SEO for a small e-commerce website seems to be an important vein. Ignoring SEO would be a nightmare for your small business. In this starter kit series, we’ve already covered topics that are needed for a small business website development.

If you haven’t checked it yet, do give it all a read! In this post, we will walk you through the basics of SEO implementations to your small e-commerce website.

Let’s dig deeper into it.     

1. Why should Your E-commerce Small Business Need SEO?

Few years back, have you ever heard the term – “SEO”? Obviously, not only you, nobody would say YES. Search Engine Optimization, SEO in short, began to lay its foundation only in the last twenty years.    

Before the emergence of SEO, in traditional marketing, business owners like you were advertising on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and other media platforms. 

Customers, on the other end, look at the product ad, visit the store in-person to buy the same. But, as time & trends rolled out, customers have changed their traditional practice of how they did before ten to five years back to explore something. 

And, this is where you need to optimize your website for SEO, so when customers search related to something that your brand also offers, your website might be visible in their search lists. You’ve two options to do this. 

2. Effective SEO Tactics for Your E-commerce Small Business Website

By now, you would have got a clear picture of why you should consider SEO for your e-commerce website. 

For small businesses, acquiring visibility among well-established big brands would be daunting! That’s when you can turn towards local SEO. Comparatively, you’ll find it easy to boost customer traffic to your online store within your geographical location. 

Also, search engines like Google always aim at delivering the best relevant results to their users. For e.g. if a user searches – “coffee shops near me” (or) “best beauty salons in Vancouver”, Googlebot crawls the web pages looking for location-centric keywords & citations and lists those businesses.

Did you know?      

Without any further delays, let’s get into some local SEO strategies when done right will help you take a step ahead of your local competitors.

1. Setup Your Google My Business Profile

Google My Business is a free listing from Google which is the first thing users see in the search results when searching for something that matches with your products/services. In a survey, 64% of customers use Google My Business to find the address and phone number of a local business. 

As it’s integrated with Google Maps, it displays the location directing local foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar store. You can even add more details like business hours, customer reviews, photos, etc. 

How to Setup Your Google My Business Profile?

Step 1: Create a dedicated Google account exclusively for your small business, which can also be used as your Google Business Profile Manager. 

Step 2: Add your business to the appropriate category.

Step 3: Enter the location of your physical store along with the map. If you don’t have a location, you can list the services offered in-person at the customer’s place.

Step 4: Enter your phone number for customers to reach you. This is optional.

Step 5: Enter your physical address for Google to verify your location. This is just for verification purposes, it’ll not be displayed to the public.

Step 6: Customize your profile by entering your business hours, messaging preferences, descriptions, and photos. 

2. Add Local Keywords

What are Local Keywords?

Local keywords are certain phrases that your local audience types into the search engine bars when looking for a result. Keywords contain one or more phrases. For e.g. a user who is looking for keywords research tools types into the search bar – ‘best keyword research tools’. This is considered as the keyword. 

One thing that matters is you’ve to implant the right keywords that your target audience use while searching and that match your niche. 

3. Optimize Local Citations

Local citations are nothing but the online reference of your local business on various online directories and websites. They include your business name, address, and phone number. These citations pave the way for your prospects to find your business on the web. 

Citations are considered a crucial ranking factor of local SEO, therefore, if you get mentions from well-authorized local directories, it helps boost your ranking in the local search results. 

Google My Business, Bing Places, Yelp, Foursquare are a few popular online directories for local citations. Brightlocal has rounded off more than 50+ authorized online directories for citations, do checkout.   

Not only these, you’ve a myriad of SEO strategies like link building, on-page & off-page SEO, guest blogging, tags optimization, and many more for small e-commerce businesses. Since this is a starter kit, we don’t want to overwhelm you.  

If you can implement all these tactics, there are chances to obtain better visibility on search results. However, handling all these definitely requires experience and skills. 

Therefore, you’re not alone, Small Business Web can assist you in your local SEO activities. Feel free to call us or drop us a message, any time. We’re ready to lend our supporting arm to you! 🙂