The Secret Sauce of Search Engine Marketing

The Secret Sauce of Search Engine Marketing

by | May 20, 2022 | eCommerce, SEO, Site Development

Yes, we said it, the secret sauce is SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In practice it is about making multiple impactful modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like small incremental improvements, but when combined as a group, they can have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and performance in organic search results.

Let’s consider a few telling statistics:

  • 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
  • Google (+ Google Images) currently holds 91.94% of the total search engine market share, followed by Bing, Yahoo!, Baidu, and YANDEX. 
  • 61% of B2B marketers stated that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative. 
  • 70% of online marketers say that SEO is better than PPC for generating sales. 
  • The top page listed in a Google search has an average click-through rate of 32%.
  • 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.

The above stats from 2022 should be enough to convince you that SEO should be an essential part to the success of your eCommerce business.

In this blog, we’ll demystify the SEO acronym and discuss why it is one of the most important digital marketing tactics. We’ll also take a deeper dive into how to target the ideal prospects you want to find your website through their search efforts, so they are motivated to visit your site and convert to paying customers.

Why is SEO so important?

Do you ever look on the third page of a Google Search? Most likely, you never go that far in your search. And that is the same for 90% of respondents in the Searchengineland report. This is precisely the reason why SEO is so important.

Ongoing efforts should focus on both On-Page and Off-Page SEO. On-page SEO includes Content, Indexing, mobile views and effectiveness, structured data, security, performance, accessibility, technologies, branding, and domain. On-page helps search engines understand your website’s content and what your brand is all about. In doing so, search engines can determine whether your site is relevant to what a user is searching for when they type a query. Investing time and effort into a solid on-page SEO strategy can provide a better user experience to meet your visitors’ needs while meeting your own needs via better search presence, brand awareness, and more traffic. Off-page SEO includes backlinks, traffic, Google Analytics, Local Directories, and Social Profiles. Both contribute a little bit to the total rank, position and overall authority score of a page.

Secret SEO Checklist Revealed!

What most SEO “experts” don’t tell you, and what we will, is that search engines are actually not that different from people. In the same way, you’d look for books in a library, skim-read their content, and judge their quality, search engines do the same. Only the process is a lot faster and more methodical.

​​Search engines value content that’s original, credible, well-researched, and engaging (like the work we produce for clients right here at InteractOne). And Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) value websites that are fast to load, simple to navigate, and mobile-friendly. Websites with clear page titles, URLs, and links also are search-friendly. After all, these are the things you and your customers would look for when browsing online.

But how does an eCommerce marketing team optimize a website for search engines? By carefully crafting pages and content to make them as readable and valuable as they can be for your site visitors. Here’s a great place for your team to start:

  Choose niche keywords: It’s well-known that keywords are the words or phrases typed into search boxes when looking for something, for example, “Columbus takeout’ or ‘marathon training.’ Google looks for such keywords on websites and uses them to decide how relevant site content is to a specific search query. This means you need to choose keywords that align with your product or service and your customers needs or pain points and use them appropriately in content across your site. To identify your keywords, consider what your business offers and what makes it unique. Since many other businesses will likely share the same keywords, keep yours as specific to your offerings as possible. The trick is finding keywords with low competition and high search volumes. That’s where your expert team, like the folks at Interactone, needs to put in the work.

Relevant title and image tags: ​​On each page of your website, relevant title tags should be present. Title tags let Google know what is on your page, and are the main text element used in search engine results, therefore it’s important to choose keywords and phrases that match user intent and align with the purpose of the search.

Create quality content: You’ve heard it said time and time again that “content is king” and this is particularly true in the modern era of SEO. It is essential that you create unique and valuable content that is a worthwhile read for users. Whatever your industry may be, tailor your content according to the needs and pain-points of your audience. Stay on top of relevant trends, create “how-to” blog posts, and frequently update older content to make sure you’re continuing to serve your audience with useful and timely information, even after it’s initially published. For strategies on writing quality content, check out our blog, Content is King. Rule your Domain.

URL domain: An SEO-friendly URL must be easy for both search engines and readers to digest. How can you make it so?  Create URLs that accurately describe whatever content is on the page. This allows the customer to anticipate what they will see if they click the link and gives SERPs the ability to index your content better. Avoid keyword stuffing and looking spammy by including just one or two keywords. If there are any unnecessary words in the URL, remove them for conciseness, as you want to aim for three or four words maximum since shorter URLs tend to rank better. Eliminate any randomly generated numbers, too, as they are not descriptive, make the URL unnecessarily longer, and lack relevance. Some additional tips include the usage of lowercase letters and separating words with hyphens.

