Moving Your eCommerce Site Forward: Five SEO Strategies That Must Go

Your eCommerce site is doing well, but could things be better? Actually, they could. There are some mistakes you are making with those SEO efforts that are holding the site back. Fortunately, a chance in approach will eliminate them and put your site on the path to greater revenues. Here are five ways to update your effort and make a huge difference.

Inefficient Use of the Right Keywords

One of the first things you learned about search engine optimization is using keywords and keyword phrases that are (a) popular, and (b) relevant to the topic on the page. That's the approach you used when the page content was first written. In fact, it's one of the reasons your pages are doing as well as they are today.

What you may forget is that like many things online, keywords and keyword phrases increase and decrease in popularity. There may be different phrases or word that are equally relevant to the page content but are now more commonly used for searches.

There are tools provided by the major search engines that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your keyword selections and how you use them in the content. Using them to scan what is on the page right now will help you determine if you are using excellent keywords too often or not enough. It will also provide some ideas of how naturally incorporating newer and more popular keywords would build on the audience you already have in place.

Your Internal Linking Needs to be Stronger

When you think of linking, it's usually about making it easier for readers to encounter your company on another site and be redirected to your pages. That's external linking. How much attention have you paid to internal linking?

There's no reason why you can't set up more links on each of your pages to help readers quickly get to another page on your site? Why would you want to do that? Because something they read makes them want to learn more about a topic covered on another page. Instead of going back to a menu, those readers use a link to navigate to that page.

Since you are operating a eCommerce site, adding links makes it easier to quickly jump from an informational page directly to the product. Once the reader places the item in the shopping cart, it's easy to keep reading elsewhere, or use the links provided to explore related products - all without having to initiate a new search. Readers save time and effort, and they are more likely to purchase more products per visit.

Low Performing Indexed Content Pages Outnumber the High Performing Ones

Are some of your pages seeing little traffic while others see quite a bit? Perhaps only a small percentage of pages actually get a lot of attention. Something must be done about those low performing pages.

Several factors could be the issue. The content on those low performing pages dilute their rankings in search engines. That's because they are covering information already found on another page. It may be time to remove some pages even as you tighten the content on the pages that remain. When search engines see each website page as being of value, the ranking will increase. That in turn means more people find your pages and perform better.

How many pages should you trim? There's no easy answer. Consider removing one or two at a time and see what happens. You'll soon know when it's time to stop.

Too Much Duplicate Content

This does hand in hand with too many pages. The fact that you love a certain product description does not mean it's okay to use it on multiple pages. That product or service may fit multiple categories, so take the time to create unique descriptions. Duplicate content turns off the love from search engines and ensures those pages will rank lower.

Imbalance Between User-Generated Content and Professional Content

User-generated content like reviews are great, but balance them with professional written content. Google and the other major search engines have taken the less-is-more approach to user-generated content ever since Panda arrived on the scene. Did you know that when Panda rolled out, eBay experienced a drop from #6 to #25 on Moz' list of sites with the most top ten search results? There was simply too much user-generated content and not enough professionally written content. That same issue could be keeping your pages from performing at optimum levels.

All of these issues can be corrected. If you are not sure how to manage them yourself, call in a professional consultant. An evaluation of your site makes it possible to identify the issues, prioritize them, and begin making the necessary corrections. As the changes are made, you'll see your rankings and the traffic for each page increase.