The way we shop has changed significantly in a relatively short amount of time. Not so long ago, the only way to buy what we needed was to travel to a brick-and-mortar store with cash in our hands. Flash forward to today, and we can buy everything from groceries to a car from the comfort of our own homes thanks to the ecommerce revolution.
The shopping experience has been transformed for consumers, but it has also brought a world of new opportunities for entrepreneurs. More and more people are taking the plunge by setting up their own ecommerce businesses, making it a highly competitive field. If you are hoping to become an online entrepreneur, this guide summarizes some key techniques and tactics to help you promote your ecommerce setup.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
To make it as easy as possible for search engines like Bing and Google to find and display your website in their search results, you need to embrace search engine optimization or SEO. Each search engine uses an algorithm (based on thousands of ranking factors) to decide which website pages are the best possible results for a search query, such as looking for relevant keywords, but these algorithms are constantly changing. To ensure that you are on top of SEO for your ecommerce website, hire an SEO management company like Click Intelligence.
Blogging
To give search engines plenty of pages to display, you need to create content that covers relevant keywords, is engaging, informative, unique, and refreshed regularly. Your website is likely to have pages with information about your company and services/products, but it is also worth maintaining a blog. On your blog, you can publish articles that are related to your niche and address popular topics which will give people a reason to visit, link to, and stay on your website for longer. Alternatively, you could set up a separate blog website to host your content and then link back to your company website’s relevant pages.
Google Places directory
If you are hoping to attract local customers and/or you also have a physical brick-and-mortar store, it is essential that you add your website to Google Places. This will help Google to associate your company with searchers who are local to your area and will increase the likelihood that your pages will be ranked on page one of the search results.
Backlinks from other websites
One of the ways in which search engines will judge a website is whether other websites link to it. The more links your website attracts, the more trustworthy and authoritative your website appears, especially if those links are coming from websites that already rank well. Acquiring backlinks from other websites can be difficult, but a good way to start is to provide guest blogs for other websites in exchange for a link.
Social media
Social media platforms, when used well, can be incredibly effective marketing tools for ecommerce businesses. Create an account for your business where you can share product information, promotions, and engaging content which followers would want to share. You can also use social media to interact with people, nurture your customer relationships, and connect with relevant brands.You can also pay to advertise to a particular demographic on several social media platforms and on search engine results pages via Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements.
