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SEO For eCommerce: 5 Tips For More Traffic

After direct entry, traffic via organic search is the most important visitor channel for online shops. But in order to be found at Google, a multitude of measures have to be taken on and off the website.

This is where search engine optimization for online shops comes into play: The following 5 SEO tips can mean the decisive step forward.

1) Colorado Springs SEO

Keywords or search terms are the heart of search engine optimization in Colorado Springs. Anyone running an online shop or local business must therefore know the most important search terms in their own niche in order to be able to optimize the individual pages for these terms. Therefore there is no way around a keyword search. The aim of the search is to get an overview of the main search terms and to assign them to the appropriate page type.

In a nutshell: In keyword research, search terms are filtered out and categorized so that exactly the content that serves the search intention can be created for each keyword. This covers the entire spectrum of the Sales Funnel. For SEO in Colorado Springs and other local areas, you generally have keywords that contain what you’re looking for, followed by the name of the city.

2) Non-commercial contents

As is usually clear from keyword research, most search terms are not primarily about buying something. Even though sales are the main goal of every online shop, a non-commercial area should not be missing: In the blog / encyclopedia / guide all relevant keywords can be covered without buying intention.

Thus, the target group becomes aware of the shop at an early stage – and ideally returns when it comes to the purchase. In order for this to happen and for a solid basis of trust to emerge, the content must be convincing across the board and deliver real added value.

Attention: The blog should be on the same domain as the online shop. It does not make sense to set up an additional domain or subdomain.

In a nutshell: A blog with non-commercial content appeals to the target group at an early stage and is indispensable if you want to cover as broad a spectrum of keywords as possible.

3) Improvement of user experience and technical aspects

A shop can offer such good products – if the User Experience (UX) is bad, sooner or later it becomes a problem. It is therefore important to optimize the user experience, among other things by means of the following measures:

  • Faster loading times – the faster the page loads, the better.
  • Optimization for mobile devices – Responsive design is mandatory, but not sufficient. You should also constantly check your own shop on Mobile to detect problems at an early stage.
  • A clear shop structure – It must be immediately apparent which function can be found where. The individual categories and product classifications should also be logically comprehensible. This helps users, as well as the Google algorithm.
  • Smooth operation of the individual functions – A filter function and similar elements are only helpful if they are perfectly matched to the intention of the user!

In addition, a search engine optimized online shop must have the necessary technical finesse. These include, for example:

  • SSL encryption ensures a secure connection – HTTPS encryption has been an official ranking factor since 2014. The SSL certificate is no longer a secret tip – but if you don’t have one yet, you should switch to HTTPS as soon as possible.
  • Canonical Tags – These tags show the Google algorithm which URL is the original version. This is especially helpful with product variants and prevents problems with duplicate content.
  • Referrals – When products are removed from the range, it is imperative that the relevant page is redirected to a similar product, successor model or category.
  • Internal links – When cleverly chosen anchor texts are used to suggest other relevant products (or blog articles), this is a sign of relevance and clarity for Google.

At the technical level, there are a lot of other points that need to be considered in online shops.

4) Correct use of texts

Apart from the non-commercial content, by far the most important texts of an online shop are the category pages: Most people first want to browse and be able to choose from several products.

This makes it all the more important to use category texts strategically. Such a text should have the following characteristics:

  • contains the main keyword as well as important secondary keywords in the right places (e.g. in the H1, the first 100 words and in at least one H2)
  • Offers real added value instead of purely promotional phrases
  • aims at the wishes and possible concerns of the target audience

For this purpose it is worthwhile to read product reviews in other shops. What criticisms did customers have of competing products? How can you improve your service so that similar problems do not arise in the first place? Customer focus is the key to a successful online shop.

Product pages, on the other hand, are not as important as category pages, but should not be neglected. The first rule is: never use the manufacturer’s text! This can already be found in enough other shops and can be understood by Google as duplicate content.

