Online retail has seen a surge in demand during the COVID 19 pandemic. As lockdowns and social distancing norms prevented consumers from visiting physical stores, there was a sudden shift in their pattern of shopping – from physical stores, the consumer base moved to online retail.
Online retailers were quick to realize this increase in their number of shoppers. Their immediate objective was to harness these new shoppers, understand their demand pattern, engage with them effectively, win their trust and confidence, and turn them into loyal customers.
For this, most of them engaged with an experienced eCommerce SEO company that offers not only services in initial eCommerce consulting, but also long-term eCommerce strategy that includes services around website design, website development, custom solutions, mobile application development, third party system integration, app development, digital marketing including SEO & SEM, and performance control.
This strategy worked in the favor of online retailers and most of them were able to make substantial improvements in their websites such as:
– Choosing the right eCommerce platform
– Improving website design and user experience
– Improving navigation through the website
– Capturing data through advanced analytics
– Targeting the shoppers directly through personalized offerings
Also, by working with an eCommerce SEO company, they were able to bring quality traffic to their website that actually led to conversions, and thus improved their website competitiveness.
In this way eCommerce SEO has now become an integral part of the eCommerce strategy adopted by most online retailers. For 2021, below are the top ten eCommerce SEO strategies:
Use concise and well-written product descriptions:
Your strategy must be to ensure availability of a clear and well-written description of the products that you are selling on your eCommerce store. An accurate description, that is just the right length serves two distinct purposes – firstly it enables your shoppers to find your products and secondly, it enables search engines to accurately identify and index your products.
Search engines like Google use complex algorithms to compare content, against keywords. So if your eCommerce store contains minimal product description, then search engines will not be able to do the indexing properly.
With proper descriptions that include keywords of your main products, your online store will find a way in the top search results as Google will find it easier to rank your website.
Use JSON-LD Structured Data to improve search results and CTR
Experts recommend webmasters to use data patterns and structured data in websites. This technique makes a website more organized and search engines are able to index it easily. Another benefit is that with structured data, search results are better and it is easier to build knowledge graphs, breadcrumbs and achieve rich AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) results.
With improved search results, websites also experience a better CTR (Click-through Rate) which is a clear indicator that there is an improvement in user engagement.
In terms of structured data, online search engines support three different formats to manage the markup of a website – microformats, JSON-LD and microdata. By using a vocabulary like schema.org you can manage the markup of your website and for this is recommended that you use JSON-LD and microdata.
Make your website mobile ready
An eCommerce SEO company can guide you on the benefits of a mobile friendly website. Techniques such as AMP and PWA (Progressive Web Applications) make the mobile friendly website feature-rich and responsive. PWA helps you manage the functions, look & feel and user-experience of your website.
AMP, on the other hand allows developers to build amazing websites using a common coding language that is usually a stripped-down version of CSS and HTML.
Focus on the speed of your website and loading time
Website speed and loading time are critical factors that determine the success, or failure of a business in the online marketplace.
In ideal conditions, your website must load in less than 2 seconds. Statistics show that if your website takes more than 4 seconds to load, then nearly 40% of your customers will go away.
Most customers are not ready to buy from websites that have a poor performance. They tend to buy from a website that has a good speed and over a period of time, they build a loyalty towards such a website. Moreover, they are quite vocal of their experience and if your website is not fast enough, then the news will spread quickly.
Display your customer reviews in SERP
The more transparency your website offers, the higher will be the chances that users will drop by at your website to read those reviews. Search engines like Google also note the feedback of your users, no matter whether it is good, or bad.
In 2021 your focus should be on getting a high number of reviews and that too positive ones. For this you must engage with an eCommerce SEO company and build a plan that motivates your users to leave behind positive reviews, whether by email, SMS messages, comment on website or other means. Also, you must wait for a day or two before asking for reviews.
Use long-tail keywords in website content
A long-tail keyword is any phrase that is either 4 words, or longer. This phrase includes the main keyword and other words that work on the search intent of users and help drive more organic traffic to your website. It enables brands to identify what can keep audiences engaged to their products.
Improve your website navigation
To ensure flawless navigation and enhanced user experience, improve the content hierarchies in your website. This will enable your customers to find the products easily on your website and will also enable Google to use the site navigation to index and discover new pages on your website.
Focus on conversion rate optimization (CRO)
CRO is the percentage of users who want to execute your site’s call-to-action (CTA). The higher the CRO, the higher are the chances of boosting the performance of your website and enabling search engines like Google believe that your website is well structured, has a clean design and is with effective formatting.
CTAs should be ideally text-based and integrated with blog posts, so that your website visitor can click on them, be directed to your website’s landing page and complete an action.
Internal Linking
You must focus more on internal linking of relevant products, categories, and resources as it would help search engines like Google understand, index, and find the right pages in your website. Proper linking gives more authority to your website and boosts the rank of your website in search engines.
Make use of video marketing
It is a good strategy to exploit the strengths of video marketing in your eCommerce strategy for 2021. Videos are helpful for users as they take very less time to convey a point and are also easy for users to absorb. You can create a simple text copy and get videos shot professionally. Build a network of influencers who can endorse your product.
Conclusion:
Looking at this success that happened even during the COVID 19 pandemic, online retailers are now convinced that it pays off to engage with an eCommerce SEO company.