To maximize your products' visibility in external search engines' results, take good care when performing search engine optimization of your online store's contents.
Search engine optimization involves drawing up a page's contents in such a way, so that the page ranks as high as possible in a search engine's unpaid results when somebody searches for a specific search term.
Optimizing your online store may include both editing its contents and taking care of technical factors. For merchants, the most important thing should be drawing up and organizing contents in a search engine friendly way. Search engine optimization also improves the functioning of the online store's search as MyCashflow's internal search engine generally follows the same rules as the most popular web search engines.
Keywords
Keywords are words related to the page contents that are supposed to help a website rank higher in search engine results. Rarely does a website rank high in search engine results thanks to any search term; most often websites base on a limited number of carefully selected keywords that are especially relevant to their contents.
Selecting keywords
The number of selected keywords largely depends on the online store. A store may sell computers and furniture, which cannot be easily described by using the same keywords. Therefore, you may want to select keywords basing on your online store's product categories. There's room for variation within a category too: for instance, trousers won't be searched for by using the same keywords as knit garments, and yet both belong to the same main category of clothes.
You may want to think broadly when selecting keywords – look for all the words that are used when talking about a specific product. For example, a customer may search for a TV set based on the following criteria:
- brand (Samsung, Sony etc.)
- model (flat screen TV, plasma TV etc.)
- properties (widescreen, 52", Full HD, antenna)
- purpose (home cinema, traveling)
Google Ads helps selecting the best keywords
With the help of Google Ads' keyword planner, you can check the number of searches for particular keywords as well as find new keyword ideas for the keywords you already have.
In Google Ads, you can also optimize the visibility of your keywords in organic search results.
Using keywords in your online store
Search engines' ranking criteria evolve constantly. In this section, we aimed at collecting current best practices regarding keyword usage:
- Use keywords in multiple important locations.
- Use keywords together with their synonyms, equivalents and other related words.
- For instance, when writing about a TV set, you could also mention home cinemas, DVD players, speakers etc.
- But don't try too hard to stuff all the related words into the same paragraph; it'll make it difficult to read. Make sure that the text is logically organized.
- Use keywords at the beginnings of paragraphs, but remember to use them in moderation. Search engines can, to some extent, decode the context in which a keyword has been used. So, if you use a keyword in a paragraph, make sure that the paragraph's content is closely related to the keyword.
Remember that you're writing for people, not search engines
Keywords should be used as an integral part of the text. Don't use too many or too few keywords on a page. Avoid blandly repeating a word; use synonyms and related terms instead.
The easiest way to optimize a text is to use ordinary sentences that contain keywords only in such places in which they are directly relevant.
Important keyword locations
You may want to add keywords especially at the following locations in content texts:
| Location | Explanation |
|---|---|
Document title (<title>) | Document title should summarize its contents. Usually search engines take into account only the title's first 100 characters (or even less), and keywords that appear at the beginning are considered most important. Often you may want to include, for instance, the store, company, or brand name in the title. By default, the online store's name is included in document title. This can be prevented by editing the output for the |
Meta description (<meta name="description">) | Often the text found in meta description is displayed in search results under the title. This means the visitors who come across the page in search engine results will make the decision whether to visit the page based largely on its meta description. Keywords used in meta description don't influence your page's ranking in search results. |
Page headings (h1–h6) | Use the most important keyword at least in the page's main heading ( As their headings, pages use the name fields of different content types (such as product, product category etc.). |
| Content text (main content area) | Write ordinary, high-quality content that is easy to read. In contents, use keywords in moderation and only at such places, at which they are especially relevant. Use also keywords' synonyms and the related terms if it is natural to do so. The amount of keywords in a text is not crucial, but you may want to use a keyword at least a couple of times in a text of regular length. |
| Products' key words | The online store's internal search engine uses the contents of the Keywords field that can be found in the product form in the admin panel. Enter in this field a list of all keywords (separated by commas) that describe the product. |
For every page, you can set a separate document title and meta description by using the search engine optimization tools in the Web Designer extension.
Testing keywords
After defining suitable keywords for your online store, test the keywords by performing searches that use them. You may want to conduct tests both before placing keywords in contents as well as after doing it:
- Perform search with the selected keywords before adding them to the text.
