Whether you are a small ecommerce business owner or run a huge company, SEO immensely impacts your business’s success. Your SEO tips and tricks will determine how easily your target customers can find you. Since 75% of internet users do not browse past the first page of search results, that is no easy task; however, you dont need to worry much. This blog post has put together high-impact SEO tips and tricks you can implement for massive success. Let’s dive in!
What’s SEO and Why Should You Care?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a strategy used to grow the quality and quantity of a site’s traffic from search engines. Its main aim is to improve your site’s position in search results pages since the higher a site is listed, the more people will see it. The better your site’s visibility, the more likely you are to attract prospective and existing website visitors to your business.
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Search engines like Google or Bing use search engine crawlers on the site, going from page to page, collecting data about those web pages, and putting them in an index. Then, algorithms analyze the indexed pages, considering there are ranking factors or signals, to decide the order pages should appear in the search engines.
Many factors go into the search engine’s algorithms and are developing each time to keep up with changing user behavior and advances in machine learning. However, there are also different SEO tips and tricks you can use to help boost your search marketing efforts. Some of these strategies work instantly, while others take a while to get going.
Here are some of the search engine optimization tips you can implement:
1. Align SEO With Business Goals and Define KPIs
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The first thing you require to do is first to understand where your business stands, what is your ultimate goal and how yopu will measure your success along the way. To do this, you will need to perform an SEO audit. You can contact SEO experts to help with the process, or you can simply use Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and other SEO audit tools to do this.
Here are the factors you need to evaluate to guide you through the optimization process.
- The domain name, age, history, etc.
- Your page factors, such as headlines, keywords, and phrase tags
- Content quality, organization, and the quality of the images on your site
- Duplicate/ identical content.
- Website factors include usability, load speed, and click-through rate (CTR).
- The quality of inbound and outbound links.
Once you know where you’re at, it’s time to start planning and allocating resources to optimize your site fully. Obviously, your plan, budget, and timeframe will largely depend on your brand’s unique situation, but if you want the best results, be prepared to put effort into them.
During this stage of the SEO process, you will also want to define your key performance indicators (KPIs). This means you need to lay out a strategy you will use to measure the success of your new SEO tips.
SEO KPIs worth tracking include:
- Return on investment (ROI). It can take between 6 to 12 months or more before seeing returns.
- Conversions such as clicks, sales, and leads. Set conversion targets before launching each campaign.
- Organic visibility
- Organic sessions
- Branded vs. non-branded traffic: Branded traffic comes from customers who already know about you, while non-branded traffic comes from customers who learned about your website when it showed up on their search engine results page (SERP).
- Keyword rankings
- Measure the number of backlinks, and missing links earned, referring domains, and toxic links.
- Organic click-through rate (CTR): Indicates how relevant your title tag and meta description are about a given query.
- Bounce rate: Indicates if the page is engaging and relevant to the search and queries.
- Page speed
2. Integrate Keywords Onto Your Site
As we stated, search engine rankings are decided by an algorithm that assesses various factors to decide how well a site answers a certain search query. And a huge part of that is the use of keywords. From complex phrases to a single word, keywords will tell the search engines what your webpage or site is about.
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The thing is, getting these keywords is not as easy as you might think. You will need to conduct thorough research for keyword optimization. You can utilize a keyword research tool to make the process easier. Most SEO professionals use Google’s Keyword Planner, but there are other options you can use.
Here is what to pay attention to while integrating Keywords onto your content:
a) Search Intent/ Target Keyword
A target keyword is a specific word or phrase you know your potential customers may use when using a search engine and seeking out your site’s services. Mainly you should pay attention to your primary keyword to help you attract the audience you are looking for.
To do this successfully, you must identify your target audience and put yourself in their shoes when you create your list of keywords.
b) Relevant Keywords
Once you’ve pinpointed your targets, you need to know the keywords that are important to them. Targeting only a few keywords is advisable, as targeting too broadly makes it hard for the search engine to decide what your pages are about.
d) Long-Tail Keywords
Long tail keywords are phrases with longer word counts than the regular keyword. Their length makes them more specific, making it easy for people to find an exact match for their query.
3. Write High-Quality Content
Content creation is one of the best seo tips that you can do to improve your SEO ranking and increase sales. Most of the time, when people think of content creation, the first thing that comes to mind is blog post creation.
