15 Tips to Increase Your Sales Using SEO

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1. Do an In-Depth Keyword Research

Why do we use SEO for our business websites?
To get more traffic, isn't it?
But how does this traffic help?
The viewers from this traffic end up becoming customers and increasing our sales. The ultimate aim of every business owner is to increase sales and returns.
The first step will always be keyword research. It would help if you found the right keywords to use in the content and rank higher on the SERPs. This research takes time and effort, just as it should. If you go wrong here, your SEO efforts may be worth nothing at all.
Thus, perform keyword research meticulously for your niche.
Thankfully, there are various tools (free and paid) that help in searching for keywords. It would be best if you also focused on LSI (latent semantic indexing), where you use the synonyms of the keywords in your text.
LSI helps avoid keyword stuffing and attracting penalties. And don't forget to check out your competitor's keywords.

2. Focus on Local SEO

Even if you are a global business, you need to target local audiences.
How?
You can do it by creating individual web pages for each location (where your business operates). as an example shown for Starbucks.
These web pages should cater to the respective local users. Whether it is the content or the keywords, everything should be specific to the region.
Include a few popular highlights from the area and use the local keyword as the page's primary keyword.
At the same time, the overall website should make it clear that you are an international brand. Getting the balance right is crucial if you want to attract customers from all regions.
You will also need to create Google My Business profiles for individual locations and add them to the local directories. You have to add the website to well-known directories in the niche to reach more users searching for similar businesses in the region.

3. Generate High-Quality Contents

Digital marketing is a lot about content. We need content on the web pages, social media posts, email newsletters, and promotional ads.
Almost everything requires content. And not just any content either. If you want the website to rank high on the search engines and bring more sales, you regularly need to produce high-quality content. It should be original, authentic, effective, and communicative.
Regardless of how old the content is, the quality should potentially keep the top spot on SERPs.
Your readers should relate to the content and learn something from it.
Content is not limited to text alone. You will need to use high-quality images and videos (we’ll see more about these in detail) to enhance the beauty of your webpage or post. The nature and tone of the content should be in tune with the platform you choose.
Instagram needs more focus on HD pictures, while Twitter is about presenting data in short snippets. Hashtags are a must on every channel.

4. Structure the Website

What is the structure of your website?
How does it impact your sales?
The website structure is how the pages are linked for the users to navigate through the site. For example, the home page is the heart of the website, which leads to all other pages.
The silo pages come next, which are used for indexing. These have links to further classifications like the category pages, product pages, and location pages. And these individual product pages will have supporting pages with additional information or lead the customers to the cart.
A typical website structure flows like this.
Organizing the webpages in an order will have it easy for the users to find what they want, and the search engine crawls to identify the pages and them to the index. At the same time, try not to create too many levels in the site’s structure. It can get confusing for the users.

5. Write Unique Product Descriptions

Your product descriptions are your strength. This tip comes under content, but since it needs more emphasis, we are exclusively highlighting it. The product descriptions should be a mix of promotional and informational.
Remember that you cannot make false claims or go overboard in stretching the truth. Users don’t particularly like it when a business promises something that is not possible. The last thing you’d want is for the customers to leave negative reviews because you couldn’t deliver what you promised.
So, provide a unique and quality description for each product.
Also, ensure that the text is easy to understand, free of errors, and presented neatly. Use shorter sentences and highlight the best features using bullets.
Double-check the content for plagiarism. Even when two products are similar, don't copy-paste the descriptions. You can rewrite the exact text in different ways for each page to make it unique and attractive.

6. Highlight 5-Star Product Reviews

Customer reviews can boost your sales online. Of course, we are talking about the genuine 5-star, 4-star reviews customers leave on the website and other marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc.
This influences users to believe in its quality and most likely makes them purchase it.
Select the best and encouraging reviews by customers to post on the product webpage. You can update the reviews periodically so that the latest ones are displayed for the visitors to read.
Do you know that adding customer reviews is another way of bringing fresh content to the webpage?
It helps in boosting your website rank and gaining more visibility.
A product with reviews will get more views than a product with little or none. People like to buy items that have been used and certified by others as good products. You can also allot a section on the web page to display related products and internally link the web pages and reviews.

