![\"seo](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ecommerce-SEO-Tips.png\")
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Any business that makes money through its website has to make SEO a priority.<\/p>\n
Showing up in the search engines when someone\u2019s looking for what you sell is quite simply one of the best ways to make sure customers can find you.<\/p>\n
But those spots on page one for popular e-commerce search terms are competitive. It takes some real work and know-how to make your website one of the ones in the running for those top spots.<\/p>\n
Here are seven things you should be doing to improve your e-commerce website\u2019s SEO so you start reaching more of your customers.<\/p>\n
Keyword research is an important step in any SEO plan because it\u2019s one of the best ways to learn what your customers are thinking about. If you base your SEO efforts around assumptions of what people are searching for, then you could end up putting a lot of effort into trying to rank for the wrong things. \u00a0Keyword research shows you what people are actually looking for on the web, both in terms of the specific phrasing they use and the kind of topics they\u2019re concerned about.<\/p>\n There are a number of tools that can help you in this step. The top of the list is Google\u2019s Keyword Tool<\/a>, which pulls directly from Google\u2019s data on what search terms people use with the most frequency. While the information provided is geared toward people using Google AdWords for pay-per-click advertising, it\u2019s also useful for people planning their strategy for SEO.<\/p>\n You can put in a list of keywords related to your business that you\u2019ve brainstormed and get an even larger list of related terms back from the tool. And you can input keywords you\u2019re interested in to see how they compare in terms of traffic and competition levels.<\/p>\n There are also a number of paid tools you can use to get even more detailed keyword information and help you organize the keywords and topic ideas you come up with in your research, such as the Moz Keyword Explorer<\/a> and SEMRush<\/a>.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s smart to devote part of your time during this step going directly to the source. Do customer surveys<\/a> to find out questions and interests your audience has and the language they use to describe them, and talk to your customer service department to get a good list of the most common questions and comments they hear from your customers.<\/p>\n Your keyword research should form the strategy of your SEO plan, but to be clear here, that doesn\u2019t mean doing a lot of keyword stuffing. That\u2019s an old-school SEO tactic<\/a> that can hurt you now, and Google\u2019s recent move toward Latent Semantic Indexing means that they\u2019re better at recognizing what webpages and content are about based on context clues. So you don\u2019t need to use the same term five times on your page to get the point across, but knowing the best terminology to use is still valuable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is luckily one of the easiest parts of SEO. For every page on your website, you have a number of spots in the html you can optimize based on the terms you\u2019re aiming to link for:<\/p>\n Surprisingly, not all websites bother with this part, so it\u2019s an easy way to get a little bit of ahead of any competitors falling down on the job.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your site architecture is how your website is organized<\/a>. A simple website (left) may have a menu with five main categories, and a few pages included under each category. An e-commerce site (right) with a lot of different products may have hundreds of categories and subcategories and thousands of product pages.<\/p>\n So you don\u2019t want a product page to be grouped inside a category that\u2019s a subcategory of a subcategory of a subcategory you want to keep it simpler than that.\u00a0 Ideally, you plan out your site structure in advance, but if you missed the boat on that, take some time now to sit down and work out the main categories present on your website now so you can start organizing the pages you already have better and have a structure defined for the ones you\u2019ll add in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Product pages that only have a product\u2019s name or just a line of description don\u2019t give you much chance to signal to the search engines what the product is or what it\u2019s about. On a related note, it doesn\u2019t tell your potential customer much about what makes the product worth buying.<\/p>\n Take some time to craft descriptions of your products that provide more information to readers and search engines on what the product is and the types of features and uses it has. This gives you a chance to let the search engine algorithms know more relevant terms to associate with the page (although you still want to be careful here not to keyword stuff!), while also providing useful information to your prospects.<\/p>\n Here’s a great example from L.L. Bean<\/a>:<\/p>\n All that research you did back in step one wasn\u2019t just good for figuring out which keywords to focus your main website pages on, it will also form the foundation of a good content strategy. Content has a hugely important role to play in SEO for a couple of main reasons:<\/p>\n This part of SEO is hard and requires time, money, and planning. But without it, you\u2019ll have a hard time getting very far. Start working on a content strategy for your brand that answers the questions your audience has and incorporates the keywords you compiled in your research. \u00a0Make sure the content you create is high quality and provides information that\u2019s useful to your audience. If the content isn\u2019t something your audience would want to read or view, then it won\u2019t do its job.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You have to create content to be competitive in the search engines these days, but unfortunately, so many other brands are already doing so that just creating great content isn\u2019t enough. You also need to do the work to get your content in front of people. That means promoting it on social media, sending it to your email list<\/a>, and may even mean paying for ads that get it in front of people.<\/p>\n This part is especially important if you\u2019re in the early stages of your content program. You\u2019re competing with brands that already have traction in the space that you don\u2019t have, so you need to put extra effort into getting those first followers who like and share your content. If you have patience and put in the work, you\u2019ll likely see those numbers grow exponentially over time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not that everything else on this list is easy, but this step might be the hardest part of doing SEO. You can control what goes on your own website, but it\u2019s harder to convince other websites to change what\u2019s on their site for your benefit and that\u2019s what you need to really demonstrate your authority to Google. Having other high-quality, relevant websites include links back to your website on their own site is hands down one of the biggest factors in how Google decides who to rank.<\/p>\n While this is a big topic with a lot of different tactics you can try, there are a few good strategies to start with:<\/p>\n Link building takes some time and leaves a lot up to chance, but the links you manage to get can do a lot to improve your website\u2019s authority and increase your rankings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n SEO isn\u2019t easy, but for e-commerce websites that live and die based on how accessible they are to potential customers, every little bit you can do to help people find you will make a difference to the sales and revenue you achieve each year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 7 SEO Tips for Your E-commerce Site Any business that makes money through its website has to make SEO a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips-and-tricks"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"best](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Wordpress.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n1. Do keyword and topic research.<\/h2>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/image3-1024x569.png\")
<\/p>\n2. Always use on-site optimization.<\/h2>\n
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3. Make sure your site structure is intuitive.<\/h2>\n
![\"example](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/3-example-site-structure.png\")
![\"website](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/2-site-breakdown.png\")
<\/center>The more complicated your website is, the more important it is to make sure that you organize it in a way that\u2019s both intuitive to your users and makes sense to the search engine algorithms. A good rule is to come up with a plan that groups related pages together in categories that make sense to your average site visitor, while keeping everything within a couple clicks from your home page.<\/p>\n4. Provide detailed information on your product pages.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"example](\"https:\/\/www.hostgator.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-25-at-12.32.57-PM-1024x579.png\")
<\/p>\n5. Create relevant, high-quality content.<\/h2>\n
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6. Promote your content.<\/h2>\n
7. Build links.<\/h2>\n
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SEO and Your E-commerce Site<\/h2>\n