Do SSL Certificates Affect Search Rankings By James Tredwell on December 22, 2020 If you are running your own website, then you definitely hear about the SSL. In the case of online marketing, an SSL certificate holds great importance. According to the experts, it is also useful in improving website ranking. In other words, some people consider HTTPS as a ranking signal. The majority of individuals are paying attention to the trends only and start adding an SSL certificate to the website. Some people really want to know; it is helpful in boosting search ranking or a myth. When it comes to the website ranking, then search engine optimization practices become important. Ranking a website on the search engine result pages is highly dependent on the quality of backlinks. On the other hand, it is also true that Google considers more than 200 search engine ranking factors. Sometimes, it becomes impossible to fulfill all factors appropriately. In these conditions, the SSL can work as a great source by which you can bring some changes in the search ranking. For more clarity and insights, you should keep reading the article. SSL Certificate – What Is It? Before focusing on the deep details related to the SSL certificate, we have to understand what it actually is and how it works. SSL certificate is a kind of digital identity with some unique characteristics. It can be easily installed on any web server. The most important thing is all SSL certificates are issued with a specific unique ID. It means the certificate that issues for your website will not be issued to another. To get such a certificate, you should choose a trusted source only. Along with it, the SSL certificate also helps the user’s website by protecting it from the outsider’s attack. It can be useful in availing of some specific benefits. In case you want to understand how to differentiate the domains with SSL and without SSL, you should focus on their beginning. In the beginning, you can see HTTP is changed to HTTPS. HTTPS represents the protected domains only. How Does SSL Affect Search Engine Ranking? After getting some basic knowledge about SSL, you can understand how does it work. Now the question appears on, is it beneficial in search engine ranking, and what are the benefits of having an SSL certified website? With the help of the following points, you can easily get answers to both of your questions. Search Engine Preferences As we know, to get the website ranked quickly, all individuals have to keep working on the search engine optimization practices. It is the only way by which the website owners can represent their website as a credible source in front of the search engine. To make sure it, you have to take care of several elements, such as – User-friendly website SEO-friendly website Well SEO-optimized Proper addition of keywords Quality backlinks Impressive link building strategy These are some major factors by which you can impress the search engine bots and get ranked. Here, we should not forget that there are more than 200 search ranking factors in previous paragraphs. If we talk about the SSL, then it is also a dominating one. The websites with SSL start displaying with a different URL structure that begins with HTTPS instead of HTTP. According to the search engine guidelines and algorithm functionings, the HTTPS domains get preference over HTTP domains when it comes to ranking. This particular factor is also proved in multiple studies and researches. Many search engine optimization experts also admitted that it is compulsory to have an SSL certificate if you want to rank on the search engine result pages quickly. Provide A Better User Experience Everyone needs to be focused on the website’s user experience to impress the users. In case you do not get success in impressive the users, they start leaving the website after a few seconds only. It clearly increases the overall bounce rate of the website. Increased trends in the bounce rate are not good for the website’s ranking. It starts leading to a negative impact on the search engine ranking by giving wrong signals. In these conditions, the search engine bots understand that the users are leaving your website because they do not find something relevant or useful. It means your website is useless. As a result, it becomes bad, and the users start lacking in achieving business goals. Here, all website owners need to make sure they are keeping the website’s user experience always high by which they can encourage the users to spend more time as much as possible. All business owners want to know how they can increase the website’s user experience and keep it up to the mark. There are multiple things that can help you earn the trust of visitors and motivate them to stay on your website for a long period. As we mentioned, trust is the most important factor. You can earn the users’ trust by presenting your platform as a secured and trusted one. It can be possible with the help of an SSL certificate only. It makes your domain secure and provides safety to the users while accessing your website as well. Consequently, you can see, users start spending more time on the website. It helps in decreasing the bounce rate effectively and leads to some positive results only. If you are running a website with a lower bounce rate, then you can detect its positive effects on the search