Definition: On-page optimization is everything an ecommerce website can do to improve its rank in search results without relying on off-page factors. On-page optimizations are the ranking factors directly controlled by a website, making them a necessary first step to successful ecommerce SEO.
Four important components of on-page optimization
Optimizing an ecommerce website per SEO best practices involves many steps — such as keyword research and competitive analysis. What's a strategy is defined, it's time to optimize:
1) Title Tags
Title tags act as a concise description of what a given web page is about, and is one of the main things users consider when deciding whether or not to visit a certain page. As a guiding principle, try to limit title tags to no more than 55-60 characters — the approximate length search engines will display. Google's limit for title tag length is 512 pixels wide, which cannot be equated to a definitive number of characters due to varying length of letters.
2) URLs
Optimized URLs clearly convey the purpose of a page to search engines, including where it's located in the hierarchy of a website.A good URL establishes the place of a given page in relation to other content, and yes, search engines are completely capable of understanding this and deciding how relevant it is to a given searcher's interests. The better the URL matches that interest, the higher the page is going to rank for them.
3) Image alt text
Search engines can't visually process images, relying instead on alt text to explain the purpose of an image. By explaining the subject of a given article in the image's alt text, search engines will understand that the image is relevant to the topic and therefore more likely to be helpful to anyone who sees it. Alt text also allows images to be found in image search.
4) Outstanding Content
Content may be the last item on this list, but it's also the most important. Ultimately, nothing on a website is more important than its content. Good content is:
- Unique - Don't use the manufacturer's descriptions for products, and definitely don't copy/paste content from other websites
- Relevant - Each page should focus on one topic to clearly communicate its purpose to
- Valuable - The content should inform, entertain, assist, or otherwise benefit the reader
- Easy to navigate - Users should find accessing the content to be a pleasant experience
- Reactive - Capable of being properly displayed on any device used to access it)
- Shareable - It should be easy to spread the content through social media and other venues)
