1. What is content optimization?
Simply put, the content optimization process is about preparing your content to reach as many of your target audience as possible. Content optimization actually happens when content is written, published, and technically accessorized for maximum impact. It is a crucial part of any content marketing strategy and facilitates all sorts of content marketing campaigns.
So why content optimization? Because one of the main goals of publishing content for most businesses is to get noticed by the general public. Apart from that, content optimization can help you:
- Inform your customers
- Increase incoming leads
- Get quality links
- Higher ranking in SERPs (search engine results pages)
- Promote engagement on social media
It's important to remember that content optimization is for machines, while the content creation process is for humans. Businesses that manage to find a balance between these two processes are often more successful than others.
2. Importance of content optimization for e-commerce stores
We've already talked about the importance of content optimization for businesses, but when you're a e-commerce business and you're looking to take your marketing to the next level, you're playing on a different field.
Efficient content optimization, which reaches the right audience and makes them visible, can directly translate into increased sales and revenue from your e-commerce activities. Additionally, optimized content can lead to increased click rates and conversion rates for online shoppers. What's more, with the right type of content on your website, you can also dramatically reduce bounce rates, and build brand awareness and loyalty.
Product descriptions that are optimized for your brand can be very useful in informing customers about the product and encouraging them to buy on your website.
How can online stores generate organic traffic?
Online stores that want to generate organic traffic should constantly monitor and improve their performance on search engines. To do this, they need to focus on two aspects:
- Contents
- Links
Additionally, to generate consistent organic traffic, online stores need to:
- Produce quality content : The main objective that your content should achieve is to educate your customers. Search engines place more importance on pages that can answer searchers' queries and questions correctly. As an e-commerce store, you should therefore focus on the questions that your potential customers are likely to ask and answer them accordingly.
- Create more landing pages : Having more pages on your website can help you perform better. Les Landing pages can be great additions to your website and perform better than product pages. Businesses are noticing a increase of nearly 55% leads by simply adding 15 landing pages to the website.
- Invest in the architecture of the site : The architecture of the site is a very important aspect of the SEO for an e-commerce. Designing the right site architecture includes setting up a navigational structure for your website so that customers can easily access your responsive product pages. You can ask for help from a Freelance on Fiverr who will take care of this task for you.
- Strengthen SEO : The SEO is a proven way to ensure that your website consistently ranks higher in the SERPs. Steps you can take to do this include optimizing your images, titles, and meta descriptions, and structuring your data according to SEO guidelines.
3. Content mistakes made by e-commerce businesses
Even though the focus is on content marketing these days, many e-commerce businesses face certain content mistakes. The following mistakes should be avoided by e-commerce stores that want to develop and fuel their content marketing strategies:
Create ineffective product descriptions
Ultimately, product descriptions serve as a selling point for the individual products on your website. Brick-and-mortar businesses have the advantage of allowing customers to touch and smell products before buying them. Online stores need to compensate for the lack of this experience with their content.
But many people go the wrong way by writing product descriptions that only describe the product but don't provide value-added information. Such product descriptions are ineffective and do not contribute much to the customer buying decision process. To avoid this, you should invest in unique, highly elaborate descriptions that succinctly answer any questions that customers may have about the product. Product descriptions should be unique and structured to be easy to understand and encourage conversion.
Lack of uniqueness
With thousands of online stores competing with each other globally today, not taking a creative approach to your content can be detrimental to your business. Unique and innovative content can help your business stand out from the crowd.
One of the biggest mistakes online stores make today is trying to create content based on what works best for their competitors. While it may be beneficial, or even necessary, to be inspired by it, your content should remain unique and reflect your brand identity. This goes a long way in creating your own space on the web.
To make your product descriptions unique, it's important to adapt your brand voice and focus on educating your customers through your product descriptions. If the aim is to highlight the benefits of the product, you should also try to build a narrative around it in order to engage potential customers.
Poor fit with the target audience
E-commerce stores often make the mistake of replicating what works for other businesses, preventing them from reaching their target audience.
Instead, brands should conduct thorough market research and identify the behavioral and buying trends of their target audience. Second, creating content that speaks directly to this segment can be more effective and more profitable than trying to target everyone at the same time.