engine ranking. It represents you are serving something useful on your website to help the users solve their problems. Keep Yourself Always Ahead The online marketplace is full of competition, and all website & business owners are trying to keep themselves ahead. No one wants to get beaten by the competitors and let them hold a higher position in the search engine ranking. To make it possible and achieve the ranking goals, the companies are putting lots of effort into holding the top-notch ranking position for a long time. The biggest issue in these conditions is how many ranking factors you are covering by following proper search engine optimization guidelines. Here, every single element plays a big role. Due to this, you cannot ignore the importance of an SSL certificate because it is also one of the 200 ranking factors. Some people don’t believe in getting an SSL certificate for the website and start working without it. While facing such a situation, these types of users may lack in fulfilling such a requirement. As a result, they lack in getting ranked on the search engine result pages. If you have the SSL certificate on your website, but your competitor does not, it becomes a positive point and an additional factor by which you can get ranked. Know More These are some key facts about the importance of an SSL certificate. It can help you figure out how you can connect the availability of SSL certificates on your website with the search engine ranking. Along with it, getting the SSL certificate is not any difficult task. You can easily get it by spending a small amount of money only. An SSL certificate is not something that needs lots of money to keep your website fully secure. You should get a certificate and convert your website domain into an HTTPS domain today. Types Of SSL Certificates If you understand the importance of an SSL certificate, you should not delay and get it today and install it on your website quickly. Before proceeding with such a thing, you have to focus on the selection of the right SSL. Mainly there are five types of SSL certificates offered by the service providers. Single Domain SSL Certificate By choosing this particular certificate, you can easily protect one domain. In case you have multiple websites and domains, then choosing a single-domain SSL certificate for all is not a good decision. You should choose it in case of operating a single-domain only. Multi-Domain SSL Certificate If you have multiple websites and are willing to protect them all, you should proceed with selecting a multi-domain SSL certificate. It can help you in covering more than one domain under a single certificate. As a result, you can save a good amount of money as well. In case you have any plan of buying more domains in the future, it can also work. Wildcard SSL Certificate The specifications and functioning of a wildcard SSL certificate are between the single and multi-domain SSL certificate. It can help you cover multiple websites, but these websites cannot be related to different root domains. In simple words, we can say it can be useful in protecting a root domain and its subdomains. Organization SSL Certificate It is almost similar to the single-domain SSL certificate. The only difference that you can notice is, it requires your organizational details for confirmation. Extended With the help of an extended SSL certificate, you can leave the biggest impact. You have to confirm and verify the legal details while installing it on the website servers. All these things can help you in getting deep into the SSL certificates and their functionings. For more details and installation procedures, you can discuss facts with the experts. Ravi is CEO & founder of Webomaze Pty. Ltd. He believes in serving the industry with some unique solutions with a huge variety of services including web design & web development, SEO Services, ECommerce Development, and so on.
Ways to Use Google Analytics to Track Your SEO Efforts By James Tredwell on December 8, 2020 More than ever, SEO has become so important. How do you make your website rank at the top of the Google page? How do you raise your chances of driving more traffic to your Website? The truth is, there is no single route to achieving this. While you engage in different ways to make it happen, you will also need to constantly check your stat performance on SEO, tweak it, and discover what is working and not. One way to track this is through Google Analytics. What is Google Analytics? Google Analytics can help you monitor and track your efforts on SEO. But before we delve into how, it is important first to understand what this tool is. Have an idea of how it works to take full advantage of its package. Google Analytics is a Web Analytics whose job is to track, measure, and raise website traffic. It does this by helping you see your SEO effort’s progress, where and how to revamp it. It is currently a platform in the Google Marketing Platform brand. This service was launched in November 2005 by Google. Google Analytics will help you to understand your audience and customers better. It gives you the tools you need to scrutinize your business data in one platform. There are several SEO analytic tools to help monitor your SEO data. Google Analytics is one of such tools. How Does Google Analytics Do this? Valuable data is embedded in Google Analytics. Your Website can use the data to track and improve Search Engine Optimisation performance. It does this from relevant keywords to your site’s highest referrals, as well as via other mediums. Below are ten practical ways to help you harness the value of Google Analytics in tracking your SEO efforts. 