Part 1: Research
Before you begin any SEO work (on-site or off-site), you need to start with research – keyword research and competitor research.
A: Keyword Research
There are three primary areas you need to focus on when conducting keyword research:
1. Find keywords for your homepage and product pages
When it comes to optimizing the most important pages of your website, you should consider relevancy, search volume, and ranking difficulty.
2. Pinpoint keywords for blog topics
Creating blog content can assist in ranking your e-commerce business for additional keywords that might not have a place on your main website. Plus, you can capitalize on long-tail keywords with your blog.
3. Avoid keyword cannibalization
Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages of the same website are trying to rank for the same keyword.
B: Competitor Research
After you’ve done keyword research, you’re half way there! Now it’s time to conduct competitor research. You should consider:
1. Which keywords are your main competitors going for?
Compile a list of keywords your competitors appear to be using with their SEO strategy.
2. Where are they getting their links?
One really important thing to remember is to pull a list of the places your competitors are getting their inbound links.
3. What is their site architecture like?
Look at the site architecture of competing sites. What is their navigation like? How deep do their links go? E-commerce stores should pay special attention to the architecture for:
Popular products in a particular category
Related Products
Top rated products
Recently viewed products
4. From a strategy perspective, how can you differentiate your website?
This question ties in closely with what we’ve just discussed about site architecture. What can you do for your site that will make it different and better than your competitors? Can you improve the navigational architecture? How can you make your site more social? Will you add a blog if your competitors don’t have one? Make a list of actions you can take to ensure your site is better for consumers than theirs.
Part 2: Identifying Current Problems
After you have conducted your keyword and competitor research, it’s time to begin auditing your site for problems that need to be fixed.
A: Quickly Find Site Errors
I like to use Screaming Frog to find any website errors. Screaming Frog is free to use and will “spider your websites’ links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective.”
B: Determine Your Website Speed
Once you have taken care of the big errors, it’s time to focus on website speed.
use a free tool like Pingdom
Part 3: On-Page Optimization
While off-page search engine optimization (that is, link building) is important, on-page optimization is just as important. On-page optimization includes all of the actions you take within your own web pages to help your site rank better.
Keyword Optimization
Site Structure
Internal Linking
Usability
Mobile Version of Website
Customer Reviews
Rich Snippets
Social Media Integration
A: Keyword Optimization
You want to optimize your page and blog posts on your site for one keyword. In order to optimize a page, you need to ensure that page has the keyword in strategic locations, including:
The page title
Headers
Subheaders
Paragraph copy
Product descriptions
Image file names
Image alt tags
Meta title and description
URLs
B: Site Structure
If you’re building a website from the ground up or executing a re-design, information architecture is a must. We’ve talked a bit about architecture.
C: Internal Linking
The next step is internal linking. You might not have heard of this before, but I’m sure you know what it is. This is when you link pages of your website to other pages within your website.
D: Usability
Usability is super-important for SEO and for making your site visitors happy. If your e-commerce site has great usability, your customers will start visiting your site repeatedly, which is the goal!
E: Mobile Version of Website
Do you know how hot mobile shopping is becoming? Many people are not only browsing the web, but also making purchases through mobile devices, which means it’s really important to have a mobile-friendly version of your site.
F: Customer Reviews
A staple for any e-commerce site is customer reviews for each product.
According to Internet Retailer, you can increase your e-commerce conversion rateby 14-76% by adding product reviews to your online store. Jupiter Research also found that 77% of consumers read reviews before purchasing online.
G: Rich Snippets
"Rich snippets” and they have a huge impact on a website’s rankings.
H: Social Media Integration
An e-commerce site wouldn’t be complete without social media! Social media signals (growing your community, engaging with customers, and sharing content)
Part 4: Further Testing
After you have worked on your on-page SEO (including usability), it’s important to put a testing and optimization strategy in place.
You should:
Use analytics to see which keywords are converting the highest
Use PPC campaigns to find high-converting keywords you should add to your SEO strategy
Test meta titles and descriptions to increase click-throughs
A/B test page content to increase conversions from web traffic
Part 5: Adding Blog Content
The way to rank for keywords is through a blog. With a blog, you can optimize each post for a keyword that you aren’t targeting with the main pages of your site.
Part 6: Link Building
Similar to content, you will want to concentrate on earning quality inbound links when it comes to link building.