6 SEO Hacks for Ecommerce Newbies

For anyone new to the world of ecommerce, search engine optimization (SEO) can be an intimidating subject. There’s so much jargon that gets thrown around when marketing professionals talk about SEO, following along can be difficult for someone with little to no SEO experience. However, at one point, even the most sophisticated SEO expert knew absolutely nothing about the subject. Here are six clever SEO hacks for ecommerce newbies.

1. Understand Why Keywords are Important to SEO

Keywords are exactly what you think—the words and phrases that are inseparable from your content and will allow people to find your site sooner in search engines such as Google. Before doing anything, you should come up with a list of keywords that will help people find your ecommerce store and products. There are many keyword research tools out there that can help you see how people are searching. Make sure you are revisiting your keyword research over time to continue developing better keywords for your products.

2. Use Keywords Wherever It Makes Sense

When you are posting content or listing products, try to use your keywords as much as possible without damaging the integrity of your site. You don’t want people to be annoyed if the keyword is overused. These are some places you should always consider including your keywords: meta tags, titles, meta descriptions, images, headlines and in product description copy. While setting up your ecommerce store builder, take note of these places so you remember to use keywords when listing your products.

3. Refine Your Keywords to Satisfy a Niche

Although it might seem intuitive to have your keywords be attractive to as large an audience as possible, this can result in your site’s pages getting buried in search results. Long-tail keywords are great for getting more targeted people to your site. These are keyword phrases that say something highly specific. For example, instead of using “Dog Cage” as a product keyword, you might instead try “Dog Cage for German shepherd.” Finding your product keyword niche will be critical to boosting your ecommerce store’s SEO.

4. Take Your URLs into Consideration

URLs are often overlooked as part of the SEO process. However, they can have a positive or negative effect on the search-friendliness of your site in the same way as keywords. There are many factors to consider when building a searchable URL. Try to fit a keyword into your URL to really make it SEO friendly.

5. Give Your Site a Responsive Design Template

Ignoring mobile users will cost you. During the 2015 holiday season, one in three ecommerce transactions happened on a smartphone. If people can’t use your site on their phones, you will miss out on a lot of business and potentially loyal customers will slip through your fingers.

6. Make Sure Your Ecommerce Site Has a Fast Loading Time

Few things are more annoying while searching for something on the Internet than being unable to load a webpage. A whopping 40 percent of consumers will abandon a site that has a loading time longer than three seconds.  If your site’s too slow, you’re going to lose customers.

These six SEO hacks for ecommerce newbies will set you on the right path to developing a successful ecommerce store. Over time, if you follow these beginning rules, your site will benefit from better search engine placement.