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However, there are more options than blog posts regarding content. You can create content via videos, eBooks, infographics, or other downloadable content. The significance of content creation is to provide your audiences with useful information.
Creating optimized content will drive traffic to your site. Still, before doing so, you must understand your target audience and provide relevant content that is suitable for them. Again, you need to make industry-specific content to drive in leads interested in your type of business.
Tips for creating quality content
- Write for your readers, not yourself
- Think about search intent and your goal
- Be trustworthy
- Use Proper Formatting for Readability
- Make Topics Unique by Adding Your Perspective
- Target a Niche Subtopic
- Keep your content up to date
4. Focus On Building Relevant Links
Building relevant links are among the important seo tips that will help boost your visibility. Although this SEO strategy takes a bit of upfront work, once you’ve laid the hard work, you’ve set yourself up for considerable success.
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Link-building involves effectively using internal and external links to improve crawlability, user experience, and credibility. Ideally, these links help lead to useful or relevant information.
Internal links direct your visitors to other pages on your site. This link-building strategy helps search engine crawlers find your content and motivate visitors to stay on your site longer. External links lead visitors to another website. You can generate these links from high-site authority websites.
Top Link Building Strategies:
- Publish Link-Worthy Content
- Outreach or ask other sites for a backlink
- Perform a technical audit on your backlinks
- Use strategic guest posts or blog
- Improve your Social Media SEO.
- Create and Distribute Infographics
5. Format Content for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets or SERP features are highlighted quotes of text that appear at the top of a search page. They provide your audiences with a quick answers to their search query. Featured snippets will, in most cases, appear when users enter informational search queries.
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If you earn a featured snippet, you’re doing something right! They’re highly visible, valuable, and likely to draw organic traffic since they appear before numbered results.
To win search engine result page features, you need to create quality content to target them. The strategies you use to get featured snippets can make your content more helpful to your audience and improve your SEO, even if you don’t win the snippet in question.
Tips to win a Featured snippet:
- Research keywords with low difficulty and high audience relevance
- Structure your content for the client’s needs
- Aim for consistency across your content to build authority
- Run a competitive analysis
- Create and update your content outline
- Add Relevant Graphics to your content
6. Optimize Your Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
Your page title and meta description is usually the first thing your audiences see, making them among the most important seo tips to draw success to your business. Most visitors will decide to skip or click on your content based on the page title and meta description. That is a lot of power for so few words. Therefore, you need to make sure that they are both impactful.
Tips to use when optimizing your page titles and meta descriptions
- Make both of them unique
- Use accurate keyword phrases for each page
- Incorporate Your Primary Keyword
- Convey What Your Webpage Is About
- Keep Search Intent In Mind
- Make your page title between 30 and 60 characters
- Make your meta description under 160 characters
7. Focus On User Experience (UX)
Make your site easy to navigate with logical menus, clear page titles, and URLs that tell your visitors what the page is about. There is nothing as annoying as navigating a site you can barely use. In fact, after just a few minutes of frustration, most people don’t bother to really understand your site.
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Not only do new visitors value a good experience and easy navigation, but this seamlessness experience also helps Google’s crawlers scan your content and decide your SERP rankings.
How to Create a Better Web Page Experience:
- Simplify your site’s navigation
- Utilize UX design for SEO-friendly layouts
- Use headings and short, easy-to-read paragraphs, and tidy up your sub-folders
- Optimize your site for mobile and test your pages on different mobile devices
- Use bullet points and ordered lists.
- Use images and graphs that illustrate what you’re trying to say.
- Optimize your images.
- Write quality content that provides useful answers.
- Consider using fonts that are already on visitor’s phones or computers
8. Increase Your Off-Page Visibility
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Search engines do not just look at your website when deciding your search rankings and credibility. They also examine your overall presence on the internet. For instance, if other credible outlets link back to you, whether you have good reviews and a bunch of mentions, and whether new visitors engage with your business on social media.
- Creating valuable backlinks
- Use social media marketing
- Provide third-party websites with guest content
- Build a positive brand sentiment
- Develop an Offsite content strategy
9. Remove Anything That Slows Down Your Site
Page load time does not only impact user experience, but it also affects your SEO. After all, if a site loads slowly, visitors are unlikely to stick around, raising your bounce rate. So whether you are creating informative blogs, selling a product/service, or simply pointing people in the right direction, your website needs to be quick, accessible, and easy to use.
