Categories
Digital Transformation

Why is Local SEO Important for Brick-and-Mortar Stores?


Customers are dependent on search engines when they want to make a purchase decision. That’s why it’s essential for businesses to curate an effective SEO strategy whether they are brick and mortar stores having partial sales from ecommerce channels too. If you already have a physical location and a digital presence, your store can leverage the power of local SEO to increase visibility in your target area.


What is Local SEO?

Simply put, local SEO is an organic search engine optimization strategy where you drive local site traffic through search engines. When more local customers get to know about your business from search engines, your physical store’s sales automatically boost. Before analyzing the importance and benefits of local SEO, first let us see how local SEO differs from other search engine efforts.


How is Local SEO Different from Global SEO?

General or global SEO and local SEO are closely similar to each other. Ranking factors, on page SEO, off page SEO, technical SEO, indexing all of these things are same for the both of them.

There is just one difference between global SEO and local SEO. Local SEO efforts specifically focuses on targeting a specific location for generating revenue. In local SEO you drive traffic from a geographical area that is in close proximity to your brick and mortar store. Global SEO on the other hand reaches a nationwide or an international audience.


How is Local SEO Different from Paid Search?

Local SEO is when you get organic traffic from search engines, whereas in paid advertisements you have to the pay to the search engines every time a customer comes on your website. We don’t recommend paid search to brick and mortar stores as they can be costly, especially when you are just starting out.

Organic search results can take months before you start getting decent results. However, this is a strategy that pays huge dividends in the long-run.

5 Reasons Why Local SEO is Important for Brick And Mortar Stores

1. Local SEO gives you a competitive advantage in Google Search

Most businesses, especially big ones try to capture global leads. They invest in full-cycle digital marketing, and general SEO to increase their average order value.

As a store owner, this gives you a competitive advantage over other local businesses when you try to capture customers through local SEO.

If you can see in the image, the difficulty for global/general SEO keyword is 43, whilst for Houston’s local keyword it is 20. This shows it is easier to rank on the keyword and no matter a smaller group of leads, your business can still capture one solid lead.

Through local SEO, these customers can find your brick-and-mortarn a much more cost-effective way than digital marketing and SEO. Basic local SEO doesn’t rely on a hefty investment and a team of experts. It’s easy to set up local search presence and gets you results almost instantly.

2. Local Search Engine Optimization is cost-effective

Small businesses can serve a specific region without investing heavily in paid advertisements. For example, if you are running a small grocery shop near a housing complex, your audience will be much easier to target than an eCommerce store.

Local SEO for brick-and-mortar is also easier to manage because you don’t run into logistics and other issues which eCommerce shop owners make. So, this means you can get good profit margins with higher client retention rates.

3. Attract More Qualified Leads and Local Customers for your Local Business

You need to target the right buyers when you are running a brick and mortar store. Brick and mortar stores get a lot of foot traffic, but that doesn’t mean those customers will necessarily buy from your store. If you bring in qualified leads from search engine, then you’ll be saving both time and money for your business because these are the customers that first checked your local digital presence and then came to shop.

That’s where local SEO helps brick-and-mortar store owners. It brings in customers who are already interested in buying from your shop, unlike window shoppers. You can attract ready-to-convert leads that will bring in sales for your business, without the customer even stepping foot in your store.

Brick and mortar stores that are relatively new have a weaker cash flow than fully-established eCommerce stores. That’s why they should keep track of every penny they spend on business growth.

When new customer walks into your store, after finding your business online, you have a much higher chance of converting them.

4. Get More From Google My Business

Google My Business (GMB) is a goldmine for brick-and-mortar stores. In case you don’t know, Google My Business is one of the most used online directories that let you list your brick and mortar store on Google Maps and Google Searches free of cost. With GMB, customers can instantly find your store if you are in close range of their locality or neighborhood.

On GMBs, the customers can see each and everything about your brick and mortar store such as your business number, store timings, website, images, online reviews and much more relevant information.

According to statistics, most of the local searches made on smartphones are visited by the searcher within 24 hours. That’s how powerful GMB is for brick-and-mortar businesses.

5. Make the most out of timely local community searches

Big brands like Amazon and Walmart offer two-day shipping. This is a gap and you can capitalize on this by delivering the local orders right away, or even in a span of 4 to 5 hours. This is how you can still manage to grow through local community searches and compete against the giants in your niche.

Oftentimes, customers may need a thing or two right away instead of waiting for two days. It could be a last-minute gift for someone, or a new gadget they can’t wait to get their hands on.

Make sure you have an updated product catalog on your website, so customers can view which products are in stock. If they need something, they’ll give you a quick call for putting the product on hold for them, or simply drive to your store instantly for picking up the item. Either way, this impulsiveness will get you loads of sales.


 

Conclusion

Brick-and-mortar stores can’t ignore the importance of Local SEO for growing their business. An effective local SEO strategy can get you new foot visitors and quality shoppers for your brick-and-mortar store.

If you are also one of the retailers who needs assistance in setting up the local SEO initiatives, our experts can help. We are a full-service digital marketing company offering data-driven and result-oriented Local SEO services. Reach out to us today and top the SERPs in your neighborhood.


Categories
Digital Transformation

SEO for E-Commerce Websites: 23 Strategies for Boosting Online Sales

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

A lot of e-commerce store owners ignore metadata, and all the more so ever since Google has started replacing meta descriptions.

Meta titles and descriptions are the small piece of text your potential customers see on your search engine result pages before they click on your website. The meta title and description for your pages should be short and engaging, which motivates the user to click.\

More importantly, meta tags and meta descriptions are one of SEO-sensitive spots where you can use keywords. With this, add major attributes of your products, for example, size, color, and availability in the meta description to ensure you get relevant traffic.

5. Add Internal Links to Relevant Products, Categories, and Resources

Contrary to what many experts think, internal links within your website’s on-page SEO copy help boost sales. Relevant links throughout your on-page copy make customers browse your products for much longer, potentially enticing them to shop more from your store. However, you should be cautious of keyword stuffing and irrelevant links. Search sites view keyword overdoing and irrelevant links as a negative ranking factor that can also lead to a penalty on your ecommerce store.


Off Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

When you are doing ecommerce SEO, you need to make sure all the product photos, visual demos, thumbnails, and infographics are optimized with keywords. Create a 4-word description and add it in the Alt text of your image.

All your images should have the right dimensions. Apart from that, they should be in the correct category or subdirectory when you are uploading them. The images you’ll be using should either be 100% original, or royalty-free.

4. Create meta descriptions for search engines

A lot of e-commerce store owners ignore metadata, and all the more so ever since Google has started replacing meta descriptions.

