Results for 'ecommerce seo'

This is a Guest Post by Krista LaRiviere, Cofounder & CEO of gShift Labs

You have a great product, a great website and a super great ecommerce platform, and although Google probably isn’t going to buy your products, it is the one thing standing between you selling a handful of widgets versus setting new sales records.

If your prospects can’t find you at the Google search box, then it is well worth your time to optimize your content, keywords and entire web presence for organic search. And you want to because of the 12 billion Google searches that were performed last month; 85% of those searchers are most likely to click on the organic side (left-hand side) of the search results.

Fortunately, the new Shopify search engine optimization (SEO) features provide a solid foundation for your search engine findability efforts. Check them out if you haven’t discovered them yet.

Getting to the top of Google’s search results requires ongoing commitment to optimizing your entire web presence. 

Here are five SEO tips and tactics that will help you improve your search engine rankings, increase eyeballs to your online store and improve sales:

1. Find Out How You Rank

Before investing any time in SEO it’s best to understand how you currently rank for the keywords that you want to be found for. Accurate SEO rankings are challenging to obtain because Google personalizes search results for everyone.

If you go to the Google search box and search on your own product, it may appear as though you are #1 because you’ve likely searched on the keyword before and Google is personalizing the search for you. However, a prospect searching for your product for the first time might see your website or product page ranked #7.

2. Close The Keyword Gap

The keyword gap is a concept I use to describe the fact that your prospects are most likely using a different keyword to find your products and services compared to the keyword you would use. For example, if you are selling “gizmos” your prospects may actually refer to them as “gadgets” in the Google search box.

Closing your keyword gap is about understanding how your prospects and customers are searching and adjusting your keyword strategy to match their intentions.

The only way to close your keyword gap is through keyword research. Studying your website analytics as well as talking to your customers are two great ways to get started.

3. Publish Continuous Content

A strong SEO strategy starts with a continuous commitment to content. Content is at the heart of SEO. Without content, you’ll never be found in Google. Keep in mind that Google loves fresh, relevant content.

Start with evaluating your website and deciding if you think the content throughout your site could be improved. How do you take what you learned in #2 above and work those keywords into your content?

A regular blogging strategy will also boost and help maintain high SEO rankings when the content is optimized for the keyword phrases you are attempting to rank for. Brainstorm blog topics in advance. Think about stories about your products, the clients that love them, how they use them, etc. Post your blog content on your blog site and also Tweet it, Facebook it, YouTube It and Google+ it.

4. Publish Videos on YouTube

YouTube is the second busiest search engine only after its parent, Google. Once you close your keyword gap and have great content, putting in the extra effort to publish video content on YouTube and optimizing it for search will really pay off.

Not only will you be found when a prospect searches directly from the YouTube search box, but YouTube results can also be embedded in the Google search results page. This increases the likelihood of you occupying multiple rank positions in Google for your product. Who doesn’t want that?

Ensure you have sufficient links back to your website from the video page and reference the keyword in your voice over. And remember, your videos don’t have to be fancy or expensive.

5. Social Media Affects Your SEO 

According to both Google and Bing, social signals now account for 8% to 10% of their organic search algorithms. Your social media presence now matters to SEO! This means that Google is evaluating the volume of social signals that are being produced by your web presence.

A social signal can be a Twitter tweet or retweet, a Facebook Like or Share, or a Google +1. Here are a few tips to help increase your social signals:

• Ensure you have the social sharing icons on every page of your website. Not just the home page, but every shopping cart page. It is about providing your shoppers with endless opportunities to click the Like or Share or Tweet button.
• Incorporate Facebook into your site wherever possible. For example, add a Facebook Fan Box to your web pages as well as the Facebook Comments App to your blog.
• If possible, add your customers to your Google + Circles and follow them on Twitter. They may reciprocate and retweet your product tweets or share your content in their circles.
• SEO Your Business Facebook Page.  There are even more tips and tricks available in this SEO Your Business Facebook Page How-To Guide. 

Conclusion

All this “SEO stuff” may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Take it one step at a time, spend an hour per day figuring it out and it will pay off. SEO results do not happen overnight, but they do happen. It is a never-ending process but one worth investing in.

The days of “build it and they will come” are long past us. In order to survive in an ecommerce world, a seller has to learn the online game, which can be challenging when the rules change every day. SEO, Social Media – what are these tools and how can you apply them to your advantage?

