You Don’t Have to Be a Computer Whiz to Improve Your E-Commerce Rankings

You know you need to improve rankings and sales for your e-commerce store, but maybe you’re too broke or too hesitant to hire a professional internet marketer. Without further ado, here are a few powerful ways you can improve your chances in the search engines without knowing a lick of code.

Rewrite your product names

Manufacturers come up with some pretty dumb product names. (I’d love to meet the marketing whiz who decided to call this line of pool care products POOLIFE.) They also don’t tend to be overly concerned with popular search keywords, but you must be if you want to succeed online.

Here’s an example:

Bad: Flip Ultra HD
Good: Flip Ultra HD High-Definition Video Camera

Do this right now:

Make sure every product name in your store includes common sense keywords. By common sense, I mean that if someone asked you, “What is a Flip Ultra HD?” you would reply, “It’s a video camera.” If they asked, “What does the HD stand for?” you would say, “HD means high-definition.” Spell out exactly what you’re selling, but don’t go overboard and stuff every keyword you can think of in there.

Rewrite your product descriptions

If you’re the only store in the world selling your product, congratulations! You can skip this section. But if you’re like most e-commerce store owners, you must make sure your product description is unique and features plenty of those common sense keywords. Why? It’s called duplicate content. If the search engines see 100 different stores with the exact same product description, they’ll try to pick the best store rather than show all 100 identical results.

Do this right now:

If the manufacturer’s product description is written in paragraphs, you can reformat some of the features and benefits into a bulleted list. If you already have a bulleted list, you can rearrange the bullet points, combine two points into one or break one point into two. If there’s more information in a separate PDF brochure, rewrite some of that copy on your product page. You can even bust out a thesaurus and substitute words with the same meanings.

Add text to every category page

A lot of e-commerce stores I’ve seen have absolutely no text on their category pages, or they hide perfectly good text in pretty images that search engines can’t see. This is SEO suicide. Search engines love plain text like a fat kid loves cake, so feed them plenty of juicy category text, marinated in common sense keywords and seasoned with tasty brand names.

Do this right now:

Check every category page on your website and write a few hundred words about the type of products you’ll find there. Make sure you integrate those common sense keywords and mention the brand names you have for sale. Talk about the advantages of using that type of product, or features your customers should be paying attention to when deciding on a particular model. Consider adding definitions, especially if your products are somewhat obscure or technical.

Here are a couple examples:

“Love to take pictures of your kids? Look for a digital camera with a ‘burst’ or ‘rapid fire’ feature that shoots quickly (before the little ones lose interest and run off).”

“A spirometer is a medical device used to measure the volume of air entering and leaving the lungs.”

Extra credit

Improving your standings in the search results can take time, so this extra tip will help you increase sales right now with the customers you already have. If your shopping cart offers a “one-page checkout” feature and you’re not using it, go switch that on immediately. A multi-page checkout process is mentally exhausting, and many customers will abandon their carts rather than suffer the ordeal of a five-page form.

Got any more low-tech tips for improving e-commerce stores? Please add your 2 cents to the comments below!

Photo by basykes.

Tagged as: brands, checkout, copywriting, duplicate content, keywords, shopping cart, usability