Meta titles and descriptions are the small piece of text your potential customers see on your search engine result pages before they click on your website. The meta title and description for your pages should be short and engaging, which motivates the user to click.\

More importantly, meta tags and meta descriptions are one of SEO-sensitive spots where you can use keywords. With this, add major attributes of your products, for example, size, color, and availability in the meta description to ensure you get relevant traffic.

5. Add Internal Links to Relevant Products, Categories, and Resources

Contrary to what many experts think, internal links within your website’s on-page SEO copy help boost sales. Relevant links throughout your on-page copy make customers browse your products for much longer, potentially enticing them to shop more from your store. However, you should be cautious of keyword stuffing and irrelevant links. Search sites view keyword overdoing and irrelevant links as a negative ranking factor that can also lead to a penalty on your ecommerce store.


Off Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

Content is one of the most lucrative ways to engage your target audience. By creating and sharing quality content, you are adding value for your customers. This builds up your niche authority. Secondly, great content also helps you rank for keywords, increasing your online visibility.

Content marketing does not only attract potential customers but also helps build backlinks for your website. When you establish authority in your niche, other websites will link to you as a source. Search sites view this as a positive ranking factor, meaning you get higher rankings whenever a website links back to you.

We recommend considering another perspective on why should focus on content marketing. When you publish a mix of informative and transaction content, the target audience will come to your site for educational purposes. This will help you bring them to your sales funnel. Note that informative content has the power to influence purchase decisions.

3. Optimize images with keywords

When you are doing ecommerce SEO, you need to make sure all the product photos, visual demos, thumbnails, and infographics are optimized with keywords. Create a 4-word description and add it in the Alt text of your image.

All your images should have the right dimensions. Apart from that, they should be in the correct category or subdirectory when you are uploading them. The images you’ll be using should either be 100% original, or royalty-free.

4. Create meta descriptions for search engines

A lot of e-commerce store owners ignore metadata, and all the more so ever since Google has started replacing meta descriptions.

Meta titles and descriptions are the small piece of text your potential customers see on your search engine result pages before they click on your website. The meta title and description for your pages should be short and engaging, which motivates the user to click.\

More importantly, meta tags and meta descriptions are one of SEO-sensitive spots where you can use keywords. With this, add major attributes of your products, for example, size, color, and availability in the meta description to ensure you get relevant traffic.

5. Add Internal Links to Relevant Products, Categories, and Resources

Contrary to what many experts think, internal links within your website’s on-page SEO copy help boost sales. Relevant links throughout your on-page copy make customers browse your products for much longer, potentially enticing them to shop more from your store. However, you should be cautious of keyword stuffing and irrelevant links. Search sites view keyword overdoing and irrelevant links as a negative ranking factor that can also lead to a penalty on your ecommerce store.


Off Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

Keyword research is one of the most important steps in any SEO strategy. Simply put, keywords are the phrases your target customers type when they are using search engines, sites like Google and Bing. If you create content around these keywords, your brand will come up in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

We recommend creating product pages and listings around these relevant seed keywords and naturally using LSI (related) keywords in the content.

There are many free and premium SEO tools available for this task. If you want free options, consider using Google Trends, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.

Premium tools include Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz. These will give you more thorough and detailed insights on industry-specific keywords, with statistics like monthly volume and competition.

2. Use content marketing with SEO

Content is one of the most lucrative ways to engage your target audience. By creating and sharing quality content, you are adding value for your customers. This builds up your niche authority. Secondly, great content also helps you rank for keywords, increasing your online visibility.

Content marketing does not only attract potential customers but also helps build backlinks for your website. When you establish authority in your niche, other websites will link to you as a source. Search sites view this as a positive ranking factor, meaning you get higher rankings whenever a website links back to you.

We recommend considering another perspective on why should focus on content marketing. When you publish a mix of informative and transaction content, the target audience will come to your site for educational purposes. This will help you bring them to your sales funnel. Note that informative content has the power to influence purchase decisions.

3. Optimize images with keywords

When you are doing ecommerce SEO, you need to make sure all the product photos, visual demos, thumbnails, and infographics are optimized with keywords. Create a 4-word description and add it in the Alt text of your image.

All your images should have the right dimensions. Apart from that, they should be in the correct category or subdirectory when you are uploading them. The images you’ll be using should either be 100% original, or royalty-free.

4. Create meta descriptions for search engines

A lot of e-commerce store owners ignore metadata, and all the more so ever since Google has started replacing meta descriptions.

Meta titles and descriptions are the small piece of text your potential customers see on your search engine result pages before they click on your website. The meta title and description for your pages should be short and engaging, which motivates the user to click.\

More importantly, meta tags and meta descriptions are one of SEO-sensitive spots where you can use keywords. With this, add major attributes of your products, for example, size, color, and availability in the meta description to ensure you get relevant traffic.

5. Add Internal Links to Relevant Products, Categories, and Resources

Contrary to what many experts think, internal links within your website’s on-page SEO copy help boost sales. Relevant links throughout your on-page copy make customers browse your products for much longer, potentially enticing them to shop more from your store. However, you should be cautious of keyword stuffing and irrelevant links. Search sites view keyword overdoing and irrelevant links as a negative ranking factor that can also lead to a penalty on your ecommerce store.


Off Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

1. Perform strong ecommerce keyword research

Keyword research is one of the most important steps in any SEO strategy. Simply put, keywords are the phrases your target customers type when they are using search engines, sites like Google and Bing. If you create content around these keywords, your brand will come up in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

We recommend creating product pages and listings around these relevant seed keywords and naturally using LSI (related) keywords in the content.

There are many free and premium SEO tools available for this task. If you want free options, consider using Google Trends, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.

Premium tools include Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz. These will give you more thorough and detailed insights on industry-specific keywords, with statistics like monthly volume and competition.

2. Use content marketing with SEO

Content is one of the most lucrative ways to engage your target audience. By creating and sharing quality content, you are adding value for your customers. This builds up your niche authority. Secondly, great content also helps you rank for keywords, increasing your online visibility.

Content marketing does not only attract potential customers but also helps build backlinks for your website. When you establish authority in your niche, other websites will link to you as a source. Search sites view this as a positive ranking factor, meaning you get higher rankings whenever a website links back to you.

We recommend considering another perspective on why should focus on content marketing. When you publish a mix of informative and transaction content, the target audience will come to your site for educational purposes. This will help you bring them to your sales funnel. Note that informative content has the power to influence purchase decisions.

3. Optimize images with keywords

When you are doing ecommerce SEO, you need to make sure all the product photos, visual demos, thumbnails, and infographics are optimized with keywords. Create a 4-word description and add it in the Alt text of your image.