For example, if you sell gluten-free snacks online, your target audience is likely to be people who enjoy fitness and/or exercise regularly. In this case, targeting families may be far less successful than tailoring your content to appeal to fitness enthusiasts and people looking to lose weight.
Missed opportunities in the buyer's journey
If you create content that's only meant to get potential customers to press the “Buy” button, and then abandon them, you're missing out on a plethora of content opportunities.
The buyer's journey starts when they start looking for a product that you sell. At this point, they may not be sure if they want to buy a specific product, but they are ready to be informed and guided. These customers are more likely to buy from websites that help them make a decision.
To avoid missing out on such opportunities, e-commerce stores today need to create purely informational content to help potential customers at the awareness stage. In addition, they must also have sales-oriented content to help them make the decision. Even after the purchase, online stores need to work hard to regain and retain customers' attention to turn them into loyal customers.
Choosing the right platform for your store
Choosing the right platform to host your online store is like finding the ideal home for it. Today, online stores are spoilt for choice when it comes to finding platforms for their website. You can choose from a variety of platforms such as woocommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, Magento, Wix, BigCommerce and many others.
When choosing a platform for your online store, you should ask yourself the following questions:
- Is the platform scalable? Will it support my brand's long-term goals?
- What type of functionalities does the platform offer to strengthen my SEO?
- What type of customer service does the platform offer?
- What security measures does the platform offer for my online store?
- What level of mobile usability does the platform guarantee for my online store?
After considering all of the above factors, opt for a platform that will meet your needs and consistently support the growth of your online store.
4. What are the different types of content possible for an e-commerce store?
Sure, you might be thinking about choosing a specific type of content and sticking to it for the sake of consistency, but that might not be the right approach today when your customers want to engage with you across different platforms and mediums.
Some of the most effective types of content that are suitable for e-commerce stores include the following
1. blog
Businesses that place a high value on blogging have 13 times more likely to'get a positive return on investment than others. But above all, blogging can now adapt and be presented in different forms. Your blog can take the form of a detailed step-by-step guide, and educate customers, or it can be a list that promotes some of the popular, high-quality products in a category.
The key is to ensure that the quality of content and language is consistent and to continue experimenting with different formats and structures. This will help you identify the content structures that work best for your online store.
2. Microcontent
As people's attention spans get shorter and shorter, online businesses need to produce microcontent as much as other content formats and types.
From catchy social media captions to viral tweets, microcontent has increasingly become a critical factor in establishing brand identity and perception. It's an interesting time for content marketing in the e-commerce sector, and one way brands are adapting to this situation is by creating small, high-impact content. For greater efficiency, brands need to ensure that this content is data-based and easily shareable.
3. Videos
Video marketing is experiencing uninterrupted growth, that's undeniable.
Videos are great formats when it comes to presenting a lot of information in a format that is easy to digest and engaging. So it's no surprise that online businesses are increasingly investing in creating videos that promote their brand and sell their products, albeit creatively.
Videos are also great for providing visual evidence to your audience alongside the content. If you're still not convinced, consider the fact that online stores that have video marketing strategies can increase page visits by 127%.
4. Images/Visuals
If you think the gap between written content and video content is too wide for you to bridge, using images and visuals could be a good place to start. Using creative visuals, images, and infographics has a proven positive impact on how customers view and engage with your business.
Images can be used to present your products, their characteristics, and even to provide personalized experiences for customers. Used effectively, images can bridge the gap between customer expectations and reality to a very large extent.
Now that you know a lot about content formats and how to create quality content, let's see how you can guide yourself in the process of optimizing your content.
5. Where do you start optimizing?
If you are new to content optimization, it would be a good idea to set goals so that you are clear about what you want to achieve with this process. While it may be quite daunting the first time around, here's a simple, step-by-step process that you can follow to optimize your content for maximum effectiveness.
Identify current issues
The first step toward effective content optimization is identifying the issues that are currently affecting your content and website. This is a good starting point for identifying specific aspects that require optimization.
The key to successful content optimization always starts with identifying the areas that need the most attention. Identifying these issues will also help you adjust your goals for the content optimization process.
Here are some of the questions you may need to ask yourself at this stage:
- Does my existing content meet my store's marketing goals?
- What pieces of content are not performing well for me? Why?
