As an entrepreneur that wants to showcase your business to the world, you may think that a digital marketing career will aid your e-commerce business.
While that is not a bad idea, you can still learn the basic things without necessarily doing that.
The aim of every entrepreneur selling a product or service through the internet is to make sales.
To help you do that, you need to be positioned strategically for that to happen.
What’s the point of having a beautiful website, excellent products/services at amazing prices, and yet, you are not easily discoverable?
If you have been experiencing that, then you will be glad you are reading this article.
To help you get ahead of your competitors, you need to incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) into your efforts.
SEO will help you rank higher on search engines and attract more traffic to your website, which may possibly translate to more sales.
Here are ten crucial SEO tips every e-commerce entrepreneur will benefit from:
1.Quality contents
We start with this point because your website needs to have quality content to engage visitors when they visit your website.
Search engines love quality content and consider it very essential for ranking a website.
And no, it’s not business as usual because you cannot just copy any article from the internet and paste it on your website and expect Google and other search engines not to notice.
The contents have to be informative and exciting, but above all, very unique.
You need to make sure there is something fresh for your audience to read.
It is also advisable that you update old content on your website with new information and images from time to time.
2.Speed up your website
You can’t talk about SEO on your website without considering speed (Source: Webmasters)
Page speed is one thing search engines look for.
If it takes too long for people to access your website, they will leave, and search engines will see that as a red flag.
Data collated by Strange Loop indicates that a one-second delay in page loading can lead to 7% conversion loss (Source: Copyblogger)
A website that is slow to load its pages is often seen as an unserious one. So get rid of widgets and software that slows down your website.
3.Get the right keywords
You cannot talk about SEO without including keywords. These are words or phrases that people search for when they visit the internet.
There are short keywords and long-tail ones.
You might need a combination of both incorporated into your website’s contents to increase your chances of having more traffic.
You need to put in the required effort to find high-search but low-competition keywords.
If you cannot do it, hire out SEO experts to do the job for you.
4.Link to other websites
Inbound links are not yet outdated; if anything, they still play a massive role in how high a website ranks (Source: Uptimiser)
Google loves it when you do a combination of no-follow and do-follow links because they create a natural link profile for your website (Source: Quicksprout)
When you create high-quality contents that are engaging, you increase the chances of people coming to your website and sharing your links with others.
If they find it informative enough, it makes it easier for them to link it to their web content.
Also, if you can get authoritative websites to link back to your website, that would make Google rate your website even higher.
5.Use easy-to-read URLs
Have you come across a website link that reads something like:http://www.abcxyds.com/article/342819 before?
Not only do search engines frown at such, but visitors as well.
I mean, the link should tell you what article/content you are about to read entails like:http://www.abcxyds.com/best-seo-tips
That way, the reader knows that they are about to read an article on best SEO tips.
Don’t forget that search spiders that crawl the internet to fish out effective websites are programs and not humans. They like things simplified and easy to search (Source: Searchengineland)
6.Add keywords to your anchor texts
We have already established that you should search and use keywords when writing your website content.
Another SEO tip that can help your chances of ranking higher on search engines is if you use it in your anchor texts.
This means that instead of writing: “click here” for more details, you should write: “10 easy steps to become a productive entrepreneur” will help you in your entrepreneurial journey.
Do you get the drift?
The keyword in that clause above could be “productive entrepreneur” and could be the keyword you want to rank for.
You can use such keywords in your product description links. But be careful not to keep repeating the exact keywords over and over on your website to avoid being penalized.
7.Install web analytics software
You need to install web analytics software like Google Search Console, Google Analytics or any other one to help you keep track of what’s going on in your website.
Web analytics software helps you to know what’s working and what’s not.
This should be one of the first tools to install on your website after setting it up.
8.Make use of social media
Social media is the new goldmine for business owners to harvest buyers.
Social media allows you to interact with your customers and potential customers. They get to learn more about your products/services.
Indeed, there must be a reason 93% of businesses make use of Facebook for marketing (Source:Sproutsocial)
Apart from that, different case studies have shown how powerful social media likes, shares, tweets, etc. can impact search engines (Source: Semrush)
9.Have a blog
Having a website with pages is not enough to get your business out to the world.
You need a section where you can always publish new content, especially related to your product/service and its usefulness.
And the best place to do that is in your blog section.
If you don’t already have one, ask your website designer to create one from your website.
10.Steer clear of broken links
Imagine how frustrating it can be when you click on a website or search engine link and get this: “Page 404 Not Found”?
If that is annoying to you, imagine how others feel when they experience such on your website.
It’s enough to discourage a visitor from returning to your website.
Therefore, make sure there are no broken links on your website.
Tools like Broken Link Checker for WordPress users and Screaming Frog for others can help you check for these and optimization (Sources: WordPress and Screamingfrog)
Final thoughts!
Do whatever ethical it takes to improve your website’s search engine ranking.
Not only will it help you rank higher on first search pages, but it could bring in more organic traffic that businesses pay huge money to get.