All your images should have the right dimensions. Apart from that, they should be in the correct category or subdirectory when you are uploading them. The images you’ll be using should either be 100% original, or royalty-free.

4. Create meta descriptions for search engines

A lot of e-commerce store owners ignore metadata, and all the more so ever since Google has started replacing meta descriptions.

Meta titles and descriptions are the small piece of text your potential customers see on your search engine result pages before they click on your website. The meta title and description for your pages should be short and engaging, which motivates the user to click.\

More importantly, meta tags and meta descriptions are one of SEO-sensitive spots where you can use keywords. With this, add major attributes of your products, for example, size, color, and availability in the meta description to ensure you get relevant traffic.

5. Add Internal Links to Relevant Products, Categories, and Resources

Contrary to what many experts think, internal links within your website’s on-page SEO copy help boost sales. Relevant links throughout your on-page copy make customers browse your products for much longer, potentially enticing them to shop more from your store. However, you should be cautious of keyword stuffing and irrelevant links. Search sites view keyword overdoing and irrelevant links as a negative ranking factor that can also lead to a penalty on your ecommerce store.


Off Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!


Through Ecommerce SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you can rack in more sales for your retail and wholesale brands, by making your product or service visible to millions of customers on search engine platforms.

Paid ads are also an option when you want to get new customers for your brand. However, paid ads are expensive to run and they only bring in leads as long as you are spending. SEO, in comparison is a long shot and sets stores on autopilot after decent organic efforts. That’s why we recommend online sellers optimize their online stores for paid as well as organic rankings.

Ecommerce SEO is comprehensive and requires thorough planning. It covers a huge spectrum of optimization techniques, e.g. adding keywords to your online store’s headlines, product descriptions, meta descriptions, meta titles, external and internal linking, etc. Read on to explore as we uncover 23 strategies for boosting ecommerce SEO.


Why SEO For Ecommerce Matters

When consumers are looking for a product or service, they’ll most probably perform a quick Google or Bing search query. They will look for specifications, reviews, prices, or other information related to the product or service you are selling.

If your digital store isn’t visible when they perform a relevant search query, then you can lose hot leads from potential customers. The question here is, “Do your products (and website) pop up when your ideal target audience searches for products like yours?”

The answer to this question lies in the visibility of your website – how well it makes to the top of the search engine result pages when a query is typed. That’s exactly where Search Engine Optimization comes in.

Ecommerce SEO bridges the gap between your brand and your target audience without paying for expensive ads. Once new customers start coming to your online store, you can scale the business much more effectively.

In this guide, we have divided the 23 e commerce SEO strategies into 4 broad categories: on-page, off-page, technical and local SEO.


On-Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

1. Perform strong ecommerce keyword research

Keyword research is one of the most important steps in any SEO strategy. Simply put, keywords are the phrases your target customers type when they are using search engines, sites like Google and Bing. If you create content around these keywords, your brand will come up in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

We recommend creating product pages and listings around these relevant seed keywords and naturally using LSI (related) keywords in the content.

There are many free and premium SEO tools available for this task. If you want free options, consider using Google Trends, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console.

Premium tools include Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz. These will give you more thorough and detailed insights on industry-specific keywords, with statistics like monthly volume and competition.

2. Use content marketing with SEO

Content is one of the most lucrative ways to engage your target audience. By creating and sharing quality content, you are adding value for your customers. This builds up your niche authority. Secondly, great content also helps you rank for keywords, increasing your online visibility.

Content marketing does not only attract potential customers but also helps build backlinks for your website. When you establish authority in your niche, other websites will link to you as a source. Search sites view this as a positive ranking factor, meaning you get higher rankings whenever a website links back to you.

We recommend considering another perspective on why should focus on content marketing. When you publish a mix of informative and transaction content, the target audience will come to your site for educational purposes. This will help you bring them to your sales funnel. Note that informative content has the power to influence purchase decisions.

3. Optimize images with keywords

When you are doing ecommerce SEO, you need to make sure all the product photos, visual demos, thumbnails, and infographics are optimized with keywords. Create a 4-word description and add it in the Alt text of your image.

All your images should have the right dimensions. Apart from that, they should be in the correct category or subdirectory when you are uploading them. The images you’ll be using should either be 100% original, or royalty-free.

4. Create meta descriptions for search engines

A lot of e-commerce store owners ignore metadata, and all the more so ever since Google has started replacing meta descriptions.

Meta titles and descriptions are the small piece of text your potential customers see on your search engine result pages before they click on your website. The meta title and description for your pages should be short and engaging, which motivates the user to click.\

More importantly, meta tags and meta descriptions are one of SEO-sensitive spots where you can use keywords. With this, add major attributes of your products, for example, size, color, and availability in the meta description to ensure you get relevant traffic.

5. Add Internal Links to Relevant Products, Categories, and Resources

Contrary to what many experts think, internal links within your website’s on-page SEO copy help boost sales. Relevant links throughout your on-page copy make customers browse your products for much longer, potentially enticing them to shop more from your store. However, you should be cautious of keyword stuffing and irrelevant links. Search sites view keyword overdoing and irrelevant links as a negative ranking factor that can also lead to a penalty on your ecommerce store.


Off Page SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

6. Link building for ecommerce product pages

Backlinks are the core of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks and brand mentions build your website’s authority in search site rankings. Search engines give huge leverage to websites that have strong backlink profiles. There are two ways you can build links:

Natural link building

When you post valuable, informative content for your customers, other websites start linking back to your site as a source. This is known as natural link-building.

In addition to natural link earning, guest blogging is another popular way to get a strong link and brand mention for your website.

Black hat link building

Black hat link-building means exploiting loopholes in the search system for higher rankings. These links can damage and blacklist your website’s reputation.

7.Drive social signals for more traffic

Social media has the potential to skyrocket your e-commerce store’s sales overnight. Creating a social media presence with quality content goes a long way especially when when you are a new business owner.

When customers find your content valuable they’ll share that content, growing your brand in the process. Same way, when users find something valuable on your social media, they get curious to check the website/online store and end up making a purchase – or at least, add the products in their wishlist.

8. Newsletters of your ecommerce site

Customers love when brands reach out to them personally. When you send them content they find interesting, they are more likely to try out your product or service.

Creating a newsletter that engages your target audience, with a few links of your ecommerce store, can be a great organic traffic source for your brand.

9. Influencer Campaigns

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have created a completely new marketing strategy that is influencer marketing.

c Partnering with these influencers can help forward the narrative of your products and increase your audience. When an influencer promotes a product/service on their social media accounts, customers see it as credible. You get traffic and ultimately leads and conversion.


Technical SEO Strategies For Ecommerce

10. Optimize your site’s architecture

Before you start your online website, you should invest some time in creating a solid architecture for your site.

