Setting up an online store is only one of the steps to perform constant sales. Let’s think about search engine optimization as an effective strategy to bring traffic to the site and increase selling.
Nowadays every online store's owner is dreaming about being ranked #1 on Google. The more optimized for search engines a business is, the higher rankings it will receive, and the more visible for shoppers it will be.
What are the other advantages of SEO? How to optimize your Magento 2 store for Google? In this post, we propose some offbeat steps for optimization.
Store websites can be optimized:
- On-page - the factors that are controlled from your website (keywords, usability, site structure, internal linking, site's mobile version, advanced snippets, integration with social media, etc.)
- Off-page - the external factors that you are not able to control at 100% (for example, link building or guest posts).
You can dive deep into this topic as much as your time allows. But to make a long story short, let's briefly highlight 5 most important and relevant ways (from both on-page and off-page sections) that you can take right now to optimize your online store for Google.
Keywords Segmentation
Keyword segmentation helps to target your audience more efficiently. Visitors have various positions during the buying process: they can be just browsing, be interested, or ready to purchase. That is why you'd better segment the specific keywords that you’re targeting each buyer.
Segmenting keywords also influences on your website’s search visibility. When a shopper types your brand into Google, he/she is looking for your brand in particular, getting ready to buy.
Speed Optimization
It's never late to focus on website speed. Your customers will not hang around waiting for a slow site to load. They will ask Google to find a faster solution (that is likely to be your competitor). All we remember statistics showing that 40% of visitors abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load.
Luckily, there is a handy solution to retain customers and make your site working faster. Magento 2 Google Page Speed Optimization improves the page's code structure and helps a browser to process page rendering faster. This solution improves reports in Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, and Pingdom.
Thanks to the optimized page code, customers get the content much faster than the page completes render.
Javascript Optimization
Speed optimization will assist you to reduce the number of requests to Javascript content. This allows working around the browser limits on simultaneous connections. Magento 2 Speed Optimization combines only the scripts that are used on a specific page.
The module lets minify Javascript in Magento 2 by removing all excessive code unnecessary for reading by a browser. As a result, your page will load faster, as the total page size is decreased.
Image Optimization
Many e-commerce businesses still forget that SEO isn’t only about optimizing text, but also about optimizing your product images. Make sure your images have an appropriate size, as large pictures are one of the reasons for slow website loading.
Do not doubt to utilize such powerful extensions as Magento 2 Image Optimization to improve your JPEG, PNG or GIF files. The module reduces the size of the images, helping the Magento pages load faster.
This optimization corresponds with Google PageSpeed Insight recommendations that improve search engine optimization.
Do not forget to use keywords when naming your files and add descriptive captions. Google will easily understand the context of your pictures, and the ranking of your Magento 2 store will be improved.
Customer Reviews Optimization
Product reviews are crucial for online stores. The e-commerce conversion rate may increase by 14-76% by adding product reviews to the store.
Customer feedback positively affects SEO because more reviews mean more fresh content (that Google appreciates). In order to get more customer reviews, implement a user-friendly Magento 2 Google Customer Reviews extension by Aitoc.
Final thoughts
Google and the other search engines are constantly updating their algorithms, and you have to stay on top of the updates. There are many ways you can optimize your store's website for search engines. We've described just some of them, but they all are worth implementing to increase sales.
If you have any questions or something to add, feel free to comment on this post.
