How to Rank No. 1 on Google: Ecommerce SEO Secrets
ranking number one on Google doesn't require Supernatural Powers despite what so many SEO gurus want you to think between the industry jargon algorithm updates and constant streams of SEO hacks it's easy to forget that bringing in steady traffic to your Ecommerce store from search simply boils down to making content that humans and web crawlers love keyword research site structure and on-page SEO might sound scary but they are all just tools that allow search engines to recognize that your website provides a quality experience so when people type in something into the search bar Google knows to recommend your web page so if you want consistent high quality traffic to your website that you don't have to pay for stick around I'll explain things in a way that's simple to follow and easy to execute because most tutorials make it seem way more complicated than it actually is in this video I'll take you through the fastest and easiest way to go from an SEO newbie to a Shopify SEO genius [Music] the reason why so many e-commerce businesses drool at the thought of ranking number one on search engines whether we're talking about Google Bing or Yahoo is because by using these types of websites visitors are ready to buy when people type something into a search engine they are already aware of the problem they have so if they click on your website first and are impressed they will likely realize purchasing your product is the perfect solution the second page of Google is where websites go to die a recent study showed that when people search for something on Google less than five percent of people even make it to the second search results page so unless you want to be giving 95 of your sales away to competitors you should do everything possible to stake your claim when it comes to getting the number one spot on search all you need to do is set up the structured layout of your online store and consistently publish and improve the written content throughout your entire website you want to create content people find valuable this is how you'll get backlinks from other websites the more links that point back to your website the more your online store's ranking Position will improve so let's break it down into a battle tested four-step approach one conducting keyword research two planning your e-commerce site architecture three on-page SEO with content creation for your blog and finally four building backlinks beginning with step one it is all about keyword research the very first thing to do is to hop on Google and Amazon yourself and use their autocomplete features you're looking to sell something to someone so you should have at least a rough idea of what your Target customers will type into the search bar when they are looking to buy so load both Google and Amazon and start typing the category of items that you are offering to see what the autocomplete features spit out for example I love pens so if I were to start an e-commerce business with writing utensils I might fire up Google and just start typing best pen and see what Google auto completes because those are all the most frequently searched terms all of the internet users search for after they start typing those words list these autocomplete keywords out on a spreadsheet for both Google as well as Amazon you can go really far down the rabbit hole on just this strategy and hit search on each of these autocomplete results to see which businesses are succeeding the most when it comes to SEO for example if I go with best pen for writing I can see Google shopping ads but the top organic results are trusted review sites like Wirecutter by the New York Times and top retailers blog posts like this one from jet pens but as you scroll to the bottom you'll also notice this section on all Google search result Pages which is called the related searches section which will further show you what your Target customers are actively searching for and therefore what you want to be ranking for with your own website same goes for Amazon as I start typing in best pen into the search bar a bunch of recommended refined searches show up and clicking on it will show you which Amazon retailers are doing the best job at ranking for those Search terms this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to keyword research as you continue learning you will undoubtedly want to leverage additional research tools some free and some paid but from an absolute beginner's starting point this is already going to yield a gigantic list of keywords for you to start thinking about ranking for but how do you parse down your list to identify what to really focus on think about what you offer what niches and sub niches you want to sell to in terms of your Target customers pay attention to long tail keywords those with at least four or five words since the longer the tail of the keywords the more specific and more purchasing intent there typically is when someone is searching for them for example searching for best pen for new Junior Associates at law firms likely has a higher purchasing intent than someone who searches for what's a fountain pen there's a clear intent and niched down search parameters in our new law school graduate search they're clearly looking to make a purchase to make a good first impression at their first job out of Law School search engine optimization keyword research is the first critical step because again at the end of the day the goal of SEO is to help search engines like Google figure out what your site is all about so helping them figure out what you're about by using the keywords you want to rank for frequently and relevantly is of the utmost importance if you are interested in learning more about SEO and content marketing register using the link below to gain access to our free online course it's going to help you supercharge your sales by changing the way you think about your e-commerce marketing funnel this course will show you how to avoid the worst e-commerce mistakes and provide a repeatable framework for turning a product idea into online sales fast as a bonus you'll even receive free checklists and worksheets to make marketing your business as easy as possible learn how to go from first day to first sale in this free training course so click the link in the description below to register now moving on to the next step of SEO is to carefully plan your eCommerce website's site architecture again the goal of seos to help search engines understand what your site is all about so keeping the information architecture as clean and simple as possible will do wonders for boosting you in search engine results of course the more individual products you sell the more different product categories you have and the more different filtering your website has the tougher this becomes the first rule you want to follow when planning your site's architecture is to strive to have literally every single page whether it's an individual product page a category page your about us page I mean literally every page as few clicks as possible away from the home page I mean if your customers and site visitors need to rely on opening a bunch of new tabs or clicking their back button to figure out where they are on your website Google and other search engines will be just as confused and this will most certainly hurt your rankings no matter how keyword rich and targeted the written words throughout your website