If you’re on this page, you’ve probably recognized the importance of search engine optimization and how it affects your eCommerce site. Great! Just by knowing that, you’ve taken the first step to improving your website and are that much closer to building more traffic to your site.
And if you’ve asked yourself the question in the title, we’re here to help answer.
Optimizing your website requires a number of different methods, depending on what stage of optimization you are in and what kind of keywords you are looking to target. If you’re not looking to do the dirty work, you can hire an eCommerce SEO company that will handle and refine every single page on your website. However, if you want to take the time to truly understand SEO and how it can improve your eCommerce site’s visibility, read on. In this article, we’ll go over the main basic steps required to optimize your site for Google’s search engine.
Optimize your Product Search Results
There are three main parts of a Google search result: the title, the URL, and the meta description. Let’s look at two examples of search results.
Both of these results came up on the first page for the search query “dumpster rental Austin “. Which one are you more likely to click on?
If you chose the first one, then you answered what most people would have also chosen. And here’s why.
Google puts a limit on the number of characters that are shown for both the page title and the meta description. When creating page titles, try not to exceed more than 60 characters, or your page title may be cut off in search results, as seen in example two. For meta descriptions, the same rules apply, and you should aim to keep your meta description between 150 and 160 characters. When you conform to these restrictions, your search result looks cleaner in comparison to the other search results on the page. The cleaner your result, the more reliable it appears to the user.
In addition, there are two other optimization tactics that the first result uses that makes enhances it in Google’s search appearance. For page title’s, always place the more important keywords towards the front of the page title. If you have chosen a target keyword for the page, this is what goes at the front, NOT the name of the company. Unless your company has brand recognition for its name, this should go at the end instead of the beginning.
Another tactic that the first search result implements is main keywords and secondary keywords in the meta description. This is important because the search result will bold the words found in the search query in the result’s description! By placing these main and secondary keywords throughout your meta description, readers are able to easily discern what your page is about before even clicking on the page.
Decide on a Target Keyword
Once you’ve cleaned up your site, it’s time to choose a target keyword for each of your main pages. The whole point of SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is to optimize certain pages for a particular keyword. By enhancing the page’s contents for this particular word, you are more likely to show up on the first page results for search queries involving this keyword. Trying to choose too many different keywords to focus on will dilute the power of your page, so it’s best to choose one keyword to focus on.
It’s important to choose your target keyword carefully, because different keywords have different searcher intents associated with them. In addition, each keyword has a different keyword difficulty (how difficult it is to get to the first page of results) and search volume (how many times a month that keyword is searched for). All of these attributes must be taken into consideration when choosing keywords for your page.
What’s known as the customer search funnel is an important process to keep in mind when choosing keywords. Although some keywords may tempt you with a large search volume, it’s important to consider whether the keyword matches what is offered on your page. If you are selling a service, but have chosen a keyword that is generally associated with a user having a question and looking for an answer, the user is less likely to click on your page after reading the meta description. Worst yet, your page will also decrease in ranking in they click on your page and realize it isn’t for them. By clicking out of your site, this increases the bounce rate of your page, something that Google takes into consideration when ranking sites on Google.
An example of this would be the keyword “best chrome nails”. If you’re a nail salon, you wouldn’t necessarily want to target a services page for this keyword, because users may have been looking for pictures of “chrome nails” for inspiration and not a service page of a nail salon.
Conclusion
Always remember that for every target page on your site, you should optimize your page title, meta description, and in order to do that, you need to choose a focus keyword that your page will be optimized for. Once you’ve done these steps, you will be on your way to page one for your focus keyword.