an anchor text about on-trend clothes for a summer holiday, to grab a reader’s attention. This is far more effective, and your content writers will appreciate the freedom and flexibility they have to let their imaginations and creativity run wild. What’s more, as this article isn’t too promotional but does represent your brand well, it’s more likely to be shared on social media.

Product Pages Need Optimising

As an e-commerce store, if you’re not optimising your product pages well, you’re losing out on the wealth of searchers who are looking for what you offer.

However, optimising one or two products isn’t enough. Every product you sell needs optimising, which includes the images you use to promote, the titles you use and the product descriptions.

Your images

“Alt” tags are the simplest way to optimise your images. An “alt” tag is the HTML attribute a search engine crawler will read to analyse the quality of your content and the message it portrays. However, it’s also imperative to use “alt” tags to improve the accessibility of your site. For visually impaired consumers, their screen reader will read out the text, so they are aware of what the image is. Your “alt” tag needs to describe what your image shows, and it needs to be as clear and defined as possible. If your image has a button to purchase your product, you need to describe that as plainly as you can: “button to buy.”

Product titles

The title of your product isn’t only used to hook consumers in; it’s also a way to include specific keywords for Google’s bots. By creating a clear, defined title, Google understands what you are trying to sell, boosting your chances of showing highly on the SERPs. E-commerce can utilise the power of keywords in their titles by using product features to create long tail keywords.

A great example is an e-commerce website selling women’s clothes. Their product titles should reflect what they are advertising: women’s size 14 black maxi dress. Not only does this state for the consumer and Google what the product is, but it uses a long tail keyword to boost the SEO ranking.

Product descriptions

A product description is your opportunity to really sell your products, so it’s only natural you want to use promotional, sales language to entice site visitors to click the ‘add to cart’ button. Due to this, it’s not uncommon for sites to write descriptions from the heart. However, your product description should use long tail, natural keywords.

What’s more, your product descriptions must be long-form content. Google values high quality, long content, which means a product description which uses a couple of sentences isn’t going to rank highly. While link building articles are often a minimum of 500 words, descriptions can often be much less. This is a mistake for e-commerce sites. Much like Google values quality link building, it values quality, long-form content on the site itself.

To increase the word count to Google’s preferred length, ensure you use as many keyword descriptions as possible. One technique is to include the product story within the description, which is especially effective for unique items. Ask yourself these key questions when writing product descriptions:

• Why did you create this product?
• Alternatively, why did you source it from a different brand?
• Did you design the item to solve a problem for you, and believe it can solve a problem for consumers too?
• How did you come about the idea?
• What details about this product need to be clearly conveyed, such as the colour, the size, the age range (for children’s products in particular)?

When creating descriptions, keyword research is crucial. Look beyond the most common search terms, however. Opt for long tail keywords which specifically refer to your product.

Additionally, ensure every feature is included within the description. Often, brands choose to list their features, which provides better readability for the site visitor while also boosting SEO.

Conclusion

SEO not only boosts site traffic; it is a key way to increase sales for e-commerce sites. By using the two crucial ways above, you can ensure your store and products grab the attention of visitors instantly.