By now, we’re going to assume you’ve had the basics of eCommerce search engine optimization drilled into you.
You understand the importance of high-quality product photos and unique, well-written product descriptions. You know your website needs to be readable and navigable on mobile devices, and that your store needs a streamlined checkout process with plenty of payment options. And you certainly grasp the reasons why maintaining a blog is a good idea.
But you don’t yet know everything. There’s a lot to eCommerce SEO that you still haven’t explored. We’re going to scratch the surface of that uncharted territory today, with a few tips to help you take your storefront’s optimization to the next level.
Play Around With Schema Markup
Referred to by SEO expert Neil Patel as ‘semantic vocabulary’, schema markup is designed to help search engines better understand the context of your site. It tells them what your content means rather than simply what it says. How it works is a little complicated, but the pared-down explanation goes a little something like this.
Schema is all about connections and context. It’s a form of structured data that establishes the meaning of a particular element based on how it’s connected to other elements. You can read a bit more about it here, but the long and short of it is that by applying the schema to your product pages and blog posts, you can improve your chances of ranking on the SERP.
Use Breadcrumbs
You already know that site structure is important. If a customer cannot easily navigate through your storefront to find what they’re looking for, they’re going to go elsewhere. What you might not know, however, is that you can make things a bit easier on them with breadcrumb navigation.
Basically, this involves showing your users where they are on your site at any given time, allowing them to easily go back to a previous page if the need arises. This also has the side benefit of improving your site’s internal linking and making it easier for Google to map your site.
Promote and Participate
While it may not directly pertain to SEO, an active presence on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit can help drive traffic and act as promotional platforms for your store. It’s important, however, that you establish yourself as a community member first and a merchant second. Not to say you shouldn’t be open and honest about who you are and what you do, of course – just that you shouldn’t try pushing your brand on people.
Instead, participate openly and honestly in community discussions, sharing any non-promotional content you think will be relevant to your audience. Show them you have a degree of expertise, and focus on building relationships.
Better SEO, Better Sales
There’s a lot more to eCommerce SEO than the basics, and a whole lot more than what we’ve covered here. We’ll certainly revisit this topic at some point in the future. For now, though, we hope this advice has proven useful.