In this way, you'll be able to get a better grasp of the competition surrounding the selected keywords. Pay special attention to the pages that come first and their contents.
If it seems that there is a lot of competition for a given keyword, you may want to select another one – with less competition – in its place.
- Perform searches also some time after adding the keywords.
Perform searches (both by using the store's internal engine and web search engines) with the keywords you've selected and added to the texts to see whether your products' ranking has improved in search engine results.
Note that using keywords is just a part of search engine optimization, which means that using only the right keywords may not necessarily bring remarkable results.
At first testing might be slow because it takes some time for Google's search index to update.
Links
Another important factor that influences a website's search engine visibility are links included in the website and links that point to it. Pay special attention to the following things:
- Usually links that point to individual pages and websites come from sources whose subject matter is related to your online store. It is also important for the link sources to be acknowledged and well optimized themselves.
- Links from a page should point to pages with related contents. For instance, on a product page you can add a link to the manufacturer's page with additional information about the product.
- There should be enough links in the online store between contents related to each other. Internal links – when properly implemented – also help visitors navigate your online store.
Tools for creating links
In MyCashflow, cross-sell products make creating internal links between products much easier.
You can add products to multiple product categories to make it easier for your customers to find them.
On the online store's front page, you may want to promote e.g. the newest or most popular products. You can also feature the products whose visibility you'd like to improve.
Textual contents
While placing keywords at the right locations does improve your online store's visibility in search engines, it is also very important that you take care of the overall quality of your store's contents.
For more information on how to create good titles and snippets, see Google's Help Center.
Product category and brand descriptions
Product category and brand descriptions are a perfect place to talk at length about the products they contain. Provide your customers with general information about the products you sell, and use the related keywords in a natural way in the text.
You may also want to add related images and videos to the text. Pages with graphical contents tend to rank higher in search engine results compared to pages that only contain text.
Product descriptions
As you've already provided your customers with general information about your products, on product pages you may want to go into greater details about individual products:
- In product information, make sure to cover the product's properties as clearly and extensively as possible. Visitors that are looking for something specific will be grateful for this kind of information.
Put it in your own words
Avoid copying contents e.g. from the manufacturer's website. Google may punish websites with contents copied from elsewhere.
Description is the right place to describe the product more freely in order to advertise it. In the text, use keywords, their synonyms and other terms related to the topic.
You can also link to similar and compatible products from the content field. Even though you might have already done it by using cross-sales, the links placed directly in contents are of great value when it comes to search engine visibility.
- Add the most important keywords that are related to the product to the Keywords field.
The field's content is used only by MyCashflow's internal search engine, so in this respect the engine differs from web search engines.
Pages dealing with the store's subject matter
If your online store has a clear theme (or themes) that connects your product catalog (such as pet care or consumer electronics), create info pages, on which you'll write about the topic. Creating info pages is a further possibility for adding high-quality content to your website. Apart from that, there is nothing better than producing useful, meaningful contents to improve your online store's image.
Info pages dealing with topics important to your customers are also a great place from which you can link to your store's product categories or even individual products. In this way, info pages are also useful when it comes to creating internal links.
Visitor tracking
Another important method used in search engine optimization is visitor tracking. Visitor tracking involves monitoring the keywords leading to your website as well as visitors' behavior when they arrive at your store.
To track your website's traffic and search terms, you'll need a visitor tracking tool. By default, you can enable the following tools in MyCashflow:
Using a visitor tracking tool that hasn't been included in MyCashflow extensions is possible as well, but it may often require adding JavaScript code to the store theme.
Processing the results of visitor tracking
After enabling a visitor tracking service, you can start analyzing the information collected by it. Pay special attention to the following things:
- Which keywords have led visitors to your website? Are these the same keywords that you have used in your online store?
If the keywords used by you and your store's visitors differ remarkably, you may want to rethink the keywords.
- Which keywords drive traffic to which pages? Do visitors find the pages they were supposed to find, or does any page drive unexpected traffic?
- When visitors use the store's internal search engine: do they go to any of the search results, or do they leave the search result page without opening any of the links?
