You must know how to use search engine optimization to build your dropshipping website. Dropshipping has its own set of SEO challenges than stores that stock their own inventory. It’s therefore important to learn how to use SEO. This guide is for those who are just starting to learn about SEO. This guide is suitable for dropshippers and data feed-based merchants. Anyone who wants to learn SEO for beginners can get valuable advice on how to increase the organic traffic to their website or store. Are you completely new to this concept. Don’t worry! You will learn SEO without any prior knowledge.
Before you start learning how to use SEO to help your business, it is important to remember that there are many pieces that make up the puzzle. Google is getting more sophisticated in the analysis of quality content. It’s therefore important to be familiar with the characteristics used by the algorithms to rank your content. SEO is not as easy as simply filling a piece with optimized keywords. SEO is also about creating quality content that adds knowledge and presents the information in a way that is helpful to your readers. The SEO guide is divided into two parts. The first section will cover key concepts of SEO. Next, we’ll dive into practical SEO guidelines you can follow to succeed.
SEO For Beginners
Let’s first discuss what SEO is. This article is for beginners and you don’t have to know anything about SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization. In simple terms, it is the ability to rank higher when someone enters similar keywords into a search engine. This is how to increase organic traffic to the site. Traffic that is organically generated without paying for advertising. This is a great strategy to increase brand visibility and sales without spending a lot of money on marketing.
Many types of content can be searched for using SEO, including news, photo and academic papers. Dropshipping ecommerce is becoming a more popular business model. Knowing how to properly use SEO can help you stand out from the rest.
SEO can be broken down into many interrelated practices. It only works well if you take into account all of them. SEO’s most fundamental component is to include well-researched keywords in your content. Although it can be tempting to just throw keywords in the post, SEO is about finding the right balance between many other factors, such as originality, writing quality and site structure. It is important to check your website for errors and problems in order to optimize SEO. Websites such as Screaming Frog will help you to identify problems like slow loading times and mobile friendliness of the URL structure or formatting of your content.
You’ll soon realize how important it is to optimize your product pages with keywords and links as you become more familiar with SEO concepts. You might be tempted to insert as many keywords as you can or to add tons of links to your content. However, be careful not to do this. You want the content to be natural, readable and user-friendly. This is a crucial aspect of using SEO to your advantage.
It is not possible to learn SEO for your business overnight. You need to take a long-term view and be committed to learning and updating on all aspects of SEO. They change constantly as the internet becomes more analytical.
Let’s now get a better understanding of SEO and how it affects the Google rankings. We will then explore some key concepts that are associated with SEO to boost rankings and organic traffic. This will give you a solid foundation to learn how to best use SEO.
SEO Guide: Key Concepts
Before we get into the concrete ways to improve your SEO rankings, let’s cover some key concepts. This is especially important for beginner SEO guides.
SEO Guidelines For Keyword Counts
Dropshipping SEO rankings are affected by the length of each page’s content. Search engines will be able to easily understand your page if it contains more words than you have. This is a fundamental aspect of SEO.
Keywords in web text should be used at a ratio that is optimal with the overall text. As part of the SEO guide, we recommend at least 350-500 words per page. Remember that your content must be helpful to your customer so they have a positive experience in your store. The content must look natural. This is the first step in properly using SEO. You can optimize the text by adding keywords, links and other strategies to increase your ranking.
Site penalization can be caused by stuffing text at the bottom of pages or hiding it under menus or other expandable fields. Be thoughtful about what content you include on your website. To increase the content you include on a category page such as a product page, add content in the form a welcome message. On the other hand, a product page can have content that describes each product in detail.
If you aren’t sure what to answer, the following questions can help you get started. What does it mean? What is it used for? It can be used wherever? When is it most effective? Why should customers use it? What should it be used for? Do not forget to mention your product’s competitive advantage.