Create a good user experience: Make your website easy to navigate, with logical menus, clear page titles, and URLs that tell visitors what the page is all about. For example, instead of “www.trainers.com/123abc,” opt for “www.trainers.com/white-running-trainers.” Consider using breadcrumb trails at the top of your pages. These give one-click access to other pages on your site, and they’re good for SEO as you can weave keywords into them. So much of your online success is tied to the user experience of your website. Your marketing and development team need to be working in tandem to deliver a smooth and functional digital experience.

Make your site mobile-friendly: Given that nearly half of all searches are done on mobile devices, optimizing your website to work well and look great on mobile devices is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have. And it’s something that search engines consider in their rankings, too. Google says mobile-friendly sites show higher in search results and account for over half of searches on Google.com.

Write unique meta descriptions: Meta descriptions are one of those small tasks that often get overlooked. Although Google has said meta tags are not a ranking factor, they are one of those small on-page SEO details you should incorporate into your content marketing strategy to optimize results. For tips on how to write unique meta descriptions, check out our blog, Meta Descriptions: Small Detail Costing You Big Traffic.

Fast page loads: Neither humans nor search engines like slow websites. In fact, one-quarter of visitors will abandon a site if it takes longer than two seconds to load. If you think any of your pages are running slowly, you might want to perform a quick analysis and identify any areas for improvement. For more information on page speeds, check out our blog, ​​Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters.

Outbound links: As previously mentioned, off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO. This involves building backlinks to your website from high-quality websites. You can do this by publishing guest posts on popular websites, participating in online discussions, and submitting your website to online directories such as Angi or Manta.

Specific Calls to Action (CTA’s): As its name suggests, a call to action (CTA) compels a visitor to take action, such as clicking a link to visit a product page so they can purchase a product/service. The better your CTAs are, the more conversions you will get, and the better your on-page SEO.

​​Optimizing your website for SEO with some of these checklist items won’t yield overnight success. How come?  It’s a long-term investment in creating a seamless user experience and unique, engaging content regularly. If you commit to this, you will reap the rewards by attracting higher-quality traffic to your site and happier customers who trust and respect you, your expertise, and your business offering.

Bringing it all together

It is no small feat to implement a well-designed and effective SEO strategy for your eCommerce website. SEO strategy is something that you cannot ignore or overlook when planning to expand your online presence. While there are many channels through which you can market your business, nothing can overpower the impact of search engine optimization tactics and strategies. All businesses with an online presence, whether small or big, should be opting to implement SEO tactics into their marketing strategies. But given the long list of tactics described in this blog, savvy eCommerce teams or choosing to put their trust in experts like the team at InteractOne to implement advanced SEO practices. If you need help with Search Engine Optimization challenges, let us know, below. We’re digital marketing pros and are here to help.

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    Metrics Matter; How Tracking Data Improves Business

    Metrics Matter; How Tracking Data Improves Business

    by | Aug 6, 2021 | PPC, SEO, Technology

    We know from everyday life that tracking data helps us to improve performance and reach our goals, whether it’s our credit scores or the miles we run. When we don’t have data, we’re blindly guessing at how we’re performing. It’s like trying to navigate without a map—you’re likely to get completely lost or take the same path multiple times unless you have the data that shows you where you’ve been or where you’re going. 

    eCommerce operates the same way—we don’t know how well we’re tracking against our goals unless we have accurate, up-to-date analytics that can be checked frequently. But when we are in possession of that data, we have our business road map. Data provides valuable insights that enable us to compile reports, compare results and achieve our goals. 

    In this blog we will discuss how to ensure your analytics are set up correctly and also how to digest the data based on your goals.

    Ensure Your Analytics Are Set Up Correctly

    Data should be the driving force behind every marketing decision and activity, but you need to ensure your analytics tracking is accurate and that attribution is set up correctly before you rely on those reports. 

    For example, you might set up Amazon Pay on your eCommerce website and decide you want to track what kind of visitors utilize that payment method. However, if Amazon Pay was attributed to referral traffic in analytics, that would need to be resolved before you could rely on those attribution reports. 

    It only takes one data point being off to throw everything else out of whack.You must ensure everything is set up correctly before you begin.

