Mastering SEO for independent retailers

Steps To Get Started

Most independent retailers understand the benefits of SEO for their businesses but don't know where to start. This section highlights five crucial steps retailers should focus on when doing SEO.

Perform Keyword Research

Keyword research is vital for a successful retail SEO. Retailers need to know the terms their target audience uses when searching for products/services like theirs to build content around them.

Many tools, including Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner, can help with keyword research. Here are crucial stages to cover when researching keywords:

Informational keywords: They help educate users about products or services

Navigational keywords: Users use these keywords when they want to visit a specific website or webpage.

Transactional keywords: Users will use these keywords if they intend to do a transaction. In other words, these keywords reveal users have the strongest intent to take action. Examples include "buy," "download," "subscribe," register," etc.

Intent-based: These keywords show the purpose or intention of a searcher's query.

Local SEO

Local search provides retail businesses an excellent opportunity to gain more visibility locally. By optimizing for local searches, businesses can reach more potential customers actively searching for local solutions.

Below are steps retailers should take to optimize their local businesses:

• Set and optimize Google My Business listing

• Ensure the business name, address, and phone number is accurate across all platforms

• Encourage customer reviews

• List their businesses on relevant local directories

As a bonus, retailers respond to all reviews (positive and negative) to boost credibility and trust.

Create High-Quality Content

High-quality content forms the basis of a solid SEO strategy for independent retailers.

High-quality content attracts the right audience to a website, engages them, and encourages them to take action. In fact, if the content is valuable, users will likely share it to reach a wider audience.

In addition to benefiting users, high-quality content can help improve a website's rankings on search results. High-quality content will also help generate high-quality backlinks and increase click-through rates (CTR).

Optimize Images

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is especially true for independent retailers who offer physical products or tutorials.

Image optimization ensures that a website and product images are in the right format, size, dimension, and resolution. Optimizing images has many benefits, including:

• Improving page load speed

• Enhancing user engagement

• Providing a good user experience

• Reducing bounce rate by shoving off additional page loading time

In turn, this will help improve SEO for a retail website and boost conversions.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile devices contribute to 59.01% of all website traffic. Additionally, 92.3% of all internet users use a mobile device when performing a search.

Mobile optimization involves adjusting the website content to provide users with a good user experience when viewing it via mobile devices.

Retailers can achieve this by ensuring the content is scrollable, optimizing videos, and using easy-to-read text, among other things. 

Taking it to the next level

The benefits of SEO for independent retailers cannot be overstated. With better SEO, retailers can reach a wider audience, become more credible and trustworthy, and get a higher click-through rate.

SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy with long-term benefits. When done right, it can form the firm foundation of a retail business and provide room for sustainable growth. Strategies like proper keyword research, content and image optimization, mobile optimization, and local SEO will help boost visibility for retailers and increase sales.