3 SEO Tips for eCommerce Sites

How to Optimise SEO for More eCommerce Sales

Advising on how to get an eCommerce site to make sales should be easy. The whole point of an eCommerce site is to sell, surely?

Well... from what you can see on thousands of eCommerce sites, it's not.

ECommerce SEO should be the most basic sort of SEO, but there are mistakes that eCommerce site owners make time and again. The advice on how to fix these mistakes is out there – but without the reasoning. Site owners might be clear on the how of it all, but without the why they're working in the dark.

3 of the Most Common SEO Tips for Boosting Sales on eCommerce sites, and why they work

Adding more text to product descriptions:

The absolute most common piece of advice given by SEOs to any eCommerce site is to improve on product description text. Following this advice can help in two very straightforward ways:

• It attracts shoppers. Most product descriptions are very basic, but think about it from a shopper's perspective. When you're buying online, every piece of information is valuable. More text (as long as it's quality text) adds to the shopping experience.

• It pleases Google. Products come with manufacturer descriptions, and the common practice once was to simply copy and paste those descriptions. In doing so, though, site owners were creating duplicate content – effectively sabotaging their own site by making it look like they were stealing content. By rewriting the content, site owners get rid of this problem completely.

Keeping it simple:

A lot of ecommerce site owners give into the temptation to use every page they have to push as many products as possible out there, cramming items into their keywords and sidebars. The experience of most SEOs shows that this can damage both sales and SEO campaigns.

In SEO terms, focussing on more than one main keyword dilutes the effect of any optimisation work that's been done on the page. The days of 'bargain kids toys bikes barbies discount toys christmas' keyword lists are over. In sales terms, studies have found that pushing too many options in front of someone who is just about to make a purchase actually deters sales. In short, too many options makes things too confusing.

Being more visual:

This is something that has emerged over the last several years. SEOs have always recommended that eCommerce sites use consistent, quality images because this improves the overall quality of the site. As more studies are undertaken on the behaviour of shoppers online, however, it's emerged that big, clear pictures have a greater impact than the equivalent space in text does. With more shopping being conducted via mobile devices, it's likely that pictures are going to play an even greater part in buying decisions as time goes on.

Simple changes? Yes. But by following these SEO tips: boosting text, simplifying sales strategies and posting bigger, better pictures, you should see a remarkable eCommerce sales boost. Feel free to share these 3 simple but effective SEO tips for eCommerce sites... someone will thank you!