Why You Need a Website; Even if You Don’t Sell Anything on It

In our modern digital world, having a website for your brand is an absolute must. It acts as a hub where prospective customers can learn more about your products. Even if you don’t sell anything on your website, having one is still necessary.

Whether or not you have a website, people are talking about your product online — wouldn’t you rather be the source of all truth for your prospective customers?

If your website is the digital equivalent of your business, then search engines like Google and Bing are directories. Your domain needs to rank highly for search terms so high-quality people can find it.

In this article, we’ll outline how to increase the search visibility of your non eCommerce product website.

Information About Your Products

Your website acts as a hub of information about your products. You’re able to go in-depth; more than a product page on an eCommerce platform ever could.

This is important because potential customers tend to do extensive research before they make a purchase. The buyer’s journey involves multiple touchpoints before they obtain your product; your website is one major stopover before the checkout.

In many respects, your website is an extension of your brand’s sales team. It’s there to provide information and insight into your products when your salespeople aren’t available. It can answer questions and outline benefits, providing support to prospective customers.

Information About Your Brand

Your website is where you get to tell your story: what your brand is about. This is an opportunity to tell your target audience what your brand stands for, and what makes it different. Your USP: unique selling proposition is a primary element to your brand; it should be front-and-centre.

When prospective customers come to your website, they’re looking for answers that satisfy their needs. When considering buying your product, they’ll not only research your product but your overall brand strategy.

Once customers have been educated about your brand, they can also review your team and the history of your business.

Information About Where to Buy Your Products

Even though you don’t sell your products on your website, you can still use it to redirect potential customers. You can dedicate an entire page to where your products are sold, whether that’s online, in-store, or both.

You can also add these same links on the product information pages on your website.

How to Increase Search Visibility of Your Non eCommerce Product Website

Given that your website is found via search engines like Google and Bing, its search visibility is extremely important. Increasing it requires addressing the core subcategories of SEO:

• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Technical SEO

If you measurably improve all three, you’ll start ranking higher on SERPs, resulting in more organic traffic. When you’ve got more people visiting your website, you’re going to be generating and nurturing leads, leading to more customers.

Below, you’ll find actionable strategies you can implement to get your domain noticed on Google and Bing.

Improving On-page SEO

On-page SEO is all about the things that you can control on your end, on your website. That’ll include all the pages and the content on them.

Here’s what you can do to improve the on-page SEO of your website:

1. Create Quality Website Content

The foundation of any good website is its pages and the content on those pages. You must provide an informative, educational, and entertaining experience to those that visit your domain.

There are several pages your non eCommerce website will need; which ones will depend on the nature of your business. Aside from obviously the home page, some examples of pages might include:

• Product information pages
• A buy now/where to buy/contact us page
• A testimonials page
• A frequently asked questions (FAQ) page
• Blog/educational content pages
• An about us/brand history/our story page

For example, Naturopathica has a home page, a products page, an about us page, and a blog page.

Most websites have a sitemap you can look at; you can use this to research competitors.

Make sure your pages are optimized around particular keywords relevant to your business. Not every page will require a keyword, as there’s no one using Google to search for your about us page.

Some pages should be optimized for keywords, acting as pathways for search traffic to your domain. Others should primarily be for user experience, informing, educating, and entertaining website visitors.

2. Create Content Targeting Long-tail Keywords

Blog and educational content are an awesome way to bring in website traffic from Google. It’s also a great way to provide value to potential customers who might benefit from your products. An active, high-quality blog also says a lot about your brand as a whole.

Each post/page can be dedicated to a specific long-tail keyword, tunnelling search traffic to your website. Uncovering these valuable “gold nugget” search phrases is done through keyword research. You must find keywords that your prospective customers are searching for

The basis of your content marketing strategy will revolve around making unique content for these keywords.

3. Optimize the Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions of Your Website Pages

One of the most important things you must address regarding the pages of your website is their metadata. These are HTML tags that communicate to search engines what your pages are about. They also tell people using search engines what your pages are about on SERPs.

In case you didn’t know, metadata are these things you see on Google:

Your meta title (page title) and meta description are just two of many; others include your image alt texts and header tags.

Your meta title is the most important of the bunch. It’s what search users see when they observe your page result on Google.

It has one of the biggest influences on your page’s rankings. To optimize it, here’s what you’ll want to do:

• Add your keyword
• Front-load your keyword if possible
• Keep it short

Secondly, you’ll want to address your meta description. This, like your meta title, is seen by individuals using Google. If your meta title is the title of your page, the meta description is the blurb.

It’s a few short sentences that tell what to expect on the page. Although it doesn’t directly impact search rankings, it has an indirect influence. A persuasive meta description can increase the click-through rate, which does affect rankings.

To optimize your meta description, do these things:

• Keep it under 155-160 characters length
• Write like a copywriter
• Tell them what to expect

Want to see what your metadata looks like for all your pages currently? simply Google search “site:yourwebsite.com” and observe.

Systematically address each page, one by one.

4. Add LSI Keywords to Your Content

A great and easy way to boost the SEO of the page content of your website is to add LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are keywords that are semantically related to your primary keyword in search engines. Do you know how you type something into Google and search suggestions come up?

These are LSI keywords; you should find ways to sprinkle them within the content of the pages of your website. These phrases provide search engines with additional context; it makes it easier to rank your pages.

Improving Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is all about the things off-site that you can address to influence your website’s search rankings. This concerns how many backlinks your website has, what individual pages have, and the quality and relevance of those backlinks.

Here’s how you can improve your website’s off-page SEO:

1. Reach Out to Blogs for Guest Blogging Opportunities

One of the best ways to generate quality, relevant backlinks for your website is guest posting. This is where you write content and someone else features it on their website. This person will have an audience within your industry or niche.

What you get from guest posting is a backlink, which is a link from that website, back to yours. Make sure that it’s a “dofollow” link to ensure you get all the SEO benefits.

You’ll also get exposure, which could result in more website visitors and eyes on your brand. It’s one of the best off-page SEO strategies around.

To find guest blogging opportunities, use Google like so:

Proposition them, follow their guest post submission instructions, make good quality content, generate quality backlinks. That’s all there is to it.

2. Create Social Media Profiles

Social media is a fantastic way to help build up your website’s visibility on search engines. You can promote your website and blog posts on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Social signals such as shares, likes, and comments can also indirectly influence your search rankings. By improving the visibility of your profiles on social media platforms, you’ll be able to increase your reach. More users will see your posts, and your website will get more hits.

Social media doesn’t directly influence Google rankings; it only acts as an effective traffic channel to your website. One might look at top-ranking pages and assume a relationship between search visibility and social media, but it’s incidental.

Improving Technical SEO

Technical SEO is all about how your website is structured, which influences how search engines crawl it. It’s also about how your website performs for users; user experience affects your SERP rankings.

Here are some actionable strategies you can do to improve the technical SEO of your website:

1. Build Internal Links

Creating internal links on your website helps search engines better crawl, rank, and index your domain. When you make things easier for Google and Bing, your search rankings will likely improve.

One case study showed that an internal linking campaign can increase organic traffic by as much as 40%.

Image Source: NinjaOutreach

The key with internal links is to not go overboard; only use them where contextