Launching a website or online store is a significant challenge for businesses that are not yet Digital. In 2024, it’s not enough to launch a site with a basic structure (think: an elementary Landing Page) and wait for the avalanche of customers. How do you think they will find you if they haven't heard of you and your products/services yet?

To be as close to your target audience as possible, you need effective Google promotion and on-site optimizations, which will help you attract it and have as many conversions as possible.

If you did not know exactly what SEO optimization actions you need to do before launching a website or an online store, until now, then this article is for you.

Below, the SEOLITTE team offers you a list of site improvement activities that you need to do before launching your promotional campaigns for your products and services online.

Let's start:

Pre-launch SEO tasks for e-commerce websites

The first question that arises is: what volume of keywords are you working with? In other words, how many keywords do you want your site to rank high on? You need to know a valuable detail: keywords are the "backbone" of an SEO strategy. They give you valuable important about :

• The volume of searches in your specific activity niche and the level of consumer interest in your business;
• Various concerns of potential customers;
• The difficulty of ranking at the top for the most competitive keywords (the level of competition of SERPs);
• Opportunities to outperform your niche competitors.
  

In general, the volume of keywords you work with depends on the size of the project you’re planning to launch Online. The recommended volume depends on the size of your website and the competition in the niche, as follows:

• 200 keywords (small and medium online stores where the competition is low to medium);
• 200-750 keywords (online stores, large websites with competitive niches;
• Over 750 keywords (online stores, large websites with over 10,000 pages in extremely competitive niches. When deciding which keywords to land on with your e-Commerce site we recommend that you start with the first phase.

(Phase I - strategic) - Steps: 

• Research the competition and the online activity niche. At this stage, you find the target audience, and the goals that the public has when they visit the site, and you should be looking to set up the functional requirements of each user (what are they accessing the page for, what are they looking for specifically, for example: looking for a message box to contact a store representative, etc.
• Analyze specific keywords for the service/product groups, then group them per webpage.
• Establish the architecture of the site with an emphasis on marketing (here you will receive suggestions for creating new categories and subcategories that hold new keywords with which you will rank well on Google).
• Support the correct indexing of your site by Google by setting up SEO tools such as Sitemap.xml, Schema.org, etc. You can't do effective SEO optimization of your website if you don't pay close attention to site indexing. Schema.org and Sitemap.xml will make search engine robots to analyze the complete structure of your site and permanently increase the speed and quality of its indexing.
• Building a long-term strategy to bring SEO results along the way. Such a strategy will help your site keep its position for more than a year after the SEO works have been implemented on the site.

(Phase II - operational) On-Page Optimization (On-Page SEO)

In the second phase of SEO actions, we’ll talk about performing an analysis of site accessibility. To ensure that Google will run your site correctly and to see the level of UX (User Experience) it has, you need to answer the following questions:

1. Are the pages and content on the site accessible to search engines??
2. Is the content accessible to the public at large, on all devices and browsers??
3. Are the pages loading quickly from all devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs, etc?
4. Are the design, user interface, and experience pleasant and easy for all users?

If you don’t have exact answers for at least two of these questions, then you need to move towards concrete SEO actions, necessary to be performed on the site, namely:

• Setting statistical and analytical/tracking tools for monitoring impact (Google Analytics; Google Search Console, etc.)
• Creating Open Graph tags
• Creating and implementing the corresponding meta tags (titles, meta descriptions)
• Creating and implementing Anchor and Header Texts (H1, H2, ..., H6)
• Image optimization, creating and adding ALT text
• Basic tips for improving site load speed. At this stage, the SEOLITTE team comes up with tips provided to the developers so that they can improve the operating speed of the website on all devices.

So here are our recommendations:

1. Installing a responsive theme (if the site is on WordPress, you can find a lot of responsive themes in the settings menu, which will give it a user-friendly structure).
2. Simplifying the menu (the simpler the menu, the faster the user will get to the page they need).
3. Use forms that are as short as possible (we are talking about the forms that the user must fill out when placing an order on the site). Try to simplify them as much as possible so as not to waste the user's time.
4. Optimize the size of the images on the site (don't load large images, they slow down the loading speed of the site)
5. Reduce the number of plugins on the site (leave only the plugins you use; you can drop non-functional ones without any problems)
6. Minimize the number of JavaScript and CSS files (having many files here fills the site’s code and slows it down)
7. Using the site's cache
8. Use a simple font for the text on the site
9. 404 error detection and elimination.
   

Know that your work on organic promotion on Google doesn't stop here. After launching the website, you will also have to work on its maintenance. The Google giant appreciates it when the site is updated and perfected for different users, but also to index web pages as quickly as possible.

Not sure if SEO suits you or have any questions about these tasks? Call us at +373 69 809 235 and we offer you a FREE consultation for all SEO and digital promotion services. We’ll look together for customized solutions to help your business grow. SEOLITTE - your marketing ally who sells!