Hi Andrew,

What would be your top SEO tips to get a brand new e-commerce website higher in search results?

I know that link building is essential but it will take a lot of time – is there anything that can be done quicker?

I’m selling sporting goods and competition is pretty severe but I have some unique selling points so I think I can do well in this niche.

Any quick SEO tips for a newbie like me?

Best,
Mark, UK

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your question.

Let me tell you this – SEO takes time and there’s nothing you can do about it. Whatever strategy you’ll be using, results will be only seen in a few weeks, if not months time. Yes, there are black hat, grey hat techniques that will shoot your rankings through the roof for a day or two but they won’t give you long lasting results. As a general rule of thumb – the longer you’ll work on SEO, the slower results will show, the better for your business in long term (there won’t be huge fluctuations).

With that said, as you have a brand new website, I would first concentrate on ON PAGE SEO – ON Page SEO relates to every aspect of your website, including:

* Page structure

* Layout

* Linking structure

* Page Titles

* Meta data

* Product Descriptions

* Image ALT tags

* and so on!

Here’s my TOP 3 On Page SEO tips for quick optimization (don’t skip anything, and do these 5 steps for every page you have on your website):

1. Unique, keyword rich content - this is crucial! Make sure each page of your website has at least 200-300 words long, UNIQUE text (product description). Obviously, throughout the text you want to use keywords you want that particular page to rank for.

2. Page Titles – again, unique for each page and should contain main keyword you target for that particular page.

3. Meta keywords, meta description & SEO friendly URLs - if your shopping cart doesn’t support this, get a plugin that does the job! Again, Meta data for each page should be unique and contain main keywords. Urls should be written in a form like this: www.yourwebsite.com/product-name.html

If you follow these 3 steps, your e-commerce shop will be SEOd better than 95% of your competition! I know this involves a lot of writing if you have a lot of products but trust me, this will pay you back ten fold, in long term.

If you can’t write, don’t want to write or are simply too lazy – get a writer to do product descriptions for you! You can get 300 word descriptions done for $5 or so, money well invested in your business growth!

Thanks,
Andrew

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