If your e-commerce site isn’t getting the type of traffic you wish you were getting, it may be caused by some common SEO issues. Take a look at your site and see if you have any of these five SEO problems that might be harming your e-commerce site.
1.Weak or No Product Descriptions
If you have a lot of products, it’s likely you have short descriptions that were provided by the manufacturer. This is not helpful for the following reasons:
- Short descriptions give search engines very little content to work off of, so it will have trouble indexing the product.
- If the descriptions are automated, they likely aren’t unique enough and can create duplicate content issues.
- Automated descriptions are also likely to be found on other sites offering the same products, so the search engines won’t rank you above those competitors.
Changing all the descriptions on your site may not be possible, but it will be worth the effort to create long, unique descriptions on key products. Consider creating full-fledged landing pages with exciting, actionable copy for your highest-value products. Boosting these pages can help your overall search engine ranking in a big way.
2. Not Including Customer Reviews
Today, customers expect to be able to read reviews of each product on the product page. You can thank Amazon and other big retailers like Target, Nordstrom, and R.E.I. for that. Allowing customers to leave reviews helps create transparency for future buyers, and they can confirm whether its the right purchase or not.
You might be some bad reviews. But, don’t panic. Studies have shown that customers are more likely to purchase an item with diverse reviews over one with 5-star reviews.
In addition to it being helpful for customers and will encourage them to continue making purchases on your site, it’s a huge gift to SEO. In a study over 30,000 businesses, Yotpo found that those who added user reviews to their site had Google organic page views per month grow by over 30 percent in just nine months.
3. No Unbranded Keyword Optimization
If your site isn’t developed with keywords in mind, you’re in trouble. Your products pages are likely built around a brand and model name. There will certainly be customers searching for these phrases, so they should be included on the page and in the title tags.
However, you’ll also have a lot of customers who aren’t searching for a specific brand or model name. To help them, you need to include generic, popular phrases on your pages as well.
This will take some keyword research to see what real customers are actually searching to find products like yours. Then, use those keywords in your meta descriptions, image alt titles, URLs and headings. This will help you rank higher in search when customers are just looking for “waterproof rain jackets” or “eco-friendly cribs.”
You could have the best site in the world will tons of awesome products, but without proper SEO, you won’t be found. A thorough investigation of your site will help you determine where you SEO is lacking, and how it can be improved. There are always small areas where it can be tweaked and help you find the customers you need.