https://www.jdrgroup.co.uk/social-media
It's Summer 2017. Technology is improving by the day. Online marketing opportunities are the best they have ever been. Your competition is rife.
If you have your own business or are thinking of setting up your own company, now more than ever, it is essential that you're in with the know and are fully clued up on all things SEO. Getting ranked on Google could be the primary difference between your business completely failing or unimaginable success.
A 2011 report said websites ranked No.1 on Google for their industry, received an average click rate of 36% and the company ranked No.2, was a fraction of that, with an average click rate of 12.5%.
In this post I am going to talk you through 6 Steps To Getting Your Retail Business Website Ranking In Google:
1) Research
The very first thing all business owners should start their SEO journey with...RESEARCH! If strong background and industry research is not carried out, this could have a detrimental effect on the success of this marketing strategy for your business. Spend time looking at your competitor's websites and social media. Focus on their keywords, and compare your current approach to theirs. Competitor research is the beginning of you setting your business apart from the rest. This is where you decide whether to go completely against their ways or whether you follow them, with modifications of course. If there is a monopoliser within your market, don't put too much of your attention towards them. Yes, use them for inspiration and to help you create goals. But within the competitor research stage, look at your more local rivals.
2) Keywords
Keywords are proven to be the most efficient lead generators of the internet today. But, nothing good comes easy. You must take the time to really study your business and narrow your keywords down in order to steer the right traffic to your e-commerce site. Don't be too broad. If too vast, it will take a very long time to achieve high rankings, if any rankings at all! Broad keywords will still result in traffic coming to your website, but most likely not the correct people and your business will probably not be what they're looking for, resulting in maximum time wasting. A retail example of this would be if a business specialises in maternity fashion, they should not go after keywords such as “clothes” or “maternity clothes.” They should opt for key phrases such as “long maternity dress” or “elasticated maternity jeans.” A good tip is to focus your keywords around the different pages you have on your e-commerce site. For example, for an apparel retailer, have the different types of garments you stock on separate pages. This results in different links which increases lead opportunity and traffic. Learn more about choosing the right keywords with this great article - How To Choose the Right Keywords For SEO.
3) Blog
Online retailers often overlook the power of a blog. This could be for multiple reasons, however I think the main influencer of this is that people don't actually know the purpose of an inbound marketing blog post or how to successfully rustle one up. Each post should be focused around a particular key phrase and they shouldn't be overpowered with multiple keywords. This will devalue the posts and will not be effective at all in getting your business a positive end result. For a retail business, a good blog post example would be; “How To Get The Perfect Summer Evening Maternity Look” with a keyword focus of “long summer maternity dresses.” This is very precise, with a very slim chance of steering incorrect traffic to your web pages. To really push the inbound marketing strategy and to fulfil the potential of your keywords, you should create an e-book...or a few! An e-book is made up of multiple blog posts with the same theme. So, back to the maternity wear. A great e-book theme would be “Ultimate Maternity Styles,” with individual sectors focusing on day wear, evening wear, beach wear and day to day inspiration. Usually, to view e-books, there will be a “download” option in which consumers will enter their email address. Now this is another fantastic marketing opportunity as you have your potential customer's direct contact details! Seize this, and get in touch! You can find out even more about the power of blogging with this article - 4 Reasons You Need To Blog To Be Successful In Today’s Content Marketing War.
4) Backlinks
In terms of backlinks, less isn't always more. However, more is definitely not more either! It is crucial to the success of your business to avoid low quality inbound links to your e-commerce site pages. Yes, it is important to get as many quantitative leads as possible, although, if you have a very heavy number of below average backlinks, your site will seem nothing more than irrelevant to most. This is something you must avoid! Focus on quality, don't rush things. Take a look at your competitors, compare and find new opportunities. Don't underestimate the power of bad backlinks as they can have very negative effects on your Google rankings, and we wouldn't want that! Low quality links are only beneficial in the short term and remember, traffic isn't always good traffic!
5) Images
I would like to think that your e-commerce website is full of exciting images spread from page to page showing off your products to the best of their ability, right? Well, this may or may not be the case. However, this won't matter either way unless you name your images! Business owners often don't realise the impact this can have on traffic pushed to their website. Wouldn't it seem silly not to make sure every bit of your content counts and is not wasted? Well, it happens, a lot. An example of this would be if a potential customer was to search “maternity evening dress” on Google Images and a maternity wear e-commerce site had given SEO naming tags to all of their product images, it is very likely their image would come up, the consumer would click on the image, taking them to the landing page. Therefore generating leads and traffic!
6) Be Patient
Finally, the 6th step to getting your retail business website ranking in Google. Be patient. Be prepared to have to wait at least two months or more to see even a small improvement, good things take time. Inbound Marketing is about having a long term perspective, it is a very lengthy process where you need to focus on the end result and always keep the bigger picture in mind. Eventually the rewards will come flooding in, in the form of increased profit for your retail website. In which I am assuming that is everyone's end goal?!
Hopefully my 6 steps to getting your retail business website ranking in Google have been a great help to you and your e-commerce business. If you implement as much of the above as you can, I can assure you that the correct traffic will be heading in the direction of your web pages!
If you have any queries, please comment below or call us on 01332 343281 for an informal chat.