    Set Specific Goals

    Tracking data is about more than just checking your page views and visitors to see how much traffic your website is getting. To really learn and grow your business, you need to set specific goals to measure specific actions that users take on your website. As the great business manager Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” 

    As an eCommerce website, you could have a number of goals, including increasing sign-ups or account creations, but your main goal will likely be increasing your conversion rate and other revenue related objectives. To do that, you will need to track micro-conversions and engagement leading up to a purchase. That means you will want to look at the time on page, exit rates on specific pages, product performance, checkout behavior, and individual goals you set up in analytics.

    Measure Your Achievements

    Depending on your goals, there are a number of things you can measure or track that are relevant to any eCommerce business. Let’s take a look at some of the most important Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) you should measure on a continuous basis.

    • Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors that end up making a purchase. eCommerce conversion rates tend to average around the 1-2% mark. Aside from sales, conversion rates can also apply to any action that you want a customer to take, from signing up for your subscription emails or clicking on a specific button. 
    • Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): tells you how much you are spending for each new customer acquired. Understanding this data helps you to optimize your advertising expenses.
    • Bounce rate: shows the percentage of customers leaving your site within at least 15 seconds. Paying attention to your bounce rate can help you establish how well your homepage and landing pages are performing and may show you where modifications need to be made to improve this. 
    • Average order value (AOV): tells you your customer’s spending behavior when they visit your site and is one of the most important metrics to keep track of when it comes to your business.
    • Cart abandonment rate: shows the percentage of shoppers that are adding a product to their cart and then leaving your site without making a purchase. Knowing your rates can help you optimize your checkout process and initiate actions to recover buckets of lost sales.

    Keeping an eye on these metrics can help you determine where you should be focusing your advertising spend, or partnerships you could potentially form with other websites to increase traffic and grow your audience. And keeping tabs on your search results enables you to tweak and improve your SEO, which can improve your traffic volume and quality. 

    Check out our blogs Six eCommerce eMail KPIs Merchants Need to Measure for Success and How to Analyze Google Ads Data After the Death of Average Position Ranking for more information on measuring your achievements with data.

    What analytics tool should you use?

    Whether you are a small or medium-sized business, an easy-to-use customer analytics tool that meets the needs of your eCommerce business goals is highly recommended. A few available options to consider include:

    • Google Analytics is best for eCommerce businesses who want to analyze their website traffic and receive some metrics such as sales conversions, product performance, customer acquisition, and various customer behavior. The best part about this tool is that it is completely free and customizable. 
    • Search Console is best for eCommerce businesses who are looking to track the overall health of their website. 
    • Crazy Egg is best for eCommerce businesses whose goal is to optimize their conversion rate. This consists of tracking customer moves and seeing how visitors interact with their site to help build an overall better experience.
    • SEMRush is best for eCommerce businesses looking for direction to help improve their SEO strategy (monitoring keywords and rankings) and grow their online visibility faster.

    Conclusion

    Nowadays we have so much data and so many ways of measuring our performance that it can almost seem overwhelming to begin with. But one of the worst things you can do as a business owner is to overlook your data and continue to operate blindly. 

    If you’re feeling inspired to set some goals and grow your business, our team can help you identify some valuable targets and set up accurate tracking to monitor your progress and achieve your objectives.

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    Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

    Perfect Page, Poor Traffic? Why Site Speed Matters

    by | Jul 21, 2021 | eCommerce, SEO, Technology

    Having a fast-loading, high-performance website is crucial to your eCommerce business. But why? Because the speed of your page plays a vital role in your conversions, user experience, and Search Ranking. Unfortunately, too many website owners place a priority on having too many bells and whistles and an overly sophisticated website design, both of which slow your site, instead of focusing on performance. 

    Think about it like this. If you go to sit down for a meal at a restaurant, slow service from the waiter often results in poor reviews and fewer return visits. Similarly, when you sit down to browse a website, slow service can drive you away and potentially steer you towards a competitor. If it’s annoying for you to wait for dinner at a restaurant or for a website to load, think about how your site visitors feel. 

    In this blog, we will discuss some best practices to ensure your eCommerce site speed is not hurting your search rankings, users’ experience, site traffic, and conversion rate. But first, it is important to understand what site speed is and how to measure it.   

    Site Speed Defined

    CSite speed often referred to as Site Performance or page speed, is how quickly your eCommerce browser can load fully. Poorly performing sites that render slowly in a browser can drive users away. Conversely, sites that load quickly will typically receive more traffic and have better conversion rates. 

