First step of buying a product online is searching it on search engines. As 93% of online experiences start with a search engine and specifically Google, that enhances the importance of SEO ranking and cannot be overstated. So the SEO strategies must be implemented keeping in mind the ever changing algorithms of Google.

As we all know that improving SEO rankings is a key towards raising the visibility of your brand at all points of a buyer’s journey; particularly at the consideration stage, during which your customers are actively seeking solutions to a defined problem or may be looking for some product.

Google is the most popular search engine in the whole world, and if your website is not having an appearance on Google’s first page then you are unfortunately missing out on a lot of traffic.

In the past years, Google has focused on the helpful content delivering to its users and for this Google is constantly changing its algorithms. If you have a website running for a long time and you also update your site on a regular basis but you do not find any significant improvements in your rankings. On the other hand, if you have not updated your SEO strategy for a while or if you are looking for it, you must keep these facts and figures in mind while remapping your site’s appearance in 2024.

As we all know that SEO has evolved significantly over the years and we all equally have an eye on its ever evolving nature. Google Core March update (2024) has pushed down the AI-generated content to provide high-quality and helpful content and as a result giving a better chance at visibility.

To attain higher rankings or to maintain your rankings higher on Google’s first page is not an easy task, in-fact it requires a lot of hard work, time, and dedication but it is Possible to reach your aim at the end. This article will briefly discuss why SEO is valuable for e-commerce stores, analyzing how to use SEO to boost your website ranking. Also we will look at the latest trends that could be the key to success in the improvement of your site’s rankings in 2024 and beyond. 

Why SEO is important for a Website:

Consider you have a shop and you have a lot of products to sell and they are of great quality but no one is coming to your shop and goes to your competitor’s shops for purchasing. This is the same case when you have an online shop with quality products or services but you are not getting traffic to your website, a major factor comes here is the SEO. You have made a shop and you have not done its SEO. How could people get to know about your store’s existence?

SEO is a digital strategy through which you can optimize your store and take it to higher positions in Google Results and ultimately get potential customers. That’s how people will know about your store and ultimately you can get an increased traffic. Consider SEO as a partnership between you and Google, you cannot do games with this to get higher rankings, in-fact you have to be consistent and have patience after creating quality and optimized pages. Doing this ensures Google that the website is authentic and thus it will rank it on higher positions.

Regardless of the CMS you use, basic SEO strategy is the same for all e-commerce platforms. As every CMS works in its own way, for example if you have a PrestaShop store it has SEO modules that you can use for doing SEO for your PrestaShop website.

Let us get into a detailed discussion about the aspects in PrestaShop SEO and to know how you will get higher rankings on search results.

Google’s Ranking Factors:

Quality of Content: This is the most important factor that may affect your rankings on Google or any other search engine. Google always empowers high quality, informative and useful content.

Technical SEO: Technical SEO is done to your site for Google to better crawl and index your website. It includes website speed, mobile friendliness, and many other factors.

Backlinks: Backlinks is something you can get from other relevant websites having the same niche. The quality backlinks improve your site’s SEO, as the link juice is shared with your site from authentic sites.

Keyword Optimization: Keyword optimization is a technique using which you can add keywords to your site strategically. This helps Google to understand what your website is about and how relevant information you are providing to your customers.

Social Signals: Nowadays social media is a great way to go with and it plays a crucial part in your brand’s building. If you are not making use of social media then you might be lacking somewhere in your site’s rankings. Make your content shareable so that the readers can share your content to their social media platforms.

How to Boost Your Rankings in 2024

As for now you have understood the importance of SEO but still confused from where you could start doing it. No worries, we are going to discuss in detail the most effective ways to optimize SEO of your PrestaShop store, and the specific PrestaShop addons you can use in the optimization process. 

i) Keyword Research:

When we talk about content, the first thing comes into our minds is the Keywords. Keywords are sort of basic queries that your user might use in their queries and so you have to make use of these keywords in your content, either in the blog or product/category pages. The right keywords and the placement in content means a lot for better rankings. Moreover, in today’s digital world, it is not just about the volume keywords have but it is about the relevance.

Also keywords can be used in the URLs, title and META and in your whole content but with certain limitations as well. If you have a PrestaShop store, choosing the right keyword for your product page is of great importance. You can find a list of keywords from different online tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, Ahref, etc. The most important factor while choosing keywords is, they must have a high volume and low competition. Apart from primary keywords you have to use the long-tail keywords because they are also important when it comes to SEO.

Once your list of keywords gets ready, make sure to use them naturally in your whole site for both users and crawlers, like: URL, title, Meta description, Headers, Product descriptions, category description, and ALT tags.

Keep in mind that you have to use keywords in a certain way that it might not look like stuffing them in your pages; it will harm your SEO and user experience.

ii) Include Visuals:

When we talk about content, it is not confined to the blogs or descriptions but it also includes the visual aspect of your website. It might include images, videos, and infographics, all of these visuals trigger your user’s attention towards your site.

Images and other visuals can help you in the clarification of your content; sometimes your content becomes lengthy and users might get bored while reading. That’s where you can grab their attention by adding images and infographics so that the content looks appealing. These images include statistics as well when it comes to some comparison blogs. Using your own images protects you from Copyright claims as well and improves brand awareness. It also increases your site authority when people share your images to their sites, and ultimately you get backlinks from the authentic sites.

Use your keywords in the image ALT tags because this will help your content reach the right audience.

iii) Mobile Optimization:

The number of mobile users is increasing day by day, every second person has more than one mobiles and everything is summed up in these tiny devices. So if you want to earn a complete revenue then you must also have a mobile version of your website. It is a key factor that your site must be having a mobile version, compatible with all smartphone devices.

Mobile-first means how well navigated your site is, for people using handheld screens. When talking about PrestaShop specifically, there are multiple mobile compatible themes that you can use and make your PrestaShop stores mobile friendly. 

iv) Technical SEO:

While keywords are of great importance, here you cannot forget the technical aspect of a website’s SEO. Without technical SEO you cannot gain the advantages of your keywords. Here are listed some essential factors that have to consider doing the technical SEO of a website:

• Adding Meta title and descriptions for your pages, having proper distribution of headers from H1 to H6.
• Make sure that your URLs must be user friendly and must have your main keyword in it. If we consider PrestaShop here then there is a best-selling module on PrestaShop addons named Pretty URL. You can use this module to make your URLs number free and well optimized. You can add internal links to your pages as it will get users to the other relevant pages as well.
• Google has a metric called CORE WEB VITALS; it will help you understand that you are providing an optimal user experience. The Core Web Vitals guidelines measure the speed, interactivity and visual stability of a webpage. By improving these three metrics, you can help your website rank higher and improve your website’s UX. Also the major factor Google is measuring is how quickly pages load on your website with response times for fonts and images.

In short, you have to pay serious attention towards the speed insights so that you can give a better user experience to your customer.

v) Have a Blog on PrestaShop website:

If we talk about PrestaShop, it is a good approach to have a blog on your website. Having a blog not only develops a connection with your customers but also adds power to your website that is much appealing to search engines.

To have a professional Prestashop blog there are multiple modules on PrestaShop addons which you can use but most prominent of all is the PrestaShop blog module by FME. This multilingual module allows you to add a professional blog to your store and share the latest news and articles with your customers.

Conclusion:

After finishing this detailed discussion, you might have an idea about the importance of SEO for any website, especially if you own a PrestaShop store.

SEO is an art and to be an artist you have to know all the aspects of it. On the basis of this discussion you can improve your website’s performance and optimize it as per your requirements.

These tips will help you build a highly optimized website in your niche and achieve your website traffic and conversion goals.