Building a successful ecommerce website requires a different set of measurements and design parameters compared to other types of websites, like educational websites or official company websites. Unlike sites that only seek to inform readers about a certain subject or establish a brand’s authority in an industry, an ecommerce site needs to attract, engage, and encourage people to perform an action like purchasing a product from the business’s online catalog.
For many local businesses, an ecommerce website also serves as a first point of contact with potential customers. Filipino ecommerce entrepreneurs who are now entering the digital economy must ensure that their websites are hardworking enough to convert as many visitors as possible into customers.
If you intend to set up your own ecommerce business, it’s wise to go about it with a clear idea of what exactly you want to be able to achieve. With regard to the key aspect of search engine optimization or SEO, here are six goals that you should meet to see continued growth and success pour into your ecommerce website:
SEO Goal 1: An Optimized Internal Linking Structure
Any trustworthy SEO company Philippines provider will tell you that one of the best ways to improve your rankings on popular search engines is to have an optimized internal linking structure. This is a map of all the internal hyperlinks on your web page that connects relevant pages together.
Having a great internal linking structure for your ecommerce website serves two main purposes. The first is that it helps your users find the necessary information within your site. This prevents them from possibly going somewhere else and finding this information from a competitor’s web property. The second is that having multiple internal hyperlinks on your website suggests to search engines that you are an emerging leader in your specific industry and have relevant knowledge about your line of business. This improves your chances of being ranked higher on their engines and being found by potential customers.
SEO Goal 2: Strong Domain Authority
One of the main goals of SEO for ecommerce is to improve the ranking of your ecommerce website on search engine results pages (SERPs). Aside from having an optimized internal linking structure, you and your SEO partner should dedicate a lot of your efforts towards strengthening your domain authority.
Work with your SEO agency to implement strategies that will make your site appear more authoritative to search engines. Keep in mind that search engines are built to provide the best possible information to users for their specific queries. To rank higher on search engines, your ecommerce website must be seen as an authority in your industry. Discuss viable strategies with your SEO partner, such as featuring useful content and developing hardworking web copy.
SEO Goal 3: Increased Visitor Time
Your domain authority also partially depends on how long your visitors remain on your site and how engaged they are when they’re using it. Does it seem like they spend a lot of time exploring your site? Do they read your blogs on a regular basis? What exactly does a typical customer do on your website, and how long does it take them before they leave?
There are many ways to engage your ecommerce audience, from publishing high-quality content to employing visually striking design elements that make it a pleasure to stay on your website. Either way, you must aim to have visitors stay on your web page for a significant amount of time. This signals to search engines that the web content you’re providing is valuable enough to your customers for them to stay on your website for longer.
SEO Goal 4: A High Conversion Rate
You should also ask yourself how many visitors to your website actually take action towards your business. While the exact metrics for success depend on the business, you should be able to determine the ideal number of people purchasing your product or the ideal amount you want to make in sales for your business to break even.
The conversion rate is an important metric to take into consideration, as it will determine the right marketing strategies for you to use and how you can assess your areas of improvement. Moreover, having a high conversion rate also shows Google and other search engines that your website can provide what a lot of customers need.
SEO Goal 5: A Low Bounce Rate
In a similar vein, you’ll need to make your website engaging to reduce the bounce rate, or the rate at which people click off your website. In general, there are three main reasons why your bounce rate could be high: 1) your website may not be providing in-depth or relevant answers to specific search queries, 2) your website may sport poorly written or grammatically incorrect content that turns customers off, and 3) your website may feature pages that are not optimized and are difficult to navigate.
Having a high bounce rate can significantly affect your ranking on search engines. If visitors to your site immediately leave after entering, it proves to search engines that your web page is not valuable and is less worthwhile to potential customers.
SEO Goal 6: Fast Loading Speed
The modern customer is unforgiving when it comes to site speed. Web pages that load slowly or are clunky to navigate through have a higher chance of being seen as unprofessional by the average user, who will most likely lose interest and go to a competitor’s property.
Knowing that, take every effort to maximize the speed of your ecommerce website and work with your SEO agency to make your pages easier to use.
Final Thoughts
A great SEO strategy can level out the playing field and give a voice to the emerging ecommerce entrepreneur, all so that their business can stand out amid the cacophony. Your ecommerce website needs to be seen as an up-and-coming authority and a provider of value in your field so that you will be ranked higher on Google and other search engines.
When you work on the SEO and web design aspects of your ecommerce website, remember to always prioritize the customer experience journey. All the SEO ecommerce goals that you aim to meet should converge in one overarching goal: to make customers happy to do business with you.
