Include Alt Text in Images
Alt text, short for alternative text, is a string of text that serves as a descriptor for your images. The alt text is part of the HTML code for the image and may replace the image if it doesn’t load properly, or appear if the mouse hovers over the image for a certain period of time.
Alt text has recently become part of mainstream conversations because of its accessibility factor. Users with screen readers are able to have the alt text read to them as well as the normal text on the page. This allows them to take in the entire experience of the page without missing anything. The accessibility of alt text gives more people the ability to enjoy your eCommerce site, which is a win for consumers and sellers alike.
The other reason that alt text is important is for machines themselves. Google in particular is constantly crawling pages to assess what they’re about in order to categorize them for user searches. Because this is part of your eCommerce SEO strategy, you should include relevant keywords if you can. However, you should always prioritize what makes the most sense so don’t include a keyword just for the sake of it if it doesn’t make sense in the image description.
Optimize Each Product Description for eCommerce SEO
The product description on an eCommerce product is the next most important factor after the product image. Therefore, it makes sense to pay special attention to each description on your site. Each product description should be natural, informative, and unique. You want to avoid simply copying and pasting manufacturer descriptions that have no life or enticing component to them. You want to draw customers in and convince them that your product is the best solution to their problem. This is the best way to raise conversion rates, which is the end goal of optimizing your website in the first place.
In addition to writing clear, concise, and explanatory content, you also need to include keywords in order to boost your eCommerce SEO. As with alt text, you should include them naturally and avoid keyword-stuffing. If you already have an SEO blog section of your website, you can follow many of the same best practices to effectively optimize your product descriptions.
Take Advantage of Google Search Ads
Whether you only have a web page, or an eCommerce app as well, you will likely invest in Google search ads at some point. And because this is an investment, it only makes sense to incorporate your eCommerce SEO strategy into the ads in order to secure the best ROI possible. One of the best ways to do this is to conduct keyword research in order to find the best keywords for your ads. You can use any research tool, but some popular ones include: MOZ, SEMrush, Google Keyword Planner, and Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. These tools can help you plan which keywords to use by looking at their competitiveness, search volume, and predicted cost per click. With some planning ahead, you can create ad campaigns that work extremely well for you and complement your organic eCommerce SEO strategy without becoming obtrusively expensive.
Check Your URL for eCommerce SEO
Another vital component of your eCommerce business is the individual URL for each product page. If you’ve ever looked at or tried to copy a URL for a page, you may have noticed that the URLs are usually the name of the main page followed by a string of numbers and letters. While this confirms the individuality of your page, it is essentially useless for customers and page crawlers. Why? Because the URL doesn’t actually say anything about the product found on that page. SEO best practices determine that any URL on your page should be clear and include keywords. So when you’re adding pages to your website, be sure to customize each new page’s URL in order to make sure that it can easily be recognized, found, and shared.
Pay Attention to your eCommerce Website Design
When it comes to a successful eCommerce endeavor, visuals are key. So it’s vital to have a website design that is user-friendly when it comes to UX. Even the best products can be left to collect dust on the virtual shelf if customers can’t easily navigate to them. And the more that users quickly leave your website without going past the homepage, the lower your ranking will be. Take the time to check this category in your analytics so that you can see where you may need to improve the usability of your site.
When in doubt, it’s best to keep things simple. It might seem like a good idea to pull out all the bells and whistles, but this can easily work against you by distracting users. The focus is your amazing line of products, so allow them to shine. Your menu should help people navigate easily to where they want to go and unnecessary graphics and images should be kept to a minimum in order to preserve the loading speed of your site. If you’re in need of inspiration or guidance, take a look at some of your favorite company’s sites in order to pinpoint what it is that makes them work so well.
By incorporating these eCommerce SEO tips into your eCommerce marketing strategy, you can be sure that your site will find more success. Why? Because your rank depends on how well you’re able to streamline the user journey of your site for your customers. Search engines have moved to basing their algorithms on how strong UX is, so if you make choices that please the user, you can bet that you will please the algorithm as well.