Let's
be honest, SEO doesn’t tend to be the most popular subject for
store
owners
because it's hard to know what Google wants!
But
as soon as a customer jumps on the web, they'll head to a search
engine to find what they are looking for, so you're gonna have
to give SEO some much-needed attention.
And
considering 90%
of users don't go past the first page of results, it's vital that you
adopt the right SEO techniques so that you can give your online store
the best chance to be seen!
Just
be sure that you aren’t making these 7 SEO mistakes...
#1.
Not associating keywords with buyers
It's
true, keywords will help you connect with your audience. But they
won't work if you don't use the keywords that they are searching for.
It sounds pretty simple really, but it's surprising how many sites
don't have the right direction when it comes to their keyword
strategy.
When
your customer visits Google, they have a question that they want
answering. What you need to do is find out what that question is, so
you can create content that specifically looks to answer it. This can
then be used as your keywords so you can optimize your site to
attract the right
audience to your online store.
Action
points:
-
Find
out the questions that your buyers are asking
-
Create
content that answers those questions
#2.
Spamming content with keywords
So
as important as we think keywords are, it's still crucial that you
don't adopt any bad techniques when it comes to your content.
When
creating content such as blogs, ebooks or infographics, you need to
make sure that it's well-written. It has to make sense, it has to add
value and it should definitely not involve too much usage of your
chosen keyword.
Action
points:
-
Don't
overstuff content with keywords
-
Make
sure your content is well-written
-
Hire
an expert writer to do this for you
#3.
Having a ton of duplicated content
This
is a common mistake in the world of Ecommerce for one simple reason:
the product description. Typically Ecommerce merchants that sell
loads of different products will just use the manufacturer's
description for their products – so that means you're gonna have
loads of duplicated content which can get you penalized.
The
solution to this one is straight forward. You need to write unique
descriptions for all of your products. Sure it may take time and
effort, but once you've created unique content you'll see the
benefits and it will add more value to your site.
Action
points:
-
Create
unique content for your product descriptions
-
Use
keywords within your content
-
Use
benefits and features to encourage more sales
#4.
Not optimizing meta tags
The
meta tags need to be optimized across your site for SEO success. A
meta tag is used to provide information about a web page for the
benefit of search engines and website users. These include the title
page that appears in the web browser and the description of the page.
Make
sure you don't have duplicated title tags, that you keep your tags
short, and that you include the right keywords. Although Google
doesn’t put a huge focus on this, it's also good practice to use
keywords in your alt tags for your images so that they can be
optimized for search results.
Action
points:
-
Keep
your title tags to a maximum of 70 characters long
-
Keep
your meta description tag between 150 and 160 characters
-
Use
keywords within your meta tags
#5.
Focusing too much on link building
Link
building was once a technique to bring in more traffic, but those
days are gone and if you focus on the wrong link building strategy,
you could be penalized. Sure, getting people to link to your site
will help you improve your SEO. But it's important that you
understand the difference between a valuable link and a spammy link.
If
you try and encourage links from sites that don't have a great page
rank, this can do more harm than good. You need to focus your efforts
on building links from authoritative sites so that Google knows you
can be trusted. So rather than building links, aim to create valuable
content that authoritative websites will want to link to.
Action
points:
-
Focus
on quality links ahead of quantity
-
Create
valuable content
-
Promote
it to influencers to encourage valuable links
#6.
Not having any product reviews
A
huge part of SEO is about building trust within your community and
product reviews can really help you do this. Truthfully, 70%
of users will look to reviews before they make a purchase decision,
so if you don't have any available then you could be missing out on a
lot of sales. And reviews can help you feature a steady flow of
unique content on your site – which is great news for SEO.
If
you're looking for an easy way to integrate reviews onto your online
store then check out review platforms such as Yotpo – something
that you can expect from our ecommerce
solution.
Action
points:
-
Encourage
users to leave product reviews
-
Integrate
your store with a review platform
#7.
Using too much flash
So
we all want a website that looks great, but flash content makes it
harder for search engines to read because it doesn’t come in their
language – HTML.
We're
not saying you shouldn’t use flash, but you just gotta be smart
about it. Your homepage is likely to get the most amount of traffic,
so don't waste it by having a flash focused homepage. Make sure you
have a balanced page of image, text and links so that both Google and
your customers know where to go next.
Action
points:
-
Make
sure the content on your site comes in HTML format
-
Balance
your homepage with images, great navigation and text
Takeaway
So
there you have it – our 7 SEO mistakes that could be costing your
store money! Remember to forget about spammy archaic techniques, and
focus on optimizing your site for a human, rather than a search
engine.
And
if you want to find out more about how our Ecommerce
solution can help you bring in more traffic then contact us
today!