When search site crawlers go through your ecommerce website, the architecture of your website plays a pivotal role. If your website’s site structure is out of place then the crawlers will find it difficult to index all your web pages.

11. Consider using 301 redirects

301 redirects are a simple way of redirecting traffic from one page to another page of your website through a code at the backend.

These redirects are an ideal way to retain traffic and decrease bounce rate when you are rebuilding product pages, revamping your online store and improving your site’s architecture while deleting redundant or out-of-stock products.

Here is the code for 301 redirections:

Redirect 301/old-url.html/new-url.html

12. Prioritize page speed for user experience

Speed is another important ranking factor and Google loves websites that load faster than milliseconds.

With so much competition in the ecommerce industry, your website should deliver content as quickly as possible to search engines and users, that too without any errors or delays.

No matter how good your product or service is, customers won’t wait for more than a few milliseconds on a web page.

13. Implement schema markup for product and category page

Schema markup is a way to index your web pages faster. It provides search site crawlers with information about the content of your site without having to crawl each page individually through Google search console.

For eCommerce stores, you should use the ‘product’ markup and ‘reviews’ markup. For product and category pages, make sure that it has all information related to your product, such as size variations, material, and more.

14. Use canonical tags

When you are running an ecommerce store with a large product catalogue or category pages, those products are accessible from different categories. That’s why you’ll find the same piece of content on different URLs throughout your ecommerce website.

This can lead to a search site’s duplicate content issue on your store website. Canonical tags are an HTML element that indicates search site crawlers whose URL should be shown in the search results.

15. Use XML sitemap

Similar to schema markup, a sitemap is a file on your website’s backend with all the information about the photos, videos, or other files on your website. The only significant difference between a sitemap and schema markup is that sitemap prioritizes which web page crawlers should index first.

A lot of newbies and even experts underrate how crucial sitemaps are for your website. When you tell search sites which pages are the most important, it starts to move readers onto those specific pages first – getting an abundance of traffic for your e-commerce business.

16. Optimize your website for mobile users

You need to optimize your website for all kinds of devices, especially smartphones and tablets. You may start getting website traffic, but if the website isn’t optimized, the content would be difficult to scan, increasing your website’s bounce rate.

Make sure that all the visual and textual content doesn’t shift places when your website is viewed on smartphones and tablets. The text size should also be readable at all times for any device.

17. Use breadcrumb navigation

Breadcrumb navigation ensures that a visitor navigates through your website seamlessly. E-commerce sites normally have huge product pages on their e-commerce store, so customers need a proper navigation process to help them find what they need.

c

18. Claim your Google My Business listing

Google My Business is Google’s own free tool that assists local business owners in getting brand visibility on Google listings. For example, when you type in “Plumbers in Houston” on Google Search and Google Maps. The results you see with a business name, name, location, reviews etc., are Google My Business listings.

All you need to do for Google My Business listings is to create a free account and add all of the relevant information about your business, such as contact info, photos, location, hours etc.

19. Claim your listing in other major directories

Google My Business is still an effective SEO strategy, but not as effective as it used to be a few years back. But Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and now focuses more on other ranking factors. However, you can still leverage the potential of other online directories. List your business on directories that apply specifically to your industry.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce directories. We recommend going for the one that best suits your target audience and the industry you serve.

  • Bing Places
  • Yelp
  • TripAdvisor
  • Apple Maps
  • Trustpilot

It’s also important that all of your business information is accurate across every single listing. Secondly, if anything changes, make sure to update the changes on all of your directory listings.

20. Focus on reviews

Focus on reviews Search engines take customers’ feedback as an indication of how good your product/service is. Customer reviews go well beyond local SEO because reviews help customers make a purchase decision almost instantly.

Now the question comes up, how can you get customer reviews? We recommend asking your existing and past customers for honest feedback on your product/service rather than paying someone for a review. Search engines will eventually figure out your scheme, and you’ll get a negative brand reputation.

You can simply ask your customers for a genuine review through an email link after they purchase your product or send a review request in the customer’s product packaging.

As a foundation start with Google reviews and then gradually expand to other local directories like Yelp and TripAdvisor. Also, reply to those customer reviews in a professional and friendly manner for long-term business growth.

21. Generate local links

When a credible source talks about your business on their website, search engines see this as a sign of credibility. Quality backlinks are crucial, no matter what kind of business you are in.

However, there is a difference between local SEO backlinking and general backlinking. In local SEO, instead of getting links from general websites, you look for backlinks in your own specific area.

Here are a few ways you can get those local backlinks:

  • Writing a guest post on a local business website.
  • Getting mentions in local events.
  • Listing in city pages or country directories.

With a quick search query, you’ll find loads of authoritative business websites in your targeted area. If you are reaching out to local influencers, make sure to do it in a way that is beneficial for both of you. For example, you write a blog post for their readers instead of just expecting a favor.

22. Optimize Your Website for Local Keyword Ideas

When you are doing local SEO, you need to take a different approach to keyword research. In local SEO, you should target long tail keywords that are location specific, like ‘Plumbers in New York’ or ‘Chefs in LA.’

Targeting these keywords in your website content and metadata increases your chances of appearing in local search results.

23. Create location pages

If your ecommerce store has multiple locations, then it’s always recommended to have a separate web page for each location.

For example yoursite.com/atlanta-cement-company

When you have a separate page for each location, you add your business information that is specific to your targeted area. Information such as an address, business hours, contact number, and customer testimonials for local customers should all be visible on your location pages.

URL, title tags, meta descriptions, and headers all of these should also include your targeted local keywords.


Wrapping up the ecommerce SEO

On-page, off page, local and technical SEO, all contribute to the success of ecommerce websites. All in all, ecommerce websites need an effective and actionable SEO strategy for their long-term sustainable growth. If you are DIYing the SEO of your product and category pages, these 23 tips will significantly boost your results. If you need more information on how you can make these tips work for your brand, book a call and we’ll take it from there!

Categories
Digital Transformation

Content Creation and Optimization for SEO Success


Content optimization plays a paramount role in your SEO success. However, content optimization isn’t just limited to search engines. You should optimise your content for both search engines and humans. When you create content for humans, it automatically becomes search-engine-friendly. On the other hand, when you create content only for search engines, your web page may generate organic traffic, but the customer conversion rate would not be satisfying.

Read on to explore why content optimization is important and top 6 strategies you can implement today to ace your overall SEO efforts via content marketing.


Why Is Optimising Content So Important?

Simply put, content optimization is a strategy to ensure your content has the best possible chances of achieving your intended goal. That goal can be getting new customers for your business, or creating brand loyalty for existing customers.

