Since the pandemic forced people to stay at home, lots of consumers turned to the internet to buy goods. Investment reporter Natasha Dailey claims that there have actually been more people shopping online. She found that the use of eCommerce sites had increased by 54% in February. Apparel alone has seen a 75% increase in terms of online sales. This means that the consumer landscape in America is changing to accommodate the physical limitations that the pandemic has imposed.
Because of the rising trend of online shopping, being on eCommerce platforms is vital for today’s businesses. AskMoney identifies Shopify as one of the top platforms that companies can build their online stores from scratch. The eCommerce platform helps businesses find new customers, offers numerous tools (like optimization tools and campaign creation tools), and numerous price points for users. It’s a great place to build an eCommerce site if you don’t already have one and if you don’t have much coding background. There are also a few big players in the eCommerce space such as WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and Volusion, each with its own features and strengths.
After establishing an online shop, you’ll also need to optimize it using Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This helps drive traffic to your website by ranking it up on the search results page. If you want to gain more visitors for your eCommerce site, here are some of the ways you can improve your SEO practices:
Use effective keywords
Keywords are the foundations of SEO. In our ‘Top SEO Techniques for Your Digital Marketing Strategy’ article, we highlighted how you can use platforms to help you find the most commonly searched words or phrases. Google offers analytics tools that aid in helping you see the trends in terms of what people are searching on the net, or you can use specialized engines like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Integrating these keywords into your eCommerce site will make it easier for people to find what they are looking for. Just remember that the keyword integrations should seem natural, as some search engines may deem your site as “spam” when done incorrectly, lowering you in the search results.
Create good product descriptions
If you are selling products on your site, creating good product descriptions is important. These are what buyers are looking at before deciding whether or not to purchase something. When describing what you are selling, make sure to highlight all its key features, add a short description of how it can be used, and list down what separates it from the products of the competition. While having SEO keywords is helpful, it’s far more advantageous for you to create a write-up that explains how your products and services can benefit your audience. This makes your website more relevant to the target market. This small change may actually create a big difference in terms of traffic and sales.
Localize your SEO
Relevancy is a priority for SEO strategies, and localizing your efforts (geotargeting) allows you to hyper-target a select demographic. This means that you’ll be reaching out to those in the area where you offer your services or products. Forbes notes that geotargeting generates more organic traffic, ranks you higher on search results, and reduces your bounce rate. You can do this by researching what keywords are being used in your region or by using language-specific keywords (if the area you are in has more than one dominant spoken language). Make sure to take into account whether the people in that region use different words compared to other places (like how those in the Midwest say pop while those in the east coast say soda). This may seem like a small aspect, but it can definitely generate many benefits for your eCommerce site.
In the online landscape, SEO is essential to make your website stand out from the competition. These are just some of the changes you can make to have your eCommerce site rank higher on search engine results.
