For so many eCommerce website administrators, SEO is an elusive beast, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. There are ranking signals that even the most SEO-agnostic people can optimize.
So, we asked the BigCommerce SEO experts over at 1DigitalⓇ Agency for some input on what ranking signals are the easiest to optimize. Here’s what they told us.
(Keep in mind, anything related to the content, which accounts for the vast majority of these ranking signals, cannot be optimized before performing keyword research).
1. Page titles
Page titles are probably the easiest and most straightforward ranking signal you can optimize, and platforms like BigCommerce make this easy as pie to do.
Just log in, open the page editor, and add your relevant keywords into the page titles where they fit on the page.
Then give it a few days. All else being equal, organic impressions for those and related search terms should increase.
2. Meta descriptions
Just like page titles, meta descriptions are a ranking signal. You can optimize these by making them short, readable, and scattering targeted keywords among them.
Best practices indicate keeping meta descriptions somewhere between 150 and 180 characters, so keep that in mind when peppering them with keywords.
3. Product page copy
Product page copy is a ranking signal, but it’s also there to entertain, educate, tantalize, and encourage your customers to convert.
Add in keywords where you can, but make them relevant, and make sure you pay very close attention to the overall UX of the page because that is also a critically important ranking signal.
Also, in addition to making sure the page reads well and is sown with keywords…
4. …Don’t use duplicate content
It may be tempting just to jack the copy off of your supplier’s website, or to cop a blurb from a manufacturer, but don’t do it.
Google penalizes duplicate content, and even if it didn’t, you’re not going to be the one to get the rankings if you plagiarize. That would be the publisher of the original copy.
By the way, that’s one of the easiest ranking signals to optimize – just don’t steal!
5. Blogs
Blogs in and of themselves are a ranking signal (content) but there are other ranking factors wrapped up in them.
For instance, the age of the content, length, breadth and depth, structure and organization, use of titles and internal links, and relevance can all score big points with Google.
So, therefore, just by blogging regularly and keeping the quality of your writing high and relevant, you can improve your organic rankings.
Who knew? Well, the BigCommerce SEO experts at 1DigitalⓇ Agency, and now, thanks to them, you do too!
6. URL slugs
Really not a huge ranking factor, but they do make a spot of difference and luckily, BigCommerce makes it very easy to edit them.
Just make sure you edit them before making a page live, or you’ll leave quite a trail of nasty broken links (bad for SEO!).
7. Internal links/anchor text
Adding internal links to your BigCommerce store at the page level is not a difficult task.
Just choose a page you want to link to, preferably one that’s relevant, and drop a link to it. You can spice things up by using one of your keywords as anchor text, too (that’s the text that’s used to represent the hyperlink, like this: BigCommerce SEO Experts).
If only sowing backlinks were that easy! (Work with the BigCommerce SEO experts for that).
8. Mobile-friendly themes
Coding and web page development are not easy tasks to master, despite the fact that they definitely do impact SEO.
However, BigCommerce is compatible with a wide range of mobile-friendly, SEO-friendly themes that you can install and configure with just a few clicks.
Take mobile optimization seriously. It’s estimated that half or more of online shoppers access online stores through their mobile devices and Google has been mobile-first indexing for over three years.
9. Alt data
All things considered, it’s pretty easy to update image alt data. This is the textual (and technical) data associated with the image files embedded on your BigCommerce website.
You can update the data associated with your images to contain keywords and search terms for a slight SEO boost.
And, while you’re at it, you might as well compress your image files. That will improve your site speed scores, which is also good for SEO.
10. Remove broken links
Finally, scan your website and remove broken links where you find them by implementing 301 redirects. Broken links (404 errors) will result in a technical flaw that will cause Google to downgrade your site’s search engine rankings.
You can easily find “page not found” issues in Google Analytics (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages > Page Title > then search, “Not Found”).
Have Questions About eCommerce SEO or BigCommerce? Send Them to the BigCommerce SEO Experts
While these are some quick adjustments you can make to BigCommerce websites’ ranking factors to improve search engine optimization (SEO), you can also work with a BigCommerce SEO expert to take care of them for you, improving your organic rankings in the search results.
Choose an Elite BigCommerce certified eCommerce SEO agency, like 1DigitalⓇ Agency, which has ten years of experience developing SEO strategies for clients on the BigCommerce platform.