In a nutshell: Category pages are the best way to pick up important commercial keywords. Texts about categories and products should be a bit longer, because very short descriptions can lead to duplicate/thin content and users like to research them. Transparency is a must.

5) Optimize Google Snippet

The Google Snippet, consisting of Title Tag and Meta Description, is the flagship of a page and can significantly increase the click rate. However, this only works if it is immediately clear what the page is about and whether the searched for can be found there. These factors are important:

  • Keyword in Title Tag and Meta Description
  • Teaser to page content
  • Talking URL that contains the keyword.

All of the above steps fall within the scope of OnPage optimization. Beyond that, however, it also plays a role what happens offside.

In addition to the SEO work on the shop itself, it is therefore important to establish links by requesting backlinks from other industry-relevant sites. These external links should preferably not have the nofollow attribute, otherwise the link will not be counted by Google. To be honest, building links requires a lot of time and the search for cooperation partners is not always easy.

SEO for online stores consists of many small cogs. If all these components mesh together, this will lead to better Google rankings in the long run and is the most important strategy in online marketing in the long run – an effort that pays off.

Denver SEO Basics For Beginners

To be found on page 1 of Google is not only the dream of every website owner, but it is also a pure necessity if you want to attract online customers in Denver or Colorado Springs.

Search engine optimization, SEO for short, is an extensive subject area in which many companies have specialized in the meantime. This shows the importance of the topic. And it shows also that the conversion requires some at special knowledge.

But already with few bases much can be achieved. The most important SEO or search engine optimization basics I would like to introduce to you in this article. You will see that it is not so difficult at all to optimize a Blogbeitrag or a web page for the search machine Google.

Plugins do not automatically provide SEO

If you are working with your own WordPress installation, you may have heard of so-called SEO plugins. However, these plugins do not optimize your posts and pages for you but only help you – in the form of an intelligent checklist. The two best-known plugins recommended by SEO Denver are the Yoast and wpSEO plugins. If you can’t use any of these plugins (e.g. because you work with WordPress.com, Blogger.de or a homepage construction kit like Jimdo or Wix), you can download the checklist at the end of this article and take the most important steps with it.

Understanding Search Engine Optimization

In order to be able to optimize a text for search engines, one must at least understand a little how search engines work and what they pay attention to.

Actually I should write: How Google works and what Google pays attention to. Because in Germany Google has a market share of over 96 percent! The remaining percentage is distributed among Bing and Yahoo and search engines like DuckDuckGo or ixquick.

In the following, I will concentrate on Google – because what works here also works for the rest (at least well enough).

Also, you should know that you can’t get to the first page of Google “with your site”, but only with a single page.

About keywords

In addition, you can’t reach page 1 on Google globally, but only for specific keywords (called keywords in the following).

The shorter the keyword, the harder it becomes to fight your way forward, because the more competition there is for the keyword and the more “misses” you can have. Just think of the kettle words like “high pressure”, “cancer” or “cross”.

Most Google users have now recognized this and are looking for longer word combinations. The results that Google delivers to them are usually much better and lead faster to the desired result.

These longer keywords are called long-tail keywords. Long tail is very nice figurative and means as much as “long tail”. For example, a long tail keyword is “basic search engine optimization for beginners”.

Meanwhile, Google is also so intelligent that you can ask questions in normal syntax. For example: “what do I have to consider with seo”. Especially if you’re using voice input to search on your smartphone, such “natural phrases” are a good idea.

Usefulness and relevance

Overall, Google is expected to use well over 200 factors according to which the positioning takes place. As amateurs, we can’t and don’t want to know them all. Much more important, however, is the following: For some time now, Google has been taking particular account of the usefulness and relevance of an Internet page. In addition, the clicks on the search results and the time spent on the site are included in the ratings.

