What many Singapore business owners don’t realise is that E-Commerce Site is highly driven by search queries. In fact, research shows that almost 50% of online shoppers start their journey on the search engine. So if you’re ignoring SEO, your e-commerce business will not be able to compete.

This isn’t to say that optimising an e-commerce website is a simple task. On the contrary, it can be rather complex, especially when you’re trying to achieve higher rankings in major search engines like Google and Bing. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.

Singapore e-commerce business owners should focus on making their website easy to crawl. You should use the keywords that you would like to rank for. You should also exhibit authority through backlinks and content. With that said, let’s go a little deeper into what you need to do in order to ensure that your e-commerce site is SEO friendly.

1. Use Unique Title Tags

A common issue with a lot of e-commerce sites is duplicate title tags. And this is because creating unique tags for each and every product page can be a tedious part of the digital marketing process. So it’s easier to just fill in the same tag repeatedly. Well, search engines are only interested in title tags that are unique. You can check the title tags for a site by pressing CTRL + U.

A great way to avoid creating duplicate tags is to use keyword phrases, not just the single keyword. You see, online shoppers use key phrases when performing an online search. So optimising product pages in this way will help you to rank for these phrases.

Just remember to keep your tags below 70 characters. Aso, try to place the keyword phrase at the very beginning of the tag as search engines place a significant amount of importance on the first phrase. 2. Use Permanent 301 Redirects

Permanent 301 redirects can help you to send traffic to a detour page. If you ever move your content, this is a great way to ensure that search engines will be able to find it. And what’s more, 301 redirects ensure that the page’s most important qualities, such as page authority, PageRank, MozRank, and traffic value are moved along with it. Failing to use a redirect typically results in users and the search engines being taken to your 404 Page. And this means that you can lose a lot of traffic, ranking power, and backlinks.

If your old page has expired, try redirecting to a similar product page or a message page that is generated dynamically. In this way, your user experience will remain in tact and you’ll maintain your link equity.  You can use permanent 301 redirects to redirect bots and users from old locations of certain web pages to new locations, redirect visitors from old domains to new domains, redirect users from your alternate TLDs to your main TLD, correct your canonical issues, and keep all unauthorised bots and users from accessing development environments.

3. Optimise With Keywords

The most important pages on your e-commerce website are your category pages. They take priority over your individual posts and pages. Category pages need to be optimised to appear first in the SERPs.  For example, an e-commerce site that sells athletic shoes shouldn’t optimise every product page for “athletic shoes.” This would only cause pages to compete for this keyword. Instead, you should optimise all of your individual posts and pages for their specific brands and features and then link them to your “athletic shoes” category pages.  This way, your category page will be able to rank for “athletic shoes” while your product pages will be able to rank for terms that are more specific. Your pages won’t have to compete.

The trick to attracting more traffic to your category page and more user to your funnel is to know how and where to use your keywords. Use your keyword in the image ALT as well as in the file name. Include it in your H1 tag and page description. Make sure that your page title includes your keywords and that you use LSI keywords throughout your entire post. You should also include them in your permalinks.

4. Make it Mobile Friendly

Google is now a mobile-first indexing search engine. And that’s because mobile searches have completely surpassed desktop searches. This means that your ranking will be primarily determined by the mobile version of your website, not the desktop version. They’ll consider things like your content, meta tags, structured data, and page speed.

So your website needs to be mobile friendly. The best way to ensure this is to avoid Flash, that and other software that’s not common on most mobile devices. Make sure that you use text that can be read without the user having to zoom. Users shouldn’t have to scroll horizontally either. Also, make it easy for users to tap links.

5. Implement Schema Markup for Product Pages

One of the best ways to increase your product visibility is to use schema markup. Google’s rich snippets gives your customers more details to click through on the SERPs which helps to drive revenue. And one of the biggest advantages to using schema markups is that is ensures that search engines can understand all of your product information. Many rich snippets include events, products, reviews, softwares, and recipes. It’s important to note that ich snippets don’t actually increase your ranking in the search results. However, it can help the crawlers to better understand all of your content and display information that is comprehensive. By implementing the following schema markups into your e-commerce site, you can double your click-through rates:

Products

Optimise your product detail into you schema markups so that the search engines will understand that they are actually crawling a product page, not a blog. Markups for product pages gives you the ability to offer details in regards to the product sizing, colour, model number and other products that are related.

Pricing

In most cases, we come across product listings that have prices positioned directly beneath them, especially from larger brands like Amazon. Schema markups will allow you to educate your visitors on the product pricing right from the SERPs which leads to an increase click-throughs. Reviews and Rating

One of the most powerful elements of any page is the testimonials. This is especially the case when it comes to closing sales. When the SERPs show your reviews and ratings it acts as a form of social proof and converts your visitors into real customers.

6. Use Breadcrumbs

One of the things that search engine crawlers tend to pay attention to is your permalink. This helps them to better understand what the content is about. So it’s crucial that you make sure that your permalink is self-explanatory. In the case of e-commerce stores, this means that your permalinks should look like the following:

Category page: www.example.com/category/ Sub-category page: www.example.com/category/sub-category/ Product page: www.example.com/category-sub-category/name-of-product/

Remember that if your site has bad navigation or structure, it can lead to high bounce rates, an increase in cart abandonment and lower rankings. So when organising your site think about the pages that will get you the most traffic? Consider the search queries that visitors typically use. Keep in mind that the search engines will not be able to understand or find your navigation if it is not in the form of HTML.

What Singapore business owners need to be aware of is that breadcrumbs on your product pages can help visitors to better understand where they are on your site. So use breadcrumbs that are location-based. This preferable to showing them the entire structure of the site.

Conclusion

SEO is a crucial part of gaining visibility for your products and taking your marketing strategy to the next level. There are a lot of opportunities for Singapore e-commerce businesses that optimise their site. And if done well, you can completely surpass all of your competition.