- What changes do I need to make to improve the performance of my content?
Dividing web pages according to intentions
User search intent should always be the basis of your content creation and optimization process. For your content to perform better, you need to align it with search intent, which should be the logical ranking criterion for all of your web pages.
For example, the content of the product page will need to be very extensive because users who reach this page will be looking for information that will encourage them to make a purchase. On the other hand, registration or payment pages should be kept simple, as users don't want to spend a lot of time reading these web pages.
To succeed in this step, you need to match the search queries that users enter with the right keywords in your content. This will ensure the search engine that the web page will be able to respond to the user query.
At this point, you need to ask yourself questions, including:
- What are my users looking for?
- Does this content respond properly to the user's request?
- Does this content match my user's search intent?
E-commerce keyword research
While writing only to include the right keywords is never a good way to optimize your content, including keywords isn't optional. When it comes to e-commerce, you need to keep in mind that your customers have other sellers for all the products you sell.
If you're wondering how to approach keyword research for your online store, we've got you covered.
Use Ahrefs to help you find keyword opportunities
With a tool like Ahrefs, you can take advantage of keyword opportunities and conduct high-quality keyword research using multiple approaches. Here are two proven methods you can use to identify and take advantage of keyword opportunities:
Approach 1: Analyze competitors using Site Explorer
With Site Explorer, you can get an overview of the SEO performance of any business, the type of SEO services performed on the site, and the factors that determine them. One of the most important metrics you track using this tool is organic traffic. This setting will not only let you know how much organic traffic your competitor is receiving, but also what keywords are generating that traffic.
You can also identify the specific keywords that your competitor is ranking for, which can also prove to be great keyword opportunities for your website. Additionally, you can adjust locations based on who you're targeting, or set it to “Global” to understand which keywords are performing well for the business worldwide.
Approach #2: Identify pages with few or no backlinks using Content Explorer
Even though, historically, we've seen a strong correlation between a website's backlinks and its organic search traffic, there are a few that defy these rules. These are websites that attract high search traffic only by using the right keywords and creating quality content around them.
Use Ahrefs Content Explorer, search for a very relevant phrase, and then select the domains with the lowest number of referring domains. Ideally, we're looking for pages that attract at least 500+ monthly organic visits with minimal or no backlinks.
Now, identify the keywords that bring that traffic to the website and find relevant opportunities to add them to your website.
Determine if you are choosing the right keywords
Finding the right keywords to rank for is even more important than ranking for a large number of keywords. Long-tail keywords can be a big help in this regard. Because they are longer sentences that consist of 3 or 4 words, they tend to target search intent better than other keywords. Their use can allow you to get in touch with the audience concerned.
It's also helpful to think like a customer when considering whether you're choosing the right keywords. So think about the exact words or phrases you're likely to use on Google to search for the products you sell. To determine if you are relying on the right keywords, check the performance of the keywords regularly.
It is therefore very important to use the right keywords that are likely to give the best results for your online store, and to use them in the right context. Here you need to ask yourself:
- Am I choosing the right keywords for ranking?
- What are the keywords used by my customers?
- Are the keywords being used in the right context in the content?
On-page optimization
The next step in your content optimization journey is to ensure that the on-page optimization of your website is done correctly. On-page optimization refers to all actions that a business takes directly on its website to increase traffic and search engine rankings.
Optimization of keywords
We've talked enough about keywords for you to know that they're an indispensable part of your content optimization journey. By regularly updating the keywords on your website and ensuring that successful keywords are integrated into the content of your website, you will increase its SEO capacity.
Determine the speed of your website
Today's customers are impatient, and won't wait for slow websites to finish loading when they have other websites that can instantly present the type of results they want. For e-commerce stores, lower website speed can mean higher bounce and cart abandonment rates. You can use tools like PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix to control the speed of your website and optimize the elements that could slow it down.
Usability
User experience is perhaps one of the most crucial elements of overall website performance that determines the success of your online store. Over 90% of buyers leave and never come back to a website where they have had a negative experience.
Online stores should conduct regular tests to ensure the usability of the website based on four major parameters: usability, satisfaction, efficiency, and errors. One of the most effective ways to test these parameters is to ask customers what they think of the overall user experience on the e-commerce site.
