Apr, 2024

Apr 12, 2024

SEO playbook for beginners

Over the last few years, the e-commerce industry has seen significant growth. Customers can easily order clothes, furniture, and more with a few clicks of a button from their desktop or mobile device. According to Statista, the e-commerce market is expected to continuously expand by about 9.79% annually from 2024 to 2029. The ongoing increase in organic search competition will follow the continuing growth of the e-commerce market.

To ensure your online business keeps swinging in this competitive market, you must prioritize the best possible practice of your SEO strategies. In this article, we'll explore 9 ways for you to rank higher in the SERPs and enhance your brand visibility on Google.

But always keep in mind the most important rule:

**Never trust anyone who promises to get you to the top spot on popular keywords quickly. **

No legitimate professional or expert can make that guarantee. If someone tries to sell you on it, Keep Calm and Say No.

Incorporate Long-Tail Keywords in Your Content

Incorporating long-tail keywords into your SEO strategies is a great way to gather more effective attention to your content and allow your content to be noticed by different types of long-tail search queries. Long-tail keywords typically have lower competition and less search volume, but they can yield better results than short-tail keywords when positioned correctly.

Long-tail keywords are phrases that contain three to five words. For example:

Short-Tail Keyword: Christmas Gifts
Long-Tail Keyword: Personalized Christmas Gifts For Women

Incorporating these keywords in your SEO tactics can help you get noticed by new but quality targeted audiences looking for exactly what you're selling, triggering a higher purchase rate. We recommend using a mix of short-tail and long-tail keywords in your product pages, blogs, and landing pages.

Use Breadcrumbs

Think of breadcrumbs as an SEO breadcrumb trail. They provide navigational insight into customer’s routes.

For an e-commerce website, breadcrumbs may look like Homepage > Women's Clothing > Blouses > Item. Users can easily click on the previous page and retrace their steps if necessary. There are three types of breadcrumbs:

Hierarchy: Based on the hierarchy of your website's site structure
Attribute: Based on the product attributes
History: Based on a user's search history on your website

No matter which breadcrumb setup you choose for your site, they can improve the user experience and help you rank higher in the SERPs.

Improve Your Website's Page Speed

There's nothing worse than landing on a website that takes forever to load. A slow page speed can significantly impact your rankings and the user experiences. To improve your website's page speed, we strongly suggest you optimize the images on your landing and/or product pages. Here are some grab-and-go clarifications:

JPEG (or JPG): are typically ideal for photographs or images with complex colors and gradient effects. It offers good compression while maintaining decent image quality. Make sure to adjust the compression settings to balance image quality and file size.
WebP: is a newer image format developed by Google allowing making smaller image files without losing quality. But not all web browsers fully support it yet. So, it's essential to provide fallback formats for compatibility. On CMS such as Shopify or WordPress, you may easily find a way to convert the original JPG/PNG and other types of images to WebP. You can also use services like CDNs to help you convert the images to improve your website's search engine optimization (SEO).
PNG: the best suitable format for images with transparency or those that require crisp or clear details such as logos, icons, or images with text overlays. PNG generally produces larger file sizes compared to JPEG but maintains better quality, especially for images with text or sharp edges. Don’t abuse it, and use it only if strictly needed, for example, when transparency of an image is needed.
GIF: Don’t use GIF images for SEO optimization unless there is no other choice. GIF files can be very large (heavy) compared to still images, especially if the animation feature is utilized. Large file sizes can prolong the page loading times, which is a crucial factor for SEO. Slow-loading pages can lead to higher bounce rates and lower search engine rankings. Moreover, GIF formats are very limited when it comes to colors and quality, transparency support, limited browser support for animation, and unsatisfactory compression.

If you run your business on Shopify, ensure you disable the features you no longer use and choose a fast Spotify theme that won't impact your page speed.

