SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, and it gives your site an added layer of security. SSL certificates proivde this security, and they’re pretty easy to get. You could use the ‘Encryption Everywhere’ website security product, which is included as standard in all Bigcommerce plans, purchase a more advanced certificate, or simply install your own third-party version.

Regardless, this is important as search engines ESPECIALLY Google tend to favor sites that are secure in their results, as opposed to unsecure ones.

Indexing your BigCommerce store is a great first step to improving your SEO. To do this, you will need a sitemap for your site.

A sitemap is simply an XML file that contains all the links that are a part of your site.

After you have your sitemap, it and your website must be submitted to Google’s Search Console; this allows Google to be able to crawl for your content faster in the future.

While you must never overuse keywords, as doing so can do far more harm than good in terms of your BigCommerce SEO, you DO need to make use of them sparingly in product descriptions and other website copy. In order to discover just what keywords are being used by consumers searching for products like yours, keyword research must be undertaken.

As page speed is critical to good SEO rankings, keeping it in mind is a smart strategy for your store. Your options with regard to reducing page speed are a bit limited with Bigcommerce: rather than being able to buy your own hosting and code your own template, you have to use Bigcommerce servers and their templates (which, whilst perfectly good, don’t give you fine-grain control over the speed at which your site loads).

A common problem that BigCommerce stores often have is failing to create unique and engaging unique product descriptions. All to often e-commerce stores make use of product descriptions copied from the manufacturer, so every e-commerce store that sells that those kinds of products are using practically the same content. As Google can only rank copy for one site the chances are very good that it will not be yours.

An e-commerce SEO campaign ensures that unique product descriptions are created over time to avoid duplicate content on all product and category pages. It is extra work and perhaps even an extra expense for e-commerce site owners but is the only way a product’s page or listing will ever stand a chance of ranking well in SERPs.

One of the most significant elements of a web page is its title – search engines treat it as a key piece of information when working out how to categorise and rank it, and your title itself shows up as the largest component of a search result (as well as at the top of browser windows).

You should ensure your BigCommerce page and post titles are never vague in nature. Additionally, they should ideally start with your ‘focus keyword’ – the phrase you want to rank for in search.

Research study after research study has shown that more and more consumers rely on online reviews to help them make purchasing decisions, and so if a consumer can view positive reviews on your website that is almost certainly going to boost their confidence in purchasing from you.

How reviews affect SEO is less clear, as Google is not very forthcoming about whether these are a ranking factor they consider. However, as numerous reports have shown, there does seem to be a correlation between displaying reviews and increased organic traffic to an ecommerce site. One study, conducted by Yotpo, on more than 30,000 businesses who agreed to implement reviews on their ecommerce site, found that within nine months of the implementation, organic traffic to these sites increased by as much as 30%.

Although Google says that they aren’t technically a ranking factor, a well-written meta description can encourage more clickthroughs to your website – which raises the clickthrough rate (CTR) of a page. The CTR of a page is generally believed by most SEO experts to be a ranking factor (with search engines rewarding results that get higher click through rates), so getting meta descriptions right is important.

Your meta description should:

• be concise (less than 160 characters)

• accurate

• contain the keyword you are hoping to rank for

• contain an interesting overview of the page content — one that encourages people to visit it.

Adding alt text and descriptions to your images is actually a sound idea to optimize them. This is because as Google crawls your site, it knows how to rank these images if they have text telling them what they are, and this can allow visitors to find said images.

A clean URL is simply a URL that goes directly to where they’re supposed to. They are short, easy to understand and most importantly, encourage by Google. It is also important to note that you should add a relevant keyword to your URL slugs.

An excellent way to determine your site’s mobile-friendliness is by subjecting it to Google’s Mobile-Friendly test. Sites that favor mobile users tend to get strong results in SEO, so this is a golden opportunity to rank higher.

Social sharing can increase your store’s inbound links. But remember that most social media platforms use no-follow links. “When someone discovers something on social media, there’s a chance they’ll share the link. Not only can this increase the number of inbound links to your site—improving your credibility—but it can also show how popular your content is as well.

Featuring a video makes it 53 times more likely that your page will get a front-page Google result. And because people love videos, it’ll also make it 41% more likely for someone to click through, and up to 85% more likely that they’ll buy. You don’t need anything super slick or fancy — just show off your product and how it can be used, just like you would if you were selling to someone in person.