The e-commerce industry is growing at a tremendous rate. As per stats, it is expected to grow by 21.5% in 2022 hitting a valuation of US$ 74.8 Billion. This upward growth trajectory is making the industry supremely attractive for budding entrepreneurs. It has intensified competition. The need to stand out in front of e-shoppers is paramount and this is where E-commerce SEO plays a pivotal role. E-commerce SEO is an organic form of Digital Marketing, for online stores, that assists e-businesses in increasing the number of visitors to their e-stores and boosting their ranking in the SERPs.
Religiously following E-commerce SEO practices such as, building a responsive yet simplified e-store, optimizing the page speed, creating unique product descriptions, social sharing, and targeting the right keywords are a few ways to ensure a boom in website traffic.
In this article, we share 4 magic insights into E-commerce SEO and the major trends in the E-commerce industry.
THE MAGIC QUADRANT FOR E-COMMERCE SEO 2022 – INSIGHTS
Certain E-commerce SEO exercises, irrespective of the trends, remain uniform to ensure a strong digital presence. Here, we have divided them into 4 major practices, which are:
WEBSITE ARCHITECTURE
Your E-commerce website is the first impression of your e-business which is why it is imperative to build a simple, easy-to-navigate, and clean website. An overwhelming website is one of the main reasons for a high bounce rate. Also, it is important to align the website’s look to the perception of your brand. Other important steps to ensure a lucrative website are:
- Having a simple and clean home page
- Including internal links for easy navigation.
- Having a different page for each product listing.
- Ensuring swiftly loading of webpages.
- Owning an SSL Certificate.
- Ensuring regular site audits
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Having a bucket of well-researched and relevant keywords is a must for e-commerce SEO. There should be a mix of varied keywords in an e-store’s keyword trove.
There are various keyword research tools that assist an e-business in targeting the e-market and connecting with pertinent e-shoppers. Utilizing keywords heedfully is a sure-shot way to improve the traffic to your online store, tremendously.
INDUSTRY AND COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Industry and Competitor analysis must always be done with the intent to draw inspiration and gain knowledge of the industry in your business model falls. It must not be done with the motive of duplication. Google is particular about its plagiarism guidelines and if detected, can be detrimental to your business.
Analyzing the big players in the market and doing the overall SWOT analysis of the industry is always helpful to know about:
- The trends in the industry – Keeping abreast with what is happening around helps an e-commerce business identify which products and services are in demand and how to best market your existing products to cater to the ever-changing wants of customers.
- Insights for strategy development – Industry and Competitor analysis ensure that your strategies are in alignment with the dynamic business environment, also, it gives insights regarding strategies that are keeping your competitors ahead in the game, after all the ultimate goal of an e-commerce business is to boost conversion rate and have a loyal customer base.
CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION (CRO)
The ultimate goal of E-commerce SEO is to see a significant rise in the conversion rate which is why Quality Content plays a vital role in SEO. Keeping, Converting, and Growing the customer base is a high-on-page optimization game.
Conversion is the last step for a Digital Sales Funnel. The funnel flows like this:
- Make Aware – This comes from having a higher rank in the SERPs.
- Grow Interest – This comes from having a decent website architecture.
- Ignite Desire – This comes from having a lucrative landing page and promotional content.
- Convert shopper to customer – This comes from gaining shopper trust and ensuring a good e-shopping experience. The following practices can help with CRO:
- A specific marketing message to retarget customers with abandoned carts.
- Mentioning discounts, return policies, warranty, and a wide array of payment methods to avoid bouncing back at checkout.
- Easy sign-up ways or even allowing checking out as a guest.
- Mentioning the product reviews and ratings somewhere around the checkout process, maybe as a pop-up to ignite desire.
- A smooth and easy checkout process.
These are the 4 Magic Quadrants that are staples for E-commerce SEO. To optimally utilize these practices, even more, coupling them up with the trends can yield even greater results.
MAJOR TRENDS IN THE E-COMMERCE INDUSTRY
- Rise of Voice Search, Virtual Assistants, and Home Bots – The rise of voice search is increasing the need to understand the intent of the e-shopper and target relevant semantic and long tail keywords based on that. This makes it important to optimize for slang phrases and questioning tones of shoppers when they look for a product online.
- Customer Relationship Management Software – This software helps in optimal marketing by using AI-based auto recommendation technology which ensures a customized and personalized shopping experience. It suggests the next best products for the e-shopper.
- Augmented Reality – The use of AR is increasing in the E-commerce world. Companies like Lenskart and Ikea have already made immense use of AR and have successfully done so. This gives the online shopper a more real experience, even in the virtual world.
- Mobile-Friendly Websites & Apps – Creating an app and having a mobile-friendly website for e-commerce stores have taken huge significance with the rise in mobile shopping.
- Creating a positive user experience – There is immense competition in the E-commerce industry which is why Content is King. It is crucial for online stores to build a simple yet responsive website that ensures a user-friendly experience and gives a glance of the e-business offerings.
- Video-based content – Using video content makes your product pages much more responsive. It also helps you rank higher in the Video SERPs of Google. Product tutorials are a great way in which e-stores utilize video content.
- Map Pack Results – These are location-based results. Listing your business in Google My Business is a must for any E-commerce store. Ratings and reviews on google my business listing are looked heedfully by e-shoppers.
- Creating rich snippets – Rich snippets are summaries that resolve the e-shopper’s product query in a brief manner without the need for them to visit any website. E-shoppers are most likely to click on the website links that show in these rich snippets.
Along with relevant product descriptions, FAQs can also be a great source to build your rich snippets. Landing in the “popular products” results of the SERPs also boost traffic significantly.
- Chatbots – Chatbots on the website and in the apps create an automated user experience. FAQ(s) can be covered through Chatbots and for complex queries, a strong customer services team coupled with chatbots can create a faster service and much better customer experience on your e-store.
- Product Image Optimization – Optimizing product images not only helps you reduce your website’s loading speed but also improves your ranking in the Google images SERPs and, this is exceptionally important for e-commerce businesses since they have a lot of image content.
CONCLUSION
E-commerce SEO has propelled not only B2C businesses but has also given an avenue for B2B businesses to create a successful market. There are businesses working as full-fledged E-commerce companies catering to the digital needs of budding entrepreneurs, startups, and huge organizations. If you also have a burning desire to grow your Online Business, #ARM Worldwide extends its helping hand to make your dream come true. We offer to provide you with the best e-commerce services to take your business to impressive heights.
Wish to start and grow your E-business? Connect with us!
