SEO in e-commerce - how to promote your business?
We hear about SEO all the time. Several activities help us share a website in the search engine – Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Why is SEO important for your e-commerce? In this article, I will introduce you to SEO, explain what is important for your website, and describe how to improve your score in search results.
How SEO works?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process of improving a website’s features to increase its visibility on the web. SEO primarily aims to move our website to the first position during a specific query.
The top (first ten) results show pages meeting specific criteria. But let's look at universal standards:
- The page contains a particular string of words or phrases that we enter into the search engine.
- On the website, there are videos or photos thematically matching our query. Search engines like Google "like" pages that contain a lot of media – not just text. For the images to be meaningful to the search engine. It is worth paying attention to several rules thoroughly described in our e-book.
- You are popular! Your website has many visitors and is often shared on social media, which is why it is also attractive to Google.
In addition, many other factors affect a website’s position in the search engine. It's hard to focus 100% of your work and attention on them, but it's worth taking care of them because it works directly on the business.
How to improve your score?
Usage of keywords/keyphrases.
A key phrase is a specific string a user types into the search engine. Search engine robots scan the content of the pages and include in the results those that best match the query.
For robots to check our website and show it to the right users, we need to add appropriate keywords and metadata to our content. In this way, we pass our content on and enable it to be scanned by robots.
Find and eliminate the errors.
The more unique the content, the better! We reduce the number of repetitions. CMS systems for editing content (WordPress, Shopify, Magento, etc.) provide SEO tools that will help determine the content of our website in the best way for search engines.
- Title – specifies the name of our subpage. This name also appears as the title in the search results. We limit the title to 50–70 characters – short and specific.
- Description – we describe the subject of our content in a short description, and we list the most critical moments. We limit ourselves to 255 characters.
The title and description for each subpage should be unique. We do not lead to a situation where several pages with different content have the same description and name. The description does not directly affect the better search position, but it can increase users’ interest if it is exciting and catchy.
Don’t forget about the media.
The first of the most essential things about images on your site is the use of compression. According to the HTTP Archive, images account for an average of 21% of a page's total weight. We strongly recommend compressing your images before uploading them to the website.
The name of the file is also essential for SEO. There are better ideas than a title like DSC00001.jpg. We should name the image based on its content to help search engines understand your graphic image and improve its SEO value.
Let's add attributes like "title" and "alt". If the browser cannot display the images correctly, the "alt" tags will replace the images with text. As with the title, we can describe the image file’s contents using the "alt" attribute.
The title works here similarly as in the case of the page description- title attribute in the <img> tag adds a title text tooltip to the image when hovering over it with the mouse. The value can be any string. There is no limit to the length in the specifications, but it is better to be within 48 characters. However, it's worth remembering that the Title tag doesn't have as much impact on search results as Alt, so its use is optional.
Let's implement the headers.
The best analogy for headings is the structure of a book. Each book has a title, chapters, and subchapters. It is easier to perceive a text divided into parts, and’s it best when each piece has its name – we know what we are reading about. Thanks to SEO, we define each title and subtitle with a header tag – H1, H2, H3, etc.
The H1 heading is the title of that particular page and should only appear once. We can use H2 headings several times, but at most four times on one page. The H3 and subsequent titles could be used for a minor division of content, which may be part of a large block starting with H2.
We move headings from H1 to H6. H1 is the most important and should be at the beginning of the text or the top of the page. We also format similarly – the H1 header is the largest and stands out. Then we move according to the hierarchy – from larger to smaller sizes.
SEO and e-commerce
While you're sleeping, someone else is grinding! The development of our business directly depends on sales. We must make the most of all e-commerce solutions’ tools.
When designing an online store, we must remember the substantive content. Texts, descriptions, headers, and the correct structure of links, pagination, internal linking, and many other factors.
- We never leave randomly generated numbers in the URL to our categories and products. We must describe the link in a way that defines a specific category: example.com/women-shoes/heels
- It is best to include the product name, brand, and size in the URL name of the product. All this data will allow us to quickly find a product from the search engine if we are looking for a specific product.
- Internal links (URL) lead us to another subpage on the same domain. In the case of online stores, this is an essential element because we can see another similar product. For instance, like accessories or bundles, and quickly learn about delivery dates or payment details. The main menu or links in the footer are internal linking as well. It's easier to imagine a website today with these things. Internal links have a positive effect on the usability of the website and the assimilation of content by Google robots. It helps to understand the structure of the website better.
- Let’s add filters on the category page. Filters will help you quickly reach the item you seek, especially when not remembering the manufacturer’s name and only the colour or some individual features.
- Product reviews. We can always increase the attractiveness and interactivity of the site by allowing users to share their opinion about the purchased product. The features described in the comments can be used for website positioning – of course, if they are positive :)
SEO and Headless
Monogo offers a wide range of e-commerce services. The star of recent years – Headless, is gaining popularity among customers. What about SEO?
The Headless Core 3.0 structure has been prepared with SEO in mind, presenting customers with a complete SEO solution.
One of the most significant advantages of using Headless CMS is the separation of content from presentation. That means that we can control different types of content from one CMS. We can show a blog post on a website, mobile app, or smartwatch. This is possible because we store content in a format anyone can use.
Loading such a page is much faster, creating a more pleasant user experience. We can achieve it by optimizing and compressing files and scripts because the frontend part is separated from the backend.
The use of headless technologies is 100% safe for SEO. Google interprets such technologies well, and we, as MONOGO, make sure that it is attractive to customers, users, and search engines.
Conclusion
SEO optimization is a vast field that allows you to promote our websites and services. It is, therefore, essential to choose the right content to increase the popularity of websites – for users and search engines. At Monogo, we have ensured our client’s websites are SEO-friendly for years. We have prepared for our Partners an extensive manual of practical SEO rules for owners of online stores. If you want to learn SEO rules and implement them in your company, leave a contact in the form below and download the free E-Book.