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OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE FOR SELLING
Search engine optimization is a dreaded concept for many people. They
immediately think about complications and technology and the money they
will have to spend to get the help of an expert. Yes, SEO can be complicated,
but once you understand the basics, the picture becomes a lot clearer and
everything you have to do makes sense.
The website for your dropshipping business must be optimized for you to be
visible to the search engines. You need a good search ranking to show up high
enough when potential customers search for your items or you won’t be able to
make sales.
Setting your website up for selling and conversions fall under marketing, so it is
understandable that many entrepreneurs find it confusing when we speak of
optimizing your website for selling. The two concepts work together to bring
potential customers to your website and keeping them there long enough to make
a sale.
The question most asked is whether SEO can really help to push conversion
rates higher. The answer is a definite yes. Once you understand the reasons why
your website must be optimized, we will go through each step of the process.
Turn Your Website into a Workhorse
Conversion statistics are not favorable across e-commerce websites and
currently stand at 2.5%. This means having a great website that looks good is
simply not enough. To get your site traffic to yield a higher conversion rate, you
need to study your niche audience and cater to their needs and wants. The way to
build customer loyalty is to make your website work as hard as possible. Give
your visitors the best possible customer experience with easy site navigation.
This is why you must optimize your website because if your audience cannot
find you, there is no possibility of any conversions.
Cater to the Expectations of Your AudienceTo give your customers what they want you use lead magnets, give them a
reason to want your products. When a visitor comes to your website, let’s say
your niche is outdoor kitchens, they came to your website because they need a
new wood burning stove. When the visitor arrives on your website, he is
presented with an in-depth blog article of the advantages of wood burning stoves
and the best models for different circumstances. This immediately draws his
attention. At the end of the article, you get him to sign up for your email list by
offering him a downloadable ebook with decor ideas and information on which
models suit different types of outdoor kitchens the best.
A few days later you follow up the lead magnet with for instance a free
consultation from a decor expert in his area. You have fulfilled the customer’s
needs and surpassed his expectations and you have a conversion. This scenario
works for whatever your niche products are and whatever incentives are most
suitable for your niche products.
Optimization is the key that brings the customer to your website and then your
efforts you have put in to appeal to your site visitors will secure you a new
customer.
Website Appeal for Your Specific Niche Audience
Your goal and the goal of the search engines are the same, the methods used are
simply different. You need to analyze the behavior patterns of the customers in
your specific niche, and Google uses over 200 different ranking factors to
analyze literally millions of websites, but your goals are the same. To give your
website visitors the best possible experience by presenting them with excellent
contents and prioritizing the contents that give the best value.
For SEO, you focus on using semantic keywords, the words and phrases used by
the person using the search engine to find what he or she is looking for, also
called search intent. When you optimize your website for selling with the goal of
increased conversions, you guide your website traffic to buy your products, or
sign up for your email listings, or join your social media pages.
When you optimize for your website goals and for SEO at the same time, you
create a much better working relationship and interaction between the search
engines and your website and the result is customer satisfaction.
Organic Traffic
Businesses spend large sums of money every year on paid advertising to attractvisitors, when search traffic clicks on one of your sponsored listings or on a paid
for advertisement. Yet, this type of advertising on average leads to a conversion
rate of less than 2%.
While it is true that it takes time, effort, and money to develop your website
content and to promote it, the organic traffic you gain through SEO is free. The
conversion rate for customers that visit your website through organic search is
far higher at over 14%.
Investing your time and effort, as well as money, to grow the organic traffic to
your website takes time to achieve, and often people are too impatient, they want
instant results. The results of paid for advertising is short lived though, but the
results from organic traffic are long lasting and brings a far better conversion
rate.
Website Data Analysis
The first step in the website optimization process is to analyze your website data.
This enables you to see website visitor behavioral patterns that will guide you as
to where to apply and focus your SEO.
Google offers the Google Search Console, an excellent tool that gives you user
behavior reports such as tracking key metrics for your bounce rate, number of
sessions and unique sessions of visitors and the behaviour reports show you how
your site visitors behave while they are on your website, which pages they went
to the most and which specific pages lead to the best conversion rates.
Keyword Research
Search engine optimization has changed radically, especially in the last decade.
