Leaves are falling, longer nights are getting colder and the deafening silence of the night is broken by the constant howls of neighbouring dogs. You take your smartphone and play MJ’s Thriller to remind you that Halloween is just around the corner. Yes, you are not afraid!
But you should be because nothing is scarier than discovering your very low SEO rankings on search engines like Google. The possibility of losing profits, revenues, followers, etc. is so mind-boggling that you marathon the Internet in search of a cure.
Lucky for you, we’ve rounded up these SEO strategies that could propel your e-commerce site back to the top of the SERPs.
The Necessity of HTTPS
In 2014, Google made a striking announcement—HTTPS will become a ranking signal. Since then, search engines like Google displays show ‘not secure’ messages for sites that do not have HTTPS connection. However, today, your site’s rankings hardly change even though you have activated HTTPS. But this doesn’t necessarily mean HTTPS has lost its touch or is no longer necessary. It is more of the user experience.
But why do some businesses put off activating HTTPS? This can be easily described as fear. HTTPS encrypts the connection between the site and the browser, ensuring that data sent between the two isn’t interrupted. This prevents any vulnerable attack by criminals or hackers.
Unfortunately, it takes more than an SSL certificate to make sure your site is “secure.” This is where fear comes in because switching to a secure site requires a large investment in planning and time and tons of steps involved to get it up and running.
If you are running a WordPress site, you need to activate your HTTPS by doing the following things:
SSL certificate change, server config, WordPress config
- Log on to your host domain
- Tick the certificate that changes your site’s IP address
- Check if server is configured properly for the change
- Modify any settings, as needed, in WordPress
- Then installs the SSL plug-in
Database pattern changes
- database entries with “http://” must be changed to https://
Domain propagation/resource monitoring
- This could take around 48 hours because this requires watching the domain change go live
- Check the site for resources that failed to shift to https:// protocol
CSS/PHP hard-coded http:// patterns
- Manually edit and upload to the server PHP and CSS files that have hard-coded http:// strings
HTTPS is now a necessity despite it not being easy to activate. But not having a secure site could easily scare off visitors. It’s better to be safe than sorry.
Schema markup
Schema markup is a code that is placed on an e-commerce site to help search engines like Google to provide useful information to users. Basically, it’s a way for Google to search and understand particular data on your site.
This code was relatively invented with the end-user in mind. In fact, it is often referred as “the virtual business card” because users get to see what the site is about, what they do, where they are located, etc. The schema markup exists to provide users with their much-needed information.
You can use tools such as those from Hall Analysis and Schema App to implement the code on your site such in a much easier way compared to coding, which surely will scare the living daylights out of you.
Voice search
The rise of voice search has slowly reached new heights. It’s as if search assistants like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s – uh – nameless service, which are solely voice recognition-based, are taking over. More and more users are conduction online searches using voice search. This means, your site’s SEO agency London should be optimised for voice search so that users can easily get answers to their voice-enabled queries.
Google+
A lot of users have ignored the power of Google+, mostly because they believe it’s a dead zone. You should know that Google is the top player in the search engine universe. Because of that, you need to get into Google’s good side. And this includes being active in Google+.
When you post on Google+, it creates a unique URL and this could show up in Google search results. If you constantly post keyword-rich content on Google+, this helps improve SERP rankings. It is noteworthy also that SEO in Google+ posts are ranked higher compared with those in other social media platforms.
It is high time you activate your Google+ and get posting. It is also an avenue to get the attention of local businesses.
Bing
Yes, Bing lives. Surprised? Don’t be because 23% of users use Bing for searching. In fact, there are specific reasons as to why Bing should be given focus and optimised SEO strategies for site ranking. First, there is less competition, meaning ranking higher is a bit easier compared to a saturated space like Google. Second, ranking results are viewed faster. Third, less expensive paid ads. And then, there is transparency—Bing is clearer when it comes to how they rank websites and what sites need to do to get higher rankings.
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