Content optimization is a broad topic, and there are lots of things you need to understand for getting your desired results. It isn’t just about writing great content that stays in the website, or performing technical tasks for bulk content distribution without persuading action: but rather giving your target customers what they really want – in short, meeting search intent and adding value. But you can only meet search intent and add value when you have the right search query data and when your content gets to the top of Google search – this is content optimization and it’s a cyclical process.


Why Is Content Optimization Important For Search Engine Optimization?

Let’s assume you’ve written a great value-adding content piece for your customers that’s related to your product or service. You want that content piece to go viral. A few weeks after publishing the content, you notice that nobody is reading your content piece. The piece is sitting somewhere in the corner of search engines. What’s the reason behind that? Here are a couple of key pointers you might have missed:

  • You didn’t perform keyword research before publishing your content
  • You didn’t add any real value for the readers
  • The content structure is out of place, which means search engine crawlers have a hard time understanding your content.
  • Your title tag and meta descriptions don’t reflect what your content piece is about.

All of these elements matter when you want your content to appear and convert in search engines. If search engines can’t find your content, it doesn’t matter how good the content is. Secondly, if you are pitching your content to the wrong audience, your content piece won’t convert.

To help you avoid this, we have compiled a list of content creation and optimization techniques to boost your SEO efforts.


Content Creation Strategies

1. Target Informational Keywords in Blog Posts

Keywords are the nucleus of your content strategy. Keywords are what make your content visible to search engines and your target audience. The better the keywords, the more engagement your content would get.

There are essentially two types of keywords: primary keywords and secondary keywords. Primary keywords tell search engine crawlers and your audience what your content piece is all about. While secondary keywords focus on the subtopics related to your primary keywords to get better rankings.

When writing a content piece, make sure to add your primary keyword in the following SEO-sensitive spots:

  • title
  • first introductory paragraph of your content
  • meta tags and meta descriptions
  • Alt Text of your content’s images
  • Whereas secondary keywords are relevant keywords included in your content body and subheaders.

2. Headers And Sub Headers In Blog Posts

Headers and subheaders are critical for content optimization and SEO. An H1 header is the title of your content piece and provides context to search engines and readers. An H1 header should always include your primary keyword because as we mentioned earlier primary keywords help get visibility for your content piece.

Sub Leaders are more like the subtopics for your content. For example, if your content H1, the first heading is ‘Top 10 Nike Shoes’, your subheaders can be Nike Air Force 1 and Nike Air Jordan Retro. Make sure you include relevant and right search engine keywords in your sub-headers.

3. Creating Content That Provides Value

A good quality content strategy is to find the pain points of your target audience and how your piece can help them overcome them. When you publish content with the right search intent in mind, your piece slowly starts to get traction on the internet.

The other way to gain traction on the internet is to create a pillar article and link other relevant content in that blog post.

4. Meta Descriptions That Increase CTR In Search Engine Results Pages

When you perform a search query, you must have seen a small description beneath the title and the URL. That small description is known as meta description. Search engines also often times create search results snippets for your websites. These small snippets are also a kind of meta description that provide further information about your content piece.

Even though meta descriptions don’t influence search engine rankings, they still have a huge impact on the click-through rate of your content. A good meta description lures users to click on the link. And obviously, the more users click on your link, the more leads and traffic your webpage generates.

5. Desktop And Mobile Speed

When most people optimise their content, desktop and mobile speed is the last thing they consider. However, it’s something that can make or break your content marketing efforts. When writing content, you need to ensure that the content piece is easily readable from both desktops and smartphones.

With so much content out there, customers don’t want to wait for seconds when they looking for something. Search engines know that, and that’s why they see it as a negative ranking factor when web pages don’t have the optimal site speed.

6. Audit, Analyze, And Update Your Content Regularly

Content optimization is a long-term strategy. You can’t just publish your content and leave it there for eternity. Great content marketing is constantly auditing and analysing your existing content along with publishing new pieces.

You need to gather critical data through Google Search Console, such as audience location, age demographics, interests, and other key metrics. You also need to monitor your SERP rankings constantly and then tweak your content marketing strategy accordingly.


Conclusion

Content creation and optimization can be a deciding factor in your SEO strategy’s success and failure. Great content is all about adding value to your readers, content that brings your ideal target audience to your website again and again and establishes your niche leadership.

Want to create content that’s optimised for humans and search engines, or already have content that needs a push on Google? Get in touch and we’ll help you create robust distribution channels for your highly valuable content.

Categories
Digital Transformation

Link Building for Local SEO: Tips and Best Practices

What Are Examples Of Local Link Building?

When a customer performs a local search query such as ‘Houston law attorneys.’ search engine algorithms will rely on ranking factors like backlinks to generate results related to that query. Local links assist the search sites in understanding which product/service is the most trustworthy within that specific location in our example Houston.

These local links can come from all sorts of places, like individuals, trade unions, businesses, and more. Local links from your customer’s geographical location are crucial for small businesses that are just starting out.


Local Business Listings Links

Here are some query combinations you should try when reaching out for local links:

  • [neighborhood] business listings
  • [neighborhood] business directory
  • [neighborhood] directory
  • [product/service type keyword] business listings [neighborhood]
  • [product/service keyword] business directory [neighborhood]
  • [product/service type keyword] directory [neighborhood]

For trade organizations:

  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] alliance
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] association
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] council
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] society

You can also find more related search query combinations on Google and Bing.


Best Tips And Practices And Local SEO Link Building

1. Get Listed In Local Business Directories

Local directories and industry-specific directories are a cost effective way to get quality backlinks for your business. Google My Business, and Yelp are some of the directories where you can list all of your business information completely free of cost.

There are some directories where you’ll have to pay a small number of fees, but the links those directories give are much more valuable in the long run. We recommend listing your business on websites that are specific to your industry and the local area where you operate.

2. Leverage The Potential Of Social Media

Most local businesses need to pay more attention to the potential of social media for local SEO link building. Social media signals don’t heavily impact your website’s authority or local search results. However, they are also free of cost and can generate a decent amount of traction for your business.

Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are just some of the social media platforms where you can promote your business depending on your industry and target audience. Other businesses and websites can also reach out to you through these social platforms for a link exchange collaboration which is also an effective local link building strategy for giving your local SEO efforts a boost.

3. Get Featured On Local News Sites

Local newspapers sites, and forums can also add a quality backlink to your link profile. Local communities use these local sites and forums to stay in touch with the local community around them. Getting a link from them would show search sites where you run a business in that specific local community.

You can find these news sites and forums using a quick search query like ‘Local news Houston or ‘Downtown Houston forums.’ You can also submit a press release to these platforms requesting to promote your business or collaborate for a local event.

