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Before we talk about the importance of SEO for your POD store, let’s take a step back and take a small trip a few years down the line. You see, in 1883, there was a printer in Wyoming who was supposed to print out a telephone directory. But the man lacked one essential component needed to print out the directory: white paper. But instead of getting more paper, the man printed out the entire directory on yellow colored paper.
And hence, yellow pages came into existence. It’s funny to think that one of the most common things found in everyone’s household until a decade back was printed out the way it was by accident. Back in the day, yellow pages were the only directories that mattered. But now, in this digital era, search engines have dethroned them. If you’re seeking contacts for any business in any corner of the world, search engines are your best friends.
However, there is one key difference between yellow pages and search engines apart from the massive technological upgrade. Unlike telephone directories, search engines are arranged according to content relevance. This relevance is determined by Search Engine Optimisation, commonly referred to as SEO, an $80 billion industry that determines how well you rank on the SERPs.
If you’re looking for ways to improve your print on demand store’s SEO ranking, in this article, we will provide you with everything you require to step up your SEO game.
Understanding the importance of SEO & organic traffic for POD stores
Let’s take a very relatable situation to give you a clearer picture of SEO’s importance in all this. If you enter anything into a search engine and start sifting through the results, it is more than likely that you won’t go beyond the first or second SERP (Search Engine Results Page). You are not going to waste too much time digging into it. Similarly, it is of the essence that your POD store website also needs to appear as close to the top of the SERPs as possible. This is only possible via a good SEO ranking.
Now moving onto organic traffic, let’s first understand what it means. Organic traffic is unpaid visitors who visit your website just because it is ranked high on the SERPs and not because of paid ads. They are essentially free traffic. Organic traffic is the most critical kind of web traffic because they are people who have specifically come to your website because their unique needs match your niche and product offers. Therefore, there is a much bigger chance of them converting into leads or sales.
Paid traffic, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. It can bring you visitors, but only because you have paid for a place high up in the SERPs. Since these are inorganic users, there is a much smaller chance of converting them.
But for you to increase the number of organic traffic on your website, you must rank high on the SERPs. There are a couple of factors this depends on, but the one that comes to mind right now is your website speed. Now that the Google search engine follows a mobile-first indexing approach, pages with slow loading speeds will find it difficult to rank high on the SERPs. This is because Google aims to provide its users with a smooth user experience, pushing well-optimized websites higher up on the SERPs.
Five ways to optimize your POD store
Keyword optimization
Keyword optimization is the first step in your SEO campaign. Look for the correct keywords to include in your website in order to achieve a high ranking on the SERPs. Have a proper grasp of the buyer’s intent before you do so. Keyword optimization can be split into three parts. They are as follows.
What keywords to look for?
Your website should have a sound mix of both body and long-tail keywords. Body keywords are the ones with 2-3 words and score pretty high on search volume. Whereas, long-tail keywords comprise four or more words and are much more specific than body keywords. Having a sound mix of both body and long-tail keywords can result in a good score on search engines.
Where to look?
You can initially start looking for them on Google or Amazon search bars. Enter a body keyword into the search bar, for instance, “basketball shoes”. Now you will find words people have used to search for anything and everything related to basketball shoes on the search engine. This is one way to look for keywords.
On the other hand, you can also look for them on forums and social media. But this can be time-consuming. Although, you can avoid all this hassle by using keyword generating tools or plugins like Google trends, Ahref, etc
Integrate your Keywords to your Merch Store
If you own a merch store, place the keywords strategically throughout product listings, descriptions, and titles. Here are just a few pointers you need to remember.
- Make your keywords as specific as possible.
- Do not stuff them in a single phrase.
- Make sure that they are easy to read and convey all the required information to the audience.
- If your website has multiple pages, never put the same keywords on them since they will then compete against each other for SEO ranking.
Boost Online Avenues that Link to your Merch Store
A captivating online presence will always work in your favor with regard to SEO ranking. Given below are some steps you can use to achieve them.
Social media
Building your brand on social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., can go a long way in boosting brand awareness and visibility. Share your product links on your social media account to create inbound links. By doing so, you are attracting leads that are likely to stay for longer on your page and end up buying. Only people who are genuinely interested in the products you are selling.