Dropshipping SEO Tags
Let’s now talk about titles and tags. Your H1 tag can be described as a title for a book. It is the title of a book that search engines will read. Your H1 tag is the first thing visitors see on your website. Your H1 tag will contain the product title if it is a product page. It will also be the category name if it is a product page. Use modifiers such as ‘Best’, ‘Top’, and ‘Buy’ to get started.
Similar to image names and alt tags which we will discuss later, don’t go overboard with keywords in your H1 tags. Google might consider this spam. If you do this, you could be subject to an over-optimization penalty. In the poor example, you will see the repeated use of the word ‘blue’.
Title tags for dropshipping SEO
Title tags are crucial in dropshipping SEO. The title tag determines what search results will appear when someone uses a search engine. Moz states that the title tag should not exceed 55 characters. It should also be relevant to search terms that you are trying to rank for and enticing enough so that people click on it.
The title tag can also be displayed in the Bookmarks tab when someone bookmarks a page, as well as when they use browser buttons at top left corner of screen to move forward or backward. The title tag also appears in a user’s browser history. There are so many uses for the title tag. It is important to make it concise, user-friendly, and descriptive.
SEO in Meta Descriptions
The Meta description is another important SEO concept. Meta descriptions appear directly below the title tag when you use a search engine. They should be between 120-155 characters. They should be relevant and explain what the user will find on the page if he clicks through. This is the most important aspect of our beginner’s guide SEO. You’ll be able to stand out from other people if you master it.
Dropshipping SEO is a great way to get clicks. Let the person know what they will find in your meta description to give them a reason why they should click through to your website. This could be done by including information about a great deal, a guide or an attention-grabbing list within the meta description. For inspiration and examples, take a look at the meta descriptions and title tags of pages higher in rank. How do you create something that is more popular than them?
SEO with Internal Links
Linking is another important aspect of SEO. Links that link from one page of your website to another are called internal links. These links are distinct from external and backlinks. You should include the html tag ‘dofollow’ in all internal links. This signals to search engine crawlers that the link is to a page. This grants you ranking power. You can also use internal links to inform search engines which pages you want to rank. They can also be used to help customers find other pages on your site.
Dropshipping SEO uses internal links to indicate to search engines which pages should rank for particular keywords. They help to categorize your website for search engines and increase domain authority. A related link to a descriptive keyword can help a page you’re linking to rank higher if it is a blog post or infographic page with a lot of quality, high-authority backlinks.
Keep in mind that the more links you have on a page, then the lower the authority they can pass. For example, two internal links can each transfer 50% authority. A transfer of 33.3% is possible with three links. Navigation, category links, and other information are also required. You must also include navigation, category links, etc. Link placement can also have some weight. The authority of three internal links may be 60% for the highest and 20% for the lowest. Here is a guide to building an good internal linking structure.
You can see that internal links are crucial to SEO. You should only add them when they are relevant to your content. Don’t overdo it. You’ll be able to achieve the perfect balance between boosting rankings and making your content appear unnatural.
SEO Guide to Backlinks
Backlinks are an important part of SEO. They can drive traffic to your website. Backlinks are links linking to another website from your site. They are combined with your website’s content, and they are the best way to get a website high in search engines. Search engines go to great lengths to ensure that backlinks from a website are natural. Your site will be penalized if you buy backlinks to improve your domain authority.
This is the key terminology to understand when it comes to backlinks.
- Follow these guidelines to improve your site’s ranking.
- No follow: These links to you, but do not pass authority and will not improve your website’s rank. They include rel=”nofollow” somewhere in the a tag. A natural mixture of do and not follow links is required.
- Keyword rich ( Anchor text ): These links are based on specific phrases or keywords (anchors).
- Natural: These links are based on your company name, your brand, or another variation of your URL.
- Unnatural: If you attach tracking parameters to your links, do not follow them in sponsored posts or any other links that would not have happened naturally, such as links to a category page of an ecommerce website.
Too many unnatural or keyword rich backlinks can lead to penalties. Do not create too many. It should not exceed 20% or even 10% of your total links profile.