4. Work With Local Bloggers Or Influencers For Local Link Building Opportunities

Local influencers are people who are famous in a community and have a local following. You can seek collaboration opportunities with these influencers by submitting a guest post on their local blogs or asking for a small shout-out to your business.

There can even be a trade offer where you review each other’s products or services for a quality link exchange. Lastly, these partnerships can also help your business become visible to a wider audience.

5. Pursue Sponsorships With Other Local Organizations and Brands

Reach out to brands that are not your direct competitors to obtain a local backlink and increase your brand awareness. For example, if you are selling surfboards to a local community, you can reach out to a brand in your local area selling beach apparel. When their customers start following your brands through those relevant local websites, your search engine rankings start to grow organically.


Conclusion – Local Link Building Strategies

Local links build your authority in search engines. When other credible websites add your link to their websites, search engines see that as a sign of trustworthiness. However, not all backlinks are created equal. That’s why, you should get links from websites and referring domains that have a high domain authority.

If you still want to know more about how local SEO and local linking can grow your business, reach out to us today for a quick consultation call and figure out great ranking insights with our local SEO experts.

What Are Examples Of Local Link Building?

When a customer performs a local search query such as ‘Houston law attorneys.’ search engine algorithms will rely on ranking factors like backlinks to generate results related to that query. Local links assist the search sites in understanding which product/service is the most trustworthy within that specific location in our example Houston.

These local links can come from all sorts of places, like individuals, trade unions, businesses, and more. Local links from your customer’s geographical location are crucial for small businesses that are just starting out.


Local Business Listings Links

Here are some query combinations you should try when reaching out for local links:

  • [neighborhood] business listings
  • [neighborhood] business directory
  • [neighborhood] directory
  • [product/service type keyword] business listings [neighborhood]
  • [product/service keyword] business directory [neighborhood]
  • [product/service type keyword] directory [neighborhood]

For trade organizations:

  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] alliance
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] association
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] council
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] society

You can also find more related search query combinations on Google and Bing.


Best Tips And Practices And Local SEO Link Building

1. Get Listed In Local Business Directories

Local directories and industry-specific directories are a cost effective way to get quality backlinks for your business. Google My Business, and Yelp are some of the directories where you can list all of your business information completely free of cost.

There are some directories where you’ll have to pay a small number of fees, but the links those directories give are much more valuable in the long run. We recommend listing your business on websites that are specific to your industry and the local area where you operate.

2. Leverage The Potential Of Social Media

Most local businesses need to pay more attention to the potential of social media for local SEO link building. Social media signals don’t heavily impact your website’s authority or local search results. However, they are also free of cost and can generate a decent amount of traction for your business.

Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are just some of the social media platforms where you can promote your business depending on your industry and target audience. Other businesses and websites can also reach out to you through these social platforms for a link exchange collaboration which is also an effective local link building strategy for giving your local SEO efforts a boost.

3. Get Featured On Local News Sites

Local newspapers sites, and forums can also add a quality backlink to your link profile. Local communities use these local sites and forums to stay in touch with the local community around them. Getting a link from them would show search sites where you run a business in that specific local community.

You can find these news sites and forums using a quick search query like ‘Local news Houston or ‘Downtown Houston forums.’ You can also submit a press release to these platforms requesting to promote your business or collaborate for a local event.

4. Work With Local Bloggers Or Influencers For Local Link Building Opportunities

Local influencers are people who are famous in a community and have a local following. You can seek collaboration opportunities with these influencers by submitting a guest post on their local blogs or asking for a small shout-out to your business.

There can even be a trade offer where you review each other’s products or services for a quality link exchange. Lastly, these partnerships can also help your business become visible to a wider audience.

5. Pursue Sponsorships With Other Local Organizations and Brands

Reach out to brands that are not your direct competitors to obtain a local backlink and increase your brand awareness. For example, if you are selling surfboards to a local community, you can reach out to a brand in your local area selling beach apparel. When their customers start following your brands through those relevant local websites, your search engine rankings start to grow organically.


Conclusion – Local Link Building Strategies

Local links build your authority in search engines. When other credible websites add your link to their websites, search engines see that as a sign of trustworthiness. However, not all backlinks are created equal. That’s why, you should get links from websites and referring domains that have a high domain authority.

If you still want to know more about how local SEO and local linking can grow your business, reach out to us today for a quick consultation call and figure out great ranking insights with our local SEO experts.

Local link building efforts are an essential part of any local SEO strategy. You want to get locally relevant links to help Google and others understand that you are a part of the local community.


What Are Examples Of Local Link Building?

When a customer performs a local search query such as ‘Houston law attorneys.’ search engine algorithms will rely on ranking factors like backlinks to generate results related to that query. Local links assist the search sites in understanding which product/service is the most trustworthy within that specific location in our example Houston.

These local links can come from all sorts of places, like individuals, trade unions, businesses, and more. Local links from your customer’s geographical location are crucial for small businesses that are just starting out.


Local Business Listings Links

Here are some query combinations you should try when reaching out for local links:

  • [neighborhood] business listings
  • [neighborhood] business directory
  • [neighborhood] directory
  • [product/service type keyword] business listings [neighborhood]
  • [product/service keyword] business directory [neighborhood]
  • [product/service type keyword] directory [neighborhood]

For trade organizations:

  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] alliance
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] association
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] council
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] society

You can also find more related search query combinations on Google and Bing.


Best Tips And Practices And Local SEO Link Building

1. Get Listed In Local Business Directories

Local directories and industry-specific directories are a cost effective way to get quality backlinks for your business. Google My Business, and Yelp are some of the directories where you can list all of your business information completely free of cost.

There are some directories where you’ll have to pay a small number of fees, but the links those directories give are much more valuable in the long run. We recommend listing your business on websites that are specific to your industry and the local area where you operate.

2. Leverage The Potential Of Social Media

Most local businesses need to pay more attention to the potential of social media for local SEO link building. Social media signals don’t heavily impact your website’s authority or local search results. However, they are also free of cost and can generate a decent amount of traction for your business.

Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are just some of the social media platforms where you can promote your business depending on your industry and target audience. Other businesses and websites can also reach out to you through these social platforms for a link exchange collaboration which is also an effective local link building strategy for giving your local SEO efforts a boost.

3. Get Featured On Local News Sites

Local newspapers sites, and forums can also add a quality backlink to your link profile. Local communities use these local sites and forums to stay in touch with the local community around them. Getting a link from them would show search sites where you run a business in that specific local community.

You can find these news sites and forums using a quick search query like ‘Local news Houston or ‘Downtown Houston forums.’ You can also submit a press release to these platforms requesting to promote your business or collaborate for a local event.

