You can invest ample time and money into building your e-commerce site, but if customers are unable to find it in the maze that’s online shopping, it will just be another platform lost in a sea of neverending content. Search engine marketing helps businesses to optimize their content for better-searching power on websites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo so that customers find the sites that best meet their needs. While this can be done by using trending keywords, there are other ways to generate traffic and sales. Here are some tips that will help you to rank higher in online searches.

Find and use the right keywords

While it’s always best to use a keyword tool to appropriately calculate which keywords your potential clients are using, you can start the process by putting yourself in their shoes—What would you search for? By creating a list of phrases and words that you think shoppers would use to find your products and services on the web, you’re eliminating the guesswork involved. After building your list, you can then validate your suggestions to ensure they’re the best options. You can then use the keywords that you’ve narrowed down to create pages that rank higher when prospective customers search using said keywords.

Be unique over your competitors

Business and competition go hand-in-hand, so if you want to rise above your industry, you will need to use words that make your company stand out. For example, phrases like “near me” or that utilize geographic location harness a lot of power within local communities. It’s also great to use phrases such as “on a budget”, “savings”, and “best” alongside popular keywords to differentiate your low prices and quality products. 

Don’t abuse keywords

Although utilizing keywords is a great way to attract online attention, you should consider making landing pages that best appeal to search engines rather than having keywords sprinkled everywhere throughout your content. This is because overuse of keywords risks distorting the meaning and can irritate select shoppers who read lots of content. While traffic is important, it’s equally as important to ensure that your text is clear and easy to read. 

Build lots of links

The more websites that carry links to your website, the higher you will rank on searches. This is a great opportunity to develop partnerships with businesses that are similar but not in direct competition with yours. Keep in mind that quality is far better than quantity so it’s important that the links directing back to your website come from credible sources. 

User-friendly websites are best for search engine marketing

Functional and easy-to-navigate websites are more desirable to the shoppers who manage to find your business via an online search. That said, there are loads of ways to improve your website’s readability through web development and search engine marketing—add headings that feature top keywords, ensure mobile-friendliness, and upgrade site speed

Measure results and make changes as needed

There are a variety of free and low-cost tools (ex. Google Analytics) that help to provide you will details about the SEO performance of your website as well as data about your visitors—how they found your site, their gender, geographic location, and even how long their session time was on each page. Then, your team is able to use these measured results to make changes to future search engine marketing strategies. 

Can you think of other ways you’ve used SEO to rank higher in various search engines? Drop a comment below to share with our readers.