SEO for Online Business: 6 Key Tips for Your Success

If you want to boost your online presence, build trust, and scale your brand, the first thing you need to do in 2024 is adopt ecommerce SEO.

The value of SEO for online business is massive. It lets you create a better user experience, enhance credibility, and drive lots of potential buyers to your website.  And it can be very cost-effective too.

The only question is how to get it right.

The Hidden Benefits of SEO for Online Business Growth

Among the obvious advantages of search engine optimization, such as a better online presence and enhanced online traffic, SEO can offer many more perks to an ecommerce business:

• Optimized content: Delving into SEO allows you to create well-researched and optimized content for your site. Quality content delivers greater value to your customers and prospects and guides their buying decisions.
• Implemented marketing tactics: Creating a synergy between SEO and other marketing efforts can help you boost your online presence further and skyrocket your ROI. For example, you can leverage the same target keywords in your PPC campaigns and search engine optimization to double your traffic and leads. Similarly, you can integrate it with your social media, affiliate marketing, etc.
• Better website: Technical optimization makes your site more convenient, fast-loading, and safer. All these characteristics are demanded by Google algorithms to put you high in the SERPs, and they bring plenty of value to your users, increasing their satisfaction and loyalty.
• Adaption to change: SEO requires keeping up with the times and refining your strategies according to ever-changing search engine algorithms. By adapting to these changes your business becomes more flexible, up-to-date, and competitive.

Long story short, ecommerce SEO brings long-term value and sets you ahead of your competitors.

What Data Says

Now that you know the primary perks of SEO for online business, you must be wondering whether these benefits are actually backed up by facts and numbers. And the answer is definitely yes!

According to DataReportal's Digital 2023 report, the total number of Internet users last year accounted for 5.16 billion, indicating that the vast majority of the world's population is now online. And that number continues to grow.

Apart from the fact that a huge part of your potential buyers are out there on the web, there is one more thing you should recognize concerning the role of SEO for online business – modern consumers are independent and prefer to make well-informed decisions. It's no wonder researching products and brands is among the top 10 primary reasons why people aged 16-64 go online, with 43.4% of users reporting it.

These facts lead us to one of the most important mottos of today:

“Businesses don’t have to chase the customers now, we just have to be in front of the prospects when they need us.”

And the best way to get in front of customers is to implement search engine optimization!

Crucial Elements of SEO for Online Business Growth

Plan Wisely

Every successful ecommerce SEO strategy begins with gathering and analyzing information and making a well-informed plan.

Conducting a thorough competitor analysis should be your first step. Competitor analysis is the core of business intelligence. It enables you to understand the tactics, strengths, and weak points of your competitors, detect gaps in the market, conquer new markets, and make better business decisions faster. Most importantly, it lets you refine your own strategies for a competitive advantage.

Okay, so where do you start? If you are new to competitor analysis, first, equip yourself with the right tools. For example, try the website traffic estimator. With this tool, you can gain a complete overview of your competitors’ traffic and SEO tactics.

• Namely, you will be able to see:
• Whether your competitors focus more on paid or organic traffic;
• Where the traffic comes from;
• Which keywords drive the most visitors;
• Which pages attract the most traffic;
• What the overall cost of traffic is;
• And much more.

Use the data you gain to figure out what works well for other brands in your sector and identify any gaps they’ve missed that you can fill. For example, you can discover specific keywords, topics, page optimization insights, and other important elements that your competitors are neglecting or missing out on.

Once you have all the data at hand, you can build actionable plans to achieve your short-term and long-term goals.

Bonus tip: Target less competitive aspects of optimization for starters. For example, start by integrating less competitive keywords into your strategy; the ones that other brands aren’t using as much yet. This will let you fill the gap and gain that preliminary competitive advantage. Later, you can also target more competitive options.

Gather Your List of Keywords

Leverage cutting-edge keyword research tools to understand the queries people use when researching products similar to yours. Organize your findings in a list of keywords that you can use later in your optimization strategy.

For maximum impact, collect different types of keywords, such as:

• Product-focused keywords: General queries used to capture prospects' attention when they seek similar products. For example, “women shoes,” “baby products,” etc.
• Transactional keywords: These terms indicate the customer’s intent to buy, such as ”buy leather women shoes”, “teenage shoes with discount”, etc.
• Long-tail keywords: These are longer phrases that are more specific and intent-driven. For example, “best wedding women shoes,” etc.
• Subcategory keywords: These are more specific terms that fall into specific product categories. For example, if the category is “women shoes”, subcategory keywords may include “boots,” “ballerina flats,” “heels,” etc.
• Semantically related keywords: These are queries that are semantically similar to your primary keywords. For example, if your primary keyword is “women shoes”, semantically related terms may include “women summer shoes,” “ladies shoes,” “summer footwear for women,” etc.

On-Page SEO

Once you have a plan and a list of target keywords, you can start optimizing your site to appear higher in online search results. To get the most out of it, we recommend approaching optimization based on different page types:

1. Category pages

Ecommerce category pages are used to organize and showcase groups of products with similar attributes or purposes. They are there to make it simpler to navigate through the products in your store.

Here's how you should optimize them:

• Organize your categories logically (i.e., make sure all products fit their groups perfectly).
• Fill category pages with helpful content, such as guides, reviews, answers to common questions, etc.
• Category pages typically have limited space for copy, so follow the principles of effective writing with concise but informative pieces and clear CTAs.
• Build an effective URL hierarchy.
• Leverage long-tail keywords (3+ words) for category pages. These keywords typically have a stronger intent and lower competition, hence, higher conversion. An example of such a keyword is “best women shoes for walking.”
• Use structured data to provide more information about your pages and classify content.

