E-commerce search engine marketing is one of the best ways to improve your website’s ranking and bring the expected traffic. All you need to do is to optimise your e-commerce site in a proper way.

Keyword research

Keyword research is the cornerstone of any website, whether it is an e-commerce store or a normal service based website. In other words, keywords can make or break your business, so choose the right set of keywords.

Some people still believe that using too many keywords will help them to rank better.  In fact, there are certain   criteria to pick the right set of keywords, such as:

• Relevant
• High volume
• Low competition

Tips:

• Follow well tried keyword research process (https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-research/).
• Remove unnecessary keywords.
• Study your business, competitors as well as industry.

Create a sitemap

If you want to help your users and search engines to read/scan/index your website efficiently, create a sitemap.

Now, what is a sitemap?

According to Wikipedia, a site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design, or a Web page that lists the pages on a website, typically organised in hierarchical fashion.

But why use a sitemap?

Creating sitemaps has multiple benefits, such as:

• Ease of navigation  (https://www.sitemaps.org/)
• Better visibility
• Guides or informs search engines about any changes on your site.
• Faster indexing.
• Helps to classify a website

How to generate a sitemap?

With the help of these proven tools, you can easily generate a sitemap:

• Slickplan
• Dynomapper
• Screaming Frog XML Sitemap Generator
• PowerMapper

Where to submit a sitemap?

Once you have generated your site’s sitemap, you will need to upload, check, as well as validate it. You need to submit it  to Google Webmaster Tools.

Tips:

• Always generate and submit your sitemap. (https://www.semrush.com/blog/10-awesome-visual-proven-sitemap-generator-tools/)
• Use gzip to compress your Sitemaps.
• All URLs listed in the Sitemap must reside on the same host as the Sitemap.
• Periodically check and update your sitemap for better results.

Optimise images

It is a well established fact that high-quality images speak  louder than words. However, you should use “alt tag attribute” to optimise it.

Now, the question arises, why create an alt tag?

According to Google, it provides Google with useful information about the subject matter of the image. We use this information to help determine the best image to return for a user’s query. (For more details, visit – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=en)

Tips:

• Avoid keyword stuffing.
• Be precise in alt text for products.
• Mention the topic in alt tag.

Use Breadcrumbs (Breadcrumbs are a useful navigational feature of a website)

According to Wikipedia, Breadcrumbs or breadcrumbs trail is a graphical control element used as a navigational aid in user interfaces. It allows users to keep track of their locations within programs, documents, or websites.

Types of Breadcrumbs:

• Location Breadcrumbs
• Path Breadcrumbs
• Attribute or Keyword Breadcrumbs

Advantages of using Breadcrumbs on a website:

• Help users to understand the layout of a website.
• Make navigation easy and simple.
•  Allow users to scan through your website and to view  content efficiently.
•  Easy to implement and improve the overall architecture of a website.

If used properly, all the above mentioned elements will help you to boost your business.