4. Work With Local Bloggers Or Influencers For Local Link Building Opportunities

Local influencers are people who are famous in a community and have a local following. You can seek collaboration opportunities with these influencers by submitting a guest post on their local blogs or asking for a small shout-out to your business.

There can even be a trade offer where you review each other’s products or services for a quality link exchange. Lastly, these partnerships can also help your business become visible to a wider audience.

5. Pursue Sponsorships With Other Local Organizations and Brands

Reach out to brands that are not your direct competitors to obtain a local backlink and increase your brand awareness. For example, if you are selling surfboards to a local community, you can reach out to a brand in your local area selling beach apparel. When their customers start following your brands through those relevant local websites, your search engine rankings start to grow organically.


Conclusion – Local Link Building Strategies

Local links build your authority in search engines. When other credible websites add your link to their websites, search engines see that as a sign of trustworthiness. However, not all backlinks are created equal. That’s why, you should get links from websites and referring domains that have a high domain authority.

If you still want to know more about how local SEO and local linking can grow your business, reach out to us today for a quick consultation call and figure out great ranking insights with our local SEO experts.


Search engines value trustworthy websites. They gauge that trustworthiness through multiple ranking factors. One of those ranking factors is link building. When credible sources are linking back to the same source, search engines start giving those websites a huge search engine ranking push.

Local link building is a lot like global link building. There are just a few differences that we will discuss later in detail. For now, the most distinguished difference between both of them is that global SEO caters to a nationwide or international link-building approach, whereas local SEO link-building focuses more on getting links from a specific local community.


What Are Backlinks?

Backlinking or link building is an SEO strategy where you reach out to other credible sources to get a quality link back to your website through an external piece of content.

This adds credibility and authority to your website because other credible sources are talking about your business on their websites. It’s a way of them telling search engines ‘We found this content valuable and wanted to link our content to them as a source’ The more high quality links you get, the better search rankings your web pages get.


What is Local Link Building?

Local link building efforts are an essential part of any local SEO strategy. You want to get locally relevant links to help Google and others understand that you are a part of the local community.


What Are Examples Of Local Link Building?

When a customer performs a local search query such as ‘Houston law attorneys.’ search engine algorithms will rely on ranking factors like backlinks to generate results related to that query. Local links assist the search sites in understanding which product/service is the most trustworthy within that specific location in our example Houston.

These local links can come from all sorts of places, like individuals, trade unions, businesses, and more. Local links from your customer’s geographical location are crucial for small businesses that are just starting out.


Local Business Listings Links

Here are some query combinations you should try when reaching out for local links:

  • [neighborhood] business listings
  • [neighborhood] business directory
  • [neighborhood] directory
  • [product/service type keyword] business listings [neighborhood]
  • [product/service keyword] business directory [neighborhood]
  • [product/service type keyword] directory [neighborhood]

For trade organizations:

  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] alliance
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] association
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] council
  • [neighborhood] [product/service type keyword] society

You can also find more related search query combinations on Google and Bing.


Best Tips And Practices And Local SEO Link Building

1. Get Listed In Local Business Directories

Local directories and industry-specific directories are a cost effective way to get quality backlinks for your business. Google My Business, and Yelp are some of the directories where you can list all of your business information completely free of cost.

There are some directories where you’ll have to pay a small number of fees, but the links those directories give are much more valuable in the long run. We recommend listing your business on websites that are specific to your industry and the local area where you operate.

2. Leverage The Potential Of Social Media

Most local businesses need to pay more attention to the potential of social media for local SEO link building. Social media signals don’t heavily impact your website’s authority or local search results. However, they are also free of cost and can generate a decent amount of traction for your business.

Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn are just some of the social media platforms where you can promote your business depending on your industry and target audience. Other businesses and websites can also reach out to you through these social platforms for a link exchange collaboration which is also an effective local link building strategy for giving your local SEO efforts a boost.

3. Get Featured On Local News Sites

Local newspapers sites, and forums can also add a quality backlink to your link profile. Local communities use these local sites and forums to stay in touch with the local community around them. Getting a link from them would show search sites where you run a business in that specific local community.

You can find these news sites and forums using a quick search query like ‘Local news Houston or ‘Downtown Houston forums.’ You can also submit a press release to these platforms requesting to promote your business or collaborate for a local event.

4. Work With Local Bloggers Or Influencers For Local Link Building Opportunities

Local influencers are people who are famous in a community and have a local following. You can seek collaboration opportunities with these influencers by submitting a guest post on their local blogs or asking for a small shout-out to your business.

There can even be a trade offer where you review each other’s products or services for a quality link exchange. Lastly, these partnerships can also help your business become visible to a wider audience.

5. Pursue Sponsorships With Other Local Organizations and Brands

Reach out to brands that are not your direct competitors to obtain a local backlink and increase your brand awareness. For example, if you are selling surfboards to a local community, you can reach out to a brand in your local area selling beach apparel. When their customers start following your brands through those relevant local websites, your search engine rankings start to grow organically.


Conclusion – Local Link Building Strategies

Local links build your authority in search engines. When other credible websites add your link to their websites, search engines see that as a sign of trustworthiness. However, not all backlinks are created equal. That’s why, you should get links from websites and referring domains that have a high domain authority.

If you still want to know more about how local SEO and local linking can grow your business, reach out to us today for a quick consultation call and figure out great ranking insights with our local SEO experts.

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Digital Transformation

Keyword Research and Analysis for Effective SEO


Keyword Research and Analysis for Effective SEO

Keyword research provides valuable insights into the queries the customers are searching for in search engines like Google and Bing. The insights you get from thorough keyword analysis play a crucial role in your content strategy, as well as your overall digital marketing strategy.


Benefits Of Keyword Research And Analysis For Effective SEO

keyword research is more than scrapping some phrase suggestions and extracting excel reports with a list of guesswork. Keyword research is a key SEO and content marketing KPI and several metrics go into the analysis part, search volume, keyword difficulty, SERP positions, traffic potential and intent to count a few. Here are top 3 benefits of in-depth keyword research:

1. Understanding of market trends

Keyword research gives an in-depth look into current market trends. When you have a bird’s eye view of what’s already trending in the industry, you can find topics and keywords that your target audience is in search of.

2. Traffic growth

Keyword research is your number one resource for getting organic traffic through SEO. When you find the best-fitting keywords for your content marketing strategy, you get higher search engine rankings gradually – and higher rankings obviously mean more organic traffic for your website.

3. Customer Acquisition

Keyword research and analysis also fit into the customer’s buying journey. When your content is found by other professionals, you can provide them with a call to action that will lead them all the way from the awareness stage at the top of the funnel to making a purchase.


