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How to grow your eCommerce business to the next level

Written by Evelina Brown | Dec 11, 2019 6:30:00 PM

The new online store needs sales increased recognition and loyalty. To solve these problems it is necessary to constantly improve and develop the site, work with usability and content. All these goals are realized through the optimization of the site, which includes internal and external methods.

One of the most important indicators of the success of the Internet project is its place in the search results.

To get high positions, it is necessary to work out the following issues of promotion:

1. Compile a semantic core

The semantic core of the site is a set of keywords or phrases that the online store will promote in search. Collecting queries for the semantic core - the basis of optimization. Each time a user enters a query, the search engine must determine what sites to show him from hundreds of thousands of possible pages. That's why it is important to carefully select the key queries so that the search engine gave out the site of your online store in response to the request.

 

Collecting the semantic core starts with a brainstorming session, during which you need to collect the main queries on the subject, based on common sense. Think about what keywords characterize your store, what is in the range. When your fantasy runs out, you need to connect online tools to the selection of key requests.

It is also important to remember that general queries such as "windows", "swimming pools", "cars" are not suitable for commercial promotion. It is more realistic and profitable to promote window models, specific brands and models of cars, etc.

2. Group requests

The next step is to group the requests. At the end of the keyword collection stage, when your semantic kernel is ready, you need to group keywords into groups. Each group is placed on its own separate page.

For the correct grouping, you need to distribute the queries into pages, check if the queries can be placed on the same page. Example: requests "gold-plated watches", "buy gold-plated watches" should be placed on one page of the store. It is often necessary to create new pages at this stage.

3. Analyze competitors' websites

By analyzing competitors' websites, you can not only get additional key requests for promotion but also in general estimate the level of competition in your niche, estimate the reference mass.

Competitors can be found either manually by typing advanced search queries into the search box or using web tools.

While analyzing a competitor's site, evaluate usability, see what you find particularly convenient and what is not, look through the pages of different nesting levels.

4. Technical audit of a website

Technical errors have a negative impact on the indexing of the site. Site ranking suffers from the presence of takes and trash pages. It is necessary to get rid of takes because they create a lot of problems. In one pass, the search robot can index a certain number of pages, but if the site has a duplicate, instead of indexing the desired pages, it indexes them. In addition, two identical pages under one request destroy the system of internal re-linking. Pages with and without www and without www are the most typical takeups. In addition, takeups include slash ("/") and slash ("/") pages, index.html pages and pages without slash ("/") pages. To deal with takes, you need to use 301 redirects. Add the following code to your .htaccess file:     

Options +FollowSymLinks

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://%1/$1 [L,R=301]

Optimize your site upload time. The acceptable page loading speed is 1 second. Slow loading of the site can occur for various reasons: in some cases, you need to reduce the number of requests to the server, merge CSS-files, optimize images or code, compress scripts or just optimize Magento 2 Speed. When you test the speed, the service you use to perform the test will give you recommendations on how to reduce the download time.

Use the site map - it will tell your robots which pages on your site are to be indexed. Map in XML-format allows the robot to index the entire site, so you need to enter all the pages of the online store. You can create a site map online, or using the plugin engine. In addition, many CMS allow you to configure the site map so that it is automatically updated when you update your site.                                                        

Check links, pages with errors, etc. With the help of a number of programs (for example, Xenu Link Sleuth or Screaming frog SEO spider) you can scan all pages of the site, find broken links, browse title pages, find pages with an error of 404 and fix them.

5. Work on the content

The creation of high-quality and unique texts is the basis of work on the promotion of the online store. Search engines declared war on over-optimized pages - unnatural and meaningless texts lose ratings.  Therefore, write for users and use a reasonable number of keywords. Divide the texts into paragraphs - this way they become more readable. To determine the optimal length of texts, focus on your competitors from the top.

Do not let the site stand idle - the publication of new content on the site like search engines, it shows that the site is developing.

Product cards - the main type of content online stores. One customer are important descriptions, others - pictures, and you need to answer all the questions on one page.

For some types of goods, a great kind of content is reviews - for example, in the case of household appliances. When writing such reviews, the "property-benefit" method is used, when the product is described in terms of the benefits that the customer receives when buying. Such reviews are good for increasing conversion.

More than 70% of users will not make a purchase without reading the reviews of the product. Users trust this type of content, and here it is important to place human, natural reviews. Using the factor of user confidence, the owners of the online store can influence the decision of the buyer to make a purchase.

In the news section of the site, you need to report on promotions, special offers, as well as new products.

Blog management helps to promote the online store because the possibility of adding quality content to the blog is almost unlimited. Interviews with fashion bloggers, expert opinions from representatives of market leaders - such content is interesting to readers and attracts potential buyers.

Write comparative reviews, entertainment and image articles.