3 E-commerce SEO Hacks You Can Try Today
01/04/2020 | Share:
You may have heard of Search Engine Optimisation and how important it is to websites. It’s crucial for businesses that rely on site traffic via search engines. A site that is optimised properly is more likely to appear on the first page of results for the keywords that are targeted.
Depending on your niche, e-commerce SEO may require a bit of investment from you. However, there are a few things you can do that don’t require a lot of expertise. You can even get started on them today!
Here are 3 easy SEO hacks you can try yourself today:
- Add H1 Tags to all pages
- Write Compelling Meta Descriptions
- Add alt tags to all your images
Hack 1: Add H1 tags to all pages
In terms of SEO, each page should have a Header 1 tag (H1) in the HTML. It helps to organise the content better on the page and improve HTML structure. When bots scan the website HTML code, they see the H1 tag and it allows them to easily determine the subject of the page. Normally, for an e-commerce site, this would be the product or a description of it. It’s recommended that only one H1 tag per page is used, otherwise, this dilutes the meaning of your content and rankings may suffer as a result!
Now, e-commerce sites can be huge. Just think about how many products are available on Amazon for example – each one needs its own page. If your e-commerce site has way too many pages for you to manually add H1 tags, we’d recommend focussing on the main pages you want to rank for. Then, ensure that going forward you are always inserting H1 tags when you create a new page.
Hack 2: Write Compelling Meta Descriptions
This hack doesn’t directly improve your rankings, but it does have an effect overall. How does that work, you ask? Well, search engines such as Google do not use meta descriptions to determine where they appear in the search results. However, Google does use the click-through rate (number of people clicking on your page after seeing the link) to determine the relevance to people.
This links to the meta description because users can read it to make a decision about whether they want to click on your website or not. If the copy is compelling, they’re more likely to click and therefore improve your click-through rate. A higher click-through rate contributes to higher rankings.
In addition, any keywords (or related terms) within the meta description will be highlighted in bold, which obviously stands out more. If a user can see relevant keywords in the “excerpt” then again, they’re more likely to click. Make sure you write the meta description for your page yourself, otherwise search engines will take their own extracts from the text and display this instead. You don’t want them to display footer text, for example!
Hack 3: Add Alt Tags To Your Images
Ever wondered how search engines can read images? The answer is alt tags!
An alt tag is a description of the image within the code of a website. Originally, alt tags were designed for accessibility reasons. Visually impaired users can use their reader software which provides a description of the image. Today, alt tags are also used by search engines. Until technology develops further, this is their only way of understanding what images are. This is how Google Image search determines the best images to show in a search result.
With an e-commerce site, you likely have quite a few product images. The best practice is to ensure they have alt text. For best results, we’d recommend being honest about the image and stating exactly what you see. Imagine if a visually impaired user were to use the website. This maintains relevance and puts you in good favour with the search engines.
Make sure you follow these 3 simple SEO hacks to help your website be correctly indexed by Google – a key part of any SEO campaign. It helps potential customers searching in your sector to find your website and your products.
