Ecommerce is booming and is set to become even bigger in 2021 with billions of people worldwide buying products online and it’s on track to reach 22% of all retail sales by 2023. The past year saw many more consumers turning to ecommerce businesses due to lockdowns and the shuttering of many brick and mortar shops. In fact, orders for ecommerce stores increased 60% during 2020.
Ecommerce is also rapidly becoming a crowded market. Therefore, it is more important than ever to have good SEO practices. It allows your shop to get free organic visitors, boost credibility and trust and increases overall sales. In fact, 40% of web users start their online buying journey from a Google search, so you’ll want to make sure that your ecommerce store is ranking in the first page of Google for your targeted keywords.
Below you’ll find several good practices of SEO for ecommerce websites.
SEO Tips for Ecommerce in 2021
Beyond the standard SEO tips of having good copy, building up domain authority, finding the right keywords and making sure you’re using those targeted keywords; there are several new SEO tips for 2021.
- Have a mobile friendly website
People are doing more and more of their online shopping on mobile phones these days. It is estimated that by 2025, 73% of internet users around the world will primarily use their mobile phone to access the internet. Therefore, it is crucial for your site to be easy to navigate on mobile devices and to have a mobile responsive design. Being optimized for mobile devices will also improve your overall SEO.
- Publish rich high-quality content
Google’s latest algorithms have started prioritizing content quality over quantity rewarding long-form and detailed content with better rankings. SEO trends in ecommerce for 2021 include placing more importance on boosting SERP rankings and getting more brand exposure. With the new algorithms it’s not enough to have short and thin content full of backlinks and keywords. You’ll need to develop in-depth, informative, authoritative and reliable content that provides readers value to your readers.
Produce content that your target audience needs, content that they will search for and want to read. If you don’t know what type of your target audience needs yet, then think about who they are. Look at the data you have on your customer. What do they do? What are their interests? What are their values? What are their pain points and challenges? You can even create buyer personas. Once you know what type of content your target audience would like aim to create content that would provide value to these people.
Due to Google’s new preference for long-form content, it can be useful to focus on writing blog posts and articles with 3000 words or more. Long-form content also gets more traffic, it’s shared more often and is linked to more often, leading to a high return of investment.
- Have clear and useful product descriptions
Online shoppers want to research products before buying them and compare them to other products available. Invest time into writing in-depth product descriptions and make sure to include some of your keywords in them. However, instead of pure keyword stuffing, try to focus on the quality of the content. Google has a way of rewarding quality content the top spots on a Google search.
- Optimize your images and use video
Optimizing the images on your site for SEO can help drive a larger amount of traffic to your site. In order to optimize your images properly, use detailed alt text to describe the contents of each photo and choose a keyword-rich title for your photos.
Video is also becoming an increasingly important medium for ecommerce stores. According to a study by HubSpot, 90% of customers believe video helps them make the right purchasing decisions. Good video content will also make users stick around on your ecommerce website for longer, which in turn will help with SEO. You could include a video showcasing your product or informative videos for customers to learn more about topics within your niche.
In order to optimize your videos for SEO, you can use carefully chosen keywords in the video’s description.
- Make sure your website has fast loading times
No one wants to spend time on website that is slow or that doesn’t load properly. It is unprofessional and annoying. Customers expect to be able to move through your sites quickly. In fact, the best loading time for a site is below 2 seconds. If your website has slower loading speeds, then many customers will simply move onto another website, leaving you with a high bounce rate, frustrated customers and missed opportunities.
Hosting plays an important part in your websites speed so make sure to invest in a good hosting.
- Have a simple site structure
Having an easy to navigate website that is well-structured is not only something that customers like, Google’s algorithms have an easier time crawling through a well-structured clean site as well. This makes it easier for Google to understand your site and rank it properly. For this you can make sure to clearly divide the websites into categories and subcategories and to include various types of headings and subheadings.
- Use targeted long-tail keywords
Knowing which keywords you want your site to rank for is crucial. You can get a little creative here and think outside the box. Google has also started to give more space to long-tail keywords, so it is definitely useful to conduct some keyword research and see what type of long-tail keyword you’d like to target. Long-tail keywords are also great for voice search, which has become popular in the last years.
Conclusion
Ecommerce has changed a lot during the past years with the online space becoming more and more crowded. In order to stand out, you’ll need to have a solid and up-to-date SEO strategy. The tips above will be useful for 2021 but keep in mind that trends and good SEO practices are always changing so it’s worth it to keep a close eye on the SEO world.