You can no longer grab a few keywords you think is suitable and go with that,
write an article or two and you get ranked. Today it is a precise science with
numerous factors calculated to achieve that sought after first page ranking in the
search results.
Ubersuggest is an excellent free keyword search tool for finding keywords that
relate to your niche, your niche products and your business. This tool is great for
finding long-tail keywords that fit the user intent of your website visitors and
prospective customers. With Ubersuggest you are able to use broad keywords
and you are then able to filter the keyword results in different ways to get long-
tail keywords to target for instance a specific audience within your niche.
There are several tools similar to Ubersuggest, both free and paid for tools, so tryout several until you find one that you feel most comfortable with.
Content That Adds Value
We have detailed the importance of offering content that is rich in value in
earlier chapters and the benefits you gain. This holds true for SEO and your
search engine ranking.
To define what the optimal length of your content is for optimization, run a
search for your primary keyword. Visit the top 10 SERPs results for that specific
keyword and check the length of those pages. This gives you a good indication
of the length of the posts you should concentrate on.
This i s important as it alerts Google that you are providing a significant amount
of information and the time people spend on that particular page and this is a
positive for your search ranking.
On-Page SEO
Keep on-page optimization clean and simple. The goal of on-page SEO is to use
your website design, images, and words to enable the search engines to
understand it.
Identify and Strategically Use a Few Relevant Keywords
Use a tool like Ubersuggest to identify a few of the most relevant keywords that
describe the core of your niche, or your products. Use the chosen keywords a
few times on each page and ensure that the keywords flow naturally in the
content. Cramming keywords and key phrases on each page does not help your
search ranking as the search engine algorithms are sophisticated and ignore
keyword cramming.
Image Optimization
Instead of using the generic “image.jpg” to name image files and alt tags, find
relevant ways to use your keywords for image file names and as alt tags. Taking
that extra time to optimize your images correctly benefits your on-page SEO.
Internal Links
Internal links are hyperlinks within the content on a page that points to another
page on your website that contain relevant information. Internal links spread linkequity, in layman’s terms called link juice, across your website by transferring
page authority on to another page. So if you have certain pages that do not rank
high, you can link such a page to a higher ranking webpage with an internal link.
Internal links help carry those pages with lower ranking to rank better. Without
internal links, the search engine spiders cannot crawl individual pages – the
hyperlinks point them to other pages.
An excellent tool is Link Explorer that takes the confusion out of internal linking
with several great features and is definitely worth getting if you are not sure how
to go about creating internal links.
Mobile Optimization
It has become a necessity for websites to be optimized for mobile users.
Google launched the mobile-first index in 2018, so it is a must to optimize yourwebsite to be mobile friendly. Otherwise, you could lose out on a significant
percentage of conversions from mobile internet users.
The easiest way to make your website mobile friendly is through responsive
design. WordPress takes the worry of coding off your shoulders as they offer
free and premium themes that come with responsive design already built-in.
High-Grade Backlinks
Google considers backlinks as a sign of the credibility of your website and this
influences your ranking. The rule to remember for backlinks is that it must come
from a reputable website. It does not enhance your rating if you have loads of
backlinks, but they come from websites that are not trustworthy. Quality
definitely trumps quantity when you want to earn search engine credibility.
Getting quality backlinks means work for you as it takes time and effort to
cultivate trustworthy backlinks. It is worth it as quality back links are SEO gold
and with so many ways to get backlinks it can be fun instead of a chore.
One of the most popular ways to get backlinks is through infographics. Create
interesting infographics that people want to see and share.
Another popular way of getting back links is to do guest blogging. Writing great articles on other
website blogs earn you back links, but also introduces new audiences to your
own website and enhances your online reputation.
An interesting way to earn back links is to donate to nonprofit organizations. Do
a search for any websites within your niche that not only accepts donations, but
alo link back to websites from which they received donations.
These are a few ideas of getting quality back links, there are many other options
to explore. Be creative and do searches for link building opportunities that
interest you and fit your niche.
Page Speed
Your site performance, how fast your pages load has a huge impact on SEO and
your percentage of customer conversions. Shoppers are not prepared to wait
around for a slow webpage to load, and nearly half of all visitors to websites that
have slow loading time will lose those potential customers. They abandon the
page if it takes three seconds or longer to load.
In 2018, Google added a page speed update to their algorithm, making it critical
to ensure your website loads fast