When running an e-commerce business, there’s no denying that ranking higher than your competitors in search engine results is a must in order to drive more traffic to your site and improve your profits. But this can be difficult to achieve if you are unaware of the top SEO methods and strategies that will help drive your website to the top. If you are missing out on link clicks, then it’s highly likely that you’re missing out on sales.  

Today, running an e-commerce store has easily turned out to be one of the most widely chosen methods of making money online. You can start your own online shop without a massive financial investment and selling online is far cheaper when compared to setting up a high street store, making it an ideal option for people who want to start their own businesses. However, with so much competition that you will be up against, search engine optimizing should be a crucial part of the plan. So, we’ve listed some of the best SEO strategies to implement in order to improve the success of your online store.

#1. Choosing the Right E-Commerce Platform:

When selling online, marketing is not only about sending emails and posting ads, it’s hugely important that you prioritize digital marketing strategies, such as improving your online store’s SEO and working to achieve a high ranking in search engine results. Choosing the right e-commerce platform is essential for SEO, since Google favors sites based on the user experience (UX) of visitors to your site. It’s always better to invest in a high-quality platform that offers a range of features to help your brand make professional impressions and encourage customers to buy.

#2. Dedicate Time to Research:

When it comes to improving SEO for your e-commerce store, it’s important to understand that careful research is a crucial part of the process. Whether you’re researching the SEO benefits of using a certain e-commerce platform, conducting keyword research, or looking at what your competitors are doing, this is one of the most important steps for good SEO. Careful research will not only allow you to determine which keywords are going to improve your outreach, but you’ll also be able to keep a close eye on what your competitors are doing. Gaining this knowledge then allows you to determine what it is that your target audience is missing out on and offer it to them.

#3. Stay Active on Social Media:

Today, a huge percentage of e-commerce marketing is conducted using social media platforms. As a business owner, it’s crucial that you understand the importance for today’s customers when it comes to being able to follow their favorite brands on social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Using these social media platforms to market new products, deals and more can be one of the best ways to engage and connect with your customers and fans, while boosting your brand’s reach, reputation and popularity. And, the more active you are, the more brand-related content you will be creating for search engines to index.

#4. Prioritize the User Experience:

Search engines such as Google will never reward your website with a high ranking, and certainly not the top spot, if it looks awful on smartphone screens. When designing your e-commerce store, you should always keep the user experience in the forefront of your mind. Providing your customers with easy access to support when shopping, such as live web chat or an FAQ page, a simple, easy-to-use navigation system and great product pages is going to be wasted if your visitors can’t view it easily on their smartphone or tablet. A responsive design will not only improve customer satisfaction, it’s also going to earn you more reputation points with Google and other search engines. And, it’ll keep customers coming back to your store for more as they know that they can shop easily and conveniently on their mobile device.

#5. Referral Schemes

Offering a reward to customers to invite their friends to shop at your e-commerce store is a very effective way of building more traffic to your site. And word-of-mouth marketing is growing in popularity, with more and more businesses across all industries beginning to truly understand the value of their loyal and satisfied customers for marketing. Put your customers to work for you by offering them something in return for spreading the word. For example, providing customers with an affiliate link which they can share with their friends on social media that earns them money off when a friend buys or signs up, for example, is an inexpensive and highly effective marketing method that encourages customer engagement with your brand and makes them feel like a part of the bigger picture.

#6. Keep Customers Up to Date:

There are many benefits of regularly updating your website with fresh content, something which is usually done by having a fresh business blog. By blogging alongside your e-commerce store, you can earn more exposure for your company by promoting your products, providing your customers with useful information, and becoming an authority source of information for your industry. When updating your blog, the best way to improve SEO is to keep your customers, rather than optimizing for search, at the forefront of your mind. Blog posts such as how-to guides that help your customers to achieve something are much more beneficial to SEO than posts which are simply focused on making sure that a keyword is included.

#7. Never Stop Learning:

Last but not least, never stop learning when it comes to improving SEO for your e-commerce store. There are several free resources available online that you will be able to take advantage of, such as this how to guide for improving your search engine ranking. Other options include working together with a mentor who can teach you more about boosting SEO, keeping up to date with industry trends, and building a strong network of professionals who can offer advice and support when needed.

Today, selling online is a great business idea that’s often inexpensive to start with a great potential for return on investment. But you’ll need to focus on continuously improving SEO to see the business results that you need.