How does Google measure usefulness and relevance? An important element is the length of a post. Therefore, the rule of thumb is that a post should not be shorter than 300 words, because under this word count a topic – no matter how narrow – can hardly be treated comprehensively. Then you may have heard that a post should better contain 1000 or even 2000 words or more. These are also fist values. Not everyone likes to read such long contributions. Nevertheless, measurements have shown that long contributions are more often shared and likened. Through subheadings, word highlights, enumerations, and summaries, you also make longer contributions appealing to readers who don’t like to read long texts and skim them more.

Researching the right keywords

Before you write a text, you naturally think about what you want to write about and what you want to achieve with your contribution. If you know this, you start with the keyword research. This means that you look at what people are actually looking for, that is, what they are interested in or want to know. Because what use is the most beautiful search engine optimized text to you if nobody wants to know what is in it?

The easiest and fastest tool for this is the suggestion function in the Google search itself. This will give you a first impression. It will be more precise if you use special tools for it. The tools range from free of charge (Google Keyword Planner in Google Adwords can be used free of charge by registering with Google Adwords, even without wanting to place ads) to really expensive. Beside these two I like to use KeywordTool.io Ubersuggest, KeywordPro, and Keywordtools.org.

You optimize your text best only for one (long-tail) keyword. But that doesn’t mean that you have to use the keyword again and again in the same form. You are allowed to use synonyms and grammatical flexions. But you should already place your main keyword in the relevant places. These are:

  • the main heading (the title or also the H1 heading)
  • the permalink (= the URL of the page)
  • the beginning of the post or page
  • the subheadings (H2 and H3)
  • the ALT tags of the photos you include in your post
  • the meta description in the source code header

What all this is exactly and how it looks like in WordPress, you can find out if you download the checklist I linked at the end of this article.

Keyword density is out

Even if this value is still specified in the plugins and many contributions to search engine optimization deal with the keyword density. Basically the topic is out. Take the hints as fist values, similar to the text length, which should help you to keep an eye on the relevance of your article while writing. A better method than the pure percentage is the measurement of the so-called WDF*IDF value, which takes the keyword density into account in proportion to the text length.

What else is important for Colorado SEO?

Your contribution should have at least one picture, better still several pictures in the text. Here the so-called ALT tag offers a nice possibility to “hide” your keyword. But be careful with it: The ALT tag serves users of pure text-based browsers as information about what can be seen in a picture. Does this seem strange to you? Well, visually impaired or blind people, for example, use special software that reads the web pages to them. The text in the ALT tag is read to them. What is written here should also make sense for these users? Don’t use the ALT tag to spam!

Also, the file name is important. Instead of naming a picture with DSC-20010112210500.png, use a file name like “seo-001.png”.
Links

The Internet lives from links. Without links your pages will not be found. Without links every page becomes a dead end in the internet. The Internet lives from a culture of sharing and networking. This is also seen by Google – therefore not only incoming links to your sites are welcome, but also outgoing links from your site. Google also loves links within your site – because you make your content more accessible to visitors.

Page descriptions with keywords

The page description (Meta-Description) once had much higher importance than today. With the page description, you can influence the text in the search result of Google (the snippet). But only if Google likes it. I always use my search engine optimization plugin to create my own page description – as long as I don’t find out that this is explicitly harmful – like the next point.

Meta-Keywords

In the past, the keywords were also entered in the header of the source code, the so-called meta-area. However, since this possibility was quickly abused (some “search engine optimizers” entered hundreds of keywords there, even those that did not have much to do with the content of the text on the page), Google stopped evaluating them a long time ago. In the meantime, it is even very unwise to enter your keywords there because this way you only make your competitors aware of which keywords you have optimized your texts for.

Tips for reading more about SEO

These are now my most important basic tips for search engine optimization for you. Of course, you won’t automatically get to page 1 with this, but you will have already made a good part of the way. When dancing one would talk about “duty” – the rest (on the way to the top) is the “freestyle”.

