If you've spent any amount of time online building your business, you've heard the term SEO (aka Search Engine Optimization).
You’ve probably also heard that SEO is darn important if you plan on having a successful eCommerce site.
But for something that’s so well known as a must-do, that has the power to make or break your online store, it can also be ridiculously confusing.
Plus, if you’re trying to manage your SEO in-house or hire an agency for SEO services, this can make your life especially challenging because you don’t know the first place to start, or how to determine if you’re getting any value.
So, let’s fix that. Starting with what SEO is.
What Exactly is SEO?
SEO is a process that helps a website, like your eCommerce store, get found by search engines like Google and Bing.
The internet has no shortage of websites to choose from. So, search engines have a list of criteria that they use to decide if a website is worth appearing in your search result.
The more of those criteria that a website meets, the higher it will rank. But, if a website doesn’t meet enough of those criteria compared to other sites, then it won’t rank or appear in search results.
The process that you or an agency go through to help your website meet that list of criteria, and optimize it for search is SEO.
How to Improve Your Site's Ranking?
Now you may be asking, how is SEO done? What steps are required to optimize your website so it meets that list of criteria and appears on search results?
There’s a lot that goes into this SEO process, but here are a few quick tips to get started.
First, you can optimize your website by creating relevant content.
Search engines love sending visitors to websites that closely match their search inquiries. If the content on your website uses relevant keywords from a search, and the pages across your website seem credible, error-free, and consistent, you’re more likely to appear for a search.
Secondly, you can stand out by creating new content and updating the existing content regularly.
This can be done by publishing weekly or monthly blog posts that use keywords and link to other pages on your store, or adding new product pages when you introduce a new item.
You should also make sure that you’re updating the information on other pages, checking for grammatical errors, fixing any broken links, and removing pages that are no longer relevant.
Regardless of how you do it, the goal of SEO is to improve the quality and quantity of the traffic that you get to your website. But let’s talk about why this is so important.
Why is SEO Important?
We know that SEO helps search engines find your website. But why is that so important?
This may seem obvious, but if your website doesn’t appear in search results, it will get less traffic. Less traffic means fewer chances of making sales, which is a big no-no for the success of your online store.
A good SEO strategy will ensure that your store shows up in search results, which can help you build brand awareness. It also helps you to build trust with an audience when you appear on the first page of a search, and increase the quality of the traffic to your website,
How to Know if You Need to Optimize
Having the right SEO strategy in place can give you the most consistent, high-quality traffic, so it’s one of the best places to invest in your business if you’re looking to grow.
But how do you know if your site is performing well, or if you need to optimize for search (aside from the fact that you should always be optimizing for search)?
We recommend looking at how much traffic is coming to your website from search engines, and where your site is ranking during a search using different keywords.
These will be good indicators of if your store could benefit from an enhanced SEO strategy, or if your pages seem to be working to drive organic traffic.
Get More SEO Tips
Hopefully, this gave you some insight into why SEO is a must for your digital marketing strategy, and how it can help your online business grow (when done right).
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