    Why Your Website Speed Matters

    Your site speed is important for the overall user experience you are trying to create. If your site takes a long time to load you will tend to have a higher bounce rate and lower average time spent on your site due to this low speed. The example below from Google shows how longer load times have been shown to affect your conversion and bounce rates negatively.

    Speed Test Tool Recommendations to Help Your Site’s Performance

    Before you can begin to make any fixes, you first need to know where your site is in terms of speed. The speed that you need to be looking at is your time to first byte (TTFB). This determines the time the server sends your browser’s very first byte; which Google states should be 200 ms or less. You can easily measure your TTFB and other speed metrics by using a load time testing site. Below are some that can help you with this:

    Each of these tools will assign a score to your site based on Google recommendations and provide you with tips on improving your site’s performance.  When it comes to site speed testing, it’s important to pick one tool and stick with it. Each has its own set of different metrics and therefore you can’t compare one tool’s test results to another. In addition, you should run multiple tests to ensure that your results continue to improve your user’s experience.

    Factors Affecting Your Site’s Speed

    Your site speed relies on many factors and determining which of them are affecting it will help you improve its speed and ranking. Here are some of the most common problems that prevent sites from loading faster and lead to potential customer loss. 

    Compressing/optimizing large images: Loading large images is one of the main issues to cause your site to run slow, especially for mobile users. You can use Gzip, a software application for file compression, to reduce the size of your CSS, HTML, and JavaScript files that are larger than 150 bytes. Such services will result in compression without loss of quality, and therefore your users will not even notice the difference in their experience if using a desktop versus mobile.

    Reduce redirects: Each time your page redirects a user to another page, it increases their waiting time. Reducing your redirects will help reduce the HTTP request-response to complete and speed up your site page.

    Reduce themes and plugins: The more widgets and plugins you utilize on your site, the longer it takes to load them. First, make sure you are only using the ones that you truly need. You’ll often find that Developers and untrained team members may have left Themes and Plugins operational that no longer serve your benefit. Second, if you are using a WordPress template, try to keep it simple and only use Plugins created by reputable WordPress sources that have been recently updated, such as Cornerstone 4.0.

    Improve server response time: The optimal server response time is under 200ms and should be constant over multiple users. A response time beyond 200 ms is a sign that requires something to be fixed. To improve your server response time, you can either pay for new servers and equipment which could get expensive and still not solve the problem or you can look for performance bottlenecks like slow database queries, slow routing, or a lack of adequate memory and fix them.

    Use a content distribution network: Content distribution networks (CDNs), also called content delivery networks, are networks of servers that work together to provide fast delivery of your site’s content. A CDN allows for the quick transfer of assets needed for loading Internet content including HTML pages, javascript files, stylesheets, images, and videos. While a CDN does not host content and can’t replace the need for proper web hosting, it does help cache content at the network edge, which improves your website performance.

    Poor hosting location: the hosting company and server that you decide to use to store your website can have an impact on your site speed. Therefore, it is important you choose a host where all of your assets can be housed in one location and a plan that matches the needs of your website. If your data has to travel a significant distance to arrive where it is needed, this results in a high amount of network latency. For instance, if a website’s HTML and CSS files are hosted in a data center in Ohio, and its images are hosted in a data center in Florida, a user on the west coast will have to wait while all of these files travel thousands of miles to their device.

    Bringing it All Together

    Your site speed has a vital role in generating traffic. The factors that affect that traffic generation are interlinked with one another. If you find that your site is taking too long to load, don’t panic. We can help you to determine any factors that might be affecting that speed to increase your clientele, improve your user experience, retain existing users, and increase your conversion rate. 

    Ready to streamline your site’s performance?

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    How to Optimize Your Apparel eCommerce’s Product Pages

    How to Optimize Your Apparel eCommerce’s Product Pages

    by | May 26, 2021 | Apparel, SEO, Site Development

    Your product pages hold all the relevant information about the garments you sell. Most product pages include the product description, cost, customer reviews, images and call to actions. While many consumers enjoy viewing high-quality pictures of the clothing, it is not enough to drive sales. Instead, you want the user experience on your product pages to persuade shoppers to add items to their cart that ultimately lead to a transaction. If your conversion rate could use that extra boost, here is a guide on the best ways to optimize your apparel webstore’s product pages.