Structure your content
The next step is to structure the content optimally for maximum performance. How your content is structured and presented matters just as much as the quality and relevance of your content.
Here are a few things you should improve proactively to better structure your content:
Architecture of the site
Simply put, your site architecture serves as a blueprint for all of the content on your website. It should represent the hierarchy and flow of web pages and content to make it easier for visitors to your site. In addition, it must contain all the technical elements necessary for the exploration and indexing of your site by search engine robots.
Creating a well-structured site architecture will also allow you to distribute page authority equally across all pages on your website. The architecture of the site is created by connecting the pages together based on the hierarchical structure that you want to give to your website.
Amazon is one of the best examples of an e-commerce site with a highly functional and logical site architecture. Take a look at the example below:
It's not new that Amazon offers hundreds of categories and subcategories from which to choose products. The architecture of the site, as shown in the image above, allows users to retrace their steps and explore other products.
Internal links
Links have long been one of the main ranking factors considered by Google. While backlinks (links to your website from other sources) are important for establishing your credibility, internal links are important for establishing the most important pages on your website.
Internal links help Google understand the structure and flow of your website, as well as identify your site's richest content sources and information. These internal links, when redirected using descriptive anchor texts (mostly high-performing keywords), can be very beneficial for your website's ranking efforts.
For e-commerce businesses, this aspect is even more important, as internal links can allow them to upsell and cross-sell products and establish relationships between product and category pages.
Looking for fresh content ideas
Most e-commerce businesses use the same old, proven strategy of including only the pages and content that are needed. Sure, that should be your first priority, but even more important is publishing and promoting fresh content that can engage your users.
Many online stores now have separate sections on their websites to publish product tutorials, how-to guides, and entertaining videos for the sole purpose of attracting customers who come to their site. This not only increases the time users spend on your website, but also increases your credibility and trustworthiness as a brand.
Add user generated content
When we talk about trustworthiness, adding user-generated content is always a great idea. 84% of millennials say that user-generated content on e-commerce sites influences how they shop on the site.
Considering that millennials are one of the main target audiences for most online stores, this is an important parameter to consider. Here are some of the easy ways to integrate user-generated content into your e-commerce site:
- Add customer images to your product pages instead of templates
- Have a social media section that showcases your customers' messages about your products.
- Create a community where customers can interact with each other
- publish product reviews and testimonials with customer photos
Focus on Featured Snippets
Having a snippet of rich content on Google can increase revenue from organic visitors by 677%. That's how much you can increase your visibility and revenue by making extra efforts to create quality content. Rich snippets are also a great way to promote your product in SERPs and make it easier for customers to explore relevant products and read reviews.
And of course, the fact that Google has a gargantuan reach in product searches is an added benefit. Take a look at this sample search:
These “featured snippets” can be a great way to attract more customers to try your products, and most importantly, they're a great way to drive traffic back to your website instead of your products listed on Amazon.
6. Tips for optimizing different types of content
Each web page on a website has a unique story to tell - at least that's what you need to do. Thus, for each web page to obtain the importance and the traffic it deserves, it is important to take into account the parameters necessary to optimize each web page.
If you're wondering how to do it, keep reading—we've got you covered.
1. Optimization of textual content on the e-commerce site
Text content gives you plenty of ranking options, as long as you know how to take advantage of them. The best part is that you can optimize every page on your website to produce the results you want.
About us
A great “About Us” page allows you to show your target audience who you are and what your brand represents. You can highlight the history of your company, its values and a mission statement on this page. That said, you can also optimize this page so that it is effective for your SEO.
When optimizing your About Us page, be sure to incorporate these three settings:
1. Define your brand's tone of voice
How you describe your brand on the About Us page will be how your customers feel about you. So ideally, you should try to establish your brand's tone and voice on this page from the very first line.
If you are a brand that cares about the environment, be sure to mention it on the page, underlining your commitment to this cause. If you're a brand focused on young people, be sure to use jargon that appeals to them and highlight how you align with your target audience.
2. Introduce the brand to visitors
The next important goal that your “About Us” page should achieve is to introduce customers to the brand and let them know what you are. It's a great way to set customer expectations for the future.
