Improve Traffic to the Online Store

[nitinchacko]

Building an eCommerce business venture from scratch takes more than choosing the brand name and product listings. Even the best business ideas can flop if we're unable to drive enough organic traffic to the website. How can I drive organic traffic to my online store for free? :)))

[Andrew · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

Hyde here from Shopify.

There are a few things you can do to help drive traffic to your store. The first thing is to get acquainted with SEO good practices. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and will allow your store to be found more easily through Google, etc. Here is a really helpful guide on how to get started with this. I also have more general information on that here.

I have a few more steps that you can take for good SEO here:

• Submit your sitemap to Google http://bit.ly/2S86gI8.
• A Beginner’s Guide to Content Marketing.
• Ecommerce SEO 101 Video Series.
• Find out more about blogs.

Here’s how you can look up keywords to help boost your site’s ranking.

Blogs on Facebook Ads and Sales:

*How to Set Up Facebook Ads

*An introduction to Facebook Ads
*6 types of Facebook Ads

*How to Build and Launch a Profitable Store

*How to Make your First Sale

*How to make your First 10 Sales

Another resource that I would hugely recommend is an app called KIT. KIT is a virtual employee for your Shopify store. It helps drive sales by doing everything from creating highly-targeted Facebook ad campaigns, to sending personal thank-you emails to customers, to handling the other apps that you use to manage your store.

I really think this is something that would be beneficial for you, and your store as a way to increase your traffic. You can check it out here.

If you have any questions about any of this, let me know! All the best, Hyde.

[nitinchacko]

Hello Hyde! :))) Thanks for this detailed reply. I find it very helpful. Could you share an exclusive sneak peek of eCommerce growth trends in 2020?

[Andrew]

Well, we have a couple of really useful blog posts about future trends for eCommerce. 

One is available to read here. There's also another fantastic blog post here that is aimed mostly at developers and designers but offers key insights for store owners as well. 

What may be especially relevant to small business owners is this rising trend:

All the best, Hyde. 

[nitinchacko]

---

@Andrew wrote:

Well, we have a couple of really useful blog posts about future trends for eCommerce. 

One is available to read here. There's also another fantastic blog post here that is aimed mostly at developers and designers but offers key insights for store owners as well. 

What may be especially relevant to small business owners is this rising trend:

All the best, Hyde. 

---

Thank you so much, Hyde! It looks fantastic! :)))

[flareAI]

Hello,

Adding to @Andrew 's comments. submitting your store content to Google, Bing, other major search engines increases your sales through organic search.

You can submit your sitemap regularly to these major engines, or consider using a convenient tool like flare that offers many other major benefits.

Hope this was helpful.

Asha

[JamesAB]

Are you very knowledgable about the products that you're selling?  If so, you can do quite a bit through product question and answer content....and importing a lot of product questions and answers which can draw traffic from customers who are asking similar questions through search.  It would pull up similar to this within Google's results:

That can be an easy way to start from scratch and get relevant visits to your store.   If you don't know what questions customers ask, you can look on other sites like Amazon and check out their product Q&A feature...and then just write GREAT answers for that popular content.   If you use a question and answer app like Answerbase....it'll spawn new Q&A landing pages which will give you results/traffic similar to what you see above.   You're going to need to bring something unique to the table in order to compete and get traffic, so if you have great product knowledge....start there and you can build a nice amount of traffic to your store and start converting.  The traffic that we've seen coming in through Q&A content is up to 2x more valuable than other organic traffic (based on the average LTV of customers coming to Q&A content vs normal Google search queries)....so its a good area to focus your time on.

[Harry239]

Hi,

I have been looking for an authoritative contributor platform to help improve my website’s backlink profile and attract new customers, and I stumbled across Opporty.com. This ecommerce community met all my requirements: free registration, easy article submission process, fast editorial check, and the ability to embed dofollow links in my guest posts. 

I am pleased to share my find. 

[kloapparel0814]

on response to your response. How does one go about submitting?

[flareAI]

HI,

You can submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing webmaster manually. However, there are some limitations when you do it manually. 

I recommend you use SEO App such as flare which submits your sitemap and store pages regularly in a batch to Google Search Console and Bing webmaster and get your pages found on major search engines.

Hope this was helpful

Asha

[kloapparel0814]

Thank you!

[billp72]

When I look up my store's sitemap, I notice sub-sitemaps like looking like: 

<sitemap>
<loc>
https://www.oliviaandbear.com/sitemap_products_1.xml?from=4370429640777&to=4383414222921
</loc>
</sitemap>

Should I submit each sub-sitemap to google or will google chew threw those on its own? thanks

[flareAI]

Hi,

No need to submit sub-sitemaps. Google will chew through each sub-sitemap once you have submitted the sitemap index. i.e https://www.oliviaandbear.com/sitemap.xml.

Hope this was helpful

Asha

[sillycube]

The best way suggested by Google is to create original quality content in, .e.g demo youtube channel, how-to blog posts, distribute content in other communities/forums.  With quality content, others will be willing to share it across different social media to drive traffics. Also, Google will rank higher for original content. If you are selling niche products or services, content marketing can be very effective to drive organic traffic & boost SEO in the long run. Personally, I write quality long-form blog posts to get inbound leads for my app and services. 

As a Shopify app developer working on SEO for 4 years, I am trying to feature other merchants' stories in my blog/community. Feel free to check my post here. It may be able to help you.