10 Ways to Use Google Analytics to Track Your SEO Efforts. Create SEO-related Targets It would be best if you always began SEO campaigns by first setting up Google Analytics. Secondly is by setting Targets along with the creation of corresponding conversation pages. This helps to track when a person views a page with a conversation element on it. It also helps to report to you when a form like a Contact Us has been successfully filled and submitted. This page should have its personalized URL. It is also excellent to include the NOINDEX meta-tag. Including this helps not to display them organically. It ensures the reduction of false-alarm hits. It also reassures the person of accuracy in the report. In other words, you don’t want the goal of tracking your organic traffic only. But to equally monitor organic visitors. This is an excellent way to compare SEO efforts in comparison with other marketing campaigns. Find Your High-ranking Content Another great SEO tip to draw traffic when using Google Analytics is to analyze your high-performing pages frequently. After getting the analysis, go further to update them. You can do this by adding fresh and eye-catching content to your posts. High-rank the articles by including a stronger Call-to-Action. Whatever you can do to improve the ‘returns’ in the areas of your Website, do it. Work on the articles and help them stay at the top. Where is this tip most applicable? It is applicable in pages that get plenty of traffic but drive little or no business value. This tip is also relevant in pages that once ranked high but significantly dropped in organic traffic. You can equally use it to track the potency of specific pages. You can track, say, Dwell time, and see which internal links get the highest number of clicks. This will help you better understand your content’s effectiveness by monitoring, making changes, and principally improving your content. Aside from updating already existing top-performing content, you can create more content around the same topic. For instance, you made a post on The Top 10 Organic Hair Products to Try. And this post ranked so high. You have the option of either revamping the article or publishing another article on hair products. Keyword Research and Tracking Finding relevant keywords is one thing. Tracking them is another. Keyword research is ultimate. Your customers use them in their searches to find you. On the other hand, tracking keywords is possible in Google Analytics; however, the challenge with using it to track successes with SEO is that the keyword field is not given. This makes it hard to integrate the keywords used by people with the Website’s behavior. One way around this is, integrating Google Analytics with Search Console. After that, looking at Acquisition, Search Console, and Landing Pages in Google Analytics. This will help to show you the landing pages people are clicking when coming from Google. It will yet give you a knowledge of the major search terms used to find you. Correlate Organic Visitors to Non-Organic Visitors Concentrate on a specific page and track the metrics for organic traffic. After that, exclude the organic traffic and measure the metrics. Successful SEO efforts will reveal an increase in organic traffic and metrics. However, by excluding the organic traffic, you will be able to single out the poor user experience and just any design that needs improvement in general. This will help to extra boost SEO efforts. Check How Google views your Website. You want to occasionally view the category of your Website through the eyes of Google. You want to see if it is ranking on the first page. Google also wants this for your Website. It wants your site to rank on page number 1. To use Google Analytics for this is simple. You can check the category of your visitor’s interest. To do this, go to the ‘Audience.’ after that, go to ‘Interest’ and finally, ‘Overview in Google Analytics.’ This will give you the results of Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, and Other Categories. The data can help you to see the major interest of the visitors to your Website. And eventually, give you a guide to planning content marketing in accordance. Google will display to you the categories it deems necessary for your site. While Optimizing, Track Results and Document them A straightforward way to track and document the results while optimizing is to use annotations. This is done in Google Analytics. Using its annotations will help you to measure the performance of a content post-optimization. Use annotations. Annotate every SEO optimization you make in Google Analytics. It gives you an evident standard to gauge improvements from your SEO efforts. Create Notifications for 404 Pages “Page Not Found – 404” error is unavoidable. It is something that you need to monitor with Google Analytics. 404’s are mostly caused by typos or either internal or external links pointing to the URL. This can be done by first ensuring that all of your 404 pages have a harmonious page title as, say, “Page not found” or “404 – page not found”. After that, do not redirect them elsewhere. The URL should remain unchanged. Thirdly, proceed to set up an alert. After setting an alert for this, the only thing you should worry about is working out what caused the ” 404 – Page not Found”. Was it caused by internal or external links pointing to the URL? Was it a typo? Create a Dashboard for Your SEO This is one of the strategies in using Google Analytics to track your SEO efforts. Most times, your data is presented matters. Making your custom report is a great tip for measuring SEO. You can either save a custom report on a section of your Website or just pick certain metrics. These metrics could be the number of entrances made to your page or the average time spent. Google Analytics and SEO data can be presented via the built-in dashboard interface. What it does is that it pulls all individual reports into one-view. This single view is easier to gain access to, share, and print out. One of the importance of having a copy of your SEO metrics is that it will reduce the time spent reviewing Analytics. It allows you to give the time to pay attention to the SEO progress. This will also help you to see which of your content is the most popular on your site. Ultimately, it gives you an idea of how much organic traffic you’re getting. Use Segments to Remove Spam Traffic It is essential to use filters to eliminate spam traffic for correct reporting. There are various spam traffics. Two types especially can ruin your reports. These are Crawlers and Fake Referrers, and Ghost Spam. It is also possible to get spam traffic through direct. In this case, you will remove traffic that mismatches your hostname. Filters will prevent spam traffic from popping up in your reports. This will take effect from the moment you implement it. Where then does Segment come in? Segment handles the work of removing non-useful traffic retrospectively. They are great. An easy step to tracking organic traffic using Google Analytics is to set a custom dashboard. This dashboard should be segmented for organic traffic alone to display all the important metrics to your Website. Track Your Best Landing Pages This is a great tip. It can help you increase the views on your page. It can help decrease the bounce rate and help you better understand your least and most converting pages. You can run through your top landing page periodically and optimize the top 5 or top 10. Optimize them for Conversion, Readability, and Google’s latest algorithm. Optimizing them for Conversion can increase your income. For Readability, to increase the time we’ll have. Lastly, for Google’s latest algorithm, to keep your content up to date. Conclusion Tracking SEO efforts with Google Analytics is vital for all websites. Your traffic comes from all over. Some teams are professionals in helping businesses grow by optimizing their Websites. We at hopinfirst analyze your data to accelerate your growth and give your visitors what they want. For more SEO tips and answers, contact us at hopinfirst today. This article is contributed by Grace P. – is a renowned content writer at Monify Media
Important Google Analytics Metrics You Should Know and Understand By James Tredwell on November 25, 2020 The internet has made everything so simple and easy that a person can easily search for anything from anywhere. The internet is composed of different websites, and today, when the world is shifting everything online, it has become important to keep track of how many people have visited your website in a day? We sometimes look or want to check how many people visit the business website that has been created with a lot of brainstorming and design. Let us explore what needs to be done and how it is to be done? What is meant by the term Google Analytics Metrics? Let us first understand the term a bit more clearer; Google Analytics is web analytics that keeps a record of websites. It tracks the traffic being generated through the website. Currently, this platform comes under Google Marketing Analytics. In short, it is web analytics that works by including some blocks that are JavaScript codes. These codes work when a user lands on the view page of the website. And here, the reference of the javascript file then starts it’s on tracking begins. In this manner, Google Analytics provides in-depth detail on the visitors of the websites. This also helps people know about the various popular web pages and provides detail on how often people make a purchase and what not. It can help a long way in determining both success and growth. Now let us look forward to the next term that is the Metrics of Google Analytics. So, Google Analytics Metrics is that quantitative data provides tons and tons of data that relates to the action being performed on a particular website in the simplest of the forms. Now arises the question, what is the need for Google Analytics metrics? For instance, let us take this example; you have a business; you know it is important to have a well-designed website. Now you get a perfect website design done. Now you need to look at how your website performs and if there are any updates needed to be done to attract a lot of visitors. So, as to monitor the actions and feedback of visitors, Google Analytics, and Metrics can help. What do these Google Analytics Metrics mean for your business? Why