Search engine optimisation doesn't have to be difficult. In this guide, you'll get some background knowledge + information on 3 key areas to focus on.

Foreword - read this if you're new to SEO

Search engine optimisation is a big topic, but the good news is that a little effort can go a long way. There are many low-hanging fruits and it's only after you've picked them that SEO starts to become a bigger time-waster.

Search engine optimisation is about adapting your website or webshop to achieve better results in search engines. These customisations are both technical and content (text, images, video).

It is important to understand that SEO is a long-term strategy. The results won't come the day after you make changes - but if done right, the effects will show up in weeks and months.

3 key areas

1. Make your visitors happy

This is probably the single best and most effective piece of advice we can give. Search engines have become so smart that they can easily calculate whether your webshop creates value for your visitors. And if it does, you will get higher rankings in the search engines.

You can make your visitors happy in many ways, but in general, it's about giving them what they are looking for. This can be, for example, unique products or product texts that capture the visitor's interest. It could be exciting images and videos. Or it could be a blog that is well-written and informative.

2. All the technical stuff (which should run by itself)

Your online shop system should work in such a way that search engines can easily and efficiently retrieve the necessary information. It is often about the way the webshop is built with different codes. It is not something you can change yourself, but is about how the shop system is coded.

Furthermore, there are features such as "sitemap.xml", responsive design and a reasonable load speed that should be in place. Most (modern) webshop systems have all of this under control.

3. Landing pages and focus on keywords

If you want to be (easily) found via a specific keyword, then it will often be an advantage to use exactly that keyword in your headings, titles and body text. You can experiment with customising existing product pages or content pages to include your main keywords.

You can also choose to create landing pages whose sole purpose is to drive traffic from search engines. A landing page is typically a page that includes a longer text where one or more keywords appear in the title, headline and body text.

However, the landing page must also be usable for the customers who click on it. So it's important to include images, video, good text and call-to-action links to your products.

(4. The extra effort - meta-texts and ALT text)

If you want to go the extra mile, you can add some special "meta-texts" to your information and product pages. These texts are hidden from the general user, but are read by search engines. The impact of writing these texts is often limited, so consider whether it is worth the time.

It is also possible to add a so-called "ALT text" to your images. These texts are used instead of the actual image if the visitor (for whatever reason) cannot download the image. Search engines also use these texts to index your images so that they can be searched for on, for example, images.google.com.

Possibilities with an ideal.shop

A shop at ideal.shop is already optimised in every conceivable technical area. You can read more about this here.

With a webshop at ideal.shop, it is also easy (and free) to connect with Google Search Console, Google Analytics and many others. These are tools from Google that give you an easy insight into your page's ranking (in Google) on various keywords and how many visitors you have in the webshop.