10 Best Practices SEO Tips

Are you planning to sell products or services online? If yes, you have to ensure that prospective customers are actually able to find you on the World Wide Web.

You may have a fancy website that offers great products at competitive prices, but if your website cannot be found at the top in search engine listings you may not receive visitors at all.

This is because many people will not go beyond the first page.

SEO helps to rank your website higher in search engine listings. An improved ranking enables you to achieve organic or free search. More visitors will come to your website and you will have more sales.

Whether you’re a Victorian air conditioner upgrade company looking to get more sales, or a criminal lawyer looking for more clients, then SEO is for you.

Here are 10 best practice SEO tips to help you take your online business forward.

#1: Title Tag

The first thing that catches the user’s attention following a keyword search is the title tag. It should have keyword focus. Ensure that the keyword is included at the beginning.

#2: Meta Description

This is the second information that a user looks at. Include keywords within the Meta description. The description should not be more than 150 characters long.

#3: Content

The content you have placed on your website should include the keywords you have researched and chosen. They should be incorporated within titles, footers and navigation area.

On product pages, provide unique content. Many website owners, especially e-commerce service providers, pull out product information from databases. This can cause duplicate content problems.

Reprinting manufacturers’ product descriptions amounts to producing duplicate content, but it may not be possible for large e-commerce websites to rewrite all of them. You can overcome this problem by incorporating unique content such as reviews and user-generated comments.

#4: Social Media Accounts

Set up social media accounts for your website. Consider Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites.

#5: Images

Ensure that all the images provided on your website have descriptive ALT tags and file names. However, take care not to overdo it. When it comes to SEO best practices, image titles are extremely important.

#6: Backlinks

Building backlinks is important to improve credibility. You can easily achieve this through video sharing and social media websites. Also, connect with article submission and local business listing sites. It pays to spend some time and effort in building credible backlinks to your website.

Never buy backlinks. This “black hat” tactics may provide short term gains, but in the long term Google may penalize you.

#7: Blog

Write or get quality blogs written and share real and valuable content with your customers. Blogs should not be limited to press releases. They should educate, entertain and engage your audience. Of course, they should be optimized for specific keywords and phrases that you have identified through research.

#8: New, Out-of-stock and Expired Products

If you are offering an e-commerce website, it is important to have a good website structure and provide right information and internal link architecture. This helps to rank your new product pages higher. When it comes to out-of-stock items, leave those pages up if the stocks will be replenished. Never hide, delete or replace them. If possible, offer alternative items. In the case of expired/obsolete products, use the 301 permanent redirect option to take customers to the new model page or redirect them to the parent category. You lose SEO value if you just delete a page.

#9: Similar Products

Some identical products exist in different sizes and colors. You need to handle them right. Listing of these can be considered as duplicate content which in turn affects rankings in search engine listings. If you’ve got multiple variations of a hydraulic hose repairs available, then you need to consider this. Review your website. Many products sell better if they are ranked for appropriate keywords.

#10: Website Design

Visual appeal is not the only factor to be considered when designing your website. You should consult with a specialist e-commerce website designer. He/she would work along with your SEO consultant, conversion rate optimizer, analyst and others in the team to create the best e-commerce website for you.