SEO Better with External Links
Understanding the role of external links is another important aspect of this beginner’s guide. External links can be clicked to take visitors to sites other than yours. External links should only be included in blog posts if you have an ecommerce site. An external link should only be added to a blog post if you are referring to another site or if it is relevant to your audience.
Before adding any external links, read Google’s guidelines do not follow links. Then ask yourself these questions:
- My reader will benefit from linking to this site.
- Does the page I link to have a chance of being around for a while? Or could it go under?
- Are there any other pieces of content that could be useful or irrelevant to my readers?
This is a great site to link to if you answered yes to all three.
However, if you put links to external websites on a shopping page, it can take people off that page. They may be distracted from making a purchase.
Canonical links: SEO Guidelines For Beginners
Next on the SEO guide for beginners are canonical linking. Canonical links are those links that tell search engines which page to index in their search results. Let’s say you have three pages that all contain the same product, image, and content. To indicate which one you want to index, you would use a “canonical” link. You don’t want any of the three to be competing for space. Also, you don’t want duplicate content as we have discussed in this SEO guide. Canonical links might be useful if you are running a split-test experiment to see how successful certain pages in your store.
Create a sitemap for your Dropshipping SEO Strategy
A basic guideline for SEO beginners is to learn how to use SEO to create sitemap. Sitemaps are simply a list of pages on your website that Google should know about. These sitemaps are broken down starting at the top of your website and include categories, subcategories and product pages. Sitemaps can be created in many ways, including links and XML feeds. Avoid having pages or redirects to 404 and 301 on your sitemap.
How Paginated pages can boost your rankings
Pagination is another important aspect of SEO. Pagination is a collection of pages on your website. Consider a page in a product category that includes pages 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. You would normally have to link to the page with all your products, but Google now has rel prev and rel subsequent. This can be incorporated into a paginated series to guide it through without worrying about Google penalizing you for duplicate content.
SEO Guidelines For Schema
These words about Schema can be a great way to understand SEO for beginners. Schema.org has been compiled by all major search engines. This provides the code and snippets necessary to tell search engines what pages you have. Code is used to show that a video is on the page.
You can help major search engines find your page by including schema markup. It also shows the user what they will find on your page. Next, you provide them with new features (videos and images next to search results) to further enhance their user experience. Schema, an important aspect of SEO, can give you an edge as a dropshipping and data feed site.
Dropshipping SEO
We’ll be moving on to the practical tips and tricks that you can use to increase your SEO rankings and organic traffic. You’ve likely seen the term “data feed” mentioned several times in this article. Dropshipping is a common way to gather a lot information about your products, including descriptions, photos and basic product data. Data feeds are files that your supplier makes available to merchants so they can import the items into their stores. Data feeds can be extremely useful for ecommerce store owners especially when products are dropshipped. It is important to not copy-paste data feeds into your store without making any changes. This will result in duplicate content.
SEO Tips and Tricks
After we have covered the main concepts of SEO, the second section of this guide to SEO is packed with practical tips and tricks that you can use to apply all the information.
Avoid Using Duplicate Content
SEO is not complete without mentioning the importance of avoiding duplicate content whenever possible. Duplicate content is when two websites have identical content, or in extreme cases, the exact same code.
Dropshippers don’t usually hold inventory so they heavily rely on data feeds from other stores, warehouses and manufacturers. These feeds include XML feeds or spreadsheets that provide product and inventory to dropshippers’ stores.
Because all of the content, images and descriptions within the feed go to every site that uses it, it isn’t unique. This causes problems often referred to as duplicate content.
Search engines often have difficulty deciding which content to rank higher than the others. If they only use feed-provided (duplicated) content, data feed sites are unlikely to achieve high SEO rankings. It is important to use our SEO beginner tips using the additional tips below to compensate for any data feed information being used in your rankings.
