How to do SEO for Magento 2 website in 2020?

Organic Search is considered as one of the most important ways that lead the potential buyer to your Magento 2 store. It's fair because only the best of the best get into the TOP list of search engines. Those are sites that invest in the development of their e-commerce business and are actively engaged in SEO promotion. It’s impossible to buy a place on the list, so that's why people trust the choice of the search engine. It reduces the risk of getting into scams or buying inferior quality products. The stores that are in the TOP list value their place, therefore, care about reputation, quality, and customers' satisfaction.

If you are reading this article, it means that your Magento 2 store is ready to be noticed and is about to start significant changes! Let's look at what you need to know about SEO promotion in 2020 to get better and increase your profits.

What was important in previous years:

2016 - natural links
2017 - incredible social media impact
2018 - a variety of website traffic and brand traffic
2019 - solution to customers' problems through qualified content

In this article we'll tell about significant trends in SEO for 2020:

Focus on smartphones
Loyal audience size
Maximum diversity of traffic
Brand strength

In the series of articles about SEO, we’ll talk about the simple things that EVERYONE can do. But the simplicity of the steps doesn't mean that they are unimportant. On the contrary, be sure to use all the information on your site and not to put it on the back-burner! The experience says that the banalest and most simple actions could produce remarkable results.

SEO will always live because people will always ask questions in search engines. Only the optimization of the algorithms will be changing to give the most accurate response to the user's request. We must be wary of all changes and be able to adjust our websites instantly.

Our final task is not to get to the TOP of the search engine but to get profit. And TOP is a tool for your site to be seen by as many people as possible. To become your clients, visitors must get answers from your site to all their searching questions.

1. Focus on smartphones

The adaptability of the website

Focus on smartphones is now a primary trend of 2020 for online stores. More than 50% of all web traffic makes users from smartphones and tablets.

What's happening today: the availability of an adaptive mobile version is the sufficient minimum for the website promotion start. It's hardly worth starting a promotion without excellent mobile adaptability. The search engine very clearly determines mobile-friendliness and doesn't let the site fall into the TOP of the searching system if it doesn't have that.

Today numerous new brands begin to develop web pages considering a view on the mobile first of all and then on the desktop version of it. Also, we should remember that merely having a mobile version is no longer enough. To understand how well your store works on mobile, you should pay attention to some factors:

How correctly is the mobile version made in comparison with other stores in your niche?
Do the behavioural factors change and how do they change compared to the desktop user experience.
Are there any recommendations from Google Search Console on website work?
Are the fonts selected / the menu completed correctly?
Are all categories/subcategories/pages of your site available?
Have you transferred all content from the desktop version to the mobile?
How fast is the site response on mobile? etc.

It's good practice to take an example from top online stores. They have already spent budgets on an incredible amount of tests and know what works better and what is worst. You can learn from them and from their solutions on points that described above. Just don't copy their decisions, be unique.

The view in popular browsers

Special attention deserves a variety of different browsers, like Google Chrome, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc. We all use browsers on a daily basis and not only on computers and laptops but also on mobile devices. You'll be upset if your site won't even be displayed in some mobile browsers. Or when customers aren't able to make an order / call the hotline without copying the text and transferring it to the phone. These little things are super important. Stay alert to the work and adaptiveness of your web store. A little carelessness can cost you not only some customers but also one of the top places in the search engine.

Mobile Load Speed

Another trend that is gaining popularity in the world of e-commerce is the PWA. Without hesitation, it can be called a new level of website development with the best user experience. In addition to the significantly higher speed that users receive, the integration of PWA in Magento 2 stores has more advantages. You can read about this here:

Load speed in all its contexts in 2020 will be highly valuable. We used to communicate on forums, then we switched to social networks, and now we almost wholly turned to instant messengers. Why do these changes happen? Because we want to get answers to our questions more and more quickly. We want to save time, so online stores should run as fast as possible.

Super important is mobile devices download and upload speed. It's worth considering that one way or another, a large number of people use 4G LTE, 3G networks, and others. You need to take this into account and increase your store load speed on mobile devices in all possible ways.

Some services help you to see the speed of your site. Also, there you can see recommendations for improving its speed. For example, free suggestions about how to accelerate the website in the browser, developers can find here: PageSpeed Insights.

GTmetrix also has more detailed data about what is server response speed, full page load speed, size of each page of the site, number of requests in the search system, etc.

2. Loyal audience size

The search system monitors the number of people who are always following you, who love your brand, the number of your customer base, and the segment of your target audience. Therefore, it's so essential to collect emails or phone numbers of your customers. You can also add people to groups on Facebook or Telegram, even if you don't do email marketing campaigns.

By the way, if you have a Facebook business account for your Magento 2 store, we’d like to offer you an Facebook Pixel Integration extension. It’s a great plugin which allows you to track which your shop’s pages visitors are looking through, which product they purchases or adds to wishlist etc.

You can ask, "why should I do all that stuff?" and we answer, "Elementary, my dear Watson!”

Imagine a store that never did bulk email to customers but has collected pretty big clients' email base. And on some Black Friday, this web store makes an email marketing campaign according to this client base. Of course, on this day, the online store will have a nice profit due to advertising or discounts, but this isn't the whole catch that it receives. In addition to profit on Black Friday, the position of this web site begins to move up in the search engine list. The emails with a high level of feedback showed the search engine that this brand has a broad, loyal audience.