7. Optimize Pages Based on User Search Criteria

Page optimization is an essential step if you want to reach more users. When you optimize the search engines' website, you also need to consider things from the users' perspective.
You need to know the terms regularly used by users when searching for products and services on the internet. This is similar to Google or amazon autosuggest, which is provided based on user searches.
You should include these terms and phrases in the heading, meta description, title, product description, and so on.
Simultaneously, you should find the regional and local variations for these terms and use them in the respective web pages. These words could be different from the keywords used for the product.
The idea is to use terms people are familiar with to understand what you are selling immediately. These words can act as relevant keywords and help you rank faster on the search engines.

8. Create Short and Clean URLs

The URL is the link that leads to the website and web pages. While the website link is usually short and to the point, the subsequent page URLs can be long and complex. You will need to shorten these and get rid of symbols like "%, ?, #" in the link. You should also remove the dates from the link.
With a short and understandable URL, search engine bots know what it contains and most likely ranks it above other complicated URLs.
Add the URL's primary keyword to ensure the users know that the link will lead them to the page they are looking for. URLs with a keyword in them rank higher on the SERPs and will bring more organic traffic.
That increases your chances of converting more users to customers. These URLs are known as user-friendly and SEO-friendly links.
Remove the categories/sections in the URL and make it appear as a direct link from the website's homepage.

9. Optimize Images on the Product Pages

Images are a crucial aspect of eCommerce websites. How will you convince a user to buy a product they haven’t even seen?
You need to compulsorily have the pictures of the actual product on the respective product webpages. And these pictures need to be of high resolution so that users can zoom in and get the finer details from the image.
That aside, you will need to change the alt descriptions and alt tags of the images to include the primary keyword. It will ensure that the search engine crawls can easily find your product page and display it when a user enters a search request.
The highlighted text in the image is an Alt tag for the product shown on the left.

Related : Image Optimization Tips

Place the images strategically on the webpage by arranging them in between blocks of text. The tone of the picture should match that of the text and the product's overall impression to attract users' attention.

10. Track Your Competitors

SEO is dependent on other factors. If your competitor is better at Organic SEO than you are, they will rank higher and get more traffic. You would be missing out on a share of visitors, and thus, your sales wouldn't improve as much as you want them to.
But when you follow your competitors and see what they are doing to attract more people, you will also get ideas to try something different and push up the website rank. You will need to check the keywords they use and the backlinks they are getting.
You may not know, but your competitor is much likely to do the same with you. You can use the free SEO tools to analyze the competitor's website's performance and identify the weak areas.
With this, you’ll get several metrics that help create your brand strategy.
You can then work on the weak areas to your advantage and reach more users before your competitor does.

11. Improve Website Loading Speed

Improving website speed is very, very important in today's online setup. People have 4G connections and hi-speed internet. Imagine how frustrated they would feel if the website doesn't load immediately. The expected loading time for a website is 5 seconds or less.
Any website that takes longer than a few seconds to load will not get enough traffic, no matter how good your products are. Some SEO experts say that the website loading speed should be 3 seconds.
Check out for the opportunities to fix and keep the loading speed as low as possible.
Now, you see why it is so essential to work on this?
You can fix this by reducing the server loading time or finding a better host for the site. Of course, there are many ways to improve the website loading speed, such as:

• Optimizing the cache
• Trimming the JavaScript parsing
• Getting rid of redirects
• Minify stylesheets and JavaScript
• Apply CSS3 and HTML5
• And more

12. Communicate on Social Media

Social media marketing is a separate branch of digital marketing. But it is also a part of SEO. You need to integrate the website with social media platforms.
Create accounts on the popular ones such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, etc. add the icons to your profiles on the website to know where they can find you.
Hootsuite survey shows fascinating stats about the social media users up to July 2021.
You will need to interact and communicate with users on these social media platforms and increase your followers. Share posts and links to the website, contests, and events to attract more users.
Do you know that people use social media platforms like search engines?
Yes. YouTube is the second-largest search engine. Having a channel on YouTube dedicated to your business will bring more organic traffic to the website and also encourage users to give your products a try. You will need to choose the channel based on the target audiences.

13. Video Marketing - Personalized Product Videos

Video marketing is a new trend in the industry. People are increasingly watching videos, be it on social media platforms or OTTs.
Facebook Live, Instagram Live, discussions, and interviews on platforms like Zoom and Streamyard are gaining prominence. These can be aired live on YouTube or other SM platforms.
Apart from that, product videos and how-to tutorials have always been popular on the internet. If you want users to relate to a product and place an order, you should seriously consider video marketing.
Make personalized videos explaining the features and benefits of the products. Show the users how you can use the products and what customers say about the products.
Customer testimonial videos are equally popular and create a positive opinion on people as these videos are made by seeking permission from existing customers of the business. Post the videos on the website as well as on social media platforms.

