The success of your ecommerce website is directly tied to its traffic volume as well as to the quality of that traffic. There are two primary types of website traffic that you should focus on: paid and organic traffic.
While you can simply ramp up your marketing budget to take advantage of more paid leads, driving organic traffic to your website is more challenging. Nevertheless, it’s an essential element to include in your ecommerce checklist.
What is organic traffic?
Organic traffic refers to all of the traffic that your ecommerce store receives outside of paid strategies. These visitors may have found your website by conducting a Google search for keywords that you have targeted. Perhaps they clicked on a direct link in a guest blog post.
What makes organic traffic so desirable?
First, it’s free traffic that’s more sustainable than paid online marketing methods.
Second, these visitors didn’t stumble upon a paid ad by chance.
They’ve often instead specifically searched for products or terms that are related to your website. This makes them excellent prospects who may be ready to act quickly.
How to bring more traffic to your online store
With paid online marketing strategies, you can expect to see fast results. However, these results are often short lived.
Organic marketing, on the other hand, requires regular effort. Because you may not see results from your hard work for a few months or longer, it’s easy to lose focus and momentum.
Nevertheless, amazing results are yours to enjoy when you ensure that your ecommerce marketing checklist features a healthy focus on search engine optimization (SEO).
The importance of SEO for online stores cannot be overstated when it comes to increasing organic traffic. Great SEO demonstrates the authority and relevance of your website, boosting your chances of having it appear higher up on the search engine results page (SERP).
Keep reading to learn all about 17 strategies that you can combine into a comprehensive marketing campaign to improve your site’s SEO and attract more potential customers organically!
1. Perform keyword research
Selecting the right keywords to target for SEO is critical. As you identify keywords, pay attention to the terms that are relevant to your target audience. Stay in touch with your target audience through related forums, social media, Quora, Reddit, and other platforms that are easily available to you.
After you identify topics or phrases that are relevant to your business and your audience, research those keywords carefully. You can do so by using Google resources to research ranking difficulty and search volume.
Keep in mind that the keywords that you target for your website’s home page may differ from those you target on product pages and other areas of your website. After all, you don’t want your pages to compete against each other.
2. Focus on long-tail keywords in your site content
The most effective keywords to target are long-tail keywords. This is because they’re specific and easier to rank for than single words. A long-tail keyword is a phrase that’s usually at least three or four words long.
To illustrate the importance of the use of long-tail keywords, say that your online store sells camping equipment. Think about how many searches there are for the term “backpack” every month. It would likely be pretty difficult for your site to reach the top of the SERP if you target this term.
However, you have a much better chance of ranking for a long-tail keyword such as “green canvas waterproof backpack,” as the number of searches for this term are probably much lower.
3. Redirect traffic for out-of-stock products
When products are out of stock, do you simply take those product pages down from your website? The result is a 404 page, and the impact of a 404 page on your website’s performance in online searches can be devastating.
This is because removing that page can affect external and internal backlinks.
A better strategy is to redirect the URL to another page. This may be a page with related products or a list of all products that are under the same category or subcategory.
You might need to remove a page because the product will never be available through your ecommerce store again. If this is the case, ensure that all links to it are removed.
4. Optimize pages for new products
Each new product page that is added to your website should be fully optimized in the same way that other product pages have been. This means that the meta data should be optimized with the long-tail keywords that you have selected.
In addition, images need to have optimized alt attributes. Inside the content, the page should have an H1 heading with your primary keywords.
Optimizing the content is equally important. Remember to research keywords for each page and product individually.
5. Create a unique description for each product
Keep in mind that originality is critical to SEO. Some of your products may have similar features, but each description should be unique to avoid being penalized on search engine rankings.
Likewise, your content should be different from the manufacturer’s content and from any other website that lists the product for sale.
By focusing on the unique keywords that you are targeting for that product page, you can more easily craft a unique description. If your content still has boilerplate terms or if you have trouble making unique content, hiring a content writer could be a smart idea.
6. Encourage user product reviews
Customer product reviews play an important role in your organic online marketing campaign. Customer-produced content is often unique and specific, but it’ll usually include your targeted keywords or related keywords.
As the number of reviews for a product grows, this content may easily be the majority of the text on a specific page.
Product reviews are also an important part of your customers’ shopping experiences. Many consumers today rely heavily on product reviews to finalize their buying decision.
One reason for this is because they cannot actually interact with the product through an online buying process, so they depend on comments and suggestions from others who have had first-hand experiences.
7. Add social media sharing buttons to product pages
From your blog posts to your product pages and other pages on the site, social media sharing buttons are essential. Through social media, your content or products can be shared and recommended easily.
Word-of-mouth advertising is a form of free advertising, and it can have an explosive effect if the content goes viral!
In addition, Google monitors these links as well as social signals for ranking purposes. Your customers could share your content manually, such as by copying and pasting a link to your website on their social media page.
However, the extra effort required to do so may negatively impact how many shares your content has. The social media sharing buttons take the hassle out of the process for your customers.
8. Reduce your site’s loading time
Your site’s page loading time impacts the customer experience along with search engine rankings. When it comes to load times, seconds are crucial.
If your website has large graphics or other heavy components, your potential customers may become so frustrated that they click away before the page fully loads. What’s more, because page load times impact the customer experience, Google will penalize a website’s rank if load time is an issue.
One of the easiest and most comprehensive ways to learn about the impact that your page load times have on search results is to use PageSpeed Insights. This free Google tool will score your website and give you detailed information related to the score.