    Write Unique Product Descriptions

    Product descriptions are where your apparel brand’s writer can get creative. Creative product descriptions add life and personality to a garment. This personality is a showcase of who your brand is. Showcasing your brand’s personality throughout all the elements on your website will help you gain credibility and trust from your shoppers. The Fawn Shoppe has fun product descriptions for their children’s clothing:

    This section of your product page is where your brand will describe the piece of clothing — the material, the color, the design, the different elements and any other relevant information. Every description needs to answer obvious and frequently asked questions that shoppers may have about the product. Always remember to include enough details about each product, so the customer knows exactly what they are buying.  Product descriptions can also help with your SEO efforts. In general, your brand will rank higher in search engines if each product has a unique caption. No matter how tempting it is, do not copy and paste manufacturers’ descriptions or use description generators. Generic manufacturer description will actually drop your ranking due to the original caption already ranking for the first website. 

    A company that InteractOne works with, Schuler Shoes, includes unique, structured product descriptions that not only provide details but more information and questions and answers sections:

    Allow Customers to Write Reviews

    Reviews can play a huge role in helping a customer decide if they buy the clothing you are selling. On average, companies that include customer reviews have converted 58% more customers, increased revenue by 62% and increased order value by 3% over other webstores. Simply put, social proof is more important than ever and many shoppers look for reviews to explain the quality, the sizing and FAQs around products. When it comes to apparel, consumers also like to see how the piece fits on another person similar to their body type. Reviews are important for every type of eCommerce; however, since you can get a real image to show how the apparel items look on an actual person, you have a higher chance of gaining more reviews and customers if you allow reviewers to post images along with their written opinion. Some brands also allow customers to choose the size they are commenting on and their location. 

    Kabayare Fashion provides an excellent example of including customer reviews on their products:

    Include a Clear Call to Action

    An important element on your product pages that needs to be fully optimized is the call to action (CTA.) This is where users will click and add the item to their cart. On all your pages, you need to place your CTA front and center and not around any design or copy elements that would be distracting. Keep the copy inside the button simple and direct like Add to Cart, Buy Now or Reserve Now. If you are not sure if your CTA buttons are working, you can A/B test the design, placement and copy. You can spend hours A/B testing on your own, but a knowledgeable marketing firm can efficiently and quickly zero down onto the issue and fix it right away.

    Use Unique, High-Quality Media

    One of the first elements that customers will see once they enter your product page is its media. When we refer to media, we’re referring to any images, graphics or videos. All the media on your product pages need to be unique from each other and high-quality so shoppers can see everything. For product images, include different angles of the product, and for videos, show a 360 degree shot of the items. While working on your media, especially images, keep the dimensions and specifications as uniform as possible. This will help your user interaction and keep your brand looking professional. Customers, especially mobile users, prefer square photos and thumbnails. And, many companies like Amazon and Etsy use 1000X1000 pixels as their image requirement. Feel free to play around with image sizing on desktop and mobile before publishing the page live for shoppers to see. You can also add extra viewing tools like zoom controls so they can see even more details and embellishments up close.

    Utilize SEO

    As you already know, SEO is search engine optimization, which is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility on search engines like Google. Just like every other page or element on your website, product pages are an SEO-rich area. Optimized SEO on your apparel eCommerce’s product pages will help your brand rank higher in search engines. To have a fully optimized SEO, you will need to include all the SEO basics like unique title tags, meta descriptions, long-tail keywords, internal links, etc. If you want to dive deeper, we have an SEO checklist to help drive sales. Once you have the basics down, you can then include advanced SEO measures for better-optimized product pages. Since there are many elements, steps and requirements that go with setting up the perfect SEO, many companies prefer to work with a marketing team like InteractOne to help your brand’s SEO reach its fullest potential.

    Include Social Media Proof

    To not confuse social media with reviews, reviews are the content generated by customers that stays on your site, while social media is content created by your customers, influencers or even yourself that lives on the social media platform it was posted on. Social media is not for every apparel company but it can help out your product pages if your brand does use it. Just like how reviews help potential customers understand how others like the product, social media will help as well. People prefer seeing how the garment fits on another person similar to their size. The more social proof on product pages, the more potential customers you can reach. Social media proof on product pages also adds credibility and trust to your brand and clothing items. To learn more about how your brand can best utilize social media, we created a guide on the best social media tactics to use to increase traffic.