Keywords vs. Topics

SEO is a highly dynamic digital marketing domain and Google has always been an active player with its updates. It will continue to evolve in the future benefiting businesses that are providing helpful content for the right target audience.


Elements Of Keyword Research

Here are a few main elements you should look out for when performing keyword research.

Relevance

One of the ranking factors that Google prioritizes is content relevance. Again, the concept of search intent comes in. Google and other search engines will only rank your content for a keyword that matches the searchers’ needs.

Authority

Authority is another important ranking factor in search engines. Google, Bing, and other search engines provide more weight to sources it deems authoritative. To become an authority, you need to enrich your site with value-driven and informational content that lures in searchers. Value-driven content earns you social signals and backlinks that search engines see as a signal of authority. If you are targeting a keyword where the SERPs are loaded with websites such as Forbes or HubSpot, you have a lower chance of ranking unless your content is exceptional.

Volume

Let’s assume you rank successfully on the first page for a keyword, but it’s not getting any traffic; why is that? That’s because the keyword you targeted didn’t have a decent amount of monthly search volume.


How To Find Keyword Ideas?

Studying Your Niche

The best strategy to find keyword ideas is to study your industry/niche closely and what problems your target audience is facing in that industry.

Competitor Analysis

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to keyword research. By reverse engineering your competitors, you can find lucrative keywords to rank for easily. Competitor analysis identifies gaps and weak points that your competitors are missing in their strategy.


How To Target Keywords

Identifying The Search Intent

Have you ever run a search query about something and didn’t find the information you were looking for?

Content-Type

Your content type also needs to be aligned with the keyword research you are performing.


How To Conduct Keyword Research For Search Engine Optimization

googleNow that you understand all the basics about keyword research and analysis let’s uncover what it takes to conduct professional-level keyword research for your SEO efforts.

Follow these steps to find ranking opportunities that skyrocket your sales and customer engagement. You can always tweak the process, but remember to stick with the fundamentals.

Make a list of subtopics relevant to your topic

In the first step, you need to subcategorize the products or services you are offering and break down your niche into small chunks. These subcategories will include the keywords you want to rank for.

As we mentioned earlier, you need to find keywords for your strategy that your target audience would be interested in. If you are already familiar with blogging or content marketing, you might already have an idea about what we are talking about.

We always recommend keeping this list short, with 5-10 topics at most. Place yourself in the buyer’s shoes and imagine what you would look for when buying that particular product/service.

General categories for a website that sells men’s apparel might include:

  • Gym apparel
  • Affordable suits
  • Oxford shoes
  • Apple Maps
  • Style trends for the season

Expand each topic with a list of phrases you think your customers use

After you have all the subcategories, you need to identify relative terms and phrases for those categories. These phrases are search terms that your customers might type in to find your product/service. The phrases can include location, model number, or anything else related to the category. Keyword research tools like Google Analytics, Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and more help you look through the organic traffic of a website and identify what keywords customers are already using when running a search query.

This list is more like a brainstorming opportunity rather than a final list of keywords. It will give you insights that make your keyword research more focused and targeted.

For the men’s apparel website above, we can add the following under the category “Affordable suits”.

  • Most affordable suits for the season
  • Tuxedo near me under $200
  • Used prom suits near me

There are many creative ways to add to your keyword lists.

  • Type in your keyword and run the search query. Scroll at the bottom of SERP, and you can see all the related keyword suggestions for that keyword. If you want more keyword suggestions, you can also incorporate the suggestions from the second page of SERP.
  • Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console are free web performance tools that also help with keyword research. These tools also insights into customer trends and monthly search volume for a keyword.

Below is a list of paid keyword tools that you can use in your SEO strategy.

  • Ahrefs
  • Moz
  • SemRush
  • BuzzSumo
  • Ubersuggest and more.

Analyze the strength of your short and long tail keywords

For this step, you can use Google Keyword Planner or any other paid keyword research tool mentioned above. Here are a few things you need to study to analyze the strengths of your keywords:

  • Is the keyword the exact match for the search term customers are using?
  • How high is the monthly search volume? If the keyword has a low monthly search volume, that means your customers aren’t searching using that phrase or search term.
  • What is the keyword difficulty? Make sure the keyword that are used isn’t flooded by competitive players in the market. High search volume with low competition is the sweet spot you want to hit!

Verify search intent

Lastly, you need to ensure that the keywords you have added to your list all match the search intent you are looking to target in your strategy. As we mentioned earlier, relevancy and search intent make a huge part of your keyword research.

Type in each of the keywords in search engines, and see if the search results are matching is the intent of the keyword.


Conclusion – Keyword Research For SEO

Keyword research and analysis are the crux of a successful SEO strategy. The keyword research process takes time, but it pays dividends when done effectively. We hope we have answered your question about why is keyword research important for any business, and suggested you free and premium tools that can help do the same.

If you still need help with keyword research and analysis, book a call or get in touch our team of search engine marketing experts who can help you with creating your yearly keyword targeting and tracking strategy to execution.


Find related search terms

There are many creative ways to add to your keyword lists.

  • Type in your keyword and run the search query. Scroll at the bottom of SERP, and you can see all the related keyword suggestions for that keyword. If you want more keyword suggestions, you can also incorporate the suggestions from the second page of SERP.
  • Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console are free web performance tools that also help with keyword research. These tools also insights into customer trends and monthly search volume for a keyword.

Below is a list of paid keyword tools that you can use in your SEO strategy.

  • Ahrefs
  • Moz
  • SemRush
  • BuzzSumo
  • Ubersuggest and more.

Analyze the strength of your short and long tail keywords

For this step, you can use Google Keyword Planner or any other paid keyword research tool mentioned above. Here are a few things you need to study to analyze the strengths of your keywords:

  • Is the keyword the exact match for the search term customers are using?
  • How high is the monthly search volume? If the keyword has a low monthly search volume, that means your customers aren’t searching using that phrase or search term.
  • What is the keyword difficulty? Make sure the keyword that are used isn’t flooded by competitive players in the market. High search volume with low competition is the sweet spot you want to hit!

Verify search intent

Lastly, you need to ensure that the keywords you have added to your list all match the search intent you are looking to target in your strategy. As we mentioned earlier, relevancy and search intent make a huge part of your keyword research.

Type in each of the keywords in search engines, and see if the search results are matching is the intent of the keyword.


Conclusion – Keyword Research For SEO

Keyword research and analysis are the crux of a successful SEO strategy. The keyword research process takes time, but it pays dividends when done effectively. We hope we have answered your question about why is keyword research important for any business, and suggested you free and premium tools that can help do the same.

If you still need help with keyword research and analysis, book a call or get in touch our team of search engine marketing experts who can help you with creating your yearly keyword targeting and tracking strategy to execution.