If you have an online store, you certainly know how important its position in Google is to your business. I will write an article with some of the most important tips on current requirements in the field of search engine optimization. I have in mind above all Google search engine and I will refer to it.
A lot of thick books have been written about SEO. However, the most important are three issues:
- a properly constructed site (programmer’s work),
- good linking (SEO agency work),
- and well-conducted content (the PR or marketing agency or the shop owner himself).
Each of the positioning elements is important, but the basic condition is that you have to take care of each of them with equal attention.
A properly built site
A properly built site is one that loads quickly on every device (Google has been paying more attention to mobile devices than desktops since about 2015). The site must be legible, have a sufficiently large font, appropriate spacing between the buttons, etc (Google also sees it). The site should not contain too many significant errors, which you can check here: https://validator.w3.org/. It should also be fast, what you can check here: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
Linking
Good linking has a huge impact on the position in the search engine. Google is like a “sophisticated newsmonger”: it collects information and forwards it. The most important thing to him is information from a good source, because he does not listen to gossip so carefully. Hence – the most important thing in building links is that websites that link to your store are reliable and contain reliable information. Google has many intelligent robots that check it out. And if, for example, a footwear store links a page about traffic jam problems on local roads, Google will treat the link with reserve. If Google finds more of these strange links, it can lower your position, considering that there has been a kind of “stealing” links. It happens.
Read more about linking here.
Content of the site
The third important component part of positioning is the care for content on the site. I will attach special attention to this point in this post, because as a shop owner you have the greatest knowledge and competence in this area. No SEO agency knows as much about your store as you and you will not find the agency that will post as perfect content as you would.
Above all: think about key phrases.
The latest and clever trends are to hit phrases with a “long tail”. The reason to that is that more and more users will rather clarify their query than try to find what they need from the thousands of results that the “sophisticated newsmonger” offers them. You do it too. If you sell shoes, do not try to position the slogan “shoes” or even “sports shoes”. Create a list of phrases similar to “men’s shoes for jogging online”.
Your task is to develop a set of such key phrases. Find a dozen or even several dozen of them. When you are in the first positions on many of them – sales will increase.
And here comes another matter. Each phrase should have a separate bookmark on your page. If you have several websites that you position on “men’s shoes for online jogging,” they will compete with each other. This phenomenon even has its name: cannibalism of keywords. Avoid cannibalism!
And here it is worth paying attention to the underestimated part of e-commerce websites. Take advantage of the opportunity and catch it up before the competitors do this. The point is that “men’s jogging shoes online” may be a specific product in your store, but it also may be a product category.
Category pages
The pages with the description of the categories usually only contain a photo and a short description (excerpt). This content does not affect your position on Google. Use category pages and write an article using key phrase data. Make sure that the phrase is in the title and the h1 header of the page, but do not be too intrusive. Write content to users, let them be more important to you than Google. Remember that the search engine pays attention to how the users are involved (how much time they spent on a given website or how many bookmarks they have entered). So if you are positioning the category page on the phrase “men’s shoes for online jogging”, put it in the content of the page in a natural way and not more than 3 times.
As I mentioned, the basic elements of the content are the title of the page and its headline,
which should be visible immediately after opening the given tab. The alt graphic attributes and even the name of the graphic file are also important. There, also use the key phrase. Did you ever search for something on Google from the “images” tab? Exactly, this is the place where Google shows results based on alt attributes and file names.Articles
Magento gives you the ability to easily edit category pages, but also gives you the opportunity to write separate articles.
In the CMS section, you can write an article about your industry. Try to write an interesting post about, for example, a player who runs in “men’s sports shoes” (unless you have created a category page with such shoes in mind to prevent cannibalism). Write some curiosities from your industry, interest the user.
If someone wants this content, maybe he will want to post it on her/his Facebook? Maybe you can even get a natural link to your website?
The “sophisticated newsmonger” will talk about it
Good luck 🙂