If you want to get deeper into the topic, I recommend the SEO Basics series from WordPress-Ninjas and the contributions to the SEO texts on Chimpify. Both are written well understandable for beginners and help you to get deeper into the topic.

About Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs is neither the largest city in Colorado (this honor is due to Denver) nor does it have world-famous sights to offer. If it is still worth a visit, it is mainly because of its beautiful, almost grandiose surroundings – without exaggeration.

Even considering the fact that tastes are different, it can be said that Colorado Springs is one of the most beautifully located cities in North America. And once you’re there, you’ll feel very much at home in the city itself and find worthwhile destinations for discovery tours.

Welcome to the foot of Pikes Peak!

But first back to the situation of Colorado Springs. The name says it all, the city is located in Colorado, one of the “Mountain States” of the USA. So the main attraction here are the mountains – and what kind of mountains! Colorado includes the southern part of the Rocky Mountains, the northeast of the Colorado Plateau and the western part of the Great Plains. That is truly something to be proud of! One of the most famous mountains and probably the one with the highest recognition value in the whole USA is the “Pikes Peak”, which everyone might have seen in a movie or an advertisement. At his feet lies Colorado Springs.

A mountain tour is probably the best way to get to know the city and its unique location. Want to go right up to Pikes Peak? On clear days the view from the summit is magnificent. The view then reaches Denver in the north and the Rocky Mountains in the west. Depending on your fitness you can reach the summit on foot, by car or by a small train. Arriving at the top, there is a nice café and a souvenir shop waiting for customers.

Who wants to save the “Pikes Peak”, the “Garden of the Gods” is recommended. The almost 600-hectare nature park offers interesting hiking trails that can be covered on foot, by bicycle or on horseback. Red rock formations stand out impressively from a green landscape and give an idea of what it might have looked like before the settlement. The visitor center is a large open-air museum in which the life of the settlers in earlier centuries is relived very vividly – partly with real actors! Speaking of centuries. Colorado was admitted to the United States of America in 1876 as the 38th country. It was then that the State Union itself celebrated its hundredth birthday. Colorado was therefore given the seat name “Centennial State”.

Business & SEO

There is much opportunity for business in our city. SEO (search engine optimization) is a great tool for that, as local businesses can grow very easily by applying SEO to their websites. When expanding to Denver, which is not too far away, local professionals can run a multi-branch company quite profitably. On our blog, we talk about this topic a lot.

Historical greetings from distant times

Colorado Springs wasn’t always called Colorado Springs. Near the former “Jamestown”, “El Dorado” was founded in 1859, which should have come very close to what we imagine today as a typical wild west town. The “Old Colorado City History Center”, which has its rooms in a former church, provides information about this. There, photos, exhibits, and objects of art remind us of the time of the great departure, the cowboys and the saloons. Especially ceramic works from the “Van Briggle Art Pottery” should not be overlooked. They enjoy a worldwide reputation among collectors and have not only been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York but also at the Louvre in Paris. Afterwards, it makes sense to stroll along nearby Colorado Avenue, visit studios and galleries there and finally eat in one of the many good restaurants.

Art is written in capital letters in this city

The inner city of Colorado Springs seems almost a bit European. Wide boulevards, elegant houses – the founding fathers certainly didn’t have a cheap collection of buildings in mind when this city was conceived. What exactly her vision was can be seen at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, while the ProRodeo Hall of Fame is all about the history of the rodeo and the cowboys who made this sport famous. But also the fine arts have their place in this city. At the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, for example, visitors can view a select collection of paintings including works by O’Keeffe, Russell, and Audubon.

Sporty, sporty!

The excellent sporting opportunities that Colorado Springs offers all year round are perhaps one of the reasons why it is home to the United States National Olympic Committee. This also means that various sports associations are based here, which in turn like to see the city as a venue for major competitions. Visitors can, therefore, prepare themselves for the fact that during their stay some national, perhaps even international championships will certainly be held. For sports fans, this is certainly one more reason to spend an interesting holiday here.