This page was last updated on November 16, 2023.
There’s no doubt that ranking number one on search engines is incredibly important for your company. However, if you have an ecommerce site, ranking is especially vital for not only clicks but revenue. Since many ecommerce sites are larger and contain many more pages, making sure you are ranking requires a little more effort than just what fall under traditional SEO.
How Can SEO Help BigCommerce?
To receive more qualified leads and sales for your goods and services, implementing a definitive SEO strategy for your BigCommerce website is a great way to draw organic traffic to your products. And luckily for you, BigCommerce comes with unique SEO features to help you stand out against the competition, as well as a user-friendly interface to help you stay up to date with your online ecommerce store.
Read on for the best SEO tactics for your BigCommerce website!
1. Optimize Your Pages
The content on your website affects all aspects of your on-page and off-page SEO efforts, and this is no different with BigCommerce sites. The most important thing to remember with content is to make your pages relevant and targeting the right keywords.
A great place to start is with your product pages. Optimize your content and metadata on these pages and make sure to incorporate the important keywords you need. By doing so, you can direct users to the right page on your site.
Since Google could take a long time to index your pages, be sure to optimize and upload your content quickly so it can be indexed sooner.
A good tip for writing content on your product pages is to produce at least 250 words, but if you can go to 500 or 1,000 words on more prominent pages, that would be encouraged. Also, you can start with 250 and come back later to beef up a page. Ultimately, though, the goal is for the content to be unique and relevant on each page.
The Importance of Website Metadata
Alongside optimizing your website’s content, you should be including descriptive metadata on each of your pages. Metadata provides just a small snippet of what your page is going to be about, and it usually appears below the clickable link of a search engine results page (SERP).
Though there is no concrete proof that metadata is ranking factor, it can help increase the click-through rate of your ecommerce store. When writing, just make sure that is a concise, yet descriptive summary of the page, and incorporate keywords where they best fit.
2. Use Quality Images
They say to never judge a book by it’s cover, but the images you select to showcase your product can make or break a potential customer’s decision to purchase your product. Ensure that your photos are not only user-friendly, but SEO-friendly as well by being clear (not blurry) the proper aspect requirements
You also want to make sure you add title and alt title tags to photos so that Google can understand what your product is, and you want to be as descriptive as possible! Something broad such as “brown purse” would not cut it. Plus, those who are visually impaired use these tags to understand what you are showing. Using proper alt titles is a great way to show search engines you are properly maintaining your website.
When you implement what we suggest above, it can increase the chances of your images to show in Google’s image tab, which is a great way for you to get more traffic and sales!
3. Aquire Relevant Links
Having a strong backlink profile is crucial to building trust and authority with Google and other search engines. If your site is being linked from other websites, it tells search engines that your domain is trustworthy and relevant, boosting its importance. As an ecommerce site, link building can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Unlinked brand mentions, providing guest content on industry blogs, being added to “the 10 best ___” lists, and many other strategies can prove to reap huge rewards.
Pro-tip: Utilize the built-in blog your BigCommerce site has to write content that other people would want to link to. For example, say you run an online bike parts store, topics such as “15 of the Best Gifts for Fathers Day” or “How to Replace Your Bike’s Seat” are just some broad examples of ideas of posts you could write and upload. If you do SEO right, these posts could receive traffic and links on their own, but you could also do manual outreach to relevant sites asking for them to link to you as well.
Why Your BigCommerce Site Needs a Blog
A blog is a great way to share your industry-related content with your target audience. It has also been reported that companies with blogs generate approximately 55% of more website visitors than those without a built-in blog.
4. Be Mobile-Friendly
A lot of the time users are online shopping on their phones when they’re bored, waiting around, or suddenly thinking of something they want to purchase. This means that your site must be conducive to mobile devices, not just desktop computers.
Ideally, you want your site to be both mobile-friendly and responsive, meaning the site conforms to the dimensions of a phone screen instead of remaining in a widescreen, desktop view.
And with user experience now being a ranking factor by Google, as well as 74% of ecommerce and retail traffic coming from mobile devices, you absolutely want to make sure your navigation is clear and that checkout is easy for mobile users.
5. Improving Your Site Speed
Search engine rankings are known to give preference to pages that load quickly and efficiently. Additionally, nearly 89% of website designers say a slow page speed is one of the main reasons potential customers choose to leave a website.
That is why our team highly recommends doing what you can on your BigCommerce site to make sure that your page has a fast-loading time, such as:
- Avoiding using excess code on your site (ex: javascripts)
- Compressing images so they take less time to load on your pages
- Minimizing the number of external scripts of custom code on your site
- Avoid using several different fonts on your website that could take time to load
Though these are just some tactics you can do on your end in order to improve your site speed, BigCommerce also includes a content delivery network as another tactic to ensure that your website is loading efficiently for potential customers (and search engines!).
6. Google Shopping
Google Shopping is a service provided by Google that allows customers to search and shop for products across different retailers. It gives shoppers the opportunity to browse products based on the search query.
If you have an ecommerce site, use this feature! When a shopper clicks on your product, they’re sent to your website to make the purchase. This drives traffic, increases ranking, and generates more revenue for your business.
You’re missing out if you’re not using this free feature! Google Shopping allows you to add a visual touch to your ads, show up multiple times, and is proven to convert 30% higher than with a text ad.
Notable BigCommerce SEO-Friendly Features
Some of the SEO features that you can implement as a BigCommerce customer include:
- 301 redirects – Your URLs can automatically change depending on adjustments that you make to your product itself. For example, if you are changing one of the names of your products, the URL will change and automatically redirect to your updated page. This will allow search engines to know that you have made changes to your site that they should take note of.
- Microdata – This feature will add additional information to your product pages to help boost your search rankings (similar to how schema is often utilized in SEO). Your product pages can include microdata on the pricing, overall rating, brand, stock levels, and more.
- Optimized URLs – Your SEO-friendly URLs include descriptors, such as the specific product pages, category pages, and other pages you highlight on your website. It also allows you to alter your URL settings based on your preference.
Contact Us Today for SEO Help!
Want to learn more about what ecommerce SEO tactics will help your business thrive online? Reach out to us today! We’re happy to help.