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There are a couple of ways to enhance your site speed and the overall smoothness of your UX. All you need to do is: delete old, clean up your code, optimize your images, and ensure your sub-folders flow. You can also use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, which is a free SEO tool that rates your computer and mobile page speed on a ranking of 0 to 100, with 100 being the quickest.
Here are tips you can apply to optimize website speed:
- Optimize the code
- Get better hosting
- Optimize files and media
- Minimize unnecessary HTTP requests
- Reduce plugins
- Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which is a web of servers located in various geographic areas and used to provide data to users accessing a website efficiently.
- Use a cloud-based synthetic monitoring tool
10. Pay Attention to Google Algorithm Updates
Google search engines get smart and more intuitive every day, and to be able to run a successful business, it’s necessary that you pay attention to any updates that may come up. Remember, these updates can either benefit your site or even penalize you for not adhering to updates.
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The google algorithm changes so repeatedly that it’s hard to keep up with every single update. You will presumably never be able to grasp every update, but you should be able to stay on top of the most recent and biggest changes.
Below are tips for staying on top of Google Algorithm Updates
- Use Google alerts and other third-party tools
- Follow SEO experts
- Create high-quality content. Regularly creating relevant content and optimizing your crawl budget can help you lessen the effects of the new Google Algorithm updates.
- Using social media platforms like Twitter can serve as a Google algorithm checker
Reasons Search Engine Optimization Is Important for Your Business
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1. Increase Organic Traffic
When running an ecommerce site or an online business, your first goal is to attract people to your site. The more people visit your site, the more potential buyers you will likely get to purchase your products and services. Since 53% of a site’s traffic comes from organic search, SEO is the most useful tool to attract customers.
2. SEO Builds Trust and Credibility
SEO doesn’t only help with organic traffic growth but also with brand authority. Any professional SEO aims to establish a strong foundation for a stunning site with a clean, effective customer experience. Thanks to SEO, you can easily do that with much ease.
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Most clients tend to trust websites like Google appearing on the first search engine page. Again in most instances, new customers will most likely find you typing specific keywords rather than your brand. Hence, unless you are an established brand, you must strategically use SEO to appear between the first results.
3. Target Audience
Utilizing SEO to target specific keywords results in targeting your audience and attracting potential clients. Building your trademark awareness also means targeting ideal clients and creating an audience that will rely on your site for certain products and services. This means they will most likely come back to your page for more details and purchase the products they need from you.
4. User Experience
To make SEO techniques effective, your site needs optimized content to facilitate user navigation. Enhancing your user experience will enable you to keep clients on your site for longer. This way, SEO bots will see your site as relevant, improving your SEO ranking. Which in the end results in increased sales.
5. It Gives You a Competitive Advantage
Most of your e-commerce competitors will, in most cases, invest in SEO, meaning it should be necessary on your end. With a great SEO strategy, you will often outrank your competition in search engine results and gain a higher market share.
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To achieve this, you first identify your competitors, analyze their strengths and weaknesses, then create and manage your online reputation. After that, ensure that your website loads fast and is mobile-friendly, make high-quality content, and focus on providing the best user experience.
6. Improves User Engagement Rates
As we have stated earlier, a well-optimized site will definitely bring in quality organic traffic. This will then lead to more conversions and increased ROI. In addition, increased engagement rates will lead to customer advocacy and long-term revenue.m
You can use one of the many online tools to improve your user engagement rate to audit your site. Then optimize the little things like title and meta tags. Again, ensure that you’re providing a safe and mobile-friendly website.
7. Local SEO
Local SEO refers to optimizing your content for location-specific searches. Local SEO tactics can help you attract these clients who are often ready to buy. In addition, using local SEO gives you a good chance to appear in the first results when people search for topics in your niche.
The first step to getting started with local SEO tactics is creating a Google My Business account. Then, start requesting reviews from the clients you already have. Optimize your listings by ensuring you have the correct name, address, and phone number.
Final Thoughts
SEO has significant benefits for eCommerce businesses and can lead to long-term exponential growth. Brands that invest in SEO can build credibility and trust with potential clients, making it a pivotal part of a digital marketing strategy. Use these tips to produce the desired results and conquer the SERPs.
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Jacky Chou is an electrical engineer turned marketer. He is the founder of Indexsy, Far & Away, Laurel & Wolf, a couple FBA businesses , and about 40 affiliate sites. He is a proud native of Vancouver, BC, who has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Oberlo and GoDaddy.
