Welcome to the Official Plesk Podcast: Next Level Ops, the place to listen to industry experts and learn how to become a web pro!
For eCommerce owners, understanding SEO and the process of earning and retaining customers is of the utmost importance. Maddy Osman, SEO Consultant, is our guest speaker in this episode, tackling the technical and practical topics around user experience and site optimization from a marketing perspective. How can you make your site more ‘findable’ and interesting? Let’s take a look:
In This Episode: Content, UX, and Trustworthiness
So far this season we’ve explored a variety of topics around eCommerce, from owning your platform and speeding up your website, to security and using the Plesk eCommerce Toolkit.
But how can we make sure visitors arrive at our stores, and how do we provide a good buying experience once they do? Well you’re in luck! SEO consultant Maddy Osman gives us a whole bunch of fantastic insights and tips to answer both of the above questions, and we’re excited to share them with you.
Maddy starts by outlining that there are three pillars to SEO: Content, off-page SEO, and website technical structure. Each contributes to how well your store ranks in search engines. And luckily we’ve covered a lot of the technical structure in previous episodes!
As far as user experience (UX) is concerned, it all starts with content. From an SEO point of view, content is also king. In fact, there is a significant overlap between content as a UX feature, and content for SEO. Your visitors want clear descriptions, good product photos, and obvious terms for returns, exchanges, refunds, and shipping. Meanwhile, content-rich activities like blogging, even as little as once a month can increase traffic through SEO and help turn potential customers into paying customers. Making content engaging, relevant and abundant on your website helps bring users to the next stage of the process: buying!
Key Takeaways
- There are three pillars to SEO: Content, off-page SEO, and website technical structure
- Content should include solid product descriptions, lots of photos, and clear terms. Remember; buying online doesn’t provide the same experience as buying in-store, so you need to fill the gaps. Content will helps us do that.
- By the same token, don’t unintentionally create duplicate content! If you have similar versions of the same product (different colors, sizes, shapes, etc), create variations. Some search engines can lower your ranking if you have a lot of duplicate content, and variations prevent that.
- When it comes to blogging, consistency is more important than quantity. Blogging once a month is the minimum to show people (and search engines) that you’re consistent.
- Ideally, releasing one piece of content per week would be ideal. But it doesn’t just have to be on your own site! Consider being a guest blogger and spreading the word about your brand and surrounding topics through other sites.
- When it comes to off-page SEO, on top of guest posts, you can have affiliate programs and link exchanges. Since Google and other search engines consider backlinks (links back to your website or content) when ranking, getting your website linked on other websites, where relevant, can really help.
- Tools like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog can help you figure out whom to ask for a backlink.
- Reciprocity can sweeten the pot, but link-trading is also frowned upon by Google, so get creative!
- Influencers can also play a big part of getting people to your site. Social proof is the lynchpin of selling online, so testimonials are great. But showing other people actually using and promoting your products is even better.
- When people look for social proof, we can apply the acronym EAT: Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Find influencers with relevant audiences who understand and can honestly recommend your product.
- Finally, when it comes to technical structure, again tools like Ahrefs can help figure out where the holes in your website are. Remember to get rid of or redirect 404 errors, obtain an SSL certificate, and make improvements over time to your content and website speed. Our Alberto Medina episode on Core Web Vitals should be a huge help on this!
The Official Plesk Podcast: Next Level Ops Featuring
Joe Casabona
Joe is a college-accredited course developer and podcast coach. You can find him at Casabona.org.
Maddy Osman
Maddy is an SEO Consultant and Owner of The Blogsmith, an agency that focuses on SEO Content for WordPress and Technology Brands.
Did you know we’re also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts? In fact, you can find us pretty much anywhere you get your daily dose of podcasts. As always, remember to update your daily podcast playlist with Next Level Ops. And stay on the lookout for our next episode!
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