Search engine optimization (SEO) for an online store is one of the fundamental pillars of increasing sales and generating profits for any store owner, regardless of the product they sell or the target audience.
The current intense competition among online stores requires you to be a few steps ahead to win the battle to appear in the first search results.
To do this effectively, we will present you in this article all the SEO methods for an online store.
What is SEO for an online store?
Search engine optimization for an online store, or SEO for online stores, is a set of actions you take both inside and outside of your online store to help it appear to users who want to find it, thereby increasing profits.
All of these actions are free to implement, and all you need to do is search and complete a few steps. This is unlike many other marketing methods that require a large sum of money.
SEO methods for an online store vary greatly, from building backlinks, choosing the right keywords, developing technical and internal SEO, or even improving the overall user experience on the store. We will discuss all of these methods and more throughout the article.
What is the Importance of Search Engine Optimization for an Online Store?
After we've previously shown that search engine optimization for an online store helps you appear in the first results, there are also many other benefits, most notably:
1. Generating Traffic: It's quite obvious that when you optimize your online store for search engines, users will see it more, which will increase visits and traffic.
2. Increasing Profits: The more interest you have in your online store and the more users visit it, the greater the chances of making more sales. This is what the SEO methods for an online store we'll discuss in this article will provide.
3. Improving Customer Experience: One of the most prominent ways to optimize your online store for search engines is to improve the quality of the store and its user experience.
This way, even those who haven't purchased from you will have a very positive and professional impression of your store and will return in the future.
4. Increasing Credibility: Your store's appearance on the first pages serves as a guarantee to visitors that your store is honest and trustworthy.
Even if you've thought about it personally, you've probably never purchased from a store unless it first appeared to you.
5. Save Money: Many website owners waste their money on useless marketing methods that yield no significant profits.
Conversely, improving your online store's SEO will only cost you a little effort in implementing the steps we'll outline.
Search Engine Optimization Methods for an Online Store
You now certainly know how important search engine optimization is for an online store, so it's time to learn exactly how to do it.
The most prominent methods and practices for SEO for an online store are:
1. Analyze Your Store
Before you begin, you need to know exactly what your store's most prominent flaws are so you can use appropriate strategies to address them, and also so you can consciously test your site after you've finished optimizing it.
Some of the best tools for analyzing these problems are:
a) Store Analysis Tools: You can analyze your store, either initially to identify its shortcomings or eventually to determine the effectiveness of your efforts, using popular SEO tools such as Moz, SEmrush, Google Analytics, or Google Search Console.
b) Analysis Metrics: There are some basic metrics by which you should measure the success of your online store's SEO process, the most important of which are:
c) Traffic: The visits coming from search engines to your store are the most important element that should be increased in this process, as they will increase the chances of making purchases in the first place.
d) Your Store's Position in Search Results: After using a keyword, you should see if it appears in advanced search results. If it doesn't, try to solve this problem, as we'll discuss in the rest of the article.
e) Your Sales: Sales are, of course, the most important metric to consider when analyzing your online store, but it's important to know the source of these sales, whether it's through social media or search engines.
2. Identify Keywords
Finding the right keywords and including them in your store will significantly improve its search engine ranking.
To get the best keywords, you'll need to know some important information and tools, including:
A) How to Choose a Keyword: There are many types of keywords, each with its own pros and cons. You should use them all depending on what you're selling and your goal.
The most prominent of these types are:
High-Search: This is the most widely used and popular type due to its largely guaranteed results, but competition for these keywords is very high.
Low-Competition: There are some keywords in high demand, but at the same time, competition for them is still low, so you should definitely use them.
Long-Tail: These are keywords characterized by their length and specificity, and they are very suitable for specialized products with unique specifications.
B) Keyword Tools: To choose the right keyword for an online store, you'll need to use some tools to achieve the best results, including:
Google Recommendations: This isn't a tool in the traditional sense, but it's very effective in understanding exactly what users are searching for.
These recommendations appear when you type any word related to what you're selling into a search engine, and you can also find them in the "Related Searches" section after you search for that word.
Amazon keyword tool: Because Amazon has a huge number of products and searches, its keyword tool is very useful for identifying the words people use most to search for products.
In addition, this tool also provides you with a lot of other important information about each keyword.
Any other tool: The two tools mentioned above are sufficient for identifying the right keywords, but it wouldn't hurt to use other tools like Google Keyword Planner or another professional tool to achieve the best possible results.
3. Improve User Experience
This step doesn't just increase the likelihood of users visiting your store directly, but it also makes them spend more time there. This, in turn, makes Google search engines recognize that it's a good store and recommends it to more users.
Among the best practices for improving store experience are:
a) Examine user behavior: To improve the user experience, you need to know exactly what's preventing them from completing the purchase process and work to improve and develop it.
You can find this information precisely through many methods, such as data provided by analytics tools like Google Analytics.
b) Simplify the purchase process: The purchase process should be as easy as possible to encourage users to complete it.
Processes such as logging in, browsing products, adding them to the cart, and even paying and receiving the product should all occur seamlessly.
c) Use breadcrumbs: These are a set of links and text placed at the top of the page to inform the user of the page they are on and the categories they navigated to reach it.
If you look at the top of this article, you'll see breadcrumbs like "Home" > "E-commerce" > "SEO for an Online Store." You can easily place them through the platform you use to manage your store.
d) Index your store: Indexing is simply the process used by search engines to store web pages in a single, large database for easy access when searching. This can help improve your online store's search engine optimization.
You can implement this step with one click by placing your store link and clicking "Request Indexing" from Google Search Console.
d) Create a sitemap: A sitemap is simply an XML file containing all your store files, including links, images, and videos, making them easier to understand and organize by search engines, thus improving your visibility.
