When you run an eCommerce website and you do not optimize it properly for Google, it is just as if you were running a brick and mortar establishment without doors. You have products inside the store but people cannot buy them as they cannot get in.

We all know the advantages associated with selling products online since they are quite obvious. However, most site owners just use a WordPress add-on like WooCommerce, add products and expect traffic to come. This is definitely not a good approach.

Improving eCommerce SEO starts with what content is offered on every single page of the store. Believe it or not, keywords are still important, relevant and your site has to be optimized. Let us help you out by highlighting some highly effective and simple tops that will increase your traffic and ultimately, your sales.

Keyword Tips To Remember

Whenever thinking about what keywords to use for your eCommerce site, you have to think about 2 things:

• Are the keywords used unique?
• Are the keywords used long-tail?

It is so important to use keywords that are as unique as possible when content is optimized. For instance, if you sell t-shirts, using the keyword “t-shirts” is not enough since there are, most likely, millions of sites with that keyword. You will want to utilize tools like Google’s Keywords Planner Tool in order to locate keyword strings that are longer. People do not actually look for generic keywords like “t-shirts” when they want to buy. However, they may look for something like “red BRAND t-shirts for sale”.

Optimizing Your Title Tags

This is something that is important for every single site out there and it is a shame to notice that most of the site owners do not actually care much about it or do not know about this fact. The title that you add in WordPress is usually the one that appears in search results. This is basically what the people looking for your products see. If you do not add keywords that are appropriate in this section, you are hurting your rankings and you do not even know it.

You should also add a good SEO plug-in like WordPress SEO by Yoast. It is something that also works on eCommerce based sites, not just on blogs. This tool can easily help you to optimize Site Title so that proper display appears on search engines and it will help you to change the title for every single product page that you present.

Write Proper SEO Text For Product Descriptions

Usually, below product title, there is an area that offers extra information about what is sold. This is where you want to basically add as much relevant information as possible. Do not confuse this with the short description, which is usually highlighted right at the top of a product page.

When you add descriptions for the products, the long descriptions, it is important to properly feature focus keywords in various locations. Try to add it right in the very first sentence, especially if you do not want to manually update all SEO description tags in your chosen SEO plugin. Remember that you have to be sure that you always put time into the content that is added to product pages. That counts a lot and will have the highest impact on rankings.

Optimizing Your WooCommerce Short Product Description

This is the area in which you add a short product description. It should include keywords, be comparable and concise. The content you add here has to be properly limited to some keywords that are relevant. A short paragraph made out of 1 to 3 sentences is what you should aim for, together with a bullet based product information area.

Add A Blog To Your Online Store

Most WordPress based online stores do not have a blog. This is a mistake. Adding a blog can bring in so many SEO advantages that you can profit from. If you have a lot of content outside what you sell, the possibility that content will appear in search engines grows.

So much interesting content can be offered on a blog. Let’s consider the fact that you sell nutritional supplements. With this in mind, you can easily offer articles that talk about topics like:

• How to use protein supplements to increase muscle mass gain.
• What to consider when choosing supplements for weight loss.
• X product (one that you sell) review.

In your blog’s Widget Area, make sure that you add call to actions so that people can also visit your store. Such an approach can easily bring in an increase in sales and more traffic on your entire site.

Always Optimize Product Page Load Speed

This is similar to what happens when you go to the grocery store. In the event that you have to wait a lot of time for the cashier to ring items, you get frustrated. The next time, you may not visit that store again. Also, you may not even want to purchase in the first pace. An online store works in a similar way. The difference is that we do not talk about minutes as with brick and mortar establishment. We talk about seconds.

Users need to waste as little time as possible before seeing the details that they are interested in. This is where page load speed comes into place. This is a factor that has a huge effect on sale conversion and at the same time, it is taken into account by search engines.

It is vital that you make sure that all plugins and themes used for a WordPress based store are really lightweight. Page load speed should be as low as possible. With this in mind, you need to be really careful about the host that you choose.