Some brands prefer to do this by creating detailed stories and timelines, and others do it using quirky brand and product descriptions. The best way, however, is to find your unique style so that your About page stands out from other online stores the customer has visited.
Take a look at this homepage for the online skin care brand - Frank Body. The tone set by the “About” page remains consistent across all pages of the site. Brand and product descriptions are always in the first person, allowing the brand to be anthropomorphized (describing a non-human thing as human).
The “About” page also describes the brand's story in the form of a short story and puts faces to the people behind the brand.
3. Establishing credibility
Your About page is also a great platform for establishing your credibility. You can highlight your achievements and the values on which your brand is built. These aspects motivate customers to trust your brand, and if their thinking aligns with yours, it can even encourage them to become loyal customers of the products in your online store.
Watch how Frank Body does it on his website:
On its “About Us” page, Frank Body highlights its origins and the fact that it is a vegan and cruelty free brand. For skin care lovers, this information is valuable when making a purchase decision. The brand also highlights its best sales, wasting no time encouraging customers to make a purchase if they are affected by what the brand stands for.
Product pages
As an online store, some of your most crucial web pages on the website are of course going to be your product pages. A good product page should be informative, compelling, and capable of converting visitors into customers.
Besides these goals, product pages need to be SEO friendly if you want people to come across them when your customers are doing relevant searches. Here are a few things you should include to optimize the content on your product pages:
Unique product descriptions
Product descriptions should succeed in the unique combination of being descriptive and functional. You can choose to make them detailed or concise, as long as all the information your customer needs to make a buying decision is effectively delivered to them.
More importantly, your product descriptions should be unique and creative, in order to motivate buyers to buy the product specifically from your brand.
Take a look at this product description for their gas grill, for example. The product description provides a detailed description of the product, highlights the idea behind the product and its specifications, and finally describes how the customer can use the product.
Optimize the length of the meta text
Optimizing your titles and meta descriptions is always necessary to get SEO benefits for your product pages. First, meta descriptions should be under 155 characters and include a call-to-action word. It is also important to mention the brand and product name as well as related details in the meta description. Optimizing the length is necessary because text that exceeds the character length will be truncated when displayed in the SERPs.
Most SEO experts advise limiting titles to under 60 characters. Anything above this number may seem verbose to readers and may not be displayed correctly in all browsers.
Image Alt text
The Alt TXT of the image is the written description of the image that will be displayed instead of the image in case it does not load. This can be very useful for customers who are browsing your website with slower connections and for people with visual disabilities.
Alt txt images also work great with screen readers and are highly recommended to make your website inclusive. The benefit for SEO is that search engines will be able to crawl your website much more easily and, therefore, rank it well.
Call to action
Call to action buttons are very important in guiding the user journey and the buying experience of your customers. They not only serve as a clear signal for users who want to buy a specific product, but they are also proven to boost conversions. When placed effectively, call-to-action buttons can reduce friction on your website and encourage users to take positive action.
You should ensure that your call-to-action buttons are placed at appropriate intervals and highlighted in a color that contrasts with the background. Using bright colors is a great way to get customers to click on them.
FAQs
Customers are now more informed than ever, with Google providing them with the information they need to make buying decisions. Despite this, many still prefer to shop in traditional stores, as they can ask questions about the product until they are completely satisfied and then take action.
The FAQ (frequently asked questions) reproduce this experience for e-commerce sites. By making a list of the questions that customers are most likely to ask about products, you ensure that they get all the information they need to make a purchase decision. As an online store, you should also continue to add new questions based on customer queries. The addition of structured data FAQschema can help you get the FAQ search function on Google.
Blogs
If you are one of those who are wondering if blogging is still relevant in our time, we are here to tell you yes. It is an evolving strategy and the third most used strategy by businesses. In fact, did you know that businesses that blog actively are likely to generate 67% more leads than others?
For e-commerce businesses, blogging can take multiple forms that we have already mentioned above. But for blogs to start having the impact you want, you need to market them just as well. The quality of the blog content and the marketing strategy determine the success of your blog.
How to find new content ideas
E-commerce stores that want to improve the quality of their blogs must constantly come up with new content ideas. There are multiple ways to find new content ideas:
- Keep an eye on trends with Google Trends
- Analyze comments on your blog for suggestions
- Search on general forums such as Quora and Reddit
- Research the content of your competitors' articles
- Ask your readers
How do you write content that promotes conversions?