14. Work on Technical SEO - Sitemaps, Robots.txt Files, & Broken Links

Technical SEO involves a lot more than what we've mentioned auditing URLs, structured data, broken links, canonical tags, redirects, hreflang, etc.
Get a technical SEO audit done for the website to get a comprehensive idea about what changes you need to make to its design and layout.
A site map provides the search engines a ready reference to crawl and index the website's various pages without searching for them individually. You can use the sitemap to prioritize the web pages you want and put them in a sequence.
Robots.txt file does the opposite job by instructing the search engine which webpages it should not crawl. Confidential pages like the users’ cart and payment gateways are added to the Robots.txt file so that the search engine will not display these on the SERPs.
Identify and fix broken links that lead nowhere. Users don’t like it when a link they click on shows an error.

15. Gain Brand Authority - Get W3C Validation for the Website

It would help if you established that your brand is a trusted business in this market. One way to do this is by getting backlinks from high-domain websites. Even Google is particular about the quality of sources from which you get the backlinks.
The best way to prove your brand's authority would be by getting the W3C validation from the World Wide Web Consortium. It is a free service that verifies whether your website is as per the W3C standards or not. It provides you with a certificate if your website meets the requirements.
These standards have been set to judge the readability and user-friendliness of the website. The formatting, layout, and presentation of the website are taken into consideration. When a user sees the W3C validation on the site, they feel assured that they can trust your website.

Increasing Sales Through SEO - FAQs

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1. Is SEO Effective in Increasing Sales?

It is if you use the right keywords and optimize the website for search engines. Ranking higher on Google will increase sales. But you have to be sure that you rank for the correct keywords related to your business.
With effective SEO, you get more chances of ranking in featured snippets, the 0th position in SERPs.
SEO brings more organic traffic to the website, which, in turn, creates an opportunity to improve the conversion rate. A higher conversion rate implies an increase in sales and profits.

2. How Important Is Local SEO to Increase Sales?

Local SEO is critical if you want to increase sales.
This result in the image is an example of how local SEO can increase business revenue.
It brings both online and offline traffic to your business from the same region.
More than 50% of people who perform a local search on their phones visit the place. Around 70% of the users have performed a local search on the internet to confirm the address before visiting the store.

3. Should I Invest in SEO or PPC to Get More Sales?

SEO and PPC use different methods to attract users on the internet. They are both necessary, depending on what your marketing strategy is. SEO is a continuous process and delivers long-term results. PPC is a short-term campaign and brings immediate results.
Understand your position in the market amongst your competition and use the right mix of PPC and SEO to achieve your goals.
If you want instant traffic to the website, PPC would be a good choice, though the traffic isn’t necessarily going to be organic. SEO will give you results over time and bring consistency.

4. How to Optimize My Content to Increase Sales?

Your content has to be informative, educative, original, and useful. Yes, you have to promote the product, but you also need to balance providing information and hyper promotion.
Spend time on keyword research to choose keywords relevant to the business and have a large search volume.
Incorporate the keywords naturally into the content and make sure there are no grammatical mistakes. Repurpose the content to get more visibility.

5. Does SEO Increase Sales Immediately?

SEO is a long-term process. It takes at least a month for SEO to start showing visible results. With consistent efforts, you will notice a gradual increase in organic traffic and website rank. SEO doesn’t promise immediate sales.
If any SEO agency assures you instant results, you should make sure they are not following black hat SEO practices.
To give a brief, keep checking that none of the following techniques are used in their SEO strategy.
However, on-page SEO and technical SEO can speed up the process.

6. Which Part of SEO Should I Focus on More to Increase Sales?

Focusing on all aspects of SEO would be a good choice. Still, the following are some areas you need to concentrate on to increase sales-

• Website audit
• Optimizing titles, descriptions, and tags
• Internal linking of webpages
• Improve site loading speed
• Focus on mobile usability.
  
• Get rid of duplicate content
• Create and submit a sitemap and robots.txt files
• Reuse content
• Get high-quality backlinks
• Track your progress (and your competitors)

7. How Can Amazon Sellers Increase Sales Using SEO?

People who visit the Amazon website are the ones who want to buy a product. For users to choose your product, you will need to stand out from the competitors.

• The product title should include the product name, brand name, material, quantity, and color.
• Use the primary keyword in the title but don’t overdo it.
• Set a competitive price (and offer discounts).
• Have HD images and quality descriptions.