Promotion of Commercial Sites

To begin with, there is confusion in this topic: "commercial website promotion" and "commercial website promotion" are often combined into one topic, although they are different things. Let's take a look at these terms right away.

Commercial website promotionis a paid service to promote a web resource. Depending on the site, this can be SEO, contextual advertising, or all Internet marketing tools combined. The methods of such promotion can be applied to any sites - blogs, news resources, online stores, and so on. Simply, depending on the parameters of the web resource, different promotion models will be selected.

Promotion of commercial sites is the use of internet marketing tools to promote only one type of site, commercial. These works are only suitable for sites that are aimed at sales (for example, online stores). For all other web sites, these methods may not be suitable or only partially suitable.

In this article, we consider the second case.

Commercial Sites and Their Features

The most obvious examples of commercial sites are service sites and online stores.

Commercial sites are distinguished by their purpose: the main task for them is to sell their goods or services, and not positions and traffic. This in many ways changes the approach to SEO of such sites.

Features of commercial web resources:

- The importance of segmenting your audience as accurately as possible and identifying their needs.

- High competition (both in the search results and in the market): many companies offer identical products and are fighting for the first positions in the search results.

- SEO for commercial sites takes a long time, because it is difficult to get to the top for high-frequency queries, but this is justified, since search engines are popular with users. Plus, the effects of good search engine marketing last for a long time.

- Young commercial sites without their own audience should first use contextual advertising to generate demand, and only then switch to search engine optimization.

SEO Commercial Sites

In promoting commercial web resources, internal factors take precedence over external ones : work on the site itself requires more attention and effort than work on its environment. As we will see later, such a platform should not only inspire trust, but also deserve it: no one will give their money to a dubious company.

At the same time, from external factors, the emphasis is on reviews and social networks (for the b2c segment - Twitter and Instagram, for the b2b segment - Facebook).

It is important to collect the most complete and detailed semantic core : if low and medium-frequency queries work better for information platforms, then at least a few high-frequency queries should be used when promoting commercial sites. It makes sense to embed them in the content of the most relevant pages in order to increase the likelihood of a purchase.

Let's take a look at the key points in the search engine promotion of commercial sites in order.

Commercial Factors

This logically corresponds to the type of sites: commercial sites - commercial factors (CF) in the first place. Such factors determine the degree of customer confidence, that is, these are the elements that help or hinder ordering.

It is important to note that CF is not an area that search engines provide a lot of information about. For example, we know a lot from both Google and Yandex that good content is needed for high ranking. And knowledge about CFs SEO-specialists often get from the analysis of SERPs, their own experience and information from colleagues. Therefore, the success of promoting a commercial site largely depends on the experience of the contractor company.

Let's list the main CF groups:

1. Interaction with the user : address, contacts, maps, home region, online chat, callback ordering service.

2. Assortment : many products / services (including related ones), categories, the possibility of comparison, indication of prices and discounts, information on the availability of goods and the ability to place missing items under the order or receive a notification about their appearance.

3. Presentation of goods / services : photos from different angles, 3D animation, video review, characteristics, reviews.

4. Content content : articles, videos, FAQ or FAQ.

5. Google services : completed Google My Business profiles.

As you can see, the success of website promotion in search depends on the scale of the business. It will be extremely difficult for a small business to compete with large online retail outlets, especially if the result is needed quickly.

Let's take a closer look at what are the nuances in the work of an SEO specialist when promoting commercial sites.

Content

Content is a critical ranking factor for any site, including commercial sites. And first of all, content is understood as texts. That is why it follows painstakingly, request by request, to collect the semantic core and make it as broad as possible for a specific topic. The semantics should include informational, commercial, navigation, geo-dependent queries.

Texts in which all this variety of queries could be used are most suitable for an informational article section - a blog. For buyers, this kind of content is not very important - for them the completeness of information in the product cards is much more important (more on that later). However, some users do read the articles, and blogging will maximize your keyword adoption.

At the same time, the blog will play into the hands only if it is regularly updated. Here we can return to the fact that everything in a commercial site should be trustworthy: if the last publication was a year ago, it will be difficult to trust. You should also choose topics wisely: you should not publish materials that have nothing to do with your company.

Product Cards

This point is important for potential buyers, so it is worth looking at it through their eyes. After viewing the card, the user, ideally, should not have any questions about what kind of product or service it is.

Our Testimonial For Promotion of Commercial Sites

It's great when there are enough resources to create unique descriptions and photographs. If there are no such resources, it is better to use the characteristics provided by manufacturers, rather than borrow from competitors.

It's great if there are videos and animations - they affect the rankings. However, their viewing cannot be imposed - for example, they can be turned on automatically when the page is opened.

Contact Information

All contacts through which users can contact you must be in a prominent place. The most important data is the phone number (if the company works for the whole of USA, then 8-800) and the physical address. This is the basic minimum.

More work to be done:

- organize a mailbox on the same domain as the site;

- create independent mailboxes for different tasks or departments;

- launch a feedback form and chat platform;

- use alternative communication methods and indicate them.

Range

This is where we enter an area that an SEO contractor cannot influence if they wanted to. However, site owners need to understand that if your competitors have a lot of products, then you should have a wide range. Otherwise, you will not be able to reach them.

If everything is in order with the assortment, then you need to organize it in a way convenient for buyers (this is just within the power of an SEO company with on-staff programmers):

- set up sorting and custom filters by different characteristics for product selection;

- indicate prices. From our experience, we know that often this recommendation goes unnoticed, and this greatly interferes with the promotion of the site. Without pricing, behavioral metrics, especially bounce rate, will collapse - and this will be a bad signal to search engines;

- do not use the phrase "Out of stock": replace it with "Pre-order" or "Notify me of product availability." If your online store lacks most of the items, search engines will not show it to users.

Usability

The higher the usability of the site, the better the behavioral metrics. The web resource should have a modern design with clear navigation: the user should intuitively understand how to navigate the site and where the important buttons are. For example, "Basket", "Ask a Question", "Open Sizing Grid" and so on.

We recommend that you reduce advertising on the site to a minimum: the user should not be prevented from viewing the pages. It is better to get rid of intrusive banners and off-topic counters altogether.

Technical Errors

Of the technical flaws, there are often duplicate pages and meta tags (and this is always bad for ranking - search engines see two pages with similar content and remove both from the search results), as well as low loading speed. If the site is loading slowly, the user will not wait and will close the page. And search engines urge you to speed up page loading if you want to be in the top.

What other technical aspects should be improved:

- introduce micro-markup to form an extended snippet;

- install an SSL certificate for secure payments;

- to develop a responsive design or a mobile version to adequately display the site from smartphones and tablets.

Google and Yandex Services

Google and Yandex have their own services for entrepreneurs and organizations - Google My Business and Yandex.Directory. You need to use them in order to reach your audience for geo-dependent queries in search and in maps. And, of course, in order to stand out from competitors, overtaking them in the SERP.

If you are the owner of an online store or service site, leave a request to receive a commercial offer for SEO-site promotion at AIMagnus.