{"id":4282,"date":"2020-04-07T11:14:54","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T08:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp:8888\/seo-for-beginners-part-1-first-steps-in-making-your-store-visible-to-search-engines-2\/"},"modified":"2024-11-25T11:32:09","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T08:32:09","slug":"seo-for-beginners-first-steps-in-making-your-store-visible-to-search-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.x-cart.com\/blog\/seo-for-beginners-first-steps-in-making-your-store-visible-to-search-engines.html","title":{"rendered":"SEO for Beginners, part 1: First Steps in Making Your Store Visible to Search Engines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This blog post was originally contributed by Kinga Liberadzka, a Digital Marketing Manager at Land-book.com, on behalf of Positionly.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beauty of online shops, or online businesses in general, is that you are not limited to any particular area or region. You can introduce your products to millions of people across the world without your moving outside the computer screen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never has there been a greater chance to put your business in front of bigger audience and get your products discovered. However, the trick is that the online world is a very crowded place. It is full of great products and companies that offer high quality and very similar goods to yours at reasonable prices. You may have a pretty impressive competition out there \u2013 you know it\u2019s just getting bigger each day, don\u2019t you? Your potential clients are literally flooded with products available online at any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting an online e-commerce store<\/a> is the easy part. With X-Cart you can settle your own shop in several minutes. Take some more time and you will have your own customized place where you can sell online.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n Standing Outside the Crowd <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays it is just not enough to put an online business live and wait for visitors and (hopefully) customers to come. Any shop owner should take care of the visibility of his business from the very start. I know that for most people the search engine optimization (SEO)<\/strong> term sounds technical, professional and rather out-of-reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed SEO is a pretty analytical and complex subject, but it doesn\u2019t mean that you can\u2019t learn the basics and optimize your store on your own. Before you start, keep in mind four things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. SEO is a long term process, not a one time shot \u2013 you\u2019ll have to wait to see the results depending on how quickly you resolve the issue you are having.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The good news is that even little tweaks that can make a huge, huge difference.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. It will help the allround health of your website keeping you a cut above the rest when used in the right way.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. It will provide you with the information of how to deal with the constantly changing world of the internet to ensure you are getting it right every time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n

    \n Ready to Learn the SEO Basics? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Great! Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of getting a website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). When a user types a word or phrase into a search engine, a sophisticated algorithm returns a list of web pages. They are all ranked so that the most relevant results appear at the top of the first page of results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The more attractive to search engine algorithms your page is, the higher it will rank in SERPs and the more visible it will be to your potential customers. It\u2019s worth playing this game, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n On-page vs Off-page SEO <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    There are many factors that search engines take into account to determine whether (and how much) your store is relevant for the search query. You can divide them into on-page and off page elements.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n Off-page SEO <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Off-page SEO techniques involve building links from other parts of the web to your site. In the past, e-commerce site managers would scatter links to their site all over forums, directories, and comments sections, as well as buy links on other sites. These link building techniques are generally penalized by search engines these days, which means that you need to take a different approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Current off-page SEO techniques focus on building relationships, not links. Reach out to your customer base through social media. If you create entertaining content and share it with your followers on Facebook and Twitter, the customers you are interacting with may share the content on their blogs or in other communities \u2013 this way links will be created naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n

    \n On-page SEO <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    The on-page factors are about the content on your website. They include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n