When you’re using an eCommerce platform like BigCommerce, the position at which you’re displayed in the search rankings will depend much on how well optimized your website is. That’s the primary reason why people reach out to SEO agency, as getting results can be quite complex.
Most reputable companies of this type will be quite open about the strategies used to gain traffic for their customers, but not all. So, in order to provide some transparency of our own, we’ll now be shining a light on just a few of the techniques that SEO agencies use to increase sales.
On-Site SEO Optimization
One of the main weapons in a BigCommerce SEO agency armory is on-page or ‘on-site’ SEO optimization. This involves ensuring all website elements are arranged in a way that helps you rank higher in searches and gain relevant traffic. This part of the process is concerned with optimizing both HTML page source code, visible written text and hidden tags.
On-site SEO helps search engines to interpret the content on the pages of your website. This is in addition to allowing visitors to properly understand what each page is about and whether it answers their search query accurately.
– Google & Visitors Are Better Able to Understand Your Site –
Essentially, good on-site SEO allows search engines like Google to comprehend the value of your pages to those reading them. It’s all about relevance, you see, as the primary goal of search enings is to help people find precisely what they’re looking for.
The more positive signals that your website gives out that it’s a good place with high authority to direct its users to about the subject in question – the higher it will rank.
Off-Page SEO Optimization
A good BigCommerce SEO agency will also carry out off-site SEO optimization, as on-page SEO is only part of the equation. This is a broad term that covers a whole range of techniques that are designed to drive traffic to your website. Techniques include:
• Encouraging brand mentions across social media
• Engaging in industry forums to gain visibility
• Leveraging the power of social media commenting
• Reaching out to industry influencers
• Providing guest post content
• Broken link building
• Social Networking
• Social Bookmarking
Carrying out off-page SEO is vital, as it helps to build your website’s domain authority and promotes brand recognition. Failing to take care of this crucial aspect will result in competitor websites who are conducting off-site SEO ranking above you on a consistent basis.
Top-Quality Content
Ask any good BigCommerce SEO agency and they’ll tell you that content is king, as without it, the chances of you ranking well go down immensely. Every link you see when making a Google search query is attached to a piece of content, whether that be an article, a blog post, or something to make someone click through.
The importance of quality content cannot be underestimated and it should form the foundation of your website’s structure. It’s also the ideal way to ensure that all of your researched keywords appear at the correct frequency across your site.
– Google Rewards Good Content With Higher Rankings –
Great content provides value to those reading, meaning also that the right audience is being attracted. In turn, this greatly increases the chance of visitors taking action once on your website. What’s more, they’re more likely to share it with others – increasing your reach even more.
Content that captivates will naturally boost your SERP rankings – as mentioned before. Google can tell how good your content is, as well as the helpfulness of the links contained within it – placing you above the sites that aren’t deemed to be as helpful.
Identification of Relevant/Optimized Keywords
Another aspect the experts will attend to is finding highly-relevant keywords for your eCommerce efforts. They’ll be relevant to your industry and the products you sell, with the identified words able to be used to optimize your website or as part of a Pay Per Click campaign to drive traffic.
Your BigCommerce SEO agency will analyze competitors, as well as search volumes, competition, and generate short and long-tail keywords that will get you the customers you crave.
The Importance of Keyword Research
Using their expertise SEO specialists will carry out keyword research to determine the right keywords for your business, industry, niche and other relevant factors. It’s an important step as it reveals vital insight into how best to grow your business in the online world.
Research of this kind informs you of what terms people are actually using to search for products or services like yours. It will also show the competition for each potential keyword, allowing you to get a clear idea of how to put your content marketing plan together.
Making Your Site Easy to Use
Something else that your BigCommerce SEO agency will do for you is to make your site easy to navigate, as there’s nothing more likely to dissuade a potential customer than a poorly laid-out shopping experience. This involves optimizing your site’s hierarchy so that fewer clicks are needed to get to where they want to go.
Ideally, there should be no more than 3 clicks between a site user and the product or information they’re looking for. Arrange things more convolutedly than that and you’re simply making it harder to buy.
Smooth Website Navigation Is Key
Typically, site visitors are interested in three things; 1) “What kind of website am I on?”, 2) “What pages have I already visited?” and 3) “What other pages can I view?”. Answer these three questions and session-length, interaction, interest and conversions all go up.
Brand recognition relies upon visitors being able to smoothly move around your site. When transparent, organized navigation is provided, visitors spend longer with you, as they’re able to find what they started looking for in the first place. The result is a positive user experience.
Improving Your Site’s Loading Speed
In addition to ideal site hierarchy, your BigCommerce SEO agency will also work on your site’s loading speed, as slow loading can be a killer for your sales figures.
Also, Google will also base your rankings (amongst many other factors) on how quickly your site loads, as it can kill the customer experience before it starts. Either way, you’re going to get fewer customers seeing what you have to offer than you otherwise would.
Making Your eCommerce Mobile Optimized
The last item on our list of techniques used by BigCommerce SEO agency firms to boost traffic is mobile optimization. It’s important not to confuse the term ‘mobile optimized’ with ‘mobile-friendly’, as they’re different things.
While mobile-friendly sites are functional, they won’t always have all the features of a mobile-optimzed site. Usually, as a condensed version of your main site, it will look professional, but be fairly basic.
That said, they do often have text-based email addresses or phone numbers that can be used to trigger mobiles devices to directly content you as an online store owner.
Mobile Optimization Goes a Step Further
When a BigCommerce SEO agency optimizes your online store for mobile, it doesn’t just make sure that your site properly displays, but also makes navigation easier. As we’ve mentioned, this is crucial to the user experience.
A mobile-optimized website will also have larger navigation buttons, reformatted content and images that are perfectly adjusted according to screen size.
Mobile Optimization Benefits
Mobile optimization typically requires a responsive website design, which does tend to cost more, but ensures that your site works effectively across all devices. Statistics show that 79% of smartphone users have bought something on it within the last 6 months, so it matters!
Benefits of mobile-optimized websites include:
• Improves the user experience
• Improves website speed
• Increases user engagement
• Increases average time spent on site
These all feed into the benefits provided by the other measures we’ve described here. Fail to provide a good user experience and visitors will likely leave quickly – never to be seen or heard of again.
Expertise Like This Is Worth Its Weight in Gold
Of course, what we’ve covered here represents just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the methods that a good BigCommerce SEO agency will use to get sales for you. There’s still a wide range of complementing methods that all combine to create a site that works hard for you.
This is not the kind of knowledge that you’re just going to pick up, as it takes time and effort to get to anywhere near the kind of proficiency a professional will have.
And with most business owners being busy at the best of times, many simply don’t have the time to dedicate to the job. However, it’s not a job that can be ignored, so someone’s gotta do it.
Our advice is to choose the company you use well and trust in their expertise, as it’s most often worth its weight in gold.