SEO is the foundation of any E-commerce that wants to grow. Optimising SEO performance can have an amplified effect on sales performance, overall traffic and conversion rates. With the rise of online shopping and the decline of in-store shopping, there is an opportunity to invest what would have been allocated for brick and mortar stores, into online real-estate, namely your website. It’s important to have a budget for this in order to boost sales.

As a general rule, the higher your rank on search engines, the more traffic you generate. Specifically, position one on search results can expect to receive 33% of the search traffic, 18% for the second position and 12% for third; the numbers degrade rapidly from that point. This highlights that it’s not enough to rank in the top 10 (first-page) anymore; top four if not top three should be your aim in order to get some real traction. This doesn’t mean that being in positions 4-10 is useless, but it does mean that if you want your business to grow, the target goal needs to be set higher.

In order to do this, there needs to be a clear and consistent strategy employed. Here are some strategies that you should consider implementing in order to achieve real SEO success for your E-commerce.

1. Competitor backlink analysis

A competitor backlink analysis is a simple and effective method of identifying what you’re competitors and sites similar to yourself are doing to gain success. You’re able to emulate what they’ve done as the foundation to your growth; doing what they’ve done and better in order to best there SEO performance. This strategy consists of comparing their backlinks (using tools such as Majestic) in order to spot the patterns. For example; sites linking to multiple competitors should be the easiest, and targeted first; sites providing the most amount of authority should be dealt with more carefully as they mean more, and so on.

The aim here is to get similar links to them, and then improve upon what they have already done. This is where you get your competitive edge. A backlink analysis gives you the chance to spot problems, opportunities and patterns, it’s not a cheat sheet or a method of simply copying. If done correctly it’s a very effective strategy, employed by SEO experts all around the world.

2.Improve your page speed

The maximum tolerable page speed should be 3 seconds, but in reality, you should be aiming for 1.5 seconds. Search engines main aim is to deliver the best content to the user when determining what the best content is, page speed comes into play as they recognise the fact that a slow website is not the best of experiences for the user. For this reason, page speed is extremely important. 40% of people will leave a page that loads slowly, that’s potentially 40% of your customers leaving.

This SEO tactic not only improves the user experience and conversion funnel on your site but also helps with ranking on search engines; page speed being a well-known ranking factor. Use sites like Pingdom to discover your page speed and the elements affecting your load times. Once you discover the blockers, you can fix them.

3. Link-build with original content

The internet runs on content and you’ve probably been lectured numerous times before on the importance of content creation, especially for an E-commerce business. Content has many uses, and the aim should always be to maximise the ways in which you use each piece, in order to maximise your returns.

Content can be used as a link-building tool. Creating good content that can catch the attention of your target audience is just the start. This content can be used in campaigns, drawing traffic back to your website.

Reaching out to relevant sites and content hubs, in order to get them to share your content to their audience, can not only build links but also your businesses overall profile. Be sure to also link to your own content on your site and social, view this as a funnel, all leading to one desired outcome. Moving users from content viewing and consumption to converting.

These are just three, of what is quite literally, endless numbers of strategies that can be implemented in order to improve your E-commerce business’s SEO performance. These three tactics can be used by every E-commerce regardless of the size of your business. Remember that the higher you rank on relevant searches, the more traffic and sales it generates. SEO can often be overlooked, especially with E-commerce businesses who tend to focus on Paid search and other means of advertising. However thinking in terms of long-term growth and sustainability, SEO is the key to your E-commerce’s success.

Happy Small Business Marketing!