It’s important to realize that marketing your store is an equally big (sometimes bigger) task then starting your store.
For the best long term results, you cannot ignore Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Good news is, even if you are not friendly with SEO, these on page seo techniques will help you get indexed better and ranked higher in Google. Here are the 10 tips that will help you rank higher :
1. OPTIMIZE YOUR TITLES
A title tag is like the name of the book. It’s the first thing that search engines see when they are indexing your website. A well written title tag describes what your web page is about to search engines as well as your website visitors. Your title tag also the heading that will be shown if you rank in Google or any other search engine. Its important to write a title that looks good to users as well as search engines. Here are some tips on optimizing your title tags:
A) Put important words first
What do you feel when you read a title of a book that says “12 Different and Efficient Ways to Make Your Skills About Cooking Better”?
In my opinion, a better title can be “12 Ways to Cook Better” or “Cooking Better in 12 Steps”.
- Optimizing a title this way has many benefits.
- The important words are pushed in the beginning.
- The title becomes shorter and more readable.
- It sounds and looks better.
Remember, the title of your page is like a headline.
According to copywriters, 50% users will read the headline and decide whether they will read the whole article. In the search results, a good title can make the user click your link instead of your competitors.
(Note: This post was written for the Zepo blog first, therefore examples are from store built on Zepo. These tips and suggestions apply for all e-commerce stores and blogs.)
Let’s take a real world example. I selected a site built on zepo : https://www.thepenworld.com/ I randomly selected a product and checked the title, here is what I found :
The right way to write title tags
As you can see the image represents the product correctly and descriptively. It is an optimized title. But when I looked at the category page, the title tag looked like this:
As you can guess, that is not an optimized title for Google or for users. If this page were to appear on Google, it would look like this:
That is not very friendly. I would suggest to update the title tag of the category page.
For example if you are selling electronics, then you could write a title like : “Product Elect Red color size 2”. But if the product has a manufacturer number, you should include it in your title. “Product Elect Red Color size 2 part no X2zyk”. Since your users can potentially also search using the part number instead of specifics, it makes sense to include it in the title as well.
2. WATCH THE LENGTH OF YOUR URLs
A recent trend in SEO I have seen is the use of extremely short URL’s. So instead of creating URL’s like :
You should create URL’s like:
While there is no official guidelines from Google about URL length, making this optimization will future proof your rankings.
3. LONGER PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS
A recent research by SerpIQ revealed that most of top ranking pages on google have atleast 2000 words on the page. What is more interesting that the average number of words on the top ranking pages has been going up year after year.
What does this mean for you?
This means that for Google to consider your page to be shown on the top page, your pages should have a lot of content.
You should start by writing longer product descriptions, include videos and extra pictures and product reviews as well.
Just look at a product page for a mobile phone on any leading marketplace.You will see a ton of data about the product including the hardware specs, reviews, videos images and more.Those extra details help the users as well help them rank higher.
4. REDUCE IMAGE SIZES
Google and users value speed.
A recent survey has shown that most visitors will quit a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. These are customers that could have purchased from you.
Since your Zepo store is already optimized for Speed, there is little that you have to do on your own to improve your store speed, expect images.
Usually, images are the biggest element on the page. A large image will increase your website load time and give your users a poor experience.
Not only that, Google now uses website speed as a ranking signal. That means that a slow website can cause your website to rank lower in the search results.So how do you fix your big images?
A. Choose The Right Image Format
PNG, JPG and TIFF are the 3 most popular image formats. If your images are rich in colors, then you should use JPG image format. PNG and TIFF images with lots of colors are usually much larger than JPG images.
B. Choose The Correct Size
If you shoot your images on high resolution and upload them, your are doing your store a dis-service.
You should reduce your images sizes to around 1500 pixels on the longer edge and then upload them.
You should also reduce the quality settings in JPG to between (75-80%).
The difference is not visible to the naked eye but can make a huge difference in image size. For reducing your image size, you can use bulk image conversion tools including Photoshop, GIMP, XnConvert, Image Magic etc.
5. START A BLOG
Starting a blog is a fantastic way on not only ranking higher, but to attract a lot of customers.
Think about what you are doing right now, you are reading a blog on Rodinhoods.
Similarly, if you create a blog about your industry and create good content, you will attract a lot of readers and potential customers to your website.
