5 top things an eCommerce Site Can Do To Improve Rankings and Traffic

[BobGW]

Hello,

We are a niche eCommerce company with a limited budget but time on our hands to make changes and start projects.

For our main keyword we rank 10th. It is a small to medium sized niche.

Without knowing the details, I'm looking at the top 5 things I can do for Rankings and Traffic considering on-site, off-site, keeping in mind google updates.

Also, what's the best or your favorite Ecommerce ranking/traffic articles?

Thanks!

Bob

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Bob

These are just suggestions, but I would focus on the following (more than 5, but they all help):

• Site structure - Make sure that your site is laid out and categorized in a logical format, with products/services being a short amount of clicks away. Don't make users work and make sure search engine crawlers can easily crawl and find important pages on your site. Here's a great resource from Search Engine Land.
• Product page title tags - Make sure your title tags on your site are using keywords or phrases that users are searching for. Do NOT overdo keywords and stuff them in. Make sure the titles are descriptive of the content with keywords or phrases at the front of the title. Also take advantage of branding in every title tag.Take a look at Moz's Title Tag best practices page.
• Schema markup - WebMeUp has a great article on Schema for eCommerce. This takes time and effort but pays off in dividends in the long run. You will need a web developer if you are not code savvy. Read more about Schema here if you are interested.
• Use meta descriptions - You'll hear repeatedly that meta descriptions are no longer ranking factors, and that's true. BUT, they still hold a ton of weight when it comes to users clicking through to your site from search. Think of your meta description as your sales pitch when a user sees you in search. HubSpot offers a great article on meta descriptions and Moz has a great best practices page.
• Social media - Make sure you take advantage of all relevant social media platforms for your business; meaning use the ones where your target audience is and engage in that community. Make sure you use a brand name, link to your URL in your bio, and also make sure that all relevant contact information is correct and up to date.  Here's a great Inc article to help get you started, as well as Moz's Social Media for Beginners guide.
• Business listings / Local citations - this is more if you have a physical store but it's also good for listings in business and niche driven areas. Use Moz Local or Whitespark. I have used both and they do great work.
• Partnerships / certifications - Make sure you take full advantage of partnerships that you may have and also find certifications that are relevant to your business. Both of these items signal trust to users and search engines, and can greatly influence both. This includes items Better Business Bureau, shopping cart or checkout safety certifications, and any industry certifications that separate you from your competitors.
• Secure site - This is especially important if you are collecting user information or transactions on your website. Google recently announced that they do use https as a ranking signal and give a little more weight to websites using https as opposed to http. Again, this is important because you are an eCommerce website. Make sure your site is either one or the other, not both.

Again, these are just suggestions to get you going. I listed relevant resources, so discuss with your team and web development team as these items take time and need to be prioritized based on your website and capabilities.

Hopefully these help - let me know if you need anything else, Bob. Good luck to you and yours!

[DonnaDuncan]

I concur with Patrick's excellent suggestions and would add a few more to the list.

1. Make sure your site is mobile ready.
2. Optimize for speed.
3. Use Moz and GWMT to identify and fix site errors.
4. If you don't have reviews on the site already, enable them. Feed that into the schema markup Patrick mentions above.
5. Link building. Identify who's linking to your top competitors and go after the ones you can. As your top suppliers and partners to link to you. Give them something of value in exchange.
6. Use screaming frog to scan your site and check for cannibalization. Don't waste resources competing with yourself.
7. Optimize internal linking structures and anchor text.
8. Vary and test rhe effectiveness of different calls to action.

My go-to resources for ecommerce websites is The Ultimate Guide to SEO for eCommerce Websites from KISSmetrics. You'll see it talks about all the items mentioned by Patrick and myself as well as some more.

[EGOL]

but time on our hands to make changes and start projects.

Transform the site from a retail site into an informational site with a small store.

[BobGW]

EGOL,

Groundbreaking Advice as usual. We're using (mostly) 7 informational videos with transcripts. You think more people will buy if less area on the home page is going for products and more for answering every one of their questions by video? Please explain!

[PatrickDelehanty]

All awesome!

Donna had a great one that should be emphasized more than others right now due to it's urgency - that's number 1 - mobile ready. You can read more about that in the link I just provided (PLEASE read it) but here is a great tool to help get you started down that route:

Google Mobile-Friendly Tester Make sure you put your site through that testing tool to see how you're doing from a mobile standpoint. And then make sure you read through the Mobile SEO guide provided by Google.

[EGOL]

One of my retail sites has more informative content about the product niche than all of my retail competitors and manufacturers combined.  Most of the traffic entering this site comes in through content pages.  Most of those visitors never see the homepage.... but they learn that we are the site with the info.  Lots of people leave reviews .... "this site has great info, we buy there because they have answered our questions".  So, if you are in a niche such as DIY then the content approach will work really well.  All of that info reduces the number of people who write or call for information.  It was a great investment.

Only 5.5% of the impressions on this site are on the homepage.  About 20% of the homepage is dedicated to showing off our content.  The top right corner of the site is a 300x250 rectangle that shows comments by customers who reviewed us today.

[mirabile]

If you haven't already done so, I recommend giving some major attention to your onpage copy that describes each product. If you're using generic vendor blurbs that other sites use, then this is not only telling Google "Hey, nothing new to be found here!", but it's also kinda telling your customers "Hey, nothing new to be found here, we totally can't help you differentiate our listing between that one on the competitor site, sorry."

It's not only about price, or how fast you think your shipping is.  It's about helping the product page on your site look better than on the competitors.  More content love, originality, thoughtfulness, and customer care all around.

I used to work at an online retailer, and we wrote all custom descriptions and spent a lot of time on them.  Users loved was that we took the time to write detailed, high-quality copy that helped explain the product, so sales went up as a result of this.

**AS DID OUR ORGANIC TRAFFIC.    **

[BobGW]

This is very helpful mirabile, there was just so much other stuff above you to give "Good Answers" to. Thank you.

[motxroot]

I think best solution for improving rankings is decreasing load time with CDN aka Content Delivery Networks. You should watch this video about CDN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4COWL7oNSw