What is SEO? SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is the art of improving your ranking in search engines. The higher you rank in a list of search engine returns, the more traffic gets driven to your site. Sounds simple.. but it’s in many ways a black art. And it’s the kind of voodoo that’s important for someone working in ecommerce – if you want to sell your widgets, and there are lots of widget sellers out there on the web, then you’d better make sure your widget shop shows up first. How to achieve this? Check out these 25 ecommerce SEO tips from Palmer Media. Even if you aren’t able to apply all of the tips, integrating at least a few of them in to your store could make a big difference to your SEO – and your sales. Have any of you applied these tactics? Have they worked or not? What else have you done to optimize your search rankings?

Search for the phrase “social media definition”, on the other hand, and you’ll find as many different answers as you do web hits. As in, 27 million different ones. Some rely heavily on “customer driven content” as part of the definition; others, like Robert Scoble, provided his definition as a more multifaceted, broader type of media that differs from traditional media in a number of ways, then opened up the conversation to his readers for feedback. Which, in my mind, is plain old social media itself in action. What do you think of Scoble’s definition, and how could his definition be applied to help drive traffic and revenue to your site?

If you’re interested in applying more social media strategies to your store, then check out this fantastic blog find: the Persuasive e-Marketing blog from Sitebrand. They post regularly about ecommerce and social media, and the blog is a valuable resource. The article eCommerce marketers – how does your social media measure up? tells you the basics on getting started with social media, such as knowing who your audience is and what it is you’re trying to track.

In upcoming weeks, we’ll be posting more on social media strategies as well as other tactics for helping you increase traffic. Do you have any suggestions or comments? Let us know here or post a comment in the forums.

How can you sell anything if customers can't find you? SEO, which is short for Search Engine Optimization, is really important for your ecommerce store. In a nut shell, SEO is the process of improving the visibility of a website or online store in search engines. Why is that important? Because the higher you rank in search engines, the more traffic and potential customers get driven to your store.

There is no one size fits all strategy for SEO, and online store owners need to carefully assess their site to develop a customized SEO strategy and action plan to improve their search engine presence and traffic to their online store.

Here are 10 crucial SEO tips for ecommerce stores:

1. Don’t Rely Only on Pay Per Click (But Also Don't Forget it)

While many ecommerce sites fall back on a pay per click (PPC) strategy to create visibility for their store, the truth is that PPC costs continue to go up and once you stop paying for placement, your online presence disappears.

Also, some customers have an inherent distrust of sponsored links, banners, and other online ads. Ecommerce stores cannot solely rely on a PPC strategy and need to also implement organic SEO practices to help with their online visibility.

That said, recent Google research shows that when some web sites stopped using AdWords, 89% of the paid clicks did not shift over to organic, SEO clicks. So make sure you do use pay per click in addition to SEO.

2. Avoid Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is the enemy for search engines. However, since many ecommerce stores have a large amount of duplicate content as a result of product descriptions and lists, ecommerce sites tend to get penalized by search engines.

Therefore, online store owners need to assess their website and look for ways to reduce the amount of redundant and duplicate content that is present on their website. Careful usage of the rel="canonical" tag can help avoid these problems as well.

Shopify themes can automatically insert the rel="canonical" tag on all pages using one line of code. Learn how to use canonical URLs with Shopify.

3. Have a Content Strategy

Consistently adding unique and high quality content on a regular basis to your ecommerce site will not only add additional value for users, it will also help with your search engine ranking. Consider using your and add content that's related to the products and services that you sell.

Here’s this week’s dose of “I’ve posted the best and not the rest” for you…

The "2007 Ecommerce Success Report" is available at RetailSolutionsOnline.com. The report, compiled by MarketLive.com , details the ecommerce sales over the 2007 Holiday season, what the trends and gains were, as well as the strategies that drove the results. There are some very interesting numbers in here, such as the comparison between early holiday and peak holiday conversions (a 66% increase) and a 27% increase in year over year revenue. Take a look and see if there is any information you can apply to your stores for next year.

Over on the Get Elastic blog you’ll find an educational article on SEO. It touches on the SEO Shenanigans a threat to Social Media debate, as well as providing great ideas for good search engine optimization that you can apply to your site.

ZenTrend’s has come up with a very innovative approach that combines ecommerce and customer driven content. Their iStyler allows customers to view potential future fashion offerings from their store and vote on whether they love it or hate it. As described by openPR.com , the customer then gets a direct say in whether or not a piece makes it to the virtual shelf – thus prompting return traffic as well as providing real feedback in what is sometimes a hit-and-miss decision for fashion buyers. Not to mention it is completely addictive.

There’s a fun podcast over at Startup Nation, where they interview Kevin Harmon from InflatableMadness.com on various approaches to ecommerce, including finding the best outlet for your products!

And finally…

Happy Birthday to you
Happy birthday to you,
Happy Birthday Ecommerce!
Happy Birthday to you!

Read the story of how the first ecommerce transaction took place on March 4, 1983 – with a 300 BPS modem and phone line, no less!