10 essential tasks for your online store to be positioned

Written by Raúl Carrión

Nowadays you have at your disposal unlimited information about search engine optimization. Searching the Internet you will find hundreds of articles, manuals, books, etc. And I’m sure that each of them will give you ideas to work on improving the visibility of your online store. However, before working on complex search engine optimization strategies , it is essential to have performed the most basic SEO tasks. In this article you will learn which are the mandatory tasks for your online store to have a solid foundation on which to build an entire search engine optimization strategy for e-commerce.

If you want to ensure your chances of positioning your online store, I recommend that you perform each of these tasks in the order proposed: without advancing to the next task until you have completed the previous one.

Task 1: Choosing an indexable online store platform

If search engine traffic is a business channel included in your marketing plan, it is essential that the e-commerce platform you use has good indexability.

The indexability of a website is the ease with which search engines can find it and crawl all of its content.

The basic aspects that an indexable online store must comply with are:

• All pages of the online store must be accessible by Google.
• You should avoid generating duplicate content.
• Links should be placed in such a way that the popularity flow is correct.
• It should not generate infinite pages, for example in paginators or calendars.

If you are not a specialist in this sector, you should ask a company or professional for advice on the different options offered by the market.

Task 2: Design a good product architecture

The design of your product tree is determinant for the good positioning of your online store. This layout defines the pages that rank for generic product terms and also marks the navigation for potential customers.

A good product architecture must comply with the following aspects:

• Adequately distribute the products in families: all families must have a minimum number of products. If when designing the family tree we come across families that have one or two products, we may be able to unify several families to increase product concentration.
• Choose family names used by your potential customers: it is common to make the mistake of naming product families with very technical nomenclatures or those used exclusively by experts in the sector. We must put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and use product group names that they use to locate our products.

Task 3: Assigning keywords to each page of your online store

In a correct search engine positioning strategy, each page of a website is the only candidate to be positioned for a specific term. E-commerce is not an exception and that is why it is advisable that before starting to write contents we have a clear idea of what keyword we want to position each page for.

Depending on the type of page, the following distribution should be made:

• Home or home page: here we must position ourselves for our brand.
• Families: in the family pages by family name.
• Products: the product sheet is the ideal place to position ourselves for the product name search.
• Blog: in the blog we must generate an article for each search that we consider that our potential customers may make that is not strictly related to the name of a family or a product, for example, anticipatory searches.
• About us: we can use it for the keyword “online store of ” plus our main product families.

And so on with all the sections of our online store.

Task 4: Optimize the content of the home page

The home page of our online store is the section with the highest search engine optimization potential. It is therefore the ideal place to start working on content-level optimization.

In these basic tasks we will focus mainly on writing the title and description goals and on writing a description text.

For all the pages where we optimize the contents we must take into account the following aspects:

Rules for writing the meta title

• Maximum length of 59 characters.
• It must contain the keyword.
• The words that we want to position the more at the beginning, the better.
• It must be a descriptive text.
• The meta title must be unique, i.e., two pages with the same meta title cannot coexist in the same online store.

Guidelines for writing the Meta Description

• Maximum length of 140 characters.
• It should include the value proposition of each section.
• Include the keyword or synonyms.

Guidelines for writing descriptions

• Minimum length of 400 words.

Returning to the optimization of the home page, we must write a meta title that includes the name of our brand and what we sell.

In the goal description, list the most representative families, the competitive advantages or distinctive data of our brand: years of experience, certificates, etc.

As for the text to be displayed on the home page, we will write a description of the online store including the main product families, the competitive advantages and if we have a local business, the city where it is located.

Task 5: Optimize the content of product families

Once the optimization of the home page has been completed, we will start working on the optimization of the product families, writing the following contents:

• Meta Title: should include the family name and a synonym.
• Meta Description: will include the name of the family, most representative products and the competitive advantage of the family.
• Family text: we will explain the common characteristics of the products and the advantages of buying them in our online store.

Find out how to better manage linking from product families and subfamilies in an online store in our post on SEO and information architecture applied to e-commerce.

Task 6: Write an About Us page that makes people fall in love with you

The about us page is the place where customers visit to make sure they are convinced before they buy. It must include a description of the company. Arguments that give confidence and if possible real photos of the offices, personnel, etc.

In terms of positioning, it is interesting to include the keyword we chose in task 3: “Online store of ” followed by whatever we decided.

Task 7: Optimize the content of product sheets

This task is special because it is very complicated to complete it 100% due to the large number of products that we can usually find in an online store. The best option to avoid being overwhelmed is to make the firm decision to optimize a certain number of products per week and not to worry about when we will finish. The important thing is to move forward.

Meta title

It must include the name of the product and the reference. Also, in some cases it may be interesting to add words such as “buy” or “offer”.

A formula that works quite well is the following:

• Buy + [familia de producto] + [nombre de producto]

Meta Description

In the meta description of a product we must include the product name and synonyms. We will then incorporate sales arguments capable of persuading undecided customers.

Product description

It is advisable to write two independent texts in a product sheet. Before the buy button we must write a description of the article where we argue the advantages of its acquisition. Approximately 200 words will suffice.
And additionally another more extensive text that we will place at the bottom of the page oriented to the more technical aspects or possible applications / uses of the product.

Task 8: Write a regular blog article

As we have previously mentioned, the blog is the ideal tool to generate content that is positioned in search engines for anticipated searches by our potential customers.

How many articles to publish in our blog?

The answer is simple: the more the better. But being realistic and knowing that we have limited time to dedicate to this task, we could answer that an article every two weeks would be an acceptable minimum so that after a few months we begin to notice its impact on search engine positioning.

To maximize the effect, after each publication we should share the URL of the article on the various social networks we work with.

Task 9: Gaining external visibility by publishing in other media

With all the contents of our online store optimized, the next step is to gain visibility outside our own store.

First of all, we must identify which blogs and media are suitable to publish a news or article about us. We will analyze the tone they use and whether they collaborate with companies similar to ours.

Once we have found the media where we are interested in appearing, we will contact them to find out under what conditions a collaboration can be established. There are multiple possibilities:

• We write a press release and provide it to you.
• We send a product and they do a review.
• They publish a news item in exchange for financial compensation.
• Etc.

It is advisable to previously agree on the incorporation of a link to our website within the content. This way we will send visits to the store and we will also improve our positioning in search engines.

Task 10: Care for and increase your visibility on social networks

The interaction of your online store with social networks is a factor that is gaining more and more weight in Google’s algorithm. For this reason you should dedicate part of your time to manage and grow your community in the various social networks.

Having a high volume of followers on social networks will bring you the following benefits:

A wider audience will listen to your communications

The more followers you have, the more users will see your publications and therefore the better their impact and results will be.

More social links

A percentage of the users who follow your publications will share them in their circles. This action will generate links that can help you position yourself better (to a small extent) and will also make you visible to their social contacts, making it possible for them to become followers of your brand.

If you manage to get this far you will notice how the organic traffic to your online store increases progressively and you will also have a good base to start working on more complex SEO strategies. Cheer up!