How To Rank Your Ecommerce Website in Google

Learn 4 Ways to Improve Your Page Position

You’ve probably heard a thousand times that you need backlinks to rank, along with high quality content. And my next guess is that you are rather sick of hearing it. I know I am. You’re probably wondering to yourself how you could rank your site with thinnish content currently existing on your site. The truth is eCommerce sites have an edge when it comes to optimization. I feel like it’s worth mentioning the extraordinary link opportunities between a blog post and the product pages. It’s link heaven. Write an article about the product, and link to the product for people to buy. If they landed on the product page first they can link to the article to read more about the product. It’s the perfect match-up. Your content calendar just filled up – And if you’re me, the content calendar and coming up with ideas to actually write about- is the most difficult part. It’s well over half the battle. If you’re an eCommerce merchant…fairly smooth sailing from here on out – Captain.

You barely have to think about your content or come up with ideas. The products are the ideas! Sometimes I think I should have gone into retail online. So get going. Give me 500 words about each of your products, 1 per day, until your finished. There! I’ve kept you busy, quite possibly, for the next year.

But this is just one way to improve ranking position. While back links are still the best medicine for ranking a site and driving traffic, there are additional elements that go into ranking. Read on for more tips on ranking your ecommerce website in Google.

Title Tag Improvements Go a Long Way

Don’t Discount the Title Tag – It Has Two Very Important Functions

I’ve always placed importance on the title tag for two reasons. The first is that the title tag holds the Click Thru Rate (CTR). Ranking your site in the top 5 is a grand accomplishment but I wouldn’t start cheering yet. Your job is not finished. Now you have to get a searcher to actually click on your result amongst the many others that exist on the page. How do you do that? The best way to fully understand search behavior is to look at your own. After you perform a search, what do you do next? Why do you choose the results that you do on a page? What features make it stand out to you? For me, it’s identifying my search terms in the tag. That becomes a signal for me, to read further into the tag to confirm it’s a good option. If I’m in a hurry I’ll be doing a very quick scan and will be purposeful about finding those two or three words I searched for rather than reading the whole tag.

So to answer the question above. How do you make your listing stand out on the page and yell “click me” “click me”? By being the closest match to the searched term. What I mean is, your Title tag must at least contain the search terms to even have a fighting chance. I don’t read each result, word for word. For that reason, and since I have to believe I’m somewhat similar to many others out there…This is how I would construct this very important piece of literature for the highest visibility.

Let’s look at some examples. Notice how in the first example the keyword “purple widgets” is hidden in the last position of the tag. In the “correct version” the keyword exists in the 1st and 2nd position with a modifier in the second spot. “Buy Purple Widgets”. Since Purple Widgets is a short keyword you could even use it again in the 3rd position of the tag with another modifier just don’t go over the allowed number of characters or you’ve just defeated the entire effort.

No Yes Yes

A lot of times people will put the company name in the first position of the tag, which is fine if you are Coca Cola. Other than that reason I don’t see how that would get a higher click thru rate or convince a searcher that they should click that result. Personally I think it’s fine to add it to your tag but put it in the last position.

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Don’t Muck up your keyword either. Think Visibility! Just use the keyword, all by itself, in the first section of the tag. Then add to the other sections of the tag where possible.

Make Sure To Capitalize the First Letter of Each Important Word In Your Tag …Make it Jump off the Page and scream “pick me, pick me…” Note: There is another reason why using the key terms in the first position is important. Searched terms are bolded in the text, adding even more visibility to them.

The Second Importance of the Title Tag

It probably should have been 1st in order of importance yet, not many people know what it is. The Title tags are used as a signal to google on how to file your site in its index. Although it rarely happens these days, every once in a while you may notice a result is listed for a search it has nothing to do with. Look at the tag -the explanation probably lies somewhere within that tag. For example I did a search once for IT Management for a project I was working on and noticed there was a real estate management company in the 1st position along with results for Information Technology Management (the intended result). The best way to overcome a situation like this one? Rewrite the tag long version like I did here. The site was accidentally filed in google’s index incorrectly since IT is a rather popular acronym, we assume IT in this reference means Information Technology not the name of a real estate management company. We must always remember, we are dealing with machines who read things literally. Be careful to consider that when writing tags that you think have an obvious reference.

Let’s Talk About Your Product Pages

Maximize your opportunity here since this is where your conversions take place. Tell it all. Give everything a buyer might want to know about the product, in the description. If the product has alternate uses aside from the main one, be sure to mention any and all of those. Help them complete the purchase by leaving no questions unanswered. Be sure to include your keyword at least three times within this text. If you only have a sentence or two then one time is sufficient but keep the text evenly saturated with keywords. On the important products that you are eager to sell, write 1000 word articles about them, their uses or any other interesting features they may have. These can be featured on-site in the blog area. Be sure to link to the product page from the article. Preferably using a keyword (anchor text) in the link.

Site Architecture – User Experience – Crawlability

Your site structure is a very important feature of its ability to rank.

Okay so there are two, well maybe three types of architecture -only 2 are named as “popular for SEO” I will let you be the judge on this one after I provide you with all the information you need to know about each type. The topic of your website, the amount of pages, and the similarity of the topics will all be a factor in choosing the best structure for your site.

Flat Architecture -This architecture is based on the idea that no page should be more than three clicks from the home page. Avoid building deep page layers. Bring all pages up to the second layer or 3rd layer.

Silo Architecture – aka “The Silo” is basically the exact opposite of the above style. You builld pages down under a main page and link each page to the next. In this style you would want to avoid linking across silos. You want to only link pages to other pages in the same silo. Do not cross pollenate…hah! It defeats the purpose however there are differences of opinion about this.

Sometimes for individuals who have many of the same type of products the silo may make the most sense. For example let’s say you sell shoes online. On your website you would have Shoes as a main page in your navigation bar. Under that page you would have all the different types of shoes you sell. Technically this could be defined as Flat architecture still since all pages are still only 2 clicks away from the main page. So it could be described as a “Flat Silo”

So depending on the type and amount of products you have maybe a silo makes more sense. Use your best judgement. Overall adding more content is something you can do right now to increase your opportunities of ranking. Stay tuned or Subscribe to our blog for more tips on SEO for eCommerce.

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