Top 10 SEO Tips for E-commerce Websites in 2020

In today’s competitive world, running an e-commerce website has become quite challenging. Earlier, very few businesses had an online presence. But, nowadays, it has become mandatory for businesses to have an online presence. This has increased the competition, making it challenging for every business to gain the attention of the target audience.

Among all the marketing tactics, SEO is the most crucial. No matter how big or small your business, to succeed, you need SEO. With the help of SEO, you can make your e-commerce website visible among millions of other competing websites. If your website isn’t visible to your target audience, then there is no point in having an online presence.

To help you, we have come up with this blog, where we will discuss the top 10 SEO tips for e-commerce websites.

1. Have a well-structured website
Every website has some structure. In SEO, the structure of the website plays a crucial role. A well-structured website makes the task of search engines much easier. With the initiation of AI in the algorithm used by Google for rankings, voice search, as well as mobile directory, a website’s structure has now acquired more significance than ever. There are two aspects to a website structure that can immediately affect your e-commerce website: breadcrumb navigation and clean URLs. Breadcrumbs navigation enables users to see where they stand in the hierarchy of a website without checking the URL. Clean URLs are readable URL slug for visitors. These URLs are meant for both visitors and Google to enhance usability and accessibility by being instinctively meaningful to non-expert users.

2. Research keywords
Keywords are the main words of your content. Whenever people find something on the internet, they type certain related keywords. For instance, if they want to buy hoodies for Christmas, they might type Christmas hoodies, custom hoodies, etc. Putting the right keywords throughout a website is a great way to attract organic traffic to your website. Various online tools can help you find profitable keywords for your e-commerce website. Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, etc. are some of the most popular tools. When you research keywords, you will get to see a list of many related keywords. But not every keyword is worth including. You should include only those keywords that have higher search volumes and buyer intent.

3. Optimize product pages
Product pages are the lifeblood of every online business. Thus it is crucial to invest time in optimizing them. There are businesses that upload their products with just a few lines of content. Well, this is not the right approach to follow. To stand apart from competitors and make Google find your product pages, you need to provide maximum content. Here are a few things to work on:
Product name:
In many cases, the product name is used in the URL and the SEO title of a product page. Thus, you can add the common search keyword(s) to your product name. For instance, if you provide website design services, you can add a keyword ‘website design’ to your product name.
Image optimization:
Image optimization is the process of delivering high-quality images in the correct format, size, dimension, and resolution. If the images of your website are optimized correctly, it can help boost conversions, enhance page load speed, SEO ranking and user experience. Imagify, ShortPixel, WP Smush are some of the most popular plugins to optimize images for better performance.
Videos:
Videos are a great way to provide a demonstration of your products and offer your consumers a glance of your products in action. Adding videos on product pages can help your product attain more exposure because search engines and social media tend to prioritize the showcase of video content better.
Customer Reviews:
Adding customer reviews are a great way to gain credibility and boost conversions. There are no specific numbers to add testimonials. Sometimes even a couple of genuine reviews can work like magic. Try to add reviews along with the picture of your customer.

4. Optimize your website for mobile devices
People nowadays are more mobile-savvy. According to the latest statistics, currently, there are 3.50 billion smartphone users in the world. This proves that companies cannot ignore mobile users. The design of your website should be such that it automatically adjusts and adapts to any device’s screen. In short, you should have a responsive website design. Since 2017, Google has started giving priority to mobile websites. It means optimizing a website for mobile devices is no longer optional, but compulsory. You can check the responsiveness of your website by using various online tools such as Responsinator, Google Resizer, Screenfly, etc.

5. Add sitemap.xml to search console
Although many popular e-commerce platforms automatically generate the sitemap.xml, you can also add your own sitemao.xml to Google search console. Why? Well, a good XML sitemap acts as a roadmap of a website. It helps Google find your important pages quickly, even if your interlinking is not perfect. It is not compulsory to add sitemap.xml on all the pages of your website. Why? This is because you probably don’t want Google to index pages like 'Thank you’. You can add sitemap.xml by using various online tools. In fact, WordPress provides a free plug-in named ‘Yoast.’ You can install the plug-in and create your own sitemap.xml.

6. Reduce page loading speed
The time taken by a page to load is one the most key contributing reasons behind website abandonment. The average user has no patience for a website that takes more than two seconds to load. According to Google’s 2018 research, 53% of all mobile users abandoned a site that took longer than three seconds to load. Among all, images are the biggest reason why a website takes ages to load. Therefore, it is advisable to compress all the images before uploading them on your site.

7. Keep your website secure with HTTPS
HTTPS is a secure web protocol that is commonly used by e-commerce websites to secure the transactions of their customers. Being an entrepreneur, you definitely don’t want to lose tons of your sales. If the URL of your website is not preceded by HTTPS, Google will treat those websites as vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Google wants to provide the best experience to its users. They do not want to send searchers to insecure sites. That is why their ranking algorithms give priority to HTTPS sites. If your website is not secured, it could get outranked by similar sites.

8. Avoid broken links
Broken links are hyperlinks that are linked to a non-existent webpage. When someone clicks on a broken link, they are confronted with an error message, most commonly a ‘404 error.’ Broken links can have a negative impact on a website ranking. To avoid broken links, keep checking your website pages, especially with major categories. If you find any errors, fix it immediately. There are many useful tools that can help you find broken links. Some of them include Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Google Analytics, Ahrefs, Dead Link Checker, SEMrush, etc.

9. Enable canonical tags
A canonical tag, also referred to as ‘rel canonical’ is an HTML tag that tells search engines which URL represents the principal copy of a page. In other words, if you have similar content available under different URLs, you can use canonical tags to define the main version for duplicate, near-duplicate, or similar pages. Whenever different URLs of the same content exist, search engines consider those URLs as different pages. It causes a number of SEO problems. Canonical tags solve this issue. If you do not specify canonical URL, Google will identify the best URL on its own, and that URL may not represent your original content.

10. Create unique meta descriptions for every page
A meta description is an attribute that describes and summarizes the contents of your page. In other words, Meta description is a short snippet of texts that conveys to both search engines and users information regarding what a web page is all about. Meta description helps in increasing CTR, page ranking, and satisfies users because of the user-friendlessness of the appearance of the web page.

Conclusion:
So, folks, these are the top SEO tips that can help you grow your ecommerce business. Follow them and take your dream business to the next level. If you have any questions related to this, feel free to ask in the comment section below.