In the world of online retail, there’s one objective: sell more products online. This is often accomplished by using quick win marketing tactics like Facebook ads and Google ads so that you can see profit quickly, which is great. Often though, this negates the long term benefits that can be seen from a well thought out SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.
Some businesses outright neglect SEO for Ecommerce because it takes too much time. Others neglect it because the game is always changing.
The rest just don’t understand what SEO is. So, that’s where we’ll start…
Search engine optimization is an important part of marketing for ecommerce companies. The best way to improve rankings in the Search Engine Results Pagess and generate more traffic is by implementing SEO strategies that work. However, many businesses make mistakes when it comes to SEO that actually harm their online presence. In this blog post, we will discuss 7 common SEO mistakes made by ecommerce companies and how you can avoid them!
Mistake 1: Focusing on the wrong keywords
When businesses begin the SEO process, the default action is to start focusing on the keywords that in theory generate more sales.
The problem with this approach, though, is that it’s very limiting and often times doesn’t work at all! It limits the number of potential customers who will find you on Google or any other ranking service by targeting specific keywords that may not be relevant to them in their current state of mind.
This could be an opportunity to introduce your brand as a potential place to buy the product they’re looking for while they are in the beginning of their buying journey. To do this, think through the terms people would search for while they are interested in buying your product. Then, think through the questions that they’d ask on a search engine then write blog posts covering those topics.
When you answer their questions, you build good will which could eventually lead to the purchase. (Plus, it’s a great way of building a retargeting audience).
Mistake 2: Neglecting to optimize images and videos
It can be easy to neglect SEO for images and videos, but it’s important. In this day of social media dominance, not optimizing your content means you’re losing out on the opportunity to drive traffic from sites like Facebook or Pinterest.
When uploading an image or video to your site, you should always include a keyword-included alt tag. The content needs to be optimized for the words that are in the images so that they’ll rank higher on Google Image search results pages.
In addition, when optimizing videos make sure there’s text overlayed on top of the video with a short descriptive caption about what is happening within the clip. That way people can understand what they’re watching before deciding if it’s worth their time! It will improve rankings too because YouTube pays attention to SEO as well.
Mistake 3: Not optimizing URLs
URLs are another part of SEO that can be easily overlooked. The URL is what people will see when they search for your site on Google or any other search engine, so it’s important to make sure this string has keywords in the text.
Don’t force too many words into a single line though – don’t break URLs up unnecessarily because then you’re just making it difficult for visitors and spiders to understand the page hierarchy. Keep things simple by using one word per line with a hyphen separating them like domain-name-.com (for example: mysite-about-lunch).
You ideally want to make sure that your URL is easy to read and descriptive to a regular person, because that will make it easier to understand by Google.
Mistake 4: Ignoring meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are another way to let Google know what your content is about and drive more traffic. Remember, a meta description needs to be concise and should be used with the intention of encouraging people to click when they see this description on Google.
For ecommerce companies, this means being very careful with words like buy or sale if there’s no mention of those terms on the page itself (like in an newsletter). When it comes to SEO for ecommerce sites, focus on providing useful information rather than trying to rank as high as possible so people will click through from Google!
Mistake 5: Failing to create compelling copy for product pages
Product pages are the most important part of any ecommerce store, but they’re often neglected when it comes to content.
If you neglect product copy, your page will only rank for a few keywords and won’t be able to compete successfully with other sites that have more optimized product descriptions.
This means going beyond just writing accurate information about the item – this is where we get into best practices like using persuasive language and making sure there’s plenty of detail so customers know what they’re buying before clicking on anything! Remember: buyers do not want to feel duped or tricked by an online purchase. They need assurance that their money is well spent.
Mistake 6: Not checking your site for broken links
Broken links are a huge problem for SEO. When you have broken links, it means that people will be frustrated by the site and not want to come back.
Search engines will also penalize your rankings if they find that there is more than one link on the page to an image or video file – this is because it’s seen as spammy behavior from search engine optimization standpoint.
On top of all that, Google treats 404 errors (page not found) harshly when calculating rankings so make sure you’re checking regularly!
Not just because it’s bad for SEO, but also your user experience as well.
404’s are common due to products being out of stock and a number of other reasons. Consider using a 301 redirect to get your customer to a similar product or forcing a 410 header response. I refer to this as the “Hey, this is never coming back” response.
Mistake 7: Duplicate Content
When you’re building a website, it’s easy to accidentally have duplicate content on your site. This is especially true of ecommerce businesses because of cases where you have similar products with different variations.
To fix this, consider using a “Rel Canonical” tag to give ownership of the content for that product to a parent category or one specific product. This lets Google know that you are aware of the duplicated content and you’re taking action on it.
At the end of the day, making sure your ecommerce website is SEO friendly is all about making sure that Google isn’t seeing a ton of duplicated content as well as not getting stuck in a technical problem like 404 errors.
If you’re interested, we’ve put together a brand new “Darn-Near-Instant” SEO Audit. You can try it out by clicking here. It’ll load in a new tab instantly, so you won’t need to talk to me for results(unless you want to).
Hope you enjoyed this, and feel free to share with a friend!