5 most important SEO factors for your sales website to receive natural traffic

Hello everyone, recently I have been focusing on writing articles about Instagram. It has been a long time since there has been an article about the Website for everyone. Today I will write about an issue that anyone who creates a Website is very interested in: That is optimizing the Website with search engines to receive natural visits from Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Coc Coc.

SEO in recent years has changed a lot and experienced all kinds of turmoil when Google updated its algorithm. Gone are the days when people spammed backlinks and bought forum backlinks to get to the TOP. Many top websites have completely disappeared every time the algorithm changes.

But rest assured you will not be affected as long as you do it "according to the law". Sometimes people keep complicating and sanctifying SEO while leaving out the simplest core concept. That is "Optimized user experience, search engine friendly". If you do this well, the more Google updates, the happier you will be. And those who feel sad will be SEOers who follow the Spam school (black hat SEO).

This article is entirely based on my personal experience when selling on the Website in many different fields. I am not an SEOer, I only research and study SEO to serve my sales purposes. I also consider SEO as an additional channel and not dependent on it. Therefore, the knowledge here will be suitable for those who sell on multiple channels, not for those who depend entirely on SEO & traffic from SEO. And also not for those who want to SEO super competitive keywords.

Remember, our goal is to bring in organic traffic and lead visitors to become customers.

To sell furniture, it is not necessary to SEO the word "Interior Design".

So what are the factors we need to pay close attention to?

1.SSL security (or HTTPS)

If you don't know what SSL security is, you can basically understand it as a security certificate for your Website. You can look up in the browser field to see the green https text of the url and the green lock box image

Google will prioritize search results with websites that have full security certificates.

Currently, on most browsers, if you do not have an SSL certificate, your website will be warned that it is not secure. This is also a loss for customers when the website is warned, making customers distrustful. Therefore, an SSL certificate is now a must for your website.

So how do we need to get this certificate?

To use this certificate, you have to pay a fee of several hundred thousand to several million per year to the hosting provider. And the installation is also relatively complicated for those who do not know much about technology.

I have a security certificate on my websites, and each installation takes a little time, but this is a must.

If you are using Sapo's sales website, you don't have to worry about this problem, because I see that Sapo has been providing free SSL to all customers for quite a long time. From the time I wrote the review: Should I use Sapo X Omnichannel multi-channel sales platform? 

If you use an external website, you can use Hosting Z.com and sign up for a 12-month hosting package and get a free SSL certificate. Currently Medio's Blog is also using a server from Z.com. You can consult here.

This is also very good for sales websites because it gives customers confidence when buying or paying online on the website.

2. Quality website content.

A quality content will include the following elements:

• The article must be long enough.
• Provide value to readers.
• Optimize Onpage SEO well (how to place H1, H2, H3 tags; add full alt tags + image title,...). You can learn more, there are many documents written about this.
• Your website needs to have sections to edit titles, descriptions, and urls for article or product pages.

The most important thing is that the content must be attractive and provide value to readers, don't force too many keywords into it reluctantly, causing discomfort to readers.

3. Website structure.

Of course this is very important, a beautiful, eye-catching house design, but a weak, poor quality frame cannot be appreciated - the same goes for Google. Because of this, I am very allergic to regular manual coding sites.

So many times I accidentally read a few lines on groups like: you should use a hand-coded site for SEO to be good, with that kind of money, you can make a hand-coded site, why do you have to use WordPress, why use a system website, you can't do SEO. ,...and then consulting on smashing the system's website so that the other party can do it again. Sometimes my blood boils and I want to argue, but I restrain myself.

I would like to assure you that the comments come from Freelancers who design websites to promote themselves, or semi-skilled SEOers who have never sold, never directly SEOed websites of that type, but only listened. Just hesitate and comment - if you don't believe me, just click on their profile and you'll know.

Hand-code a website unless you are a very large unit and need very special features, then do it, if the budget is not at least a few tens of millions and there is an IT coding team in the company to edit and update when needed. It's best to forget that.

In terms of good website structure, I would advise as follows:

• News, introduction, blog websites should be made with WordPress
• Sales website you can use Woocommerce, or Magento. Magento is a bit heavy and difficult to use. These two types are for those who know at least a little about IT. If you don't use them, it will be quite difficult.
• If you do not have IT or coding skills, I recommend that you should use a system website like Sapo for example - also an open platform that can install apps and customize the interface very well. And of course, because it is a system website, it has very good SEO support because they have to be optimal to serve many customers. One good thing is to be continuously updated and connected to sales support platforms in Vietnam that WordPress and Magento can hardly do.

Within the scope of this article, I cannot write too deeply. If you are interested in the system website, you can read more details in the article: Should I use Sapo X Omnichannel multi-channel sales platform? 

3. Traffic

I see that traffic volume greatly affects SEO results. To take advantage of this, I often write an article related to the product for sale such as instructions, reviews, tips, tricks, etc. then have an attractive title and then push traffic to that link.

To push traffic, you have many ways to do it such as:

• Use Facebook and Google ads - the price will be very cheap, less boring than directly advertising the product.
• Post in related groups - I mean post in a nice way, I hate spam so choose a group that interacts well and then post in there like a normal user, as long as it doesn't smell like seeding. You should only post in 1 or 2 quality groups because many people are in many groups at the same time. If you post too much, they will see it as spam and give a bad impression.

For example, when I used to sell phones, LG G4 likenew was quite hot in the segment of over 3 million, but it often had sudden death errors. I wrote the article:”Why does the LG G4 have a sudden death error and is still as popular as Tran Duy Hung's girl?” (remember who your target audience is and grab the title accordingly. LG fans are usually young men and like to play with their phones, so I set the title like that).

In the article, I added a few links to the LG G4 likenew product we are selling, and introduced that the company we sell will support exchanging another device when encountering a sudden death error - other parties do not have it. And the number of orders increased immediately in the following days.

When you have good traffic and readers stay longer, Google will gradually appreciate your articles. I remember after about 1 month, that article was at the Top, and the G4 likenew product link was also in the top 2, top 3 even though the website I made at that time was completely new. Installing customer referral links in your articles helps increase Internal links, and attracts more traffic to your other pages.

4. Website speed.

Website speed is also a very important factor for Google. You can check speed with Google's PageSpeed checking tools

To optimize website speed, you need to optimize many things such as: server, code, interface, images, java scripts, etc. I find this takes up a lot of my time, but because it's important, I always try my best. possible. But my ability is limited because I'm not a coding expert, so my score is only around 90.

You should choose providers that have servers in Vietnam for better website access speed. Those with demo websites or trial registrations can also be used to check the speed.

5. Optimize website for mobile devices.

If I remember correctly, in an update in 2015 or 2016, Google updated it to prioritize mobile-friendly websites with higher rankings when users search on these devices.

Most users now use phones or tablets, so this factor is extremely important. Especially if your website supports AMP, it will be even better. AMP is an accelerated page for mobile devices, where the website will have most of its components shortened, so the access speed is very fast. Websites that support AMP when searched on the phone will have a lightning bolt image as below:

However, I only use amp for blog pages because if used on sales pages, it will be shortened, leading to parts like ordering and product interface being changed and making it difficult for customers to order.

So for your Website sales pages, just using a Responsive interface that is automatically compatible with devices is great.

I tested Sapo's system website for your reference to see that the optimal score on mobile devices is also very good.

That's my experience when SEOing my websites. If you do the above things well, your natural traffic will increase gradually and very sustainably, without worrying about losing rankings when Google updates. This method is suitable for those who want to sell multi-channel and build a long-term sales channel.

Thank you for reading the article. If you have any comments, please comment below!