9. Utilize link building
If your organic marketing strategy doesn’t currently include link-building efforts, this should receive your full attention. Link building involves getting other websites to link to your own. Based on what is known about Google’s algorithms today, incoming links directly correspond to relevance for specific keywords.
Keep in mind that the quality of the links is far more important than the number of links. For this reason, it may be better to get a few links from key influencers in your field rather than to buy low-quality links.
External links are also important. These outbound links, which send your visitors to outside sites, are often used as reference points and could impact your website’s authority.
10. Ensure that your site is mobile responsive
The number of online shoppers who search for products on their smartphones and other mobile devices has increased dramatically in recent years.
This means that your ecommerce store’s mobile pages must be as responsive and as functional as the desktop version of the pages. Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test can reveal any weaknesses that require your attention.
You should also click through the pages on your website using various types of devices. Pay attention to the layout, accessibility of the navigation bar, and other factors that directly impact a shopper’s experience.
11. Incorporate product photos and videos
Product photos and videos are essential parts of all ecommerce websites because they serve multiple purposes.
For example, customers often want to see quality images of products from multiple angles before they make a buying decision. A video showing how specific features work in practice is also beneficial for some products.
Product photos and videos do more than improve the shopping experience for your customers. They also facilitate SEO and rankings.
Your website’s graphics should have alt text, and this text should be properly optimized. Because Google and other search engines cannot view an image to see what it is about, the bots rely on alt text to essentially read the images as part of the page-ranking process.
12. Use strategic internal linking
If your ecommerce website is a lonely island in the middle of cyberspace, it probably won’t receive much traffic. Links help Google and other search engines find your product pages, blog posts, and other content.
Internal links play a particularly important role in search engine rankings because they help the bots to see your site’s layout and hierarchy more clearly.
You can’t assume that the bots will see what you want them to see in the way that you want them to see them. You must instead add structure to your website through links, meta data, and other factors that the bots can understand.
13. Start a blog
The purpose of your ecommerce website is to sell products to your customers, so why would you spend time creating a blog?
It’s simple: blogging and other types of content marketing can improve your site’s SEO.
Your blog posts can drive traffic to your website organically, such as when you market the posts on social media and through your store’s regular newsletter. Furthermore, each blog post that you create can be used to build links and increase on-site user comments.
These articles can showcase your expertise in your niche, announce promotions, tout new products, and connect with your customers in other meaningful ways.
They can also improve how relevant Google perceives your website to be. In addition, the keywords targeted in each blog post promote improved rankings.
14. Guarantee website security
Website security may be more of a factor in search engine rankings and organic traffic than you realize. Consider that even small websites are vulnerable to hacking and other cyber threats daily. The unfortunate effects of these issues can include blacklisting, web crawling problems, and more.
If Google perceives that your website is infected with malware, your pages could be penalized in rankings. If your website is heavily bombarded by malicious bots, then load times and other relevant factors can be negatively impacted.
The use of “HTTPS” in a site’s URL is a recognized factor in search engine rankings, and it’s essentially a more secure form of HTTP.
While HTTPS should be the norm for your website, many other security measures should be taken as well. Securing your server, monitoring your system regularly, and keeping your system and all extensions updated are essential steps.
15. Offer seasonal products
Offering seasonal products to your customers can bolster your ecommerce business’s bottom line in a few different ways.
For example, you’ll be providing your customers with products that may be particularly relevant at a specific time of year. By doing so, you’re serving their needs more fully.
Furthermore, seasonal SEO that promotes your seasonal products raises your website’s relevancy for a specific time of year. This might be for Halloween, the back-to-school period, or even for a full season.
You may adjust how you market your year-round products by season. For instance, if you sell toys year-round, you would market them seasonally as well to boost holiday sales.
Offering seasonal products and marketing them through seasonal SEO can bolster organic traffic to your website for a limited period of time. This will be in addition to the year-round results you enjoy from other organic online marketing strategies.
16. Get creative with your meta descriptions
If you’re not creating thoughtful titles and meta descriptions for your pages based on detailed keyword research, you may be impairing your website’s search engine rankings. Both the title and meta description are visible on the SERP.
Because of this, they must be written to inspire a user to click on the link and visit your website.
At the same time, incorporating keywords in both the meta descriptions and titles for each page will improve how easily and accurately Google reads your website. In this way, the titles and meta descriptions directly affect your website’s click-through rate and the amount of targeted traffic that it receives.
17. Ensure that your URLs align with your page titles
It’s not enough to write optimized meta descriptions and page titles. These features must correspond with the URLs. When all of these factors are aligned, your website will likely be ranked higher for more relevant searches.
Furthermore, your visitors will have a better understanding about what to expect if they visit your website. When visitors find what they’re looking for, click-through rates and even conversions can skyrocket.
Final thoughts
Organic traffic is free and targeted, so it definitely makes sense to focus on optimizing this type of traffic. Progress can seem sluggish initially, but you’ll gradually notice that more of your website’s traffic is derived organically.
This in turn can lead to an increase in customers and sales for your business!
Each of the strategies mentioned in this article plays a unique and vital role in building a successful organic marketing campaign. Incorporate them into your efforts today to help get more visitors to your ecommerce site.
Did you know that when you create your online store with WiziShop, we take care of all the technical aspects of SEO for your site? Yep, we ensure that your images are optimized and that your site is fast and respects the necessary SEO standards.
We know that you’ve got enough on your plate as an ecommerce entrepreneur, so we’re delighted to be able to give you one less thing to worry about when it comes to your business.
Signing up with the English version of our platform will be possible in the coming months, so be sure to visit our homepage and provide your email address to sign up for early access and email updates!