are Google Analytics Metrics necessary for the business to grow? It is mostly used to convert potential customers into loyal customers. But how will this be achieved? It can be done by using Google Analytics and Metrics; this helps provide the customers’ information, such as how often they visit the website. And the business owner or the website owner gets to know about the customer and works to attract more and more visitors to the website. Which, in turn, increases the profits and revenues. What is the importance of Metrics in Google Analytics? Breaking down on a simpler level, the Google Analytics metric is a data set that is associated with these actions that are being done over the website. For instance, it is something that is done to achieve great results. Who needs to see Google Analytics Metrics: The businesspersons and the budding entrepreneurs must see it. It serves to make them aware of the visitors, the users, and the targeted audience. It enables them to make changes or updates according to the need and expectations of the audience. Types of Google Analytics Metrics Which Are Important for Business Google Analytics is a software that helps to determine different characteristics of the website. Here are some important metrics used by users: 1. Acquisition Overview: One can find it by the following logging on to Google Analytics Acquisition > overview. It will help you know and keep an eye on the traffic being produced on the website. It can lead to more of your time usage. An added advantage can be, it contains a good number of sessions, the percentage of new sessions, bounce rates, and many more. 2. Social Overview: It refers to the social relationships or the activity of social media on your website. It will provide you with the information where the content of one’s website is being shared. In short, it shows the engagement of the users. Hence, unique goals can be created to keep a check on social media conversions. 3. Bounce Rate: This Google Analytics and Metrics rate shows the actual number of users or visitors visit on your site. But sometimes it has a loophole; for instance, take this example, if the website’s total bounce rate is 76%, out of which 61.45% are new visitors while 14.5% are the repeated visitors that visit, it might seem elevated which might become a problem as well. Hence, keeping track of performance is a must. Thus, it can be done by, Audience > Overview. 4. Traffic Sources: It can be located as under, Acquisition > All Traffic > Medium. It is a simple overview of the table. It includes the total number of sessions, bounce rates goal, conversions, durations, making it a comprehensive one to understand. It works on the principle of traffic growth. If the traffic grows, it will be difficult for the operator to keep a track record on how the performance is. 5. Conversions: This Google Analytics works when a user takes action regarding the conversion goal, which is being set. For example, if the conversion goal is set to subscribe to a mail or if the user takes any action regarding the same, it is counted as a conversion. In Google Analytics, it has many more tracking goals, as well. 6. Behavior Flow: It can be found by behavior> behavior flow. Being an ever-exciting feature, it depicts how the users enter the website, and it tracks the way they start and ends up till the tracking of how they leave. It will further make the website owner know about the users, which updates the Web design accordingly to attract and encourage more users. 7. Exit Pages: To keep an eye on your site’s exit pages, this can be done by following the behavior> site content> exit pages. If this rate of exit increases, this means the number of visitors to the website is decreasing. So to engage more and more customers, users, or visitors. So, for this engagement, the website should include the related content as well to attract visitors. And web design should be updated time-to-time to attract and fascinate visitors. 8. Goals: As the owner of the business and the website, one can pick any action as the goal. If you want to connect to a visitor through the forms, it can even serve the purpose of being a goal. Google Analytics and Metrics will turn this goal into conversions. Here are more than 3000 goals to give the website more chances. And if someone is a newbie to it, Google Analytics has tutorials being covered from starting till the end. 9. Average Pages Per Visit: This metric comes with a well-organized dashboard, which provides the information that, on average, how many users navigate before leaving. It can help the owner of the website to structurize the dashboard as well as properly. 10. Average Time Spent: As the name itself describes its usage, this metric helps the website owner know what the average amount of time that is being spent on the site by a particular reader is. The more the time the indication is clear, that the website is prospering. And if this time gap is low, it can be a clear indication that your website needs to be updated as per the audiences’ interests. 11. Traffic And Traffic Source: Being the most basic of the metrics, the web site’s traffic will clearly define the number of new visitors throughout the time that is being defined. The traffic can be increased by google paid ads or the blog. Each website looks to increase its reach to more and more users. So, as to have a look at how often people visit will determine the growth as well. Hence, an eye must be kept on in terms of visitors. These days, to increase the traffic, many ways have been established, such as email marketing, social media marketing, and so on. There are so many channels that help a website to grow. But, which is one channel that provides incredibly more traffic. How to find one. Hence, another metric of traffic source can help. It is the easiest way to determine which channel has helped reach or has gathered good traffic. Conclusion: Google Analytics is difficult just because of the metrics that are being used. But might prove to be helpful in some of the cases. There can be 11 metrics mentioned above that will help you out track the traffic of the site and make suitable changes if any. Google Analytics metrics can turn out to be a sure shot hit in enhancing your business and its reach. It will help in achieving future goals and growth both in the long run. This article is contributed by Akash Kumar– Digital Marketing Head at Digital Vidya.
Why Is It Crucial to Focus on Your SEO? By James Tredwell on November 1, 2020 With the digitalization of the era, the world has come down to our fingertips. A google search for almost everything has now become the part of everyone’s lifestyle. But with millions of websites listing online every day, web traffic has become higher than it was a decade earlier. The turf to be more visible on the Google Search Engine Results Page seems to be an eternal war. The SEO is quintessential for digital marketers in winning such wars. Optimizing your pages with SEO becomes a greater leap towards more organic web traffic. SEO helps get greater brand visibility and is the best source of inbound marketing. The importance of SEO is innumerable. Yet, it remains the most misunderstood and confusing tool for most users. Research conducted on the cruciality of SEO denotes that SEO is a better tool for driving organic traffic for modern time business than traditional advertisements. SEO could be a game-changing tool even for small businesses. Below are a few points to help you understand the reasons behind the cruciality of Search Engine Optimization. SEO Amplifies Brand Visibility SEO being a driving tool for organic web traffic, works on the optimization of the search results. If your page is SEO optimized, it helps you earn visibility on the first page of Google. Isn’t that a necessity for the growth of your business? The more visibility you gain online, the more are your chances to stand out from the other businesses. Thus, it helps you attract more customers to your brand. Ranks You Higher in Google SERPS Along with your website’s visibility, it’s important to be ranked higher on Google Search Engine Results Pages or SERPs. These are Google’s response to the query of the User. It includes the organic search results, paid Google Ads, related images, videos, and Knowledge Graph results. Keywords usually undermine them. There are tools like SERPs API tool by WhatsMySERP. These SERPs checker tools help you check the top 100 Google search results for different keywords. But even when we appear in the Google SERPs’ top searches, we might not appear as the topmost result. To obtain this, we can use SERP API tools to scrape Google search results as its algorithm keeps changing. To make pages ranked even with the changing algorithms, SERP API remains the first choice. The parameters in connection to Search Query, Geographic Location, Search Type can be scraped through this tool. It could also scrape the Google Images and Knowledge Graph results. It also makes sense of the local pack’s information as well as organic traffic information. SEO Earns You More Credibility Once your page appears among the top results on Google, it begins to consider you as a relevant and useful source of information. SEO helps in getting your page established through various backlinks from other reputed sites. This improvises the user’s experience. With optimized and relevant content, the user’s chances of clicking back to your website increase, which acts as a building block to the user’s trust in your website. This ultimately leads to more clicks. Brings More Site Traffic The traffic gained by websites comes through organic searches. These organic searches aren’t paid. Yet, they have a greater chance to appear on the search engines more than the paid ones. While SEO too needs an upfront investment, it is much less than the amount paid for sponsored results. Best Source of Inbound Marketing Inbound marketing is content-based. It is a methodology that attracts customers through relevant content. But outbound marketing annoys the customer with irrelevant content. SEO is known for its user-friendly interface. So, it helps the customers obtain such relevant content reading through their search behavior and experiences. This helps the customer to choose from the best of the relevant content available to them. SEO and Social Media While being on Social Media is the new fashion. SEO helps determine the algorithms of the Social Media platforms. Be it Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, getting your content visible to the audience’s greatest number becomes a key to getting more followers. SEO brings changes to their algorithms and helps earn visibility