If you run an ecom site the internet is obviously going to be quite important for you. The search engines are your high street and people typing phrases in are your passing pedestrians, if you’re not ranking in the search engines you’ve got to rely on people who already know where you are coming to find you. What can you do to make sure your site is not only found but people actually spend money with you?

Make sure you rank

The obvious one is to make sure your site is appearing when and where you want it to appear. If you sell shoes you don’t just want to appear when someone types in shoes but also variations like “ladies shoes”, “pink shoes”, “winter shoes”. Do your keyword research and find out what people are searching for. Look at your competitors and find out what their site appears for. You’re not going to get to the top of Google over night so in the mean time you might want to think about some paid placements with PPC until your organic results start to kick in and don’t forget Google shopping either.

Don’t forget the long tail

As cool as it is to be number one for the term “shoes” you’re going to have a lot of long tail keywords you want to rank for too. The fact of the matter is that you might not get as many people landing on your site after searching for “ladies pink summer sandals” but the longer tail key words are more likely to result in a conversion as it’s people later in the buying cycle that search for these terms. Make sure all your products are optimised as well as possible.

Description & title

You’ve got your site to rank and you’re ranking for all the phrases you want to rank for but that still doesn’t mean people are going to click on your site. If your site is like the high street they can just see the shop window and there are lots of other windows they can see too. Why should they go to your site and not your competitors in the position above or below you? This is why you need to make sure your description is enticing as possible. If you offer free delivery shout about it, if you know you stock larger size shoes than your competitors put it in your description. As much as you want to write your title just for the search engines remember it’s going to be the first thing your potential new customer sees so write it for them too.

Do more than just sell

Search engines love fresh and interesting content. First and foremost your site might be there to sell your product but you need to offer more than just a site full of products. Have buyer guides available, make your site interactive, invite people to send in pictures of themselves in their shoes and how they’ve accessorised them, explain how to care for your shoes or even how to care for your feet. If it’s relevant to your site traffic give them all the information they could possibly need. This not only increases your chances of ranking for a wide number of key phrases but also establishes your site as an industry leader and a source of authority.

Video

There are only so many pictures of your products your visitors want to look at and there’s only so much content they want to read. Adding video makes your site more interactive and will keep your traffic on your site for longer, the longer they stay the more likely they are to stick around and complete a purchase or remember you and come back later. Adding a video gives you the chance to show why they should buy your product rather than just telling them, a picture is worth a thousand words so a video must be worth a thousand pictures. Adding video also gives your site the chance to appear in video search results and specific video sites like You Tube too so make sure you’ve got some form of video on your site.

Jessica does SEO for fixed depreciation software specialists Real Asset Management International