SEO will either send your e-commerce website skyrocketing to the top of search result pages or send it plummeting to the bottom of the barrel. Don’t let your e-commerce website fall victim to common SEO pitfalls which will not only drop your rankings but can drop your online revenue.
Here are five of the most common SEO e-commerce mistakes that are best avoided:
1. Un-Optimized Product Pages
Changes to the site, such as adding new pages or products, can dramatically influence your organic search engine performance. One of the biggest SEO errors made by e-commerce sites is having poorly optimised product pages. For example, having no product reviews, missing image ALT tags, low quality content and poor keyword targeting are all factors that make up low ranking product pages.
Product descriptions play a huge part in the buying process. After all, people rely heavily on detailed descriptions before deciding to make a purchase.
So where can you go wrong with your product descriptions?
Using the manufacturer’s product description is the most common mistake that e-commerce sites make. This description is likely to be used by dozens of other retailers who also sell the same product, thus resulting in duplicated content. This is a huge disadvantage for e-commerce sites because search engines rank pages containing copied content extremely low. Writing unique product descriptions for each of your products may be time consuming but it will solve this problem and improve your website’s SEO.
2. Incorrect Keyword Research
Your website will only appear in search engine results if it uses relevant keywords. It is important to carry out proper keyword analyse and research to define which words will best benefit your business. Relying on broad keywords such as “Laptops” will help drive basic traffic to your site but you may want to target a more specific audience to drive solid sales. For example, if you sell specific laptop brands such as Apple, Lenovo or DELL, you can include these as keywords in order to reach searchers who already have a clear idea of the product that they want.
Failing to use both broad and specific keyword targeting appropriately will only result in your potential traffic being drastically narrowed. Long tail keywords should not be neglected. Make sure that your keywords target specific products and try to include relevant information such as brand name, colour, size and model number.
3. Sites that can’t be indexed
A website must be indexed before it can appear on search engine result pages. A search engine has its own ranking algorithm which web pages must adhere to if they wish to appear on Google, Bing or Yahoo, for example. If your ecommerce website cannot be indexed properly, it simply won’t make it onto the list. Some of the most common reasons why a website can’t be indexed include using too many images with important text embedded (search engines cannot read this text) and flash animations.
Our multi-award winning marketeers and developers are also waiting to help with any digital marketing, adwords, social media, SEO Belfast or Magento ecommerce web design questions you may have. We also provide training for third party SEO software tools such as MOZ to ensure you can clearly monitor progress and ensure your campaign is of the highest quality.
If you are worried that your e-commerce website may contain potentially harmful SEO mistakes, contact RYCO Group today for the solution at 028 3026 1861