Email to customers

You can do this trick just a few times a year. It's not necessary to become like an obsessive loud megaphone. It's enough, for example, to congratulate customers on some holiday or to inform them about new products or promotions. It will give a great impetus to set your high place among competitors in the search engine list. Everything takes into account - direct traffic, site visits through a link/ email/ groups in social networks/ messengers, everything! For your Magento 2 store you can use Email to Customers extension. It allowes you to send as many emails as you want with ease.

3. Maximum diversity of traffic

Organic Search Engine Optimization is undeniably the best source for promotion compared to any other. Transitions from search engines can potentially receive dozens of times more customers and orders than anywhere else. It is an entirely different conversion from social networks or contextual advertising.

But let's be honest, every Magento 2 store is a unique story. If we create an entirely new Magento 2 web site following all the rules of the SEO, we will write high-quality content and purchase links - most likely, we'll get into the TOP of the search engine. But it's not a fact that our site will stay there for a long time if we don't develop other promotion channels in parallel.

It's not rocket science to include a little contextual advertising on the same web site, for example, through a social network to promote several posts (and we aren't talking about hundreds or thousands of dollars). Or to make several mailings or buy posts in thematic groups. Start spreading your expertness on marketplaces, YouTube, Pinterest or other social media. In addition to SEO, there are other excellent sources of customer orders which first, can be a reasonably successful investment of finances, and second, they can create a diversity of traffic. Maximum traffic diversity will lead your Magento 2 web store to a more stable position at the TOP of the search engine.

One of the well-known and low-cost methods of promotion is native advertising. For example, some special people enter into some kind of thematic discussion in forums and leave their links. The more comprehensive the range of sites and forums from which people come to the web store, the higher its position.

BUT. Be sure to monitor your web site traffic, where users come from, and their behavioural factors. Keep track from which source came visitors with most refuses, and from where interested buyers came from. Try more different and even the most unobvious methods of getting customers. Pinterest, for example, or free site directories, are also useful as additional sources of orders. It's quite realistic to increase profits by 60% or more only in six months or a year using these unusual methods.

4. A Brand Strength

In 2020, the number of references to your brand on the Internet will also be vital. From here, it's essential to be active on social networks not only to receive orders but also to have mentions of your company on the Internet. The more references to your brand on the Internet, the stronger your brand is from the search engine point of view.

Why Online Business Branding is important ?

Another point, when people type a specific query into a search engine and add a brand name, then this brand's store starts to move to the TOP direction. If no one searches for your brand on the Internet, the search engine thinks that either you work very poorly or you don't work at all.

Your task is to make the maximum number of people to look for the name of your company on the Internet. For this, it is very refreshing to use offline advertising, if possible - various banners, paper ads, television, speeches, interviews, etc.

Example 1

Imagine that you went to an X restaurant where you had a delicious dinner and enjoyed the excellent service. In the end, the waiter gave you a business card. “Please, leave feedback about our restaurant” with QR code in it. It's straightforward for you to point the camera phone now. Moreover, if the dinner was delicious and you want to thank the place, you'll do this little favour. And here's the trick, the phone opens, not the page of reviews directly. Instead, you have a Google search with a typed ”Review page. Restaurant X”. Accordingly, the first link is the right link because of the X name.

And thus, each person who wants to leave a review, the search engine recognizes as a highly satisfied visitor who types a brand request. So every day, the X restaurant could receive 50-100 brand requests. This little free trick raised them to the TOP of Google. Just one thing like this one also allows your Magento 2 store to get to the top of Google search results, and you just need to adjust the method to your specifics. As an option, you can put QR code in the message instead of a business card.

Example 2

You order advertising from an Instagram blogger in Stories format. He says something like, "there is such a cool Y company (yours), and Y makes the best sneakers in the World." In 2019 and earlier, every blogger said at the end, "follow the link that will be below." Now it's worth mentioning as follows: "The company I told you about is called Y, but I don't remember the exact link. Google "Y," and you will surely find sneakers you dream of."

Don't worry that people will be too lazy to type the name manually. The number of visits to your Magento 2 web site to which it will be vital and will need the same.

Thus, after each such integration or advertising, absolutely any business will significantly increase the number of brand queries. And the more branded questions, the faster we get to the top. Please use this for yourself.

PS. If you focus on branded traffic, you must initially create the correct name for your store. Brand traffic is very dependent on the name you choose. link to article

Reviews

A vast number of people before buying anything first read reviews about the company. Even you, dear reader, being in the role of a buyer most often pay attention to other people's reviews.

Until the end of 2020, the search engine will recognize the nature of the reviews customers leave about your store. It tracks the reviews about your company and finds some negative words in them. The search engine will compare how many positive and negative reviews you've got. Think about whether there are enough positive reviews on your website to decide to buy from you.

Many positive reviews would seem a simple point, but they can already be considered as the minimum sufficient input to get your site to the TOP. For example, Google My Business provides an opportunity to create a free profile of your Magento 2 store on Google. There you can successfully develop it, regularly work with its content, and ask customers to leave feedback. It will directly affect your position.

PS If you do not ask to leave reviews, then you will have only negative ones. Why? Because when customers are just happy, not many of them will tell it in the comments. They have other things to do now. Most of the time, only strong emotions pushes a person to leave a review for your company, and they're not so easy to achieve.

Don't neglect the opportunity to ask for feedback on a good job or service, and this request won't negatively affect your reputation.

Website's adaptability, load speed, the size of a loyal audience , a brand strength and other topics that were touched in this article aren't a big mystery. BUT all of us are inclined to postpone those little things that can bring our business to the TOP, just because it's too obvious . There are no magical beans to grow sales and profits, instead there are our efforts and hard work.

Read the second chapter, and you'll find out more. If you have any enquiries, speak to us.

Regards, Mageside Team.