    Stay on Brand

    All the content on your product pages, whether it is images, videos, graphics, social media or copy, needs to reflect your brand. New and old customers should be able to recognize your brand instantly with every product. To stay on brand, follow the guidelines that your company created. Having a brand guide is vital in creating and implementing any designs, copy, graphics, videos and any other content you want to use. Essentially, how can you stay o brand and on message if your brand isn’t defined? That’s where you create a brand guideline that determines who and what your brand is. Once you understand the who and what about your brand, you can take that personality to the digital world. These guidelines need to include your brand’s copy and design elements, as well as your target audience.

    There are many more ways to optimize your product pages. We even have a guide on the keys to a successful product page. To learn how InteractOne can help you increase traffic on your product pages and throughout your apparel webstore, contact us today.

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    UPDATED: Image Search Engine Optimization 101 for the Automotive Aftermarket

    UPDATED: Image Search Engine Optimization 101 for the Automotive Aftermarket

    by | Apr 9, 2021 | Automotive eCommerce, SEO, Site Development

    What’s the first thing that shoppers look for when considering a new aftermarket upgrade for their cars? Pictures, usually. More specifically, pictures featured on platforms like Google Images, Instagram, and Pinterest. 

    Whether it’s aftermarket modifications or DIY maintenance components, modern automotive shoppers generally do their research online. As noted by the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) in a meta analysis, automotive aftermarket “shopping starts with an inspiration, which for this generation begins online.” Browsing images of cars similar to their own is what “stirs their emotions and encourages them to formulate dreams.” In other words, they want to see their car “trying on” the component before they make a purchase.

    There’s no doubting that unique, quality images are integral to your automotive web store. The challenge is getting your images in front of the eyes of potential customers when all of your competitors are trying to do the same thing.

    In that regard, the journey to maximizing the visibility of your images across platforms – and using that visibility to boost traffic to your website – begins with some proper SEO and image optimization. For a great example of product images, check out Putco’s webstore. 

    Compress to Conserve Data

    Google doesn’t like it when you waste users’ bandwidth – especially mobile users, who are often restricted by monthly data caps from their ISPs. Taking a large image and simply shrinking it down via HTML tags only changes the appearance of the image. The same unnecessarily large file is still loaded on users’ devices, it’s simply displayed smaller on their screens.

    That creates a couple of problems. For one, Google’s algorithm notices those oversized image files wasting data and dings your site for not being optimized. Secondly, larger files equal longer load times, which Google also penalizes. Having your website populated with unnecessarily large image files can even make it hang up or freeze on some users’ devices, hitting you with the third and final blow of an increased bounce rate.

    Create Relevant File Names

    It’s only a small bump in SEO friendliness, but every bump counts. Edit the image file names on your server to something unique and relevant. For example, you might name an image of a chrome wheel something like “20_inch_mag_wheel_chrome.jpg” instead of the random string of characters that it’s named by default.

    Those relevant keywords in the file name give search engines another opportunity to properly categorize and rank your images. Furthermore, it makes them more user-friendly: users who open your images in new browser tabs or download them will be met with a nice, descriptive file name.

    Write Unique and Descriptive ALT Tags

    ALT tags give you yet another opportunity to sprinkle your images with some SEO- and user-friendliness. Essentially, the whole purpose of an ALT tag is to describe the content of an image for algorithms as well as visually-impaired users. Make sure all of your images have brief, relevant ALT tags peppered with some of the keywords your page is targeting.

    Combining the descriptive file name and ALT tag, you’re left with a nice SEO-friendly image tag that looks like this:

    Surround the Images with Relevant Text

    Of course, in the end it all comes down to content. No amount of optimization will propel your site and web images to the top of search results if the written content isn’t unique, relevant, and well-executed.

    When it comes to images, the page text will further help search algorithms categorize and rank you by subject and quality. For example, an image of a chrome wheel could appear on an automotive aftermarket web store, a bicycle shop, a page offering Google Chrome icon packs, etc. It’s the text on the page in the vicinity of the image – most notably the caption – that tells algorithms what they’re looking at. Below, you’ll see a great example of this:

    Conclusion

    Once you get all of your web images compressed, optimized, and placed correctly for SEO purposes, you’ll have a solid foundation from which to build platform-specific image marketing strategies. Create unique, high-quality images, tag and market them effectively on Google and social media, then you’ll really have a leg up on your competitors’ stores when shoppers go browsing on their favorite image platforms for some automotive inspiration. Reach out to us today and let’s discuss how to make this magic happen on your own automotive eCommerce site. Check out our DualLiner case study too. 

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