As a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform, BigCommerce makes it easier than most for most online merchants to get a store up and running.
It’s certainly easier and more accommodating than open-source platforms like Magento and WordPress for building an online store, and since it’s templated, you don’t need to custom-code everything.
BigCommerce is also optimized for SEO strategies – to a degree. But if you want to get your store in front of more potential buyers, more quickly, here are two simple steps to get that done.
With respect to BigCommerce SEO, these are the two most straightforward steps you can take to make your website climb the SERPs.
Keyword Research
First things first, we need to find a few keywords that make sense for your business before we can offer the ultimate BigCommerce SEO tip. To do this, you’ll need access to some or other keyword research tool. For the purpose of this illustration we’ll be using SEMRush.
In SEMRush, go to the Keyword Overview tab. Type in a keyword that seems to make sense for your company.
You will get a variety of outputs, among which are volume (how many people are searching that keyword in Google per month) difficulty (how hard it is to rank for that keyword) and search intent (the ultimate goal of those searching for it).
You will want to target a keyword that has the highest possible volume and a difficulty below 30. If possible, you will also want to target a keyword with either commercial or transactional search intent. Since this is respecting BigCommerce, an eCommerce platform, you want intent to be aligned with making purchases.
If the keyword you initially searched has adequate volume (the higher the better, ideally you’ll want to pick one that has more than 100 monthly searches) but does not have an attainable difficulty score (under 30) then scroll slightly down the page till you see “Keyword Variations” and click on that tab.
You will find a ton of keywords here associated with the keyword you searched, and you will be able to filter by criterion. Filter by difficulty until you have a couple that have relatively high traffic and low difficulty scores.
Just to illustrate the following optimization, let’s say you’ll need five of these keywords to begin with. Either choose 5 that are all relevant to each other and we’ll optimize one page on your BigCommerce store, or pick 5 that are relatively different and we’ll optimize 5 pages on your website.
Optimizing Page Title Tags/Page Headers
Once you have those keywords, you’re going to want to pick a target page on your website (or one for each of them). Make sure you choose pages that are already indexed and ranking, even if they are not on page one.
Take those keywords and place them in the headers of your BigCommerce website’s titles. Try to make them contextually relevant if possible.
If you chose 5 keywords for 5 pages, repeat the process in the manner described.
There are many other BigCommerce SEO optimizations you can make (and other tools you can use besides SEMRush) but in a nutshell, this is how to make the single most impactful optimization, all things considered.
Note on Working with a BigCommerce SEO Expert
Beyond this, one of the most impactful things you can do to improve your website’s performance is work with a BigCommerce SEO expert or agency. A good strategic partner will go above and beyond keyword research and title optimization and will publish optimized content, build links, improve site speed and performance, and optimize other technical ranking factors.
After you make the optimizations mentioned here, give them some time to bear fruit, then make the decision as to whether or not you want to pursue a professional relationship with a BigCommerce SEO expert.