Blogs
Adding blogs to your website can increase your relevance on the Google SERPs. Make sure that you stay active and keep posting, for Google will always push fresh content first. You can write blogs to educate your audience about your products or services. Give them tips, stories, and listicles, and keep posting regularly to increase brand reliability and credibility. Also, another way to pump up your search engine ranking is to have people spend more time on your POD website, and what better way to do this than having them read blogs.
Visual content
The google algorithm always pushes websites with a great deal of visual content. Google firmly believes in providing its users with a great user experience, and what better way to enhance user experience than creating a visually pleasing website. Make sure that you include relevant images and in adequate amounts. Do not overdo it.
There are two ways you can optimize your tags. They are as follows.
A title tag refers to an HTML element that helps you specify the title of your webpage. These clickable headlines appear on the SERPs. Every single webpage will have a title tag. Hence you need to make sure that your tag stands out compared to the rest. Here are a few tips you can follow for title tags.
- Make them around 50-60 characters long. This is the optimum length for title tags.
- Include the keyword that you are trying to rank for at the start of the tag. A study conducted by Moz states that title tags with keywords at the start always rank better than those with the keyword at the end. This pertains to title tags on products and collections.
- Alter the title tag and meta description for your actual store as well. Doing this via Shopify or BigCommerce is easy. If you’re using Shopify, in particular, read the Shopify SEO guide to learn on-page, off-page, as well as technical SEO for the Shopify platform.
When a user punches in a keyword relevant to your website, the search engine doesn’t just sift through text. It also goes through all the images on your website for it to better understand your website. They receive these relevancy signals via filenames and alt tags. Alt tags are anchor texts for your images. A tip to remember would be to include keywords in your alt tags to increase relevance. So the perfect alt tag would be a brief description of your product paired with an alt tag.
Content optimization
Product descriptions
Creating unique product descriptions is the key to help your website stand out on the SERPs. The more unique content you give to search engines, the higher are the chances of discoverability for your website. This will make your website a lot more engaging and attractive for potential customers, giving them a reason to stay. A perfect product description will provide customers with the information they need to make their purchase decision, whilst keeping them entertained.
Collection description
Creating ‘collections’ of your products and services is yet another way to get the search engine’s attention. These collections can be optimized for search engines as well. You need to update the title, meta tag, and image on defining a collection. Update all three, and you are all good to go. Try including the keyword organically wherever possible.
Maintaining a blog
Maintaining a blog is one of the best ways to optimize the content on your website. Not only are you able to inculcate all the necessary keywords, but you can also include all the relevant links to other websites in order to optimize your website for SEO. in fact, 52% of the marketers believe that the most vital aspect of content marketing is blogging, and 57% can claim that they have gained a plethora of customers specifically via blogging. Consistently providing relevant information, including all the right keywords and links, will surely land you a high SEO ranking.
Visual content
As mentioned earlier, Google will push websites with a good amount of relevant visual content higher up the SEO ranking compared to websites that lack this. In fact, here is a stat as to why Google does this. According to a survey conducted by DemandGen, 91% of consumers will favour visual content. So make sure that your website is visually aesthetic and relevant for a shot at a higher SEO ranking.
Boost Online Avenues that Link to your Merch Store
Backlinks from other blogs
Link building is essential for SEO. But what exactly are backlinks? Well, backlinks are created when someone else links your website on theirs. People usually do it when they want to cite some content from another website. This is why uploading unique content is of the essence to improve your chances of backlinking. Another quick fix to building backlinks is to keep sharing your own content.
The more you share it, the more people will see and share it. Remember to link your product pages amidst all this content to direct people towards your product pages.
Social media
Having a strong social media presence is vital for every brand out there. If you create engaging and encapsulating content on your social media pages, it will drive better engagement. Create content relevant to your target audience to increase chances of conversion further. But again, remember to include the link to your product page to convert some of this engagement into actual sales.
Bottom Line
For your website to rank as high as possible on the SERPs, it must be optimized for both search engine crawlers and human users. If you are a print-on-demand store looking to expand your business online and create a substantial internet presence, then this article is a great starting point for you. Follow the above best practices to optimize your website for SEO and watch your POD business soar.