You can apply free online tools like PageSpeed Insight for testifying your site's page speed, and see what core web vitals impact your user experience. Best of the best, try to check the performance of your website by visiting the page with the “Incognito” mode with your browser, for example, Google Chrome, by right-clicking on the page, finding the “inspection” function, and then clicking on the last tab “lighthouse”.

Have a Link Building Strategy

Link building is another crucial search engine optimization tip for your business to establish brand/product authority. Google prioritizes websites that have a high number of internal and external links. A few more SEO tactics you can include in your strategy:

Use HARO to respond to queries about your niche or industry
Create shareable content like infographics and videos that other websites can use
Get your products added to online resource pages
Get featured in guest blogs
Get featured in PR online magazines, or articles, by famous e-zines and editors

With a link-building strategy, you can continue to gain relevant backlinks from reputable websites and establish authority.

We know there are tempting deals online for buying lots of cheap backlinks, but be cautious. If search engines like Google catch on to the fact that you've been rapidly building backlinks by purchasing them, you could end up with the opposite of the desired result and be penalized. Not to mention that this is exactly the OPPOSITE way to build the brand image, brand authority, and eventually, your business development. So, opt for a professional to handle this task with care.

Have a Simple Site Structure

A simple site structure can further improve the user experience and help search engine crawlers index your pages efficiently. A simple site structure can also improve your overall page loading speed, making it easy for users to explore, navigate, and purchase products.

The best is always to keep your website architecture logical and straightforward for the user. We recommend using content pillars to group content into different subcategories, ensuring the navigational depth is easy to follow. Don’t try to challenge the user, make sure they can get into the right place with just a few clicks.

Refresh Your Product Page

Your product pages should be informative, concise, and optimized for the best SEO practices. Think of each product page as a landing page explaining your product or service clearly. Make sure you're always:

Using the right keywords
Have right-to-the-point meta descriptions and titles for each product
Include FAQS, testimonials, and reviews for each product
Improve the copy structure with headings and subheadings

With a few SEO-driven adjustments to your product page descriptions, you can rank higher in organic search and get your products noticed by the right targeted audiences. It can also improve conversion rates over time. We recommend A/B testing a few changes to the product pages to find what complements your SEO strategy.

Use Simple URL Structures

Did you know URLs with multiple parameters are less likely to rank higher? Complicated URLs with several parameters are confusing for website crawlers. Your URL structure should contain six parts: Protocol, Subdomain, Root Domain, TLD, Slug, and Article Permalink. Other search engine optimization tips you can use for your URL structures:

Use hyphens between words to make the URL easy to read
Avoid adding dates and spell out all numbers you include in the URL
Avoid capitalizing words
Use the classic [ https:/ ] protocol to improve your rankings
Make sure your URL structures are consistent and in context with the content of the page

Make Sure Your Website Is Mobile-Friendly

Mobile traffic has seen a steady increase over the years. As of December 2023, over 56.1% of all web traffic came from mobile devices. We expect this number to continue to increase in the coming years. Since the rise of mobile traffic, Google has started using a mobile-first indexing approach.

To ensure your e-commerce website is mobile-friendly, you may want to have a responsive layout that adjusts to different screenshots. Compressing images, using a readable font size, and avoiding pop-ups that may impact the user experience are also crucial to optimizing mobile traffic.

Strategically Perform Out of Stock Products

You may feel tempted to delete out-of-stock product pages that you aren't sure whether it will return anytime soon. However, deleting the page can impact your organic search rankings. Instead of simply deleting it, it is recommended to have a strategy for optimizing out-of-stock product pages. Some SEO tactics that might help:

Offer alternatives
Let customers sign up for email alerts for back-in-stock alert
Add back-in-stock dates
Let customers pre-order items if you are certain the products are coming back soon

Explore Next-Level SEO Strategies With Naturality Digital

At Naturality Digital, our team is passionate about helping e-commerce business owners fine-tune their approach to long-term brand strategies, for which SEO is crucial.

We're here to help you implement SEO tactics that deliver results and provide expert guidance to maintain your long-term competitiveness.

Feel free to contact us today to learn more.