You can easily create it using the tool you use to manage your online store.
e) Get an SSL certificate: An SSL certificate is a layer of security that encrypts the exchange of information between your store, thus providing users with a higher degree of security. Hosting companies often provide it for free.
But even if you have to pay for it, it's definitely worth it.
f) Pay attention to mobile: Mobile currently dominates most searches and purchases in online stores, so make sure you provide the best possible experience for these users, whether in terms of design, speed, or ease of browsing, to achieve the best possible results.
j) Provide live chat: If you offer a specific product or service, you'll likely receive many messages asking questions or solving problems related to that service, especially if your store is relatively large. Therefore, it's a good step to offer them a live chat without having to leave the store.
4. Improve On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is one of the most important elements you should consider when optimizing your online store for search engines.
The most important practices are:
a) Optimize Product Title Tags: Title tags are the title that appears in search engines and users click on to open your product page.
Since this title is limited to 60 characters, you must make good use of each character and write an engaging description of the product.
b) Optimize Meta Description: This is the paragraph you see under the title of any article or product, which provides important details about it.
You must ensure that you use it to include any information that could attract buyers, such as offering free shipping or a specific discount, and of course, include the keyword.
c) Use Clear URLs: Avoid relying on random, automatically generated URLs and replace them with user-friendly URLs.
Try to include the keyword in the title, write it in English, not Arabic, and avoid using any strange symbols or numbers except for "-" to separate words.
d) Use schema markup: A structured data schema is a markup method that helps search engines understand page content by adding semantic vocabulary to your store's HTML code.
5. Link Building
Many stores completely neglect the aspect of links due to the difficulty of integrating them with some types of stores, especially those that don't have their own content.
By following the following steps, you'll be able to use them with ease:
a) Blogging: One of the best ways to market your store and products is to create a blog, write content related to your field in general, and link your products to it in one way or another. This will give your product and store additional credibility, in addition to its marketing benefits.
b) Backlinking: Creating backlinks or external links to your products is one of the most effective ways to promote your online store.
You can include them in your own blog content or contact influential blogs in your field to include them, thus improving your online store's search engine rankings.
c) Include internal links: These are links to other pages within your store, such as links to similar products, to increase the likelihood of a user purchasing one of them or spending more time on the store.
d) Use influencer marketing: We mentioned in a previous point the possibility of placing backlinks with influencers to improve search engine optimization for an online store, but the most important thing to consider is the influencer's credibility, as this will determine the success of this approach.
e) Take advantage of social media platforms: Social media platforms have a large number of users, making them a fertile environment for building external links and attracting many buyers through them. However, you must definitely create click-worthy content before anything else.
f) Fix broken links: Having a store with a lot of broken links gives users a bad impression and makes it difficult for them to use it.
There are also indicators that this can affect your store's search engine ranking. The Broken Link Checker plugin allows you to easily check your links so you can fix them (this applies if you use WordPress).
6. Develop Technical SEO
One of the first elements you should consider when optimizing your online store for search engines is the technical aspect of the store, or technical SEO, as it can significantly impact your store's visibility, even if you're already paying attention to the rest of the elements.
You can improve it by:
a) Avoiding duplicate content: This is one of the most common problems in online stores, as some products are often placed in more than one category, resulting in two similar pages for the same product, which is detrimental to the store's SEO.
Therefore, either delete one of them or at least add a noindex tag to one of them so that Google does not index it.
b) Optimizing deep pages: Deep or isolated pages are a type of page with few visits due to the lack of a way or link to access them or the increased number of steps leading to them.
To optimize your online store's search engine rankings, you will need to increase their visibility.
c) Store speed: Store speed is very important for retaining users and improving your online store's overall search engine rankings.
The reasons for slowness vary from store to store. You can find out the speed of your store and the reasons for its slowness using the Google PageSpeed Insights tool.
7. Focus on Store Content
A famous saying in the field of marketing and content writing is "content is king," as it is the decisive factor that can determine the failure or success of your store.
One of the most important ways to develop it is:
a) Look at your competitors: Especially if you are new to your field, it will be greatly beneficial to see how competitors' stores operate, whether in terms of design, keywords, payment and shipping methods, and other elements.
You should definitely add your own touch and not blindly copy. As for the technical aspects of these sites, you can learn about them through store marketing tools.
b) Improve content quality: Content quality is the primary element that reflects the professionalism of your store, and you should focus primarily on two elements:
Visual content: The quality of images and videos is very important in stores, as they give the user an idea of the product they will purchase. Make sure they are the smallest size and highest quality possible. It would be a good idea to write a description for the images as "alt text."
Written Content: Whether it's the product name, description, or blog posts, all of these should be written attractively, free of spelling errors, and use the correct keywords.
c) Pay attention to reviews: In-store reviews are very sensitive for new buyers, so try to get the highest possible rating.
It doesn't hurt to encourage users to leave a review in exchange for entering a contest or receiving a discount.
d) Pay attention to side pages: In addition to paying attention to the main pages of your store where users browse products, you should also pay attention to other side pages such as About Us, Privacy Policies, 404 pages, and other pages that help improve your online store's search engine optimization.
Conclusion
Nowadays, improving your store's SEO is no longer a luxury or a side issue that you can ignore. Users have become accustomed to a certain standard in the stores they visit, which will not be able to compete if they don't offer the same or better than them.
To enable you to do this successfully, we have taken it upon ourselves in this article to outline all the effective methods you can apply to optimize your online store's search engine results. These methods will greatly assist you in your journey to the top of search results.