SEO is nothing new, and neither are the clear benefits that come with having it as part of your marketing strategy, when it’s done well. However, many businesses still aren’t taking advantage of all the possibilities that come with a good SEO strategy, whether they don’t have one at all, or aren’t investing in one with the right company.
SEO is by far the most cost effective digital marketing strategy, as you’re ensuring that you’re appearing when someone is searching for exactly what you offer (when it’s done right), so the user has a high intent to actually become a customer, as opposed to something like paid social or TV advertising where you just hope you’re showing an ad to the right person at the right time, or having to pay to appear on SERPs with Google Ads. So, we know it’s worthwhile, and it’s time to start implementing it into your strategy!
Focus On Your Website Speed
Firstly, you should focus on your website speed. Over the last few years, Google has put a lot of emphasis on website speed, as users now expect fast websites and so if yours isn’t delivering that, Google won’t want to show you at the top of the SERPs. The specific focus is on Core Web Vitals, which are metrics that look at loading performance of a website, as well as how you interact with them and the visual stability of a page. There is a free tool for you to check where your website currently sits in terms of Core Web Vitals, and it also provides opportunities on where you can improve. Things like making sure that your images are compressed without compromising on quality, your videos are stored properly, excess code is minimised and it doesn’t take too long for the largest content elements to load are all important from this perspective. So, run your website through this tool and work with web developers to look for opportunities to improve this.
Helpful Content Is Key!
Next up, helpful content is absolutely key in 2024. There was a large update in 2022 where Google released the Helpful Content Update, which is all about making sure that when you’re writing content for your website, it’s designed specifically for humans, rather than it being focused on trying to beat the algorithms to rank well. They pushed that if you focus on writing content that helps to improve the user experience, then you will naturally rank well. So, you should be making sure you’re thinking about what your customers will want to know, including shipping and delivery information, sizing, material information and styling information to provide a well rounded experience that is helpful for users. So, whilst your content will need to be SEO optimised, it needs to be very natural and well balanced!
Implement Structured Data
A more technical area of SEO that is often overlooked but is key to the success of an SEO campaign is to implement structured data. Structured data is pieces of code you can add to your website to highlight important information to Google, helping them to crawl your website more efficiently and therefore help to rank your content more accurately. When you make it easier for Google to access important information on your website, it will naturally want to crawl it, and therefore you have better chances of ranking well for your target keywords. This is a technical element so working with an SEO agency or your web developers would be advised to help get it right. If possible, getting an automated system in place is ideal as you won’t need to update it whenever you get a new product. If you’re releasing new product collections every week, manually updating it will be the last thing you need!
Don’t Underestimate Link Building
Something that many people underestimate the power of, and so ignore, in 2024, is link building. It’s a time consuming task which is why people ignore it, however authority is an important metric and link building is one of the best ways to build it. Link building is all about writing content that contains a link to your website that is then posted on another website that is relevant to your industry topic. Google sees this link from a relevant website back to yours and sees that as an indicator of trust.
When you do this over and over, consistently, then it’s a good indication to Google that your website can be trusted and therefore rankings improve. To do this, you should reach out to blogs, introduce yourself and explain you’d like to feature content. This takes time, but when it’s done well, it can transform your SEO strategy. Focus on linking back to category pages with your link building campaign, as these are the most important pages in your SEO strategy as an ecommerce business. For example, if you are link building to a wedding guest dresses page and you have a good product collection, then the user is likely to find what they’re looking for. However, if you focus on a product page ranking well, the chance of a user landing on a little black dress and it being exactly what they’re looking for is low. So, focus on your category pages primarily and products can be secondary later in the campaign!