At the end of the day, all the content you post on your online store has only one purpose: to convert visitors into customers. But of course that's easier said than done. Content that converts should consider several factors, such as:
- Write clear and concise text
- Attracting customers' attention emotionally
- Eliminate distractions and the superfluous
- Highlight pain points and take advantage of them
- Include a clear call to action
2. Optimization of visual content on the e-commerce site
While textual content is an important aspect to optimize on your e-commerce site, visual content is just as important. They determine the look and feel of your online store and define your customer experience. Besides the obvious benefits for customers, they also offer a plethora of SEO benefits as long as they are optimized and used effectively.
Visual content also plays an important role in defining your brand identity. Wondering how? Read on.
Brand identity
Brand identity consists of things that customers can visually associate with your brand. These include the logo, design elements, and colors. Because these elements set your brand apart from others, logos or any new designs you create should always be the subject of a registered trademark to avoid reproduction.
In the case of e-commerce, your brand identity will be found on your website and even on your packaging; so plan these visual elements carefully.
Color palette
Colors are important factors to consider because each color has a psychological effect on customers. The strategic choice of the color of your logo and your brand image can therefore have a direct impact on the performance of your online store. Here are a few colors that can help reinforce your brand image:
- Rouge : if your brand is synonymous with youth energy and excitement. So, if you have a sports brand or products aimed at young people, including red in your logo and brand image would be a great idea.
- Orange : Orange is considered to be a very energetic color. If you want your brand image to exude a lot of energy, integrating orange into your logo and design is the best solution.
- Bleu : Being the most attractive color, blue should be added to your brand image if you want to give an image of trust and stability to your brand. This is the reason why many jewelry brands use it in their brand image.
- Rose : Pink has always been associated with femininity, so if your brand is aimed primarily at women or if you want to convey an image of softness, you can confidently opt for this color.
- Violet : Purple is strongly associated with royalty. Brands that want to give an image of luxury can therefore opt for this color.
- Vert : Green is associated with growth, nature, and stability. So you'll see environmentally friendly brands and investment companies often opting for this color in their brand image.
- Yellow : Yellow evokes two different types of emotions: happiness and affordability. It's also an attention-grabbing color, so if you're looking to elicit a combination of these emotions, yellow is the color to go for.
User interface elements
E-commerce elements have the ability to integrate the right user interface elements to portray the message they want to communicate to their customers. Like colors, the use of shapes and design on your website can also highlight specific characteristics of your brand.
Here is a great example:
Skull Candy uses highly defined shapes like squares and rectangles to represent design strength and capabilities. Likewise, you can use circles or curves to indicate unity or a sense of community. Besides shapes, the use of bright colors gives an impression of confidence and the use of softer colors may be permanent, but in a different way.
Portraits
As an e-commerce brand, the images you present on your website represent your brand's audience. While many brands take this factor for granted, it's actually important to choose portraits that give the right brand image to customers.
For example, if you're a brand that prides itself on selling clothing that fits all women, avoid limiting yourself to skinny models and instead encourage body positivity through your portraits.
Watch how H&M How to do it:
Infographics
Of course, when we talk about visual content, infographics are no exception. Infographics are the ideal way to communicate data to your customers. Infographics make retaining complex data easily digestible and engaging for readers. Using lots of charts, graphs, and bright colors is a great way to make your infographic stand out from the crowd.
UGC for social proof
As we've seen before, adding user-generated content to your content is always a great idea. Visitors to your website will be able to assess the credibility of your site and get reviews about your products using user-generated content. Publishing testimonials accompanied by photos, product reviews, and review videos can serve as social proof and be reused across a variety of marketing platforms.
Related products
Finally, the success of your online store will always come down to the characteristics and quality of the products you sell. Even if you have a top-notch content strategy and a powerful user interface to attract customers, it's your product that will primarily determine their buying decision. When we talk about product content, it's about presenting your product in the best possible light so that the customer wants to buy it.
360° view of the product
Brands are now doing everything possible to ensure that customers are confident when making a purchase decision on their website. Providing a 360° view of the product is one of the things you can do. By doing so, you will be able to clearly show the product from all angles and replicate the experience of seeing the product in person. It will also make it possible to highlight the smallest details of the products.
