Search engine optimization has become a pivotal marketing tool for online merchants as this is one marketing tool that reaches innumerable potential customers and it has proven to be effective as well. It is only logical that online merchants would tap into the potential of this powerful marketing tool for its efficacy and efficiency. However, when uninformed and uneducated about the ways of search engine optimization, online business owners commit the most basic yet critical mistakes in search engine optimization making what is otherwise an efficacious tool into a useless one. Albeit complicated, comprehending what makes SEO tick is rather easy to follow and the mechanics are certainly understandable. However, in order to fully exploit SEO’s powerful potential, online business owners need to fully appreciate what mistakes they have been committing and how to avoid making the same one in the future.
It is a common misconception among online business owners to think that their responsibility only entails listing hundreds of thousands of products on their e-commerce websites and from this, search engine traffic will start rolling in. This notion is extremely erroneous. What online business owners failed to consider is that optimizing for e-commerce websites for SEO is much more difficult than it is for blogs and simple company websites. E-commerce websites have a lot more pages constantly shuffling on and off the website and because of this numerous problems may arise that make SEO very hard for these websites. Furthermore, SEO errors on e-commerce websites can and will cost you money and for this reason alone; it would be much wiser to invest time and effort in getting SEO right. What this article aims to do is to identify the most common e-commerce websites mistakes online merchants do and how to avoid them.
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Product titles are common or are not optimized for SEO
In other words, the products enlisted are not given their proper description. Product titles and their corresponding descriptions are essential as it gives an overview to the user about the product you are selling; the complete lack of a text description virtually diminishes the chances of the page being in the top ten of a search engine query. This is why a description added to an item card is a necessity; strengthen your page’s chances. Remember, an image may speak a thousand words to the user but search engines cannot see images, so enrich your image by adding a description of the product. Always consider the fact that the more content you write for your product description, the better your chances for your SEO efforts. These are useful tips that should aid you in writing your description:
>>>Write descriptive content that will help your customers make purchasing decisions.
>>>Test your description, word count helps with purchase conversion (70 characters max)
>>>Do not copy content from other websites (Search engines will recognize this)
>>>Do not use product jargon
Utilizing Product Description straight from Manufacturers
This alone is guaranteed to get your site banned from the search engines. These descriptions are distributed to many online stores and most of them are leaving the text the way it was without any alterations. This would ensue to a number of pages with non-unique filter content and filters from Google. To make things worse, these descriptions in their raw form are not written in any way that would make the product appealing or sellable. This is why it is necessary to always create unique content as Google has been getting better at knocking down websites a few notches on the rankings for duplicate content and content scraping. Creating unique content for thousands of products might be a daunting task so the first thing you may want to consider is to put a no index meta tag on product pages you cannot write unique content for. If you have product pages which you either cannot get to or will be out your inventory in a few days then consider keeping them out of the search engines. Your SEO is better off in good standing than letting it suffer from poorly optimized product pages.
Badly formatted URLS
Most shopping engines present their product pages with URLS which are unreadable for both users and search engines. They are like that because when the systems were developed, it was easier for programmers to make the URLS using that pattern (without taking into account SEO). Hopefully, you are one of the lucky few whose platforms allow you to change the URL into something more meaningful and descriptive. Furthermore, when you are creating your URL structure, try to make it based on your product groups or categories.
Product Reviews are severely lacking
Product reviews are essential. They help provide potential consumers feedback from a consumer who has already bought your product. Potential consumers would look for this before making a purchase as this gives them an insight as to the quality and efficacy of your product and it’s rather unfortunate that some e-commerce websites would overlook and neglect this aspect. If your site has no such medium for providing feedback and reviews, you are missing a very large percentage of the audience. Moreover, it is easier for review pages to reach the top of search results than selling pages. In addition to this, enabling user reviews allows your users to create unique content for your online store which is free and it helps enliven the product page which brings the search engines more often. Every time a site is updated more frequently, the better your SEO efforts are.
Usability is neglected
Search engine optimization is about usability, user friendliness and user experience and to make more sales and profit online, your online shop has to be usable. This usually depends on various factors; however there are key points where you should focus on. Firstly, your website should be easy to navigate, fast, SEO friendly, well-structured and mobile responsive. Finally, the usability of an online shop has to do with the type of products you are selling. For optimum results, use software that is customized to accommodate and showcase your products in the best way possible.
About Author : Jeric is a Filipino blogger and a digital marketing enthusiast. He is currently working at Optimind Technology Solutions, a digital marketing agency that provides different kinds of services such as SEO, social media marketing, mobile app development and web design in the Philippines.
