Search engine optimization (SEO) drives your eCommerce website’s ranking in powerful search engines such as Google. No matter what type of business you are managing, an efficient SEO strategy will help you to reach higher online visibility, attract new customers and boost your sales. In today’s blog post, we will discuss 10 factors that will boost your website’s performance and describe Google’s algorithm in more detail.

1. How to create qualitative content

Familiar with the expression Content is king? In SEO, we value good content because this is the key to being present on the Search Engine Results Page. In case you have a category page that needs to be optimized, make sure that you create a piece of content of 300 words. Moreover, keep in mind that search engines can read duplicate content and you can get penalized in case you are using copied content. Therefore, split the content into shorter paragraphs and respect the H tag structure.

Also, make sure that you are using only one H1 subheading.

Another aspect that you need to take into consideration is that your content should respect Google EAT criteria: expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. EAT is critical for important domains such as law, science or health care. For more information on how you can combine content with SEO, follow this link.

2. Work on your on-page SEO strategy


In fairness, content should also be optimized for search engines, as well as qualitative. If you are wondering how you can do that, check the essential checklist for on-page SEO:

  • Select one main keyword for that particular page and up to four related keywords.
  • Add that particular keyword to your URL.
  • Make sure that your meta tags (title, description and H1) include your main keyword.
  • Content should be qualitative and composed at an eighth-grade reading level.
  • Make use of internal links and effective anchor texts.
  • Add one image at least.
  • Moreover, you will need to include more details in your search engine optimization strategy that could guarantee your place on Google Search Engine Results Page.
For example, keywords are very important and each page needs to be optimized with one single keyword. Therefore, you should write a title that stands out in the form of an H1 tag. This will let the search engines know that this piece of content is the page title and also what that page is talking about.

Another important topic in content optimization is images, and in particular, having a unique image per page. This makes the content more attractive and interesting for readers and at the same time. Image files need to be defined using the image file name and should include the main keyword as the image alt tag and title. 

Also, it is recommended to add links to qualitative sites that have a good ranking inside your content. Internal links are very important because they redirect the users to different pages within your website and keep them engaged.

3. How to find the right keywords

Businessman clicking search field with keywords. Business concept.
Needless to say that keywords are a key factor for on-page optimization. Your optimized content needs to contain the target keywords, meaning what queries the users are searching on the Google Search Engine Results Page that would make them reach your page. Keywords tell the search engine what your page is about. 

Keywords are essential beyond the current webpage content. You should optimize each page with a meta title and description, as these texts appear in SERP. Semrush Overview Keyword tool is very useful as it gives you a general overview for a specific keyword that you are aiming at targeting as well as total search volume and important Search Engine Results Page features. In case you would like to discover more details, click on the Semrush keyword research tool link.

4. How to have a secure website


In SEO, having a secure website is vital. Your eCommerce website should be seen as trusted to rank on Google Search Engine Results Page. 

How can you do that? 


By using HTTPS encryption, it will give your website SSL certificates and will create a secure connection between your platform and your customers and is protecting information that the users can provide to the website, like passwords.

To make your website more accessible, it will need to be well-coded. This will make it easier for Google to crawl the pages of your website. By adding a file called ‘’robots.txt’’, the bots will be informed where they should and shouldn’t check for your website information. It is also highly recommended to generate a sitemap, that will include a list of all your website’s pages. This will make Google understand what your website is about.

5. How to make your website crawlable for search engines

Crawlability is what makes search engines reach your website. In such a competitive market, where there are billions of web pages live, this is very demanding. The aim is to make it easier for search engine bots to crawl your website, index and understand the sort of content that you are providing. You can verify on Google Search Console whether your website’s pages are being crawled by Google.

If you aren’t familiar with this topic, ‘’Googlebot’’ crawls the web, looking for and indexing pages. It may not crawl a particular website if it was recently launched or if the website design makes it more complicated to be crawled. In any case, you need to allow Googlebot to access any CSS, Javascript and image files that are used on your website.

By adding a ‘’robots.txt’’ file, you will stop Google bots from crawling particular pages of your website. Google Search Console also has a feature called ‘’robots.txt’’ generator, which you can use to disallow pages of your website.

6. How to increase website loading speed

Did you know that the websites that rank highly in Google have a loading time of fewer than 3 seconds while for eCommerce websites, those that load in less than 2 seconds rank the highest? On top of that, Google is even considering accepting less than half-second.

You might wonder what actions you should take to make your website faster.

First of all, minimize HTTP requests, minify and combine files and use asynchronous loading for JavaScript and CSS files, because search engines can predict the site speed based on your page’s HTML code. Secondly, server response time is also important to work on. A domain name system (DNS) server has a database of IP addresses. The moment a user adds a URL to their browser, the DNS server translates that URL to the proper IP address. In case you want to see how your DNS is doing, you can check out the DNS speed comparison report.

7. How to get user engagement


We’ve discussed qualitative and optimized content from an SEO point of view, now lets focus on the engaging part. Google uses the artificial intelligence tool, called RankBrain to access user engagement.

RankBrain checks elements such as click-through rate, (how many users have clicked when presented with a search engine result) and dwell time (how much time people spend on a website). If a user visits your website but leaves immediately, it will affect the performance of your website and you will reach a high’’ bounce rate’’. By writing engaging content, you can keep people on your website. Create a clear site architecture that allows people to navigate easier. Qualitative web-design, engaging images and interesting infographics have the potential to maintain people on the page.

8. How to create a schema markup

If you are wondering what schema markup is, think about back-end microdata that shows Google how a page should be classified and interpreted. This data helps the search engine to determine the type of page. Nevertheless, data should be accurate, well-executed and structured. Schema.org maintains a universal language for structured data. For example, if you display recipes on your website, your schema markup language should include ‘’ “@type”: “recipe” and “name”.

9. How to have a mobile-friendly website


Today,  most of the web traffic is generated by mobile phones. Having said that, Google has shown that mobile-friendliness is a Search Engine Results Page ranking factor. As we have mentioned in one of our blog posts, if a website isn’t adapted to a mobile version, Google will force them into mobile-first indexing. This transition is scheduled for March 2021.

You can test your eCommerce website with the mobile-friendly test tool from GoogleIn SEO, you always need to find a balance between creating a website for users, by creating a user-friendly website, one that has a responsive design and text-blocking ads and also to rank in Google Search Engine Results Page.

10. How to be visible on Social Media

To come back to the user engagement topic, there’s no better way to do it than through Social Media. Start by posting links to qualitative content on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and you will see an increase in clicks. At the moment, there are up to 3.6 billion people using social media. This signifies that you have a chance to reach more users thanks to your website.

Google focuses attention on social media accounts in general and it has created a patent for technology that establishes whether social accounts are real or fake.

Focus on creating well-researched, long-studied, original articles that are talking about interesting topics in your domain.

Conclusion:


To conclude, by taking into consideration and implementing the 10 factors that we have detailed in this article, there is no doubt that your eCommerce website will reach Google top positions. Follow the Kooomo blog to keep up with the latest SEO news.