5 Quick Tips for E-commerce SEO

Everyone wants to rank in the #1 position in Google search results. Here are a few quick tips to get you on the right path.

You must have unique descriptions for all of your products and category pages. Write them from scratch and don't look at what your competitors have done. Be sure to include keywords that both describe your product and explain how people look for it – they are often different – but don't over do it.

If you resell someone else's product, never use the product descriptions provided to you by the manufacturer. Those descriptions already exist on other websites and you will not stand out. In fact, it will lower your ranking!

The way you write is also important. You want to be natural in what you say to someone. As you write, imagine you are having a conversation with someone. Would you actually say what you have written?

These are very similar to the product description, but will be much shorter. Google usually displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, so keep your titles under 55 characters. You have roughly 155 characters for the meta description.

These two are combined into the result seen by search engine users. You want to be to-the-point, descriptive with keywords and engaging. Give them a reason to come to your site.

You can learn more about title tags and meta descriptions at moz.com.

If you aren't updating your site on a regular basis, you aren't relevant. Things change very quickly on the Internet and the search engines want to know that you are actively maintaining your site. In a matter of months, a site that doesn't change will be seen as abandoned.

Here are some good tips for blogging:

• Don't just write about your business or products. Focus on the lifestyle of your target market and how you can help them.
• Answer questions that your visitors have. People often use search engines to answer questions to problems they have.
• Include your keywords. Make sure your blog posts contain the major keywords that you want to rank for, but don't do it all at once.
• Make a content plan each month. Brainstorm ideas, bookmark or save ideas that you come across online.
• Spend 30 minutes once a week. The first few times you do it will take longer, but you will quickly get better at it.

Remember, the goal here isn't always direct sales. You are trying to boost the importance of your entire site and thus the ranking of your individual pages.

We can't stress enough how important it is for your site to be fast, and not just on a desktop computer. Mobile usage is surpassing desktops, so you must have a mobile friendly design that loads and renders quickly. If not, you are losing money while the visitor goes somewhere else.

Structured data markup is a way to explain your product to search engines. Google, Yahoo and Bing can then use this information to present your information more prominently. This includes things information like pricing, photos, reviews, addresses

You can learn more about structured data and rich snippets from Google's developer site.