So you have a great new ecommerce website with all the bells and whistles, the next important thing to do is make sure everyone knows where it is!
Search Engine Optimisation
The goal of an SEO campaign is to make your ecommerce store as search engine friendly as possible so Google recognises your website as being the best match for your keywords when they are typed into the search bar. By implementing an effective online marketing campaign, you can gain greater visibility on the web.
With over 90.63% of the search engine market, Google is the most important search engine in terms of rankings. Promotion is not just about rankings though (although 36% of online shoppers do associate search engine placement with company prominence) but also about making sure people can find your website under a variety of relevant keywords to increase your traffic and in turn increase your enquiries, sales, and profit.
As search engines crawl and index different links on each website they visit, it is important that search engine optimisation is completed throughout the website. By optimising each page of the website individually, you can ensure your website ranks well within various search results – this is especially helpful if you provide a broad spectrum of products and services.
A large majority of users won’t enter a website through the homepage, so each page should be treated and optimised as though it is the homepage. Important things to include are:
- Navigation – Don’t leave your visitors stranded once they’ve found your website! The rule is that, ideally, you should never be more than 3 clicks away from the homepage. Although this is a good rule to follow, the most important thing is to make sure your navigation is clear and easy to follow no matter how many clicks away you are. Having clear navigation also helps with search engine promotion as it allows robots to gather additional links from your website more effectively.
- Content – Make sure that each page is content rich. Yes, pages are ranked individually but where they are ranked will be based on the content of each individual page. Having good product or service descriptions containing relevant keywords partnered with search engine promotion strategies provided by your search engine optimisation specialists will help to push those pages further up the rankings.
- SEO Tags – Creating unique title tags, meta descriptions and header tags for each page is one of the most important factors from a search engine point of view. Page tags should reflect the contents of the page rather than being generic or duplicated across the site.
- Don’t leave your customers or search engines in any doubt about what your product is – make sure it is reflected in the title tag, page description, image tags and product descriptions. Don’t keyword stuff your page, but make sure important information such as product names, colours, sizes and common alternative names are included.
Search Engines are constantly changing the way they rank websites with an ever increasing emphasis on providing high-quality, informative content. Off-site links are still valuable but are beginning to have much less overall impact on how a website ranks.
Social Networking
Social Networking is one of the most important tools the majority of companies can have in their marketing arsenal. Social networking sites such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest attract vast amounts of visitors on a daily basis, so they are the perfect place to make sure your business is seen.
Companies with social networking profiles can keep their customers and fans up to date with all the latest news and offers whilst also making their company or brand more accessible. Platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest also allow you to create shops and catalogues to advertise your products directly on the platform, improving brand awareness and generating sales.
If you sell B2B rather than B2C, you can build your audience on LinkedIn. This platform is solely aimed at business professionals, so you can market your products and services through a company profile whilst networking with other business owners and influential team members.
The majority of social networking websites are free to join and create business pages on. Many social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok allow you to display paid adverts on the website in a variety of formats.
Although social networking content is offsite, some search engines such as Google and Bing include social networking content in their search results. Your posts can display in relevant searches, increasing your chances of getting found online.
Email Marketing
As we mentioned in Ecommerce & SEO: Your People, email marketing is a great way to keep your brand and products fresh in the mind of potential clients. Offering a ‘subscribe to newsletter’ box on your website allows people who are already interested in your products or services to sign up for regular updates from your company.
Sending a regular newsletter allows you to keep subscribers up to date with the latest product launches and company news as well as allowing you to pass on useful tips and information. With email marketing campaigns you can also set up landing pages providing further information, and a good email marketing system should allow you to monitor the success of your campaigns.
Email marketing provides almost instant feedback, allowing you to monitor bounced email addresses and remove them from future mailings, view who opened your emails and what they did with them and see who has clicked on your links so you can see exactly what your customers are interested in and send better targeted emails in the future.
Newsletters can also be added to your website providing a new source of keyword rich information which integrates perfectly with a search engine promotion campaign.
Email marketing can be a steady source of enquiries and sales for your business.
If you are ready to create a new ecommerce website for your business or need help marketing an existing site, be it in WordPress or any other ecommerce platform, contact us today to discuss your requirements and request a free, no obligation quote.
To read Parts 1 – 4 of the discussion visit the links below:
