6 Actionable Design and SEO Strategies to Market your E-commerce Site

SEO Strategies to Market your E-commerce Site

Introduction

An increasing number of people are using e-commerce sites to purchase items of daily use, gifts and other things. They are leveraging the convenience, value, and variety offered by online shopping. In order to stay in the focus of users, you should make sure that your e-commerce site has a compelling design. An efficient website design along with cleverly placed content can help you get good ranks on SERPs. In this article, we are going to discuss what SEO strategies can assist you in this endeavor.

It is common knowledge that when users click through your pages, Google algorithms take note of the user behavior on your site and eventually rank your pages on SERPs. On the other hand, it is also true that without proper visibility on SERPs, your target audiences will not be able to know about you. However, just by staying on the first page cannot get you the traffic you desire. You must hire an SEO expert to get the No. 1 position.

Here is a list of the measures an SEO expert can take in marketing your e-commerce site.

# Competitor research

This is the most significant portion of site optimization.  Taking a look at the marketing strategy of your competitor sites can give you an insight into how you should design your own site. An e-commerce site generally displays related products, popular products, recently viewed products and top-rated products.

However, if you come across a leader in your niche with deep navigational architecture, you may think twice before copying the design. For a start-up, a complicated navigational structure may not be as profitable as that of an already established company because remote pages in the site architecture may not get as much visibility as those in the front.

# Out-of-stock items that may come back

If a product gets out-of-stock, but has the probability to come back in stock, you should not try to replace or remove the page or redirect your visitors to another page. Instead, you can offer relevant options like newer models of the product, other colors of the same product, other products in the category with similar price and quality.

Another great way to reach out to your audiences is to mention exactly when the item will be back in stock. You can also request your clients to order the product, so that you can send it to them when it returns to the stock.

# Specific products

In the event that you offer seasonal products, you need to link them with product categories and links that are present in the product descriptions.

In the event that you are planning to launch a new product which is bound to fetch traffic, you can optimize it by introducing a ‘Coming Soon’ page. With the help of pre-order forms, social media integration and notification about the new launch you can popularize your site.

# Obsolete products

Not all products return back to the site. Some items like cosmetics and fashion products are replaced by newer models.

In order that your audiences can choose from other options, you can redirect them to the parent category from where they can select a product similar to the one that has currently become obsolete. In order that you do not lose your rank on a particular page, the SEO expert can use a 301 permanent redirect. This will help, if you want to replace the old product page with a new one. This approach is useful to rank new product pages on SERPs.

In such circumstances, removing or deleting the page from the URL structure creates a bad impression about your marketing strategies as those customers who had bookmarked the page get an error message.

If the products are generic and do not have model numbers or specifications, you may retain the URL of the earlier product. In this manner, you get the opportunity to preserve the authority of the page and have better chances of ranking it on SERPs.

Some expired or obsolete products do not have any similar products in terms of price, appearance, quality or any feature. In such cases, the SEO professional can use a 401 code to delete the page from the site. This will let Google know that you have permanently removed the page.

# Products with identical keywords

Your website layout must have a separate page for each and every product and separate keywords for each of them. Otherwise, the search engine will not realize, which page to rank and end up ranking different pages for a single keyword leading to keyword cannibalization. For instance,   if you want to rank a page with the keyword red bean bag, you must be careful that no other page with identical products is ranked for the same keyword.

# Pages with minimum content

It is not possible to add content to all the product pages on your site. In that case, you can add a description to the parent category of the products. By improving the internal architecture and adding a relevant product to the category you can tell search engines what the page is about.

A common mistake is to add information from the database as product description. This is a wrong approach as it leads to duplicate content on the site. The SEO expert can use web analytics to know about the pages with the maximum traffic. He or she can suggest you to add unique content first to those pages.

A great way, by which you can add content to your product pages, is to leverage user generated content. This type of content includes reviews, testimonials and ratings by satisfied clients. Not only do they add content for SEO purposes, but also help in conversion as several people buy products based on user review.

Conclusion

An effective website design optimizes the site for search engines. With the help of an experienced SEO expert, you can make use of the best SEO strategies to rank your e-commerce site.

Author Bio – Kendall Archer is a leading digital marketing expert offering dental SEO services to several dental experts. With 10 years o experience, she has the knowledge and skills to rank sites on top of SERPs.