Demonstration of products in Augmented Reality (AR)
Just a few years ago, augmented reality (AR) seemed like a difficult technology to understand and implement. But today, it is very commonly used for demonstrations in various sectors such as real estate and e-commerce.
In the field of e-commerce, AR is used to give customers the opportunity to see how the product would suit them or those around them. For example, many makeup brands now use AR to show how a specific shade of lipstick can be perceived on a person. Perhaps the most popular implementation of AR in e-commerce has been done by IKEA.
The application IKEA Place helps customers buy furniture from the comfort of their own home, by showing them how a specific product might look in their home. For example, if you're looking to buy a vase, you point the augmented reality lens at your table to see what it would look like when placed on the table.
Instructional videos
Did you know that when you buy a new microwave, you get a booklet that lists the recipes you can make with the microwave, as well as instructions on how to use it effectively? Likewise, e-commerce stores are already implementing the concept of instructional videos, in which they make a video on how to use the product and add it to the product page.
This can be particularly effective if you sell gardening-related supplies or DIY kits on your online store.
7. How to measure the impact of content optimization
Now that you know how to optimize the content on your website, it's important to know how to measure its performance. After all, we know that the most relevant question that comes to your mind is this: is this going to work for me?
Well, there are lots of things you can test to see if your content optimization process is having a positive impact on your brand. Here are a few things you should keep an eye out for:
Impact on brand recognition
First, let's look at how you can assess the impact of content optimization on brand recognition. Here are a few ways that can help you do that:
Website analysis
The best way to know if your content optimization process is working is to monitor and track your website statistics. In addition, if you use a powerful analytics platform such as Google Analytics, it becomes very easy.
To measure the success of optimizing your content, you need to monitor analytics such as:
- Click-through rates on individual pages
- Page ranking/position in the SERPs
- Organic conversion rate
- Time spent by users on the website
By regularly carrying out SEO audits, you'll be able to get a clear overview of how your content is always working for your online store.
You can also embed heat maps on your website to understand the specific places on your website that visitors engage with the most. The results of the heat maps, combined with the results of your analyses, will also indicate which parts of your content strategy are proving to be the most effective. By using heat maps, you can also identify the topics that users are looking for the most information about, which can be used to create more content.
Engagement rate
Another way to understand if optimizing your content increases brand recognition is to measure engagement rates. As an online store, it would be beneficial to keep an eye on your website's content engagement rates, which will also indicate the specific pieces of content that customers engage with the most.
When you see that a specific piece of content is more engaging, you can replicate the same strategy and produce similar content.
Social sharing
Social validation can be portrayed in a negative light, but it's very important for online stores. Continue to monitor the social shares of your content, which will then indicate the real reach that your brand is getting through it. E-commerce brands need to work to increase their reach and engagement on social media in order to build a highly engaged customer base.
backlink's profile
Finally, you should also keep track of the number of Backlinks that you can get through your content. If your backlinks are constantly increasing, optimizing your content may work for your online store. You can check your backlinks on Google Analytics as well as on Ahrefs Site Explorer.
Impact on revenue
Now that you know how to measure the impact of your content optimization strategy on brand recognition in your online store, let's look at something even more important. You guessed it: the impact on your income.
In this regard, here are the two indicators that you should follow:
Reduced customer churn
If you implement a better content optimization process, it will impact how your customers perceive and interact with your website. A well-designed content strategy will ensure that customers get the answers they need and that they are interested in the content. This will reduce the churn rate of customers that you might otherwise encounter.
Increase in sales
The goal of quality content on your website is, after all, to promote your brand and increase conversions. Content optimization can help you achieve these goals and ensure that your content drives sales in your online store. When you have quality content that informs and convinces your customers, they are likely to trust you over your competitors and therefore increase your sales.
8. Conclusion
Optimizing content for e-commerce is an important part of your content marketing strategy and should definitely be a priority for your content to generate sales and traffic for your online store. If done right, content optimization can set your brand apart from competitors, give it a unique identity, and drive sales.
Content optimization is not an easy task to do and can get confusing at several stages. If this happens to you, using an SEO agency that can understand your business needs and help you optimize your content successfully is always an option.