2. Product Pages

Unlike category pages, product pages are your revenue generators. They provide prospects with in-depth information about each product and encourage them to make a purchase.

Here's how to optimize them:

• Create valuable content that informs visitors about your products and encourages them to buy it.
• Align the title and description of every product with your target keywords.
• Optimize your URL to make it memorable.
• Add high-quality images and optimize them well.
• Focus on user experience.
• Add clear and powerful CTAs.

3. Blog Pages

Unlike your category and product pages, blog pages don't directly sell your products. Instead, they create opportunities to grow your website traffic, boost rankings, improve brand awareness, create better engagement, acquire backlinks, and build trust and customer loyalty. Here, your focus should be on delivering value rather than closing deals.

Here are several tips for optimizing blog pages:

• Develop detailed buyer personas to identify blog topics that speak to your prospects on a personal level.
• Consistently analyze your competitors to find content ideas that resonate.
• Craft well-optimized, unique, and high-quality content that reflects your brand's identity and vision and that will bring value to your prospects to make them stay.
• Create short but catchy titles and add visuals for better engagement.

Bonus tip: When handling on-page optimization, you want to integrate your target keywords into all website elements, including:

• Titles and meta descriptions;
• URLs;
• Headings and subheadings;
• HTML elements;
• Image alt text;
• CTAs, etc.

However, don’t overuse keywords. Search engines often penalize sites for keyword stuffing.

Technical SEO

Technical optimization doesn’t only help you align with search engine algorithm requirements and appear higher in results. It also helps make your ecommerce store more user-friendly and convenient, improving customer satisfaction and retention.

Here are several core tips for enhancing your technical SEO for online business:

1. Create a well-organized website architecture. It should be simple and convenient. Every page must be within a maximum of three clicks away from the other pages. There must be relevant keywords to create user-friendly subdirectories.
2. Create short and static URLs for your pages. Use lowercase letters, separate words with hyphens, include your target keywords in URLs, and make sure they clearly describe the content on the page.
3. Create a winning internal linking strategy to boost your site's crawlability, boost user experience, and reduce bounce rate. Use internal links consistently and wisely to build an intuitive ecosystem within your site.
4. Continuously detect and remove duplicate content to avoid penalties from search engines and maintain a positive user experience. When adding new content or pages, make sure they are unique and stand apart from the rest of your content.
5. Optimize your site speed because over 50% of US shoppers call slow-loading pages the primary reason for abandoning a purchase. Optimize your visuals, remove unnecessary JavaScript, limit redirects, leverage HTTP caching, and use other tricks to improve the speed. Your benchmark for loading speed is 2.5 seconds or less.
6. Make your site mobile-friendly and responsive. Take a mobile-first approach, ensure that your design is responsive, optimize images, etc.

Bonus Tip: To maintain and improve your eCommerce store's search engine rankings, it's crucial to perform regular technical SEO audits. These audits help identify and rectify any emerging issues, from broken links and slow page speeds to crawl errors, ensuring your site remains optimized for both search engines and users.

Link Building for Online Business

A strong backlink portfolio is crucial for your online store to rank high in the SERPs. Yet, the benefits of link-building go way deeper:

• Increased visibility and traffic: The more qualitative links pointing back to your store from external resources, the more visible you become to your potential buyers, and respectively, the more traffic you can gain. Backlinks are also an important ranking factor for Google, so it impacts your rankings, too.
• Enhanced reputation: When reputable sources link your website and content, this gives your brand more credibility and helps build trust.
• Higher conversions: Enhanced traffic and a better brand reputation can give you a higher chance of converting visitors into actual buyers.

How do you build an effective backlink profile to make the most out of your SEO for online business? Start with the basics:

• Create share-worthy content;
• Engage in guest blogging;
• Create infographics and visual content that others will want to share;
• List your business in trusted review platforms and online directories;
• Reclaim lost backlinks;
• Establish partnerships;
• Leverage product reviews.

Bonus tip: Focus on influencer marketing. The State of Influencer Marketing 2023 report reveals that 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations. Moreover, 36% of brands claim that influencer content shows better performance than branded content. Hence, partnering with influencers who cover your target audience can help you gain even more trust, traffic, and potential conversions.

Measuring Success

Results tracking and analytics are the last crucial elements of search engine optimization. When collecting and analyzing data from your ecommerce SEO efforts, you can learn from your performance and detect weak spots that can be improved to push your online business forward.

To measure the success of SEO for online business effectively, you need to determine your focus performance metrics. Some key metrics include:

• Organic traffic;
• Keyword rankings;
• Click-through rate;
• Conversion rate;
• Bounce rate.

Track these and other metrics that align with your goals using handy tools, such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SE Ranking, and so on. These tools will bring you valuable insights and help you refine your strategy with less effort.

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Summary

As you now know, the value of SEO for online business is massive these days. Apart from making you more visible and delivering more traffic, search engine optimization helps you improve your site, create a better user experience, empower other marketing efforts, and gain plenty of other benefits. All in all, it’s an investment worth making if your goal is to scale your brand.

After reading this guide, you have all the data and tools you need to get on the right track. So don’t postpone success any longer, and start your exciting optimization journey ASAP!