The popularity of eCommerce businesses has considerably increased over the last few years. A recent study revealed that eCommerce retail purchases would rise to 22 per cent from 14.1 per cent by the year 2023. This means that eCommerce businesses will continue to remain popular among customers in the coming years too.
SEO is one of the effective digital marketing strategies when it comes to eCommerce retention and acquisition. SEO for eCommerce websites has become essential these days. However, several businesses still fail to acquire higher rank mainly due to the SEO mistakes eCommerce sellers make.
Why SEO Is Integral For Ecommerce Websites
There is no denying that a solid and well-planned SEO strategy can do wonders for eCommerce businesses. Here are a few reasons that will explain how SEO can help your eCommerce business.
- SEO helps new and potential customers to find your business
- SEO offers a cost-effective option to grow your business
- SEO is an excellent investment, as it delivers long-lasting results
The facts mentioned above will give you a clear idea of why you should implement a solid SEO strategy for your eCommerce business. That said, several eCommerce businesses make several SEO mistakes, which prevents them from increasing sales, boosting website traffic, and improving online conversions.
Ecommerce businesses that want to build an SEO marketing plan and make the most of it should avoid these costly SEO mistakes. Here are some of the common SEO mistakes that most eCommerce sellers usually make.
Spamming And Duplicating Content
It is important to note that Google and other search engines have identified and cracked down several Blackhat SEO techniques that include publishing duplicate content, keyword stuffing, inserting hidden text, missing canonicals, and more.
It is best to avoid using these Blackhat SEO tactics, as there are chances for your domain to get blacklisted. Moreover, duplicate content and keyword stuffing will offer a bad user experience to your customers, which may prompt them to leave your website or store.
It is also best to ensure that there aren’t any duplicate content on your eCommerce website or online store. If you don’t change the duplicate content, then you may even get penalized by Google.
Lack Of Testimonials And Product Reviews
It might come as a huge surprise to several readers when they learn that there has been an increase of 80 per cent was seen in searches for the top and best product review videos over the last years. This is because Google finds genuine ratings and reviews on websites and features them on organic listings.
If you can secure a spot on the organic listings page of Google, you will be able to acquire quality leads and strengthen the brand image. In addition to that, reviews will make your website stand out from the rest of the search results.
ECommerce businesses need to understand that review pages on their website will be treated as fresh content. This means that adding product reviews will allow you to rank for multiple long-tail keywords.
Not Optimizing Product Pages
Online marketers and eCommerce businesses should add alt-text tags and descriptions to all images and product pages. In addition to that, open graph data, version history, publishing dates, structured markup data, and geographical tags are also important if you want to optimize the product pages on your website properly.
If you cannot tell Google how to present the content on your website, it will appear wonky on the search engine results page of Google. Here are a few simple but effective tips that will help you to optimize the product pages on your website for better SEO results.
- Include brand names in H1 headings, Open Graph data, alt-text, and title
- Ensure that the product pages on your website are very easy to navigate
- Make sure to include alt-text to images
Optimize Image Captions
Do you know that approximately 62 per cent of GenZ online shoppers prefer visual search over other types of searches? This means that it is integral for online shops to have markup, which offers detailed information regarding your products to Google and other search engines.
Structured markup will help businesses to attract potential online shoppers who are looking for products through image search. It is best to use different combinations of secondary and primary keywords in the product image captions. This will help you to find shoppers who are looking to buy similar items.
Your Website Has Security Issues
It is crucial to ensure that your eCommerce website is safe and secure. Several shoppers will be buying products and making payments through your store or website. So, you will need to ensure that there are zero chances for a data breach or other cyberattacks.
Unfortunately, several eCommerce websites continue to function without using SSL certificates. If you follow such a practice, it is best to avoid it, as most internet users will not shop from websites without SSL certificates. Installing one ensures that the communication between the web server and your client browser is thoroughly encrypted. Therefore, you need to invest in the right kind of SSL certificate for deriving maximum security benefits.
If you want to make your website look trustworthy to existing and potential customers and guarantee greater security, then you should invest in a wildcard SSL certificate. A scalable option allows for engendering security to the chosen primary domain and multiple first-level subdomains. If you are looking for the cheapest wildcard ssl certificate, we suggest buying one from SSL2BUY, as they offer premium certs at extremely budget-friendly prices. A website that has installed an SSL certificate is more secure, but it also has higher chances of securing a better rank.
Having A Slow Website
Google considers page speed as one of the important ranking factors. Therefore, if the speed of your website is slow, it is best to find a way to approve it because websites with slow page speed fail to impress internet users.
You need to remember that fancy animation, auto-play videos, and cool graphics often end up slowing websites. So, you should consider removing some of them from your website if they are affecting its speed.
Wrapping Up
Coming up with an SEO strategy for eCommerce businesses can indeed be quite challenging. However, suppose you can avoid the common SEO mistakes and focus on offering a better user experience to customers. In that case, you will be able to enjoy success with your SEO marketing plan.