SEO Strategies for eCommerce Businesses in 2018
Is your New Year resolution for 2018 to rank on the first page of Google search engine? Or better yet, to rank #1? If so, you’d have figured out by now that you ought to work on SEO strategies to make it to the top of your favorite search engine. Great! It is no rocket science, except that one can easily get lost in the SEO world. To head in the right direction, just ask out loud to yourself…
What is SEO for? No, not for Google ranking. The ultimate purpose of SEO is a step further. It is to increase the trustworthiness of your website and to generate leads. Search engine ranking is only a method (well, THE method) to increase organic visits to your site.
Simply put, people trust Google, and SEO exists to help you gain Google’s trust. But hey, it isn’t that easy.
Google has trust issues
Google doesn’t simply rank a website on its first page because the site has a lot of keywords in it. Gone are the days when that used to work out. In the present setting, bad SEO practices will definitely backfire. Google’s trust is highly volatile and it depends on the quality of your website. They come up with updates to their ranking algorithms often. These updates are not only to improve the search results but to set standards for content all over the web. So, when you build something for your website with Google on your mind, it is going to be better optimized.
And, I emphasize, the real key is not to be obsessed with the tactics alone, you need to focus on quality. From the history of SEO in 2017 and well before that, the gist is that your search rank on a search engine depends on the quality of your website and content. The same is to follow in 2018.
The quality of your website is not determined just by the looks. Although the looks are important for user experience, the factors like:
- page load speed
- backlinks (incoming links to your website)
- outgoing links from your site
- quantity & quality of content
- dwell time, etc.,
are what used to measure a site’s quality. Among all these optimization attributes, what do eCommerce websites have to focus on for SEO in 2018?
SEO for eCommerce businesses
SEO for eCommerce websites are aimed at 5 goals:
1. Attract traffic
2. Lead generation
3. Conversion rate
4. Monetisation
5. Brand building
As we can see from the above list, traffic generation is the first aim of any SEO strategy. Only when there are people visiting your site, you can think about finding potential customers and so on. Now, the real question is, how?
Traffic can be generated from different sources, but organic traffic remains the major source for most eCommerce businesses. According to the survey by Yotpo, from 65 million ecommerce orders representing $2 billion dollars in transactions over 120,000 ecommerce stores, the organic traffic is found to be 34%, second to direct traffic (from link sharing and dark social) about 40%.
Key Takeaway:
Work on increasing the organic traffic to increase your search engine visibility and hence generate more leads and conversions.
SEO Strategies for 2018
Now that the direction towards achieving your goal is clear, let’s focus on the roads to take. The SEO strategies and techniques for your eCommerce business in 2018 are listed here based on the strategies followed in 2017 and what the online business communities expect in 2018.
Rely on quality content. Always.
If you have good, original, long, relevant and quality content, you will automatically get organic traffic. Keywords are important but stuffing keywords into an article just for the sake of SEO is futile. I’ll tell you why.
Let’s say you gained search engine ranking somehow with the use of keywords and initial Click Through Rates. But if your readers don’t find reliable information on your page, they are not going to spend a lot of time there. If readers don’t spend enough time on your page, search engines are going to notice it and not rank you further.
There is an evil twin of good content — “Duplicate content”.
The web has a lot of content. Let’s face the reality, a good part of them are duplicate. Most of the times, the duplication of content is not intentional. In fact, it is quite common in eCommerce sites.
For example, if many sites sell the same product from the same manufacturer, they just cannot avoid duplicate content beyond certain extent. That doesn’t mean Google will penalize them.
While there is no direct negative ranking for duplicate content as such (contrary to the myths about duplicate content penalization), the search engines get confused about which content is original among the several instances, that is, a lot of them. Intentional content scraping happens, too.
In such cases, you can differentiate your site by using methods like 301 redirect or using rel=canonical in html. Here’s a detailed writing.
All you need to do is, produce good quality original content and that’s it. While producing that, focus on the following:
- Increase dwell time
Dwell time is the time that a user spends on your website and it is an important search engine ranking factor. The way to increase dwell time is pretty straight forward: Engaging, reliable, good content. - Reduce bounce rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of website visitors who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page. They tend to go back to the search engine results and click on another link. The ranking algorithm makes note of such activities. So, less bounce rates = better chances of high ranking. - Reduce page load time
What is the use of all those great content if the page doesn’t load in the first place? The loading speed of a web page is a very important attribute used in page ranking. Because a page that is slow to load will have increased bounce rates and decreased dwell time. Red flag.
