Important SEO Checklist For Your E-Commerce Website

People these days browse the internet to buy almost everything since a lot of ecommerce websites offer variety of things. When it comes to searching for a particular product online, your audience must use the correct term to track it down. But being a webmaster, it is essential for you to know the importance of SEO for your website. Following is the SEO checklist for your ecommerce website that will help you to rank higher in the search engine.

1. Strategic use of keyword

Keyword research was and will always be crucial for Search engine optimization. If you select keywords that are not relevant, your rate of conversion will suffer. If you choose keywords which are very competitive, then too you won’t get any traffic. You need to be extremely careful while determining your target keywords. Google keyword planner is a good place to start your research. Pay special attention to long tail keywords that can possible lead to sales.

2. Have a company blog

It would be great if you include a company blog on your main domain. A blog attracts traffic to your ecommerce website. A site without a blog will have tough time in attracting inbound links whereas a blog that is updated regularly attracts links naturally. Make sure that your blog is hosted on your main domain as these links will benefit your domain too.

3. Earning backlinks

This becomes challenging for ecommerce websites that don’t have their on-site blog. Some try to get backlinks by listing on local directories or guest posting on popular blogs in the industry. You can also find domains in your niche that have shut down and check which websites are currently linking to them. Inform these websites about broken links by sending them an email and suggest a link to your website as an alternative. This is termed as broken link building.

4. On-page optimization

Using target keywords in your website will make sure that each page with valuable content is ranked higher. You must focus on the following elements:

• Product name- Wherever possible include descriptive wording
• Descriptive & clean product URL
• Heading tags- H1, H2, etc.
• Optimized images
• Consistent NAP (name, address, place) on all pages
• Links to important category pages from the homepage
• Deep internal linking to product pages

5. Responsive design

Mobile search has overtaken desktop search in more than ten countries. Ensure that your ecommerce website is responsive to avoid losing your potential customers.

6. Use supplementary content

It is basically any content on a page that is not the main content. The most useful type of supplementary content on ecommerce sites that you can include are product ratings and reviews. On Word Press you can set up reviews using free plug-in like WP Products review.

7. Unique product description

Duplicate content is strictly not acceptable by Google. Some ecommerce websites tend to copy content especially for product description. Ensure that you use unique description for every product and service.

8. Great site navigation

For overall user experience, having a good navigation is important. You can do this by using product categories and also by grouping products into clickable subcategories.

9. Social media sharing

Integrate your products with social media sharing. It is observed that products which are integrated with social sharing are more enticing to prospective buyers. Fashion and cooking sites should ensure to include “pin in” button for Pinterest sharing.

10. Optimized page load speed

The speed of the website helps in improving the rank of the website. It is important that your website loads quickly so that you don’t lose your visitors.

11. Interesting Meta description

You should use interesting Meta description for every page. While it may not help in boosting the search rank but it certainly influences you click rates from the SERPs. It is like an ad copy that convinces searchers to click on your site.

12. Optimized product images

For a good user experience and conversions, using high resolutions and high quality photos on your product pages is essential. Some of the best practices to optimize your product image include:

• Using descriptive keywords in alt image tag
• Using thumbnail image to showcase complementary products
• Showing all dimensions and angles of product
• Using high quality images that do not take a longer time to load

Optimizing you ecommerce website to rank higher in search engine is not difficult. You must optimize your product pages, blogs and images and provide user friendly navigation and website structure.