While there are many traffic sources that businesses can tap into, most e-commerce businesses rely heavily on paid traffic. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the e-commerce and paid advertising business situation has changed dramatically. Furthermore, consumer behavior has also changed and continues to decline. Not many e-commerce businesses typically optimize their websites for organic search traffic, but this is the perfect time to take a step in that direction. In this blog post, we will share how e-commerce businesses can increase organic search traffic.

1. Increase organic search traffic with the right keywords

There are over 200 search ranking factors that Google analyzes before ranking a website in the SERPs. And although search engine optimization techniques have evolved tremendously over the past few years, ‘keywords’ remain the central theme. You will have to be strategic when choosing keywords for your SEO campaign.

Make sure to identify keywords with relatively high search volume and low competition. Long-tail keywords can also be a powerful weapon, especially for e-commerce businesses that require commercial intent and high conversion rates.

However, there is another factor that is especially important for e-commerce websites. Since most e-commerce businesses rely on paid traffic, their websites rarely have a strong backlink profile. Without a lot of backlinks, your site will probably have a hard time ranking higher on the first page of Google. So, once you’ve sifted through a bunch of potential keywords to target, do a quick Google search and jot down the top three pages that are ranking for those keywords. If your site has more referring domains than those at the top of the SERPs, you’ll be able to rank your page on them much more easily.

2. Place keywords on the website

After you choose the right keywords, the next step will be to strategically include those keywords on your website. Here are some “hot spots” that you should include in your main keyword:

• Website URL
• The main title of the website (H1)
• Subheadings (H2 and H3)
• In the meta description of the page

At least once in the main body of the page. Some SEO experts recommend including the main keyword in the first 150 words, but there is no reliable evidence of improvements due to that keyword.

A website often ranks for dozens of keywords. You can find out the exact keywords that the top three pages in SERPs rank for by using keyword & SEO tools, for example, Ahrefs or SEMRush. Ideally, you should have a list of all those keywords and their search potential in descending order. This will allow you to choose the best secondary keywords and include them in your content.

3. Unique and in-depth product descriptions

Many eCommerce businesses struggle with content marketing because they don’t have an active blog. Furthermore, many e-commerce sites have very short product descriptions. As a result, they have very little room to include content and keywords. This limits the chances of ranking for more keywords and a higher position in the SERPs. That’s why we recommend creating unique and in-depth product descriptions. Many online stores have many similar products, with only slight differences in product specifications or target audience. Regardless, you must create unique product descriptions for each product and landing page. Duplicate content will make it harder to rank higher in the SERPs.

Another tip is to include features, benefits, testimonials, and detailed descriptions on the product landing pages. Doing so will help improve the average time on page and dwell time, and reduce bounce rates. Higher engagement is considered a good sign by Google and can lead to improvements in search engine rankings.

4. Website loading speed and user experience

In today’s SEO world, user experience plays an important role and website loading speed is one of its biggest components. The loading speed of a website is even more important for e-commerce businesses. That’s because loading speed not only affects a website’s ranking in the SERPs but also affects conversion rates, which has a direct impact on a business’s revenue and profit.

Many e-commerce businesses are going through a rough patch. Even after COVID disappears, it may be a long time before consumers return to their normal purchasing behavior, given the slowing economy and high unemployment rates. Therefore, this is the right time to invest in SEO. While the results may not be immediate, they will pay off in the long run.