SEO guide for e-commerce, i.e. online store optimization in a nutshell, part II

This is the second part of a series of articles devoted to the optimization of online stores. For those who have not yet had the opportunity to read the previous part, here it is: SEO Guide for E-Commerce, Part I. From the first article you can learn, among other things, how to conduct keyword analysis and optimize the most important content elements in your store. This time I will describe further elements that you should pay attention to when conducting SEO activities.

I have a very low CTR, how can I increase it?

CTR, in other words Click-through rate, is a coefficient that informs us about clicks on a given search result located in Google. CTR depends on many factors. However, there are activities that allow us to increase/optimize it.

Meta title and description

When working on the optimization of online stores, it can be noticed that many of them have problems with proper optimization of the titles of specific pages, e.g. categories or product subpages. A similar situation occurs in the case of descriptions of such websites. Unfortunately, leaving these elements without any optimization usually leads to a situation in which Google decides what content will be presented in these elements. Thus, the website description in the SERPs may display part of the website's content which in no way will encourage a potential user to click.

When optimizing both elements, you should follow the keyword analysis described in the first part of the guide. I encourage those who are more inquisitive and always unsatisfied to constantly test meta descriptions and titles. A good start will be to analyze information about the keywords for which our website is displayed in search results and what click-through rates look like for individual terms. Select a few subpages on the website that you would like to further optimize, then find them in the Search Engine Traffic -> section. Search terms -> The most popular pages in Google Webmaster Tools

Expand a given subpage and analyze the terms for which you appear. In many cases, the subpage will be displayed for terms for which it is not properly optimized. Think about changing the meta title and description to use as many queries as possible and direct users' attention to issues that are important to you. I once conducted a short test for several dozen subpages on one of the advertising websites.

The best result I managed to achieve by only changing the form of keywords in the page title and formulating the description differently was an increase in CTR by over 20%. At the time of the test, the positions for the selected entries remained at the same level

Just remember that during such optimization activities, CTR values may be distorted by the position of our subpage for a given term.

Rich Snipets, what is that?

When it comes to CTR, extended data in Google is a point that cannot be ignored. According to MOZ.com, websites that Those who implemented rich snippets achieved a 20-30% increase in CTR for their search results. What are rich snippets really?

Rich Snippets are additional information that appears in the form of graphics or text in search results. This functionality allows you to display additional information on our website at the SERP level. In the case of online stores, we can add information such as:

• Product price
• Availability ? information whether the product is available in stock
• Rating ? if our cms allows product ratings, at the SERP level we can display information in the form of colorful stars and ratings, e.g. 9.5/10
• Opinions ? information about the number of opinions added about a given product

In order to enable search engines to display extended data, we must first properly mark the content on the page. We can use four permitted methods for this purpose:

• Microdata ? HTML 5
• Microformats
• JSON-LD
• RDF

In the case of online stores, we must bear in mind the fact that rich snippets are updated when robots visit the product page again. Therefore, in the case of less popular storesacute;w such an update may be rare and we don't want to provide users with outdated data.

To make sure that we have marked the data correctly on our website, you can use the Google tool located at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets.

More information about the implementation of individual options can be found in the article on our blog entitled

Duplication of content in the online store

Duplicate content is one of the most important problems I encounter when optimizing clients' websites. Allowing pages with similar or the same content to be indexed may have a negative impact on the overall condition of the website. Product descriptions downloaded from manufacturers' databases and displayed in dozens of online stores may reduce the quality of our website in the eyes of search engine robots. Unfortunately, many people do not realize how important the content itself and its uniqueness are to Google. I have already written more about this phenomenon on our blog in the article The most common reasons for content duplication? how to deal with them? I also encourage you to read other articles in Duplicate content? how to deal with content thieves, and How to avoid content duplication between your own domains? I think that reading these articles should provide you with answers to any questions related to DC.

Graphics optimization, how to go about it?

When implementing SEO projects, I often come across the belief that traffic generated by graphics is of little value. It converts less than traffic from natural search results. However, it should be remembered that there are industries in which this movement is quite important. Let's not forget that most of us are visual people and often make a purchase decision due to the aesthetic value of the product and its careful workmanship. That is why it is so important to provide users with high-quality graphics that will attract them to our store at first glance. In some cases, traffic from graphics can constitute a significant part of the total visits, so why not use this potential?

One of the industries in which it is undoubtedly worth taking care of graphics optimization is house design. This is where customers usually have their first contact with the offer of a given studio through the graphic search engine. If you want to properly optimize the graphics on your website, it is worth reading the list below:

• Alternative text, or "alt", is the main element of the optimization of every graphic. It is the main source of information for Google robots about what a given graphic presents. In the case of product graphics, it is worth including information in the alternative text, e.g. about the product name, color, size or manufacturer.
• Graphic file name? Unfortunately, online store administrators often upload photos of products with unchanged file names, straight from the camera. However, it is worth making sure that the names of the graphics provide important information to search engine robots about their content. Therefore, it is worth making sure that they contain the names of the products.
• The graphic should be saved in a format supported by search engines (JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG, WebP or SVG).
• In addition to optimizing the graphic file itself, you should also remember that Google takes into account the content of the page on which the graphic is located. Therefore, if we want the photo of our product to appear in image search results for the product name, the subpage of this product must be properly optimized.