Other than these factors, backlinking (the incoming links that point to your site) and outgoing links from your site add significant value to ranking. If they are reliable and have a good ranking, Google thinks that your site is reliable, too.
So, the gist is, go ahead and get creative.
Key Takeaway:
Produce original and quality content.
Backlinking gives you good ranking.
Use links from reliable sources.
Focus on page load speed.
Aim at increasing CTR (Click-Through Rates)
Click-Through Rate is speculated to be a ranking factor on Google for years. Many studies prove that CTR has a huge impact on search ranking. Some prove otherwise. I strongly believe that CTR has a lot to do with ranking and vice versa. This article clearly explains the situation.
1. CTR and Rich Snippets
With the advent of RankBrain (which could be the the most important ranking signal for Google), there is an interesting twist to the entire CTR plot. RankBrain is a machine learning algorithm from Google that shows search results as snippets for a better search experience. You must be familiar with results that look like this:
Or this:
I do not have to click on any link to find out the results to my query in such case.
These intelligent results have actually reduced CTR by 37% according to a study in 2015.
2. What should I do?
Target the rich snippets. That’s where Schema markup comes into play. Schema markup itself is not a ranking factor but it helps increase your CTR. It is a way to structure your content so that the search engine knows what your content is about. Here’s how it can help your website’s SEO:
- Schema markup for rich snippets
Let’s look at the first result from the french toast example:
It is a rich snippet that has an image, ratings, number of reviews, cooking time and the calories it contains. People will obviously click through this link. Use Schema Markups in your website for a similar result of your page.
- Schema markup for voice assistants
Voice assistants like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple’s Siri pull information from the web for voice searches. Structured data can help them find precise and more relevant results. If your website has well marked up data, then it is most likely that voice assistants will find your site easily. - Schema markup for mobile-first indexing
Mobile-first indexing is Google’s approach to look for mobile friendly pages first and provide results accordingly. It highly relies on schemas. Mobile friendliness is no more just about the looks of a website. The content plays a significant role in mobile friendliness. Well marked up content on your mobile site can help your ranks big time.
Key Takeaway:
Well structured data increase Click-Through Rates (CTR) — good CTR in turn increases ranking.
Structure as much of content as possible with schema markup.
Mobile-first indexing relies largely on schema and is prioritized by Google.
Go secure with HTTPS
Go HTTPS! Though it is not a ranking factor itself, the SERP shows sites with SSL only. Most eCommerce sites have SSL because they deal with payments and other sensitive data like passwords. Website visitors tend to trust the HTTPS sites more than HTTP sites.
Key Takeaway:
Sites with HTTPS get ranked better.
Secure sites are always recommended — especially if you store or process sensitive information.
Target mobile users with AMP
Consider implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for targeting mobile traffic. On average, AMP optimized pages see a 100% increase in dwell time and a 20% increase in conversions. Implement AMP on all important landing pages (though it’s a bit tough) for a better ranking.
As Google says,
“AMP is a standard for creating fast-loading pages that look good on mobile devices. Having a mobile-friendly website is a critical part of your online presence. In many countries, smartphone traffic now exceeds desktop traffic.”
Investing on AMP is not ideal for sites with a lot of features and for sites that don’t target mobile traffic. But for eCommerce, the use of AMP can do good. A lot of eCommerce purchases are done from mobile, so the mobile traffic is not so negligible.
Key Takeaway:
Consider creating AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) for increased mobile traffic and better ranking.
AMP helps to reduce bounce rates because of quicker loading.
Only limited CSS and JavaScript can run on AMP.
Possible increase in CTR.
No matter the year, the classic SEO strategies that emphasize the importance of quality are here to stay. And “quantity” is equally important, especially for blog posts and articles. Long blogs with significant word count (1000–2500) get Google’s attention more than short ones.
As I said in the beginning, you may get lost among all these strategies. When things seem overwhelming, just remember that SEO is to gain the trust of the visitors, the potential customers. Understand who your customers are and make tweaks to your website accordingly. I mean, there is no use in optimising mobile content if your target is only or mostly desktop traffic.
Strategies are only as clear as your target.
So, get creative, do smart work, and achieve your search ranking dream!
