Running an e-commerce store is a complicated business. For your project to be successful, you must plan it well, promote it well, and sell it well. Of course, these are 3 broad domains of actions that must be accomplished before success arises.
Most entrepreneurs start off with brilliant ideas. For example, an e-commerce business that solves and satisfies needs and problems. And instead of offering these solutions offline, many young businessmen prefer to move their activity online.
Well, I’m exactly this type of entrepreneur. I’m running an e-commerce store that’s designed to serve the needs and wants of my country (it’s not the US).
Since I started, I came across a multitude of challenges. The website’s UI, the branding, the channels of promotion…yet, there was one aspect that put me in a lot of trouble…
I’m talking about SEO content. You see, writing for both your users and the search engines could be one of the most difficult duties an ecommerce entrepreneur can experience. If you don’t know what to do, you’ll hardly do it well. I suppose you’re not counting on luck, and I suppose that your presence here, on this post, is designed to help you learn and understand the way you’re supposed to write your e-commerce business content.
In this post, I’m sharing several insightful tips on how to improve your content optimization to be able to rank in the SERPS and impress your audience. Pay attention and apply!
Analyze Your Competition
The best thing to start with is to take a quick peek at what your competitors are doing. Generally, competition will exist in every possible niche, including yours. As you may know, “there’s nothing new under the sun”, which means that everything has already been done, only that there’s always room for improvement.
In this case, you should find your top 3 competitors and observe their content. Look at specifics such as how they write their product titles and product descriptions. Then, you should pay attention to the words they use when selling their products on social media. There are many brands who use keywords with intent (meaning that users really want something specific when they write those keywords). This can dramatically improve the conversion rate in the long-term.
Post Descriptive Titles
When you search for something on Google, the first thing you expect is a relevant result. Obviously, when other people search for products, they don’t want to lose time accessing pages that won’t help them solve their problem.
You see, Google has gotten smarter over the years. When people click on a search result and they immediately bounce, Google receives a signal that the specific page is irrelevant. The more people bounce the more “negative signals”.
The easiest solution is to optimize your titles and make them as descriptive as you possibly can. This will not only positively influence your search engine rankings over time but it should also improve your brand’s authority in front of your audience.
Write Compelling Meta Descriptions
A perfectly written meta-description will bring a lot of a targeted visitors to your website. Same as meta-titles, the meta-descriptions have an important role in your prospect’s decision. The purpose of the meta description is simple to understand.
Simply put, meta descriptions help not only the users understand what the website/product is about but also the search engines. The explanation must be short and concise – ideally 150-160 characters long.
How do you write effective meta titles and meta descriptions? Well, you first need to understand what keyword intent is and how it can be leveraged.
Understanding Keyword Intent
Keyword intent reflects the main reason behind keyword’s searches. Here’s a simple example:
If you were running a luxury shoe store, some of the keywords that your target audience will search for will be:
- “luxury shoes New York” – in this case, people from New York are looking for a local store to test and buy the shoes only after they’ve seen whether it fits them well.
- “lady luxury shoes at discount” – this is a long-tail keyword that is likely to be addressed by individuals who usually buy luxury items yet they’re always doing it while these products are on a discount.
Here’s one thing to remember: the better you understand your audience the better you’ll understand what they want. When you figure out what they want, your predictions of what they’re possibly going to search will be refined.
When you understand keyword intent, both your titles and descriptions will be optimized, and both Google and the people who search for it will reward you accordingly.
Don’t Exaggerate with Keyword Frequency
SEO is a complicated activity. Different actions lead to different results. What you must understand that some of your actions can significantly improve your rankings, while others will significantly decrease them.
Mark Parson, Content Manager at a cheap essay writing service EssayWritingLand, explains how keyword frequency worked a while ago:
“Ten years ago, e-commerce webmasters (and not only) were exploiting a simple trick – overoptimization. They would identify a few keywords (with intent or not), and they would exaggerate with its use, adding it 10 to 20 times (or even more) within a small piece of content. This would get their page ranked in a matter of weeks.
Since then, Google has changed its algorithm and policies. Whenever you overoptimize keywords, the feedback is now negative, meaning that both your specific webpage and website will decrease in rankings.
The best way to avoid overoptimization is to write naturally without even focusing on the keyword density. Some gurus will tell you 1-2% density while others suggest 3-4%. My advice? Forget about it and focus on writing while having your customer in mind.
Develop a Blog Around Your Products
SEO content can apply to both your products (titles & descriptions) and to your blog. Developing a blog around your e-commerce store is probably the best way to boost your rankings in a short amount of time.
How is a blog useful for selling physical products? Well, an e-commerce’s blog purpose is to educate the audience, so they can use the products sold on the main page. For example, if you are selling products that might present difficulties for the average person, you can write “How-To” articles that “spoon-feed” the person.
Moreover, a blog can illustrate the benefits of the products sold, and it can warn about the potential dangers. Therefore, the first benefit of running a blog is that you’ll make your e-commerce business more authoritative and trusted in your niche market.
Secondly, the more content you post the more Google will index. If people appreciate your content, they’ll spend time on your site. That’s a good signal. When they share your content on social channels, that is another signal. The more SEO signals you build with your content the better you’ll be rewarded in time!
Takeaways
Now that you’ve consumed all these tips, tricks, and advice, you should not skip to the next post. Instead, take a pen and a piece of paper and begin planning your new strategy/strategies.
You should try everything posted here and observe how it all turns out for you because even if you like it or not, content is still king. Using analytics, you can surely identify what works and what doesn’t. The greatest successes lie in the basic things. Besides that, hard work, discipline, and consistency are keys to the success of your e-commerce business.
Guest post courtesy of Paula Hicks, an experienced journalist from Romania. Currently, lives in the United States and works as a freelance editor for the number of educational resources. Her big dream is to open a publishing house in Europe.