11 Crucial Search Engine Ranking Factors for Ecommerce Websites

For every ecommerce website, the margin between success and failure is minimal. With so many competitors – many of which sell similar, if not the same, products – it’s incredibly important to look for any edge you can get. Search engine optimisation (or SEO) is a great place to start.

If you’re not familiar with SEO, it involves the use of various techniques to increase a website’s traffic by improving its rankings on search engine results pages (or SERPs).

If this sounds a bit overwhelming, don’t worry. When you boil SEO right down, it’s straightforward. You use search engines to find websites. If the search engine successfully makes a great recommend that you like and find useful, they’ve done a good job. So, why do you like certain websites and not others? What makes one website great and another a complete waste of time? Simply create the type of website that you – and others – would like to visit, and you’re on the right track.

SEO is quite simple when you break it down into a list of small, simple rules. Google’s algorithm judges a website based on hundreds of different reasons (or ‘ranking factors’ as they’re called in the biz). These factors, are what they think people want from a website. In this blog posts, you can find 11 of the most important ranking factors for ecommerce websites (according to the experts anyway – nobody really knows for certain, as Google are quite secretive):

• 1. Architecture & Usability: It might sound obvious, but your online store should be organised and easy use and navigate. If shoppers are getting lost or reaching broken pages, it might be time for a rethink. Contact your web designer immediately!
• 2. User Friendly Layout: Make sure your webpages are easy to digest. According to Google, “The page layout on highest quality pages makes the Main Content immediately visible.”
• 3. Popularity Contest: It might sound like a Catch 22, but popular websites with repeat traffic are ranked higher.
• 4. Relevant Keywords: Use relevant keywords in the Title Tag, Meta Description and Headings. Otherwise, how will search engines know what your website is all about?
• 5. Useful & Quality: People want to visit websites with useful, high-quality content, right? Useful and insightful product descriptions are a good place to start. Great grammar, spelling and even the reading level is important.
• 6. Content Length: Shallow content just isn’t going to cut the mustard any more. People want detailed information, so don’t skimp on the product descriptions.
• 7. Copy Cats: We’re back on product descriptions again. If you sell somebody else’s products, it might be tempting to use their product descriptions. Whatever you do, don’t! Search engines prefer unique content, and duplication can result in penalties.
• 8. The Need for Speed: Everybody hates slow websites, right? Who would wait 5 seconds (or even 3) for a website to load? Make sure your website is super fast.
• 9. Multimedia: Boost your website with polished images, useful videos and other multimedia elements too. Everything helps.
• 10. Optimise for Mobile: Is your online store responsive? Mobile friendly websites get a little more love in the SERPs, and they’re much easier for shoppers to use too.
• 11. Bounce Rate: It’s hard to ignore a high bounce rate. If people are repeatedly visiting your ecommerce store and leaving immediately, something is definitely going wrong.

Revamp your ecommerce site with Bing Digital

At Bing Digital, we understand that every detail counts when it comes to web design and development. Which is why, from site speed to user layout, we create sites that are as slick, effortless and intuitive as possible. If you would like more information about our e-commerce web design services, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Simply call 020 8242 1954, or complete a contact form and a member of our team will be in touch shortly.