Your blog should be the cornerstone of your content marketing. Content marketing not only makes it easier for your customers to find you, it helps increase trust as well. There have been many studies that prove that inbound marketing creates much more trust in your customers than outbound marketing. A well run blog will also boost your SEO efforts tremendously.
There are lots of startups in silicon valley who have grown on the basis of content marketing. Some notable names are Buffer, KISSMetrics, Crazy Egg, Help Scout and many more.
6. HAVE A WELL THOUGHT OUT ABOUT US, TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY
Let me share a shocking fact. For many popular bloggers, the most visited page on their blogs in not a blog post. Its the “About Me” page.
Why is that?
Think about it this way. You just met a stranger and had an interaction with them. Since its your first time meeting the person, you wouldn’t trust the person completely.But if you knew about the person and his achievements, you would start trusting them gradually. Its the same for online stores.If a visitor just landed on your store the first time, its hard for them to trust your business.
A well crafted, well written about page can really help make the connection with your potential customers and increase your business.Also, Google considers a well written privacy policy and about page a ranking signal. For more details on the subject, read this article here on trh.
7. ENCOURAGE REVIEWS
User reviews help you in many ways. They help answer questions about your product. They give additional information about your business and products to your potential customers.They give “trust signals” to Google about your business.
In short, product reviews will help your visitors, as well as Google to trust your business more and help you rank higher in the search results. If you get lucky, a single product review will make your website noteworthy! Don’t believe me, then check out the review of Unicorn Meat (yes you read it right).
8. OPTIMIZE YOUR PARAMETERS
Parameters usually occur on your category pages. There are the little pieces of text that are appended to the URL when you sort your results. Look at this example:
So what do I mean by optimizing parameters?
Google looks at every URL and expects different content.
For Google, the pages www.awesometees.com/yellow and www.awesometees.com/yellow?price=499-999 should have entirely different content.
But usually, these parameters sort and re-arrange the products on the screen so the user can find what they are looking for quickly. So how do you make Google understand what parameters do what? Is quite a simple process that you can do inside of Google Search Console.
9. MOBILE FRIENDLINESS
In late 2015, Google initiate a new update which was named by SEO’s as “Mobilegaddeon”. That’s a friendly take on Armageddon, a world destruction event.The update was meant to punish websites that were not mobile friendly. While the effects of “mobilegaddeon” were not felt immediately, Google is now pushing non-mobile friendly websites lower in its search results.
Since most of Zepo’s themes are mobile friendly already, most of you should not have to worry about this penalty. However, you can contact the friendly Zepo support for any queries.
10. Use HTTPS
By purchasing an expand or enterprise plan, your Zepo store will come integrated with SSL.
So there it is, 10 power packed on page seo tips that will ensure that you rank higher in 2016. Have questions, or want me to write about any topic in SEO, let me know in the comments!
This post first appeared on the Zepo blog here.
You can reach me on twitter @yuvrajwadhwani.
asha chaudhry
yuvraj,
when it rains, it pours 🙂
when you write – you post a magnum opus that is usually very very helpful for ecom players.
the first 7 points are just so wow – even someone like me who isn’t an ecom player can relate so well 🙂
keep rocking!
ps: team zepo shared a post on how to get customer reviews – https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/12-ways-to-get-great-customer-reviews-on-your-online-store
yuvraj wadhwani
Asha,
You are too kind with your words 🙂
I hope to write more helpful things on this community.
Rashi Sinha
Very well explained article. Thanks for putting this together Yuvraj. It can act as a great check list for anyone working on the SEO of their website (not just the e-comm companies).
Noticed that you haven’t mentioned Alt Text for images. It has been pointed out many times that alt text is very important part of SEO for images. Your take?
yuvraj wadhwani
Thanks. Glad that you like it.
Alt text is definitely important for images. I also read an SEO experiment that mentioned that images with alt tags gave a better ranking boost than links with anchor text. So whenever possible, make sure alt tags are in place.
I was limiting myself to 10 tips, otherwise there are hundreds of things that should be considered for on-page SEO. 🙂
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Simple, easy, common-sensical!
Can you analyse therodinhoods.wpengine.com for us as a favor and as part of your community service? 🙂
yuvraj wadhwani
Sure. I’ll do an SEO audit and do a post about it 🙂