As a simple tip, do consider where your target audience is and where the host server is based. For instance, if you sell t-shirts in Germany, a server that will host your site and that is physically located in Berlin will bring in faster load speed. As a general rule of thumb, if the site loads in over 3 seconds while optimum conditions exist, you have to be sure that you check the site for problems that may exist and that may decrease loading speed.

SEO Image Optimization

Visuals do sell better and this is something that you will normally consider. The images that you use to highlight the products have to be as attractive as possible. At the same time, it is quite vital that you optimize these images from an SEO point of view. This basically means that the file name has to include good keywords and it is a really good idea to add more pictures for every product.

When you attack product images, make sure that you also add alt text for every single one. The descriptions should be different, include adequate keywords and properly highlight product features.

As an extra tip that you may want to consider, look at the sitemap that you add to Google Webmaster Tools. In the event that the sitemap does not include your images, you may miss out on some SERP without even knowing it.

Add Social Media Share Buttons

This is something that most site owners do not know: social media activity is an important ranking traffic in larger search engines. Also, the influence of social media activity will drastically grow in the near future because on the fact that we are faced with a growth in the use of social channels among people of all ages.

So many plugins exist at the moment for those that want to add some sort of social share button and you need to take time to find something that is appropriate for the theme that you currently use. At the same time, it is important that you build strong social media channels for your brand. You will quickly notice the fact that even your Facebook or Twitter pages appear in search results. This would bring in more traffic. At the same time, statistics show that sales made through recommendations, like those you would receive from social media, are easier to finalize.

Get The Store Mobile Ready

Google publicly highlighted the fact that sites that are optimized for mobile devices will appear higher in search engines as compared to those that are not properly optimized. This is normal since the number of searches that are done with the use of mobile devices is constantly growing at the moment.

The good news is that this is not at all difficult to do these days since there are various responsive WordPress themes that are available and that are compatible with WooCommerce. The bad news is that most of the websites do not actually use a responsive theme. To make matters even worse, some of the responsive teams are not actually properly built so problems do exist on some devices.

Make sure that you test the responsive nature of your WordPress theme. There was a 100% increase in sales that were generated through a mobile device in the year 2014. This will only keep growing in 2015. Google is going to check sites in order to make sure that they are mobile friendly. Optimization is going to soon have a huge impact on search rankings.

Checkout Landing Pages

Most shoppers are going to add a product to the shopping cart out of habit. Then, they move somewhere else when they look at the checkout page. This is definitely something that you need to take into account.

Obviously, this is not necessarily an SEO related topic but it is one of huge importance. The major sales landing page should be displayed with the use of a landing page or full-width page template. What does this mean?

• Landing Page – These are the best for checkout purposes. They only include page content and nothing extra.
• Full Width – They do not include a sidebar but will have a footer and a header, used for navigation purposes.

As you use such page templates, the user is going to be much more tempted to complete the process, which is exactly what you want to see.

Take Advantage Of Local Link Building And Local SEO

We are faced with so many situations in which a business is not able to ship products too far but it wants to be able to have a better eCommerce presence. In this case, local SEO is something that helps out a lot at the end of the day. We recommend the following to improve your local optimization campaign:

• Focus your keywords on the location where you want to make sales, the area/city where you make the most sales.
• Create and manage a good Yelp! Profile.
• Always set up your Google Places profile.
• Link the site with friendly or as complimentary as possible companies in the interest area.
• Share all the new product offerings on your social media pages.
• Participate in the local events. Always ask for link shares and consider what can bring in more awareness.

Conclusions

The truth is that SEO is so much more important for an eCommerce site than what you may believe at first glance so you should never forget about it. We say this because a regular site/blog normally creates a lot of content. This is heavily favoured by search engines. On the other hand, web stores do not have many changes that happen. The addition of a blog, as already mentioned, is something that can help out a lot but it is not enough to compete with sites that offer information instead of trying to make sales.

Do make sure that you constantly tweak your SEO campaigns. The most important part of the process is using proper long-tail keywords and always being sure that your pages are as unique as possible. Never hurry the process and do not be shy to invest part of the profits in an improved SEO optimization.