eCommerce | October 13, 2014
8 Common SEO Mistakes You’ve Made on Your eCommerce Site
We’ve all done it. You think you know best and try to do everything yourself, although it doesn’t always work out as smoothly as you would like even though you’re sure you’re following ecommerce website best practice.
One of the most common things this happens with is SEO. You read a couple of articles and think you get the gist, but then accidentally jeopardise your site by using archaic techniques or misunderstanding what you read.
If this sounds like something you’ve done or if you haven’t seriously looked into SEO then here are the most common mistakes you’re probably making:
#1 No product description
How are people supposed to find your products, or really know what they are buying, if there is no product description?
If you have no text description then the search engines will not be able to pick up on any of these key terms, and you won’t be found in any search engine results. A nice clear description can work wonders when it comes to marketing your products.
#2 Copying the manufacturers product description
The only thing worse than not having a product description is copying the description that the manufacturer provides. Doing this is almost a certain guarantee that your site is going to be banned from search engine results for being duplicate content. Make sure that your product descriptions are always unique and something your target audience wants to read.
#3 Keyword stuffing
Another problem people have when writing product descriptions is keyword stuffing – this is repeating the same words over and over. For example if you sell ‘cat jumpers’ repeating this term 50 times in 300 words of description will be flagged up as being spam.
#4 No image alt text
Forgetting to add image alt text is something that far too many eCommerce sites do, but it can be very damaging. After all, pictures make up the majority of the content on your website, so optimising alternative image text can be exactly what you need to direct search terms and tell the search engines exactly what it is they are looking at.
#5 Non-speaking URLs
A speaking URL is a keyword and user friendly URL, for example www.catclothes.com/cat-jumpers rather than www.catclothes.com/product872358. This lets your visitors see exactly what they’re looking at in the webpage’s URL and more importantly it makes your URL more relevant in searches.
#6 No quick social sharing
Social media is a fantastic way to drive traffic and sales to your site. Unfortunately, people are very lazy and often won’t share your products unless it’s mind-blowingly brilliant or it’s ridiculously easy to share.
Installing one-click-share social buttons can make a massive difference to the number of people sharing things from your site.
#7 Not user-friendly
Another huge turn-off for sales is having a website that isn’t user friendly. This may not be strictly SEO related, but if they can’t get from the homepage to your products then all the SEO in the world won’t help you make sales.
#8 No blog
Having a blog is crucial for targeting relevant traffic through long tail keywords and interesting/ informative posts. Write on topics relevant to you such as buyer guides, latest products and content that includes some of the products you sell i.e.: “Keeping Your Kitten Warm with Cat Jumpers”.
Regularly updating your blog will force search engines to return to your site and re-index, keeping it fresh and up-to-date. Research has found that people who read a blog post about a product are up to 50% more likely to buy said product – take advantage of this and get writing!
If you feel as though you’ve made some of these mistakes and aren’t 100% sure on how to fix them then get in touch with us at Liberty today or read more with our ecommerce quick wins guide. We can help get your eCommerce store back on track and appearing in the search engine results again – talk to our ecommerce SEO agency today.