Increase Your SEO Rankings With Unique Images
Taking your own product photos is the next tip to boost rankings on this SEO guide. Although it may take some extra effort at the beginning, this will help improve your dropshipping SEO rankings. This will allow you to differentiate your products from others who sell the same dropshipped items (possibly from the same suppliers), while also avoiding duplicate content.
You can download product images from our data feed if you are unable to take your own photos. Next, rename the images so they describe the product within the image and then upload them to your server and database.
It is very important to name your images correctly. You don’t want to confuse search engines by selling large-sized blue hats and medium-sized blue hats on your ecommerce website. It will make it easier for search engines to find the image medium blue-hat.jpg and big-blue hat.jpg. This is an important step in our beginner’s guide SEO.
Add alt tags to your images
The next step in this beginner’s guide is to make sure your alt tag matches the image name. This is a key element that search engines use to determine what an image is and when it should be shown to searchers. This is the HTML:
Optimize your Image Titles
Image titles and captions are another key component of SEO success. If you choose to use them, they should match or be identical to the image name and alt tags. In the title=”insert name here” section of HTML, the title attribute must be included.
You shouldn’t go overboard. It is not a good idea to include too many keywords, descriptive words (modifiers) or other words in the name of the image or tags. This could be considered “keyword stuffing”, and can lead to penalization.
Become Master of Product Descriptions
If the product descriptions are not changed, they will be considered duplicate content. This is something you will want to correct. We have already established that having original and useful content on your web pages will make you stand out from your competition. Rewriting your product descriptions and long descriptions can help improve dropshipping SEO.
SEO guidelines state that the product description must be unique. Search engines will not show your product descriptions if they are identical to others. These pages will not rank for long-tail and competitive keywords if they have the same product descriptions as everyone else. You will be able to nail product descriptions and learn SEO techniques for your ecommerce store.
Display your Product Specifics
Dropshipping SEO requires that you display and talk about specs in dropshipping. While search engines expect specs to be identical in nature, this doesn’t mean that you have to give more details or display them in an easier way.
SEO for Beginners: What to Avoid
There are tons of SEO beginner guides that provide shortcuts and side steps to get quick backlinks, or boost traffic without the need to learn SEO in depth.
Dropshipping SEO can lead to your website being penalized by many of the blackhat techniques you will find. You risk losing your ranking. You’d also have to work harder to remove the penalty. It can take many years to get the penalty lifted if it does happen. This guide will help you to understand how SEO can benefit your business. These are the last things you should avoid when trying to optimize your online store to drive more organic traffic.
This is what you should avoid when building links.
- Directory submissions: They should not be 100% niche. If you choose to use them, it is smarter to go with “no follow”.
- Blog comments: Avoid using these, especially if you are not using keywords.
- Forum comments and Links: Search engines don’t like forum comments or links because they are so simple to do and can be obtained by anyone.
- Automated Link Builders: These software programs use bots or spiders to comment in blogs, forums, and other communities. This method can cause a negative brand image among bloggers and online communities. You are also more likely to get penalized because the backlinks can be easily mapped to you site.
- Avoid reciprocal linking. Too many of these links look unnatural, and Google will penalize you for it.
- Link farms: These sites and services create link farms to help you get mapped or penalized.
- Sponsored posts: If you give influencers or people money, or offer products in return for a post with an ‘do-follow’ link, your site (and theirs!) may be penalized. You will want to collaborate with real influencers . However, ensure that everything is ‘nofollow’ so your site does not increase its chances of being penalized.
Beginner’s SEO
Dropshipping SEO is complex. This SEO guide will help you optimize your dropshipping ecommerce store, whether you warehouse the product or have a datafeed.
These tips and key concepts will only work if you keep your content updated regularly. Dropshipping SEO isn’t a fast or simple way to increase traffic. You will need to have a long-term approach and a lot of knowledge to master dropshipping SEO. You can get started by practicing and following these beginner’s guidelines for SEO.
SEO can be a key part of increasing organic traffic to your ecommerce site. Once you start seeing results, SEO will become a crucial part of your business’s growth. Be patient and don’t give up!
