An online store isn’t all that different from a brick and mortar retail store. They both offer a collection of products and they both strive to provide an excellent customer experience. AND…they both need to be cleaned every now and then.

Just as you sweep and dust every aisle and every shelf of a brick and mortar, you need to straighten up your online retail store. Not because customers are moving your product around, but because your product pages constantly need to be monitored for progress. If a particular product isn’t doing well, you need to take a look at what your options are in terms of bringing it up to par with your other pages or maybe consider replacing it with something else.

Online Store Search Engine Optimization

Cleaning your online store usually comes down to a bit of the old search engine optimization. Search engines and search engine users are constantly changing the way in which they display and search for content. It’s crucial to consider SEO at this point and at every point of listing a product for sale.

It doesn’t have to be much of a process if you have a professional optimization specialist at your side. But for those that don’t, the overall idea is to use the best practices (which change frequently) to get your product pages ranking better in the search engines index. Whether this means creating new content, improving your on-page links or focusing on the actual copywriting of your pages. Or even better a combination of a bit of everything. But this is all up to you. Your tasks will vary from project to project.

Creating New Content

Freshening up a page doesn’t have to be a major operation. Adding some fresh content can go far when optimized for the right keyword. This works especially well for landing pages, which tend to focus on presenting a lot of optimized content.

In addition to focusing on the actual amount of content, you should focus on diversifying your content so the page is relevant and interesting. This might involve creating a list style article within your actual page, a few photos, info-graphics, and videos.

Online Store Link Sculpting

This technique involves reviewing every link on your website, no matter if it’s in the content body, the header, or the sidebar. The idea here is to optimize your links anchor text so it helps inform search engines your particular piece of content is relevant to the keyword you’re targeting.

Think of this like polishing your entire store. It takes time, but the end result will help create a better experience and maybe even attract new customers.

Copywriting

Reviewing the actual copy of your page, headlines, and descriptions is an often overlooked segment of the online store to which you need to spend a lot of your attention. Because the copywriting involves the actual language people relate to and search for with search engines. The more relevant and universal your copy, the better your chances are of attracting customers through the search engines and persuading them to make a purchase or subscribe to your newsletter or whatever else you are asking them to do.

If one keyword isn’t working well, change it to something that looks like it might work well.

It’s all trial and error and testing and must be performed often. You should always be looking at your site health and see where you can improve.