to most users. This visibility on the Social Media Platforms also alters the Google Search Engine Results. Conversion Tool SEO optimized websites are more organized and user friendly. So, these websites are easily navigable and hold your audience’s attention. These websites are structured and easily organized for a more user-friendly experience. SEO is the most efficient digital marketing strategy in modern times. Its ability to drive organic traffic helps you save pennies spent on the expensive Google Ads. These Google ads might appear to be a quick way to gain a customer base; it isn’t as long-lasting as SEO. Various channels are working in the marketing field, yet SEO’s performance is revolutionary. For a decade or more, SEO has gained its trust among the Digital marketers and has become an essential tool to grow online To Sum Up Anybody can create a website and start a business online. This will not cater towards the need of any marketer which is more sales. For your brand to get more sales and promotions, there has to be a website which is ranked top in Google. With the above-mentioned pointers, you can effectively work on enhancing the SEO for your website.
How To Prepare Your Ecommerce Store For Voice Search By James Tredwell on September 30, 2020 Voice search is the latest technology making waves in the ecommerce landscape. Customers are using this technology to search for products and services online. As per the latest market reports, in a few decades, around 50% of online searches will be conducted using this technology. The rise in the popularity of devices that feature voice search functionality has also led to an increase in the number of people using spoken language than written for searching anything online. Many popular ecommerce sites are prepping their sites for this technology as it is believed to shape the future of online searches. In today’s article, we’ll let you know about the tried-and-tested ways to optimize your ecommerce website for voice search. Prepping your online store so that customers can find you easily is crucial for your business. What is Voice Search? Voice search technology is a medium of interaction between customers and the internet. It involves customers using spoken language instead of writing. This technology is transforming the way in which customers interact with brands. The rise in the usage of smartphones for online shopping has led to a dramatic increase in the usage of voice search. Ecommerce businesses are using this technology to offer a personalized shopping experience to the customers. Importance of Voice Search Here are some notable statistics to emphasize on the importance of voice search: More than 50% of consumers use the voice search for finding contact details among other info for local businesses. In the United States, 71% of individuals in the age group of 18-29 use mobile virtual assistants. Estimatedly 22% of consumers are using smart home speakers with voice enabled functions. 20% of all the search queries online are voice-based. By the end of 2020, that figure is predicted to change to 50% which will make voice search more popular. The Voice-based speakers market is globally forecasted to reach $30 billion in revenue by 2024. Voice-enabled shopping will rise to $40 billion. If you’re wondering how voice search can help your ecommerce business attain profitable gains, then here is a list of benefits of this technology: It promotes personalization of the online shopping experience by offering personalized product recommendations and discounts. It is faster than typical online searches and yields faster results, thereby making it a time-efficient technology. Ecommerce brands offering this feature to their users have reported a rise in sales. How to Prepare Your E-Store For Voice Search? Whether you’re an established ecommerce company looking to integrate this technology in your e-store or a startup firm about to hire an ecommerce website development company for developing a robust ecommerce site, it is essential to jump on this technology trend to offer best services to the customers. If you want to know how to make your ecommerce store voice search-ready? Here are the 8 effective ways to optimize your ecommerce store for voice search. Long-tail Keywords Unlike written language, spoken language is more conversational, and, thus it is critical to use long-tail keywords. Unlike standard keywords used in SEO campaigns, long-tail keywords are more specific as they often include key phrases. Long-tail keywords are popular for higher conversion rates. Fine tuning your keywords will help your ecommerce store receive more traffic and expand the brand’s outreach. Customers using voice search speak specific words to get the most appropriate result. Featured Snippets When you search for something on Google, the first snippet that pops up on the top of the page is referred to as a featured snippet. A featured snipped showcases a descriptive text that serves as an indication of the website’s credibility. As one can imagine, getting featured as the top-most result on a search engine leads to a dramatic rise in the organic traffic for the website. According to the latest market reports, a majority of the voice search results came from the top-most results, aka the featured snippets. That is why more ecommerce businesses are trying to get