With a forecasted 60% decrease overall for in-store sales in 2020, the pandemic has significantly impacted retailers and fast-tracked eCommerce by an estimated five years. Evaluating your brand’s eCommerce platform to ensure it is adopting user and search engine best practices is the way to accelerate your business growth and transformation and get results in 2021. Reducing file sizes to speed up page load time is one way to improve website usability, whereas optimizing website coding and mobile-first indexing are some of the key ways to improve website searchability. Unlock your eCommerce potential and operate at an optimum level with strategies you can begin to implement today to boost your brand’s online presence, increase search engine ranking, and improve user experience (UX). Here are some of the main areas to evaluate to stand out in the digital world.

Source Code Optimization

A website that is poorly coded will be unfavored by search engines, practically making your business invisible with a low ranking on the search engine results pages (SERP). Improper coding can include broken links, large files, tag or meta descriptions that don’t match the target keywords, or code that isn’t mobile-friendly. A seamlessly coded website is a critical factor for both search engine crawlers and website users.

Coding for search engine crawlers: Search engine crawlers need to be able to crawl the site’s content properly to bring your brand to the forefront of organic search engine results.

Coding to improve load time: when a site is coded correctly and properly optimized, its pages will take less time to load, providing an efficient and streamlined user experience. Optimizing existing coding and HTML and removing unnecessary or unused CSS files and Javascript will improve eCommerce Google ranking and keep your audience engaged while on the site. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is a core web vital factor in Google Search Console that relates to the page load time from a user’s point of view. 2.5 seconds is the recommended page load time. Check out your core web vitals data in the ‘Enhancements ‘section of your Google Search Console account.

Keywords

Correctly incorporating the right keywords is an essential eCommerce strategy for search engines to be able to associate them with your business. Keywords are a significant component to draw the appropriate audience to your website. However, if a keyword is overused in the industry, you may find this doesn’t increase your SERP ranking. Incorporating relevant keywords that aren’t overused will guarantee a better chance of driving traffic to your eCommerce.

Plan keywords research to follow the user journey Consumers aren’t always sure on what they’re looking for when beginning a search. They might be looking to purchase fitness equipment, but are unsure of which specific equipment. This is why you should map out the potential user journeys and keywords relevant to each phase. i.e., ‘home fitness equipment’, ‘cardio equipment for home’, ‘treadmill’, best treadmill’, ‘buy Proform treadmill’.

Local keywords: If you have a local store it is important to incorporate location based keywords, i.e., ‘home fitness equipment near me’.

Competitor analysis: You can run a competitor analysis to determine which keywords are overused and overlooked.

Trending keywords: Be relevant to the current demand by identifying trending keywords. You can discover these on keyword research tools like Google Trends.

Voice search keywords: Voice search often means more conversational-style long-tail keywords rather than short phrases that are easier to search through voice search.