Basic SEO for online stores: where to start without getting overwhelmed

When someone tells me "I need SEO," I ask them: "Can you describe your product in one sentence?" If the answer is yes, you already have 50% of the work done.

SEO isn't black magic. It's putting the right words on the right things so Google can find them. That's it.

The bare minimum your store needs

Before hiring anyone or installing weird plugins, check these five points:

• Unique page titles: every product and every category should have a different title. "Product 1" doesn't cut it.
• Real product descriptions: copy-pasting from your supplier doesn't work. Write at least 100 words of your own per product.
• Clean URLs: yourstore.com/womens-running-shoes tells Google everything. yourstore.com/product?id=4832 says nothing.
• Meta descriptions: those 155 characters that show up below your title on Google. If you don't write them, Google makes something up for you (and it's rarely good).
• Named images: black-nike-air-running-shoe.jpg instead of IMG_20240312.jpg.

How long does it take to work

Here comes the part nobody wants to hear: SEO takes time. At least 3 months to see real movement for a new store. Sometimes 6.

The good news is that the work compounds. Every well-built page is an asset that keeps working for you while you sleep.

Mistakes I see all the time

After building over 100 stores, these are the classics:

• Duplicating content across similar products. If you sell the same t-shirt in 5 colors, don't copy the same description 5 times. Vary the text.
• Ignoring categories. Category pages are gold for SEO. Add a paragraph of context above the products.
• Obsessing over exact-match keywords. Google is smart enough to understand synonyms by now. Write naturally.
• Not having a blog. A blog with useful articles attracts traffic you can then convert into sales. You don't need to publish every day; once a week or every two weeks is fine.

Where to start today

Open your store, pick your 5 best-selling products, and make sure they each have a unique title, an original description of at least 100 words, and a clean URL. That alone puts you ahead of 80% of the stores I see.

If you want to go deeper, Google Search Console is a free tool that shows you exactly what people search for when they land on your site. It's the best starting point.