Do you have an online store and just receive visits? You can receive qualified traffic through paid advertising, social networks, forums or certain web pages, but if we appear in Google get many more visits that will become customers and that, combined with a good strategy of Social Media and Email Marketing, sales will multiply exponentially in your ecommerce because this is a complete Guides of SEO for ecommerce and online shops
This article will serve as a good guide for applying SEO to your online store and make your sales and finally take off. When you’ll get visits and sales because your users will find exactly those products they were looking for.
Keyword research
This point is crucial to develop a good strategy for SEO and more especially in an online store, where each category or product section should be optimized for specific search criteria and various related. We can use the products (and in some cases certain sections) to enter long tail words with low competition and the main categories and homepage to attack keywords with more searches. You must perform this task thoroughly, so I recommend you read our full article on how to search for keywords and apply all advice. Spend much time as necessary to this task because it depends on everything else.
Competitive Analysis
This will be of great help to know how they are doing your SEO strategy in your online store. Note especially how to structure your website and what kind of words selected for each section of your store. What does your competition does not have to be the best option, but if you really are positioned on Google for terms that appeal to you is because they are doing well. Browse several times for its website and analyze it all with a tool that allows you to clearly see the structure of your ecommerce. Also notes the off-page SEO they are doing, ie, what links are getting and how.
Structure of the online store
It is very important to state from the outset that the structure will store based on the keywords you’ve given and given the competing pages, but always respecting the principles of usability, which allow the user to easily browse the store and find what you want. The store should be divided into major categories (which start from the home page) and from there directly into subcategories or products, depending on each specific case. Visually it should look something like this:
Depending on the number of sections covering our shop can ask include more or fewer categories linked from the home, but always keep in mind that the more juice will be divided between the sections and will come less each.
Friendly programming
Whether your ecommerce is designed to measure or from a content manager as Prestashop or Magento, you must ensure it presents a clean code and easy to understand by search engines, as well as friendly URLs and descriptive. Some examples of URLs:
✗ http://www.mystorename.com/category.php?id_category=31
✓ http://www.mystorename.com/shoes-man/
✓ http://www.ejemplo.com/man/shoes/
The first URL is not descriptive and is impossible to know what we will find inside, however the reverse is true in the other two examples. In the second case we see clearly that we will find men’s shoes, and in the third case we will find shoes in the category of man. A descriptive and related to the content of the page URL is a factor of SEO, and also stand out more on search engines.
The schedule page includes other important aspects to SEO as the speed of loading, the content structure of the pages, the file names, etc …
Rich Snippets
Although there is no proof that the rich snippets (rich snippets) influence the positioning, what is clear is that stand out among the other results and are more likely to receive clicks. We indicate the most suitable for ecommerce.
Breadcrumbs or bread crumbs
you might consider using breadcrumbs (breadcrumbs) to show the hierarchical path of your Web so that Google does not show your URL directly, but something like this:
Product information
Detailing aspects of each product can get in the Google search box display certain characteristics, such as price:
Ratings
This is one of the formats that stands out in the results, indicating the assessment of the page or product with stars that can go from 1-5 based on user reviews.
Sitemap
In most web pages it is not necessary, but in an online store with hundreds of products (and therefore URLs) you do need a sitemap for the search engine to find all existing pages. Remember update when you add new products to the store.
Optimizing for mobile
More and more people shop online through their smartphone, anticipating that 50% of sales in 2018 were made through these devices. This means a great opportunity and it is imperative that you adapt your online store so that it can display well on mobile devices. Google strives to determine the best results for those searches from mobile, improving rankings to those sites that have a responsive layout or a mobile version that fits properly to the size of mobile devices.
Optimization of categories
The contents of each page of your online store should be excellent for both browsers like as users. Make sure your home page, your categories and all your products are organized and descriptive content.
The study of words that we saw in the first step was crucial to create the structure of the web and it is now also to include the right keywords in each section. The homepage and categories are, in principle, the pages will compete for more search criteria and competition, so we must optimize the attention to detail.
Be sure to include keywords in the title and in the headings in the text of the page and on the label alt images. No sober optimices pages; instead it uses variations and semantically related words.
Many online stores make the mistake of leaving without any text categories, when in fact substantially improve their results including a brief description of the category that can be useful for search engines and of course for visitors.
Product Sheet
Each product must be optimized so that it can appear in search results when someone. You can take advantage of certain products for long tail searches that you had not been able to use in the categories. In the optimization process you must find a balance between what you like to the search engines and what he likes to potential customers.
