One of the many benefits online shops hold over the conditional ones is the lack of constraints of particular areas and regions. We can introduce our brand, product or service with an untold number of people across the world without actually leaving our keyboard. With the advent of the Internet, there has never been a better time to promote our idea to a wider audience. The trick is that everyone else has got the same idea. The online marketplace became a very crowded place very fast. Like in all atomized markets, the competition is fierce. It is chock-full of companies trying to sell their own idea at the lowest price. Potential clients are spoiled for choice. Starting an online store is not that hard of an endeavour. What is though, it a good placement in leading search engine results. SEO is all the rage these days and it ultimately helps us get to our potential customers before anyone else does. Here are some of the basic principles and directions to make our brand and product as visible as possible.
1. SEO basics
Search engine optimization (SEO for short) is a set of practices that enables our website to rank higher in result pages. Highly complex algorithms analyse the words typed in a search query by a user and it returns a list of web pages. Typically, the top results are the most relevant ones and are the ones most likely to be picked. The more attractive a web page is to a search engine algorithm the higher its ranking is. This ranking directly affects the visibility of that web page to potential customers. Put simply, what was the last time we have found a viable result on a third or fourth page of an online search list? For the most part, we find relevant content on the top of the first page. We want our website to be there. If not at the very top, then somewhere as close to it as possible.
2. Keywords
Keywords are terms that are closely related to what we are doing or manufacturing. These words are used by people to search for
e-commerce. Each page on a website should focus on one or maybe two keywords. For additional help on coming up with a viable keyword, there are plenty of free online tools that we can use like Google Keyword Planner. These are the anchor points that link our brand to a relevant search result list. Keywords should be inserted into our high-impact pages. They should be helpful, descriptive and relevant.
3. Internal Linking
Internal linking is a way for us to lead our customers from one page to another. Typically, the more links are pointing to a single webpage, the better it is for its SEO. Main categories of our products or services should be clearly visible and appropriately linked. If we have a blog post that has or will generate a lot of views, we should definitely add links that lead to our best products. Visitors should always know where they currently are in the site’s structure. They need a sense of direction when navigating from one page to another. Arguably, the most important element is the “go back” link. It is up to us to make the webpage as manageable and transparent as possible. Indirect links, like the ones that intuitively point to recommended and related products, are always a good idea to expand our exposure. It can boost our sales and help generate backlinks, as long as they are not random recommendations but meaningful ones.
4. Speed and compatibility optimization
Search engines are using site speed as a ranking variable for some time now. It does not take a lot of thinking to conclude that a fast and responsive experience will benefit the site greatly. People do not like waiting and will go to other related sites if our expeditiousness is not up to the standard. To help, there is luckily plenty of actions that we can take. We can decrease the size of our data. Mainly multimedia content like video, audio and photos can be compressed without quality degradation. As our business gains more and more visits per time interval, we may need to upgrade our hosting. By that point, we should have the budget to purchase web hosting plans that suit our needs. Finally, consumers end to look up and shop for things on the go. This means using
mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets. This trend is on a constant rise for years now. Not only is it important to have a fast and responsive web site, but also a compatible one. Smartphone screens come in all sorts of different sizes and aspect ratios. All of these need to be accounted for to make the site mobile friendly.
Of course, there is a lot that goes into SEO. These are the basic principles that will get us going and into the spotlight. Depending on the nature of our business we will realize the specifics as time progresses. One thing is for sure, every effort we put in organic SEO services will pay off eventually and keep us toe to toe with the competition.