the zero result position that would give them an edge over the competitors. The artificial intelligence technology used by search engines often gives more preference to the featured snippets than other search results. Improve Website Structure The structure of the website can have a huge impact on your ecommerce site’s search engine ranking. Site structure enhances SEO and offers the better user experience. If you want to optimize your ecommerce site for voice search, it is imperative to improve the structure of the website. By properly structuring your website, you can offer accurate suggestions to the customers who use the voice search feature. An ecommerce store should consider structuring the content in a way that the voice search leads to the customer to the relevant page, whether it is the landing page, product page, or the FAQ page. Maximize Website Speed Nowadays, a fast-loading website is a necessity as customers mostly prefer visiting and spending time on websites that load fast than the slow ones. Also, search engines such as Google give better ranking to fast sites. Especially when it comes to optimizing the site for voice search, it is critical to maximize the loading speed of the website. As per the market reports, ecommerce sites that take just a couple seconds for loading pop up before the slow one on voice-related searches. Modern customers don’t like to explore ecommerce portals that take too long to load. So, increase your website’s speed to receive a better ranking from Google and lead more voice searchers to your brand. Use Social Media Social media platforms offer great insight into customer preferences. Through social media websites, businesses can find out what type of terms customers use while looking for products online. This is a great way to establish a connection with customers and stay updated with the languages they use online. Countless customers use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites to interact with the brands, and thus using these platforms can help you optimize your e-store for voice search. Furthermore, these sites offer a lot of useful data that can help you improve the overall reachability of the e-store and create a long-lasting relationship with the consumers. Create an FAQ Page FAQ (frequently asked questions) page of any ecommerce store provides information to site visitors in a question and answer format. The conversational nature of the question and answer format makes it a perfect landing page for a voice search. In case your ecommerce site does not already have a FAQ page, then you can ask your ecommerce website development company to create one. Refer to the types of questions ask over emails and phone calls and check the type of questions your competitors are answering on their FAQ page, to create a list of most effective questions. Also, the answers should feature conversational language to be able to engage customers. Reshape your Site’s Content The quality of content on your ecommerce store can determine if the site receives exposure. In today’s competitive ecommerce landscape, it is critical to feature top-quality, original, and engaging content on the site to reach out to more customers and build credibility among the target audience. In order to prep your website for voice search, you will have to reshape the site’s content. From an effective FAQ page to blog posts with headlines that are in question forms, there are tons of ways to reshape the content on your site to optimize it for voice search. A majority of the voice searches are done in a question form, that is why keeping the tone of the content conversational is important. Employ HTTPS Employing HTTPS is more of a necessity as search engines give preference to ecommerce stores that provide protection to user data. Even if you have a feature-rich ecommerce store that offers great user experience, the lack of an SSL certification can cause serious damage to the site’s credibility and trustworthiness. In order to ensure that a customer’s voice search leads him or her to your commerce store, it is essential to make the switch to HTTPS. Employing HTTPS is often included in the ecommerce website development services offered by leading agencies. Enlist the Products on Google Shopping Enlisting your products on Google Shopping is a tried-and-tested way to boost website traffic, broaden the outreach of the business, and outpace the competition. These are the most commonly-known advantages of listing your site’s products on Google Shopping. But, using this service is also an excellent way to prepare your ecommerce site for voice search. Customers who use Google for voice search are often directed to the Google Shopping page. Displaying your store’s products on that page can help you reach out to more customers and drive sales. Use the aforementioned ways to optimize your ecommerce store to not only stay abreast with the latest technology but to also offer enhanced shopping experience to the customers. Before picking an ecommerce website development company for building an online store for your brand, do communicate your requirements to ensure that the developed site is flexible, scalable, and boasts the latest features. Author Bio. :- Mahima Radhachal was raised in New Delhi. She works at the best eCommerce development company as Creative Operations Manager.