is there are two culprits to to poor SEO when it comes to all of this thin content and content duplication thin content are pages that have a very small amount of content and words this is obviously a problem for search engines because they rely on content to understand what each page of your website is all about content duplication happens when you have a lot of copy pasted content whether it's within your own site or maybe you got a little bit lazy and for example used another's website's product description for your own a search engine's job at the end of the day is to rank and specifically show a Searcher the most relevant websites and web pages based on what they searched for so if your web pages have minimal text making it tough for a search engine to even know what you are trying to rank for or you have content that's identical to other Pages or other websites search engines just won't show the good folks of the internet those pages so make sure every page is as few clicks from the home homepage as possible and ensure your copy is as descriptive and original as possible use relevant keywords that you want each page to rank for appropriately and you'll be setting a strong foundation for growth next up optimizing your on-page SEO and content creation for your blog when it comes to an e-commerce site the two types of pages to really focus your efforts on are your individual product pages as well as your product category Pages basically the name of the game is to ensure each shopping page is as optimized as possible in order to help search engines understand which keywords you are trying to rank for relevantly everywhere there's text whether it's the URL for an individual product to the name of the product itself and of course the product description are all opportunities to help boost your search engine rankings but a word to the wise make the content natural for a human and leverage effective human-centric copywriting to amplify the use of keywords what I mean is do not I repeat do not just copy paste every possible keyword don't try and trick Google by calling your product best pen for journaling using the URL mystore.com product slash best journalingpad and having the product description read just a bunch of copy pasted terms like best pen for journaling best pen journaling pen smooth writing pen smooth pen for journaling best bullet Journal pen okay you get the point this will backfire and Google's site crawlers will automatically rank you lower for spam you want to follow what we described earlier about eliminating duplicate content and thin content take the time to craft a custom series of paragraphs almost a product story of sorts for each individual product make it descriptive human and of course the longer you make the description the more opportunities you have to naturally incorporate more keywords you want to rank for another great strategy is to create internal links throughout your website for example in every single one of your product descriptions make sure to link another product the reader might find interesting sticking with pens if I were writing a product description for a pen that I don't know had a floral design on it I might experiment with something like this pen is perfect for long creative writing sessions in the garden in May and June and if you want to pair it with the perfect pen to write your Memoirs to by the fireplace in the winter check out this pen over here and of course I would link a nice wooden barreled pen in that text this strategy is all about keeping people on your site and with more relevant internal links to increase the number of different pages each visitor actually navigates to within your website the higher the likelihood of converting visitors into buyers but similarly to spamming keywords don't go nuts with this either one link every few hundred words is a pretty good sweet spot next up is straight up blogging writing relevant long-form content blogging is a gold mine for boosting SEO for a number of reasons one it naturally builds your reputation as a credible source to both humans and search engine Bots two search engines reward not only relevant content but also new content so if you post a high quality long-form blog post weekly that'll really help boost your site's Authority and three you can leverage blog posts to strike while Trends in your Market are hot and of course link to product pages in those blog posts but remember as with most Great accomplishments consistency in both quality and frequency are key make sure the content is relevant and valuable to your target audience ensure your keywords are Tastefully integrated without coming off as spammy be thoughtful of internal links again A good rule of thumb is one link per 300 words and you'll be well on your way to leveraging one of the most powerful ways to boost SEO for your Ecommerce store and speaking of links the next strategy is creating and fostering backlinks backlinks are when other websites or sources choose to link to your website Google and other search engines see other websites linking to yours as a sign that your site is an authority in the keywords it detects on your site there are passive and active ways to backlink a passive way is to create share worthy content whether it's a hilarious product description or insightful and valuable blog posts anything that is inherently share worthy will increase the likelihood that other websites will link to you of course this is more of a hope strategy and Life's too short for just hope alone and so collaboratively soliciting backlinks is how you can generate more backlinks by working with other business owners website administrators or content creators writing guest posts on other people's blogs is a great way to do this where your store's website is linked from that guest blog post promoting with other businesses who don't sell the exact same things you sell but Target the same Target customers as you is also a great way for example using the pen shop again as an example perhaps I look for all paper notebook and planner Sellers and offer to link their websites from my pen website and ask that they do the same for me remember SEO is all about ranking in response to what your Target customers type into the search bar of their favorite search engines the great thing about Shopify is that it has so many built-in SEO options right out of the box things like automatically generated canonical tags your website's sitemap.xml and robots.txt files also automatically generated to help Google and other search engines easily detect your site's architecture and content and so much more and if you're ready to take the plunger to Ecommerce entrepreneurship I welcome you to sign up for a 100 free no strings attached trial to Shopify where you can start selling literally the same day you start your free trial you can claim your trial by clicking the link right up here or down in the description below this has been a beginner's guide into SEO but if you really want to see just how deep that rabbit hole goes I will link an awesome in-depth article from the Shopify blog down in the description below as well and hey if you got some value be sure to let me know by hitting that like button but if you got lots of value consider subscribing and hitting that Bell so you'll be notified the moment new videos just like this one drop but as usual thanks so much for hanging out with me and I'll catch you in the next one [Music]
