Are you looking to increase your online sales? If so, you’ll need to do a little more than just put up a pretty website.

You’ll also need to optimize your online store for search engines, which is known as eCommerce SEO. The more effort you put in, the greater your chance of success in being ranked high on Google’s first page within a relatively short period of time.

Here is a guide on how to do an SEO plan for your online eCommerce store:

SEO Plan For Your ECommerce Store

To start with, you’ll have to do in-depth research on the top search ranking results. Study everything about your niche that spurs people’s interest and energy at one time. By doing so, you’ll better understand what’s already trending in your niche and what’s not.

#1 ECommerce SEO Keyword Research

In the first step, you’ll have to track down potential keywords people are searching for in your niche. For this purpose, you can use keyword research tools such as SEMrush or AHREFs.

Be wary of using overly specific or unusual keyword phrases for your ad copy and website as it may come off sounding too promotional/salesy (not recommended). You should instead focus on useful information and product descriptions that are backed by facts.

#2 Competitor Research

After doing keyword research, you’ll have to turn it into a competition analysis by finding out what each eCommerce competitor is offering and how they’re using keywords. For example: Are other sellers being too aggressive on their ads for certain key terms? Then start toning down your ad copy here; are others focusing more on one niche than your own? You may then want to target several niches that compete with yours at the same time.

#3 On-Page SEO Of Product Pages

For your product pages, start by performing on-page SEO for all important phrases (keywords) that are available for your niche and based on the data you have accumulated in the first step. This way, you’ll slowly begin to learn which keywords work well with yours and show a correlation between strong page content + high-ranking SERP results.

At this point in time, there may still be many mistakes that can be made while optimizing your store’s copy/pages. Here are a few things you can do to prevent them:

• Don’t use excessive keyword stuffing, especially in the beginning.
• Consider splitting up your product pages into various categories that focus on certain ones.
• Use correct grammar and sentence structures.
• Don’t be afraid to test different ad copy ideas – do so until you find the one that performs best for each keyword phrase.

Product Description Optimization

Once you’ve taken all of these steps, the next thing your website should be focusing on is product descriptions. This is where professionals and advanced merchants kick in, as you have to put a lot of emphasis on quality copywriting. eCommerce copywriting has to be as clear and concise as possible, similar to that of a book or textbook.

Here I gave some tips about writing product descriptions.

Image Optimization

At this point, your image search results should also be optimized for the key phrases that you want to rank for. Don’t skip this step; it’s a very important one when it comes to improving overall conversion rates and increasing sales.

Google has made significant changes in how they treat images on rankings now, so you need to keep track of them accordingly. Image size also matters greatly now, so be sure not to publish large sized photos on your website that slow down your page loading speed, eventually compromising SEO rankings.

#4 Technical SEO

At this point, you’ve taken the above steps and improved your webpage pages’ conversion rate via its copywriting & image optimization. It’s now time to press forward and optimize your website for organic search engines rankings technically. User experience and mobile experience are just a few more of the technical aspects that you should take into consideration.

For content management systems, WordPress is an excellent choice because there’s so much free help and support readily available online. However, Shopify is a great CMS for eCommerce stores too!

#5 Website Speed Optimization

For the above technical steps to be properly executed, speed optimization is an absolute necessity. You need a web host that provides you with excellent online speeds and resources available at each server location for your visitors; if not, take it elsewhere!

Your eCommerce site speed also depends on several other factors. Essentially, your website should be designed with a fast loading time and feature all technology optimizations to receive great rankings while keeping it simple to use! Be sure not to slow down page loading times by creating a bloated store.

#6 Link Building

Backlinks are — and will always be — one of the biggest ranking factors in search engines. Whether you’re doing that online through guest posts, white paper backlinks, or sponsoring someone, it always pays back; build a brand with contextual links, squeeze in organic link opportunities and utilize all forms of social media around your domain via Pinterest, Facebook & Instagram.

#7 Monitoring Google Analytics

If you’re not utilizing Google Analytics (GA) in your own business, chances are that you are just firing random bullets here and there. There’s no question it has become the center of any Ecommerce site tracking and development nowadays. Work with your keywords so that you can better understand what is working and not.

A good partnership with GA makes it possible to compare the actual results of all previous strategies & tools in real-time instead of launching a new one against limited data.

In other words,

Google Analytics + Your Marketing Campaigns = Successful eCommerce Store!

Final Words

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few years, you would know that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important factors to consider if you want your business to thrive online.

By following these simple steps, you’ll be on your way to securing first place in the search engine rankings! Do you have any questions about SEO? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll do our best to answer them!