What is SEO and why is it so important for online sellers? This blog post aims to explain the concept in simple terms and also provide online sellers with some useful tips they can use to optimise their SEO. In the ecommerce world, sales are driven by visibility, which makes SEO crucial. So what is it exactly? SEO stands for “search engine optimisation” and is the process of getting free traffic, also referred to as organic traffic, from search results on any search engine.
1. Have a good title
Your title needs to be short, informative and accurate. Do not waste precious space on terms that no one searches for, such as “wow”. Instead, focus on meaningful keywords and be sure to include the brand name or the name of the artist or designer, as the case might be, in your title.
2. Create unique product descriptions
Instead of using a manufacturer’s description of a product, rather create your own. What you need to avoid is the duplicated content . Just as in the case of the title, you need to think wisely about the words users will type in when searching for something specific on any search engine. This should give you a better chance of improving your SEO ranking.
3. Name each image descriptively
It is really important to label your product images using reasonable keywords to help your webpage rank on search engines. Why? Because search engines will crawl your web page for text, but not only that: they will also search for the keywords that are within your image file names. Fill in the alt tags with keywords and label images with keywords that describe each item.
4. Reduce the size of your images to optimize your site load times
Anything that slows down your website is bad for SEO. And too many high quality images will slow down your website. There is a catch 22 situation here, because it is also important to have great quality images on your site, not only to attract shoppers but also to properly describe and showcase the items for sale. One of the possible solutions to this problem is a “zoom-in” function. This built in feature allows shoppers to see a small version of the image, and are given the option to click on it and zoom-in to see a larger version of that image. It’s a win-win solution.
Alternatively, you can also reduce your image file size so that it does not take too long to load. You can do this using a number of image editing software tools such as Photoshop, Pixlr and others.
5. Image file type
As we all know, there are three common file types used for images. They include: JPEG, PNG and GIFs. Most of the time, the most appropriate file type to use in ecommerce situations would be JPEGs. The reason is because it allows the smallest file size at the best quality. PNGs can also be a good alternative, however a useful tip to remember is that GIFs should not be used for large images.
6. Using thumbnails
Make your thumbnail file size as small as you possibly can. Tip! Make sure you change your alt tag so that you don’t have duplicates. In other words, ensuring that the thumbnail image and the bigger main images are slightly altered in terms of their descriptions.
7. Make your site secure with a SSL certificate
By making your website secure with a SSL certificate, you are not only improving your Google ranking signal, you are also creating an environment with an added security feature. So what does SSL mean? It stands for secure socket layers. If you collect any private information from users such as names and email addresses, then it is vital to be a secure site. How do you do that? Enable SSL, also known as https.
In the end, all of the previously mentioned tips are useless if you do not adhere to SSL requirements. Just to give you an example, bidorbuy has complied as well; we have converted over to https. We now require https images and unfortunately if sellers do not adjust and adhere to these requirements, they will find that their images will no longer appear. And we all know that images are everything in the ecommerce world, so be sure to convert to https if you are a bidorbuy seller! Be sure to read more about it in one of our help articles.
