Each week, we publish a mishmash of ecommerce-related, insight-infused articles for your to smash through. Just as we collect business information across all of a merchant’s channels in a single place, we’re doing the same for ecommerce related content from a variety of top tier content creators.
It’s a little acronym that provides a lot of online marketing juice: SEO. Love it or hate it, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and, if anything, it’s going to matter more and more as a growing number of retailers flock online for a piece of consumer action. In this week’s mishmash, we’re touching on a variety of SEO-based advice, whether it’s preparing your site for SEO before it’s launched, choosing which pages to show the most SEO love, or the power of more-visual rankings.
Never Too Early to Start
Hypothetically, let’s say you’re launching your first online site or maybe another online storefront. Little did you know, it’s possible to jump-start your SEO before the website goes live, helping elevate your rankings straight off the runway. Search Engine Land has 7 great SEO pointers to put in place as you get it set up. Prepare an arsenal of blog posts beforehand, build out “coming soon” pages, and begin reaching out to influencers to get the gears turning before your site’s greenlighted.
First Is (Not Really) the Worst, Second Is the Best
Second place is first loser in the world of Ricky Bobby, but it could just be the top rank when it comes to SEO. In an SEO study by Blue Nile Research, SERP-traveling consumers seem to be attracted to search results adorned with something more than just text. Visually appealing rankings — those that had reviews, ratings, author images, etc. — attracted more clicks. When presented a series of SERP pages with the second result containing something visual, the second one, rather than the top one, was clicked 61% of the time. When the same link was stripped of the visual but moved to the top place, it was clicked on 48% of the time. In any case, make no mistake — the higher on the results, the better.
It Pays to Pay An Agency
Some merchants just abhor SEO; they’d rather handle more important matters. Sometimes, it’s easier to just pay the professionals. If that’s an avenue you find yourself leaning toward, an SEO agency is always available. But, before you begin selecting one, Bigcommerce has some SEO questions you’re going to want to ask them. Treat it like you’re hiring someone — ask them how they handle and approach their work, the work they’ve done before, how they’d align with the overall biz strategy, and their favorite color.
Optimizing Page Optimization
Obviously, you’d like to optimize your entire website for SEO, but you’ve only got so much time and money to go around. Which of your beloved webpages gets some TLC? Practical Ecommerce has some practical guidelines for choosing which pages you should pay the most attention to. First, think about your site’s hierarchy — pages connected to the main header take priority. Second, scour your performance data to see which pages receive the most consumer attention, whether it’s traffic, clicks, or conversions. Third, take a look at the article for more useful information.
Getting Content with Your SEO
Lastly, we can’t ignore how content and SEO are intertwined. Each by itself is powerful, but together they’re a match made in heaven. Quick Sprout has a juicy layout of why and how content and SEO feed into one another, as well as what types of content contain the most positive impacts on your rankings. Content that’s evergreen — it isn’t reliant on timeliness and will be useful for quite a while — is incredibly effective with SEO over time. And, at the end of the day, focusing on metrics that matter for both, like traffic and keyword ranks, is like optimizing two birds with one stone.