Be sure to include good content within the sheet and of course never use the manufacturer’s description that almost certainly and will be using dozens of online stores and you will be generating duplicate content and therefore of low quality, which can mean a penalty for Panda. You must never use copied text, instead you should strive to write a unique and original content that correctly describes the product and its features. Moreover, allowing user reviews and ratings can help update the content more often, something that search engines frown. Depending on the competence of each product you can afford to include more or less text, but always sebe be original.
Remember that the content is not only text but also images (do not let too heavy to not slow Web), videos and any other file type you can include in your page.
Expired Products
In an ecommerce it is normal that will be adding new products coming to market and eliminating those that no longer will sell more. When we eliminate a product we will be generating a 404 error , which could pose a serious problem when several products at once removed. What we can do is redirect the old to the new product (or the parent category) and avoid the mistake and move the force may have acquired this URL.
Avoid duplicate content
We have insisted that should never copy content, not even provided by the manufacturer, but there are other aspects that can generate contended doubled within your own site. While the internal duplicate content is not so bad with the outside, it can lead to penalties when the volume is large and in turn can lead to cannibalization of keywords. Let usual 3 cases online stores that can cause duplicate content.
Parameters and session IDs
Many stores include information session IDs or dynamic parameters in the URL which creates duplicate content. would be showing the same content in these three URLs:
- http://www.mystorename.com/umbrella
- http://www.mystorename.com/umbrella?sessionid=918
- http://www.mystorename.com/umbrella?color=green&sort=price_ascending
In this case you can be solved by implementing the tag rel = “canonical” or indicating the parameters in Webmaster Tools.
Same product in different categories
Nothing wrong in that one product is in two categories, the problem is when it causes the product to have a different URL when in one category or another, which would show the same content on two different pages. We can solve it with the rel = “canonical”, although the most logical thing would be to unify the two pages.
Pagination
When we have several products within a category we have to include a pager. If this is not properly implemented can generate duplicate to show some equal parts on a page and other content. In this case it is as simple as using the rel tag = “prev” and rel = “next”, which indicate to search engines that all pages are in the main series.
Off-page SEO
Having a well structured ecommerce, with good programming background, with well raised keywords and good content will have a store very well optimizad internally, but we need to make ourselves known to other websites link us naturally. We offer some ideas for what you can get.
Company blog
It includes a blog in your store and make original and unique content regularly. Study your target audience and publishes articles that can help serve them. Poses a strategy of marketing content (including the promotion thereof) and make yourself known in your industry. In addition to letting you know you will help other people link your content and improve the overall authority of your website.
Social Media
Social Media strategy, combined with your content marketing strategy, can make hundreds or thousands of people you know. Ask all to see your strengths and how are you different from the competition, always trying to create an emotional bond with your audience, but do not use social networks to sell directly. Communicate openly with your community and will generate confidence, which is important for online shopping.
You have many fans or followers not going to make your page better position, but you make yourself known and get gradually more pages link will naturally when this happens while you get other own benefits of networking social.
Communities in your industry
I recommend that you participate in specific communities in your industry to make yourself known. Do not try to sell directly, simply strive to help the community with your advice and improve your branding.
You can also contact some influential people in your industry and help to know you. When they see that support them without expecting anything in return is possible that at some point you cite in your website or blog, you will surely have a lot of authority and will provide a high quality link while you expose yourself to all readers of this website.
Monitoring
You should monitor your whole strategy is working . Do they find what they want users in each category and give a thousand laps around the store? Do visitors entering and leaving the web instantly? Maybe you should check that the keyword categories correspond to its content. Use a tool that allows you to see the behavior of the users.
Moreover you should consult your site in Webmaster Tools to see if everything is working properly or is there something you can improve. You should also be aware of the links you get and everything that has to do with your website.
It also monitors the position of your site for different search criteria check not only their development but also whether they are displayed or a product category (may be occurring keyword cannibalization).
I recommend reading The Quick Reference Guide for SEO blogs
Conclusions
A job well done SEO for ecommerce requires a lot of patience and effort and works best when raised positioning strategy from the outset, ie, before creating the Web. It does not mean you can not apply a SEO strategy after creating your store, but you’ll encounter several limitations if you had not had’d raised from the outset.
The more products you have, the longer it will take to optimize the store, but you’ll have more ways of conversion. Take care of every detail so that the web can be presentable to users and search engines to focus on issues before conversion.
An online store is not so different from a physical store: you make yourself known to visit you and promote you to buy from you. Google wants only the sites that receive natural links within its search engine, and this can only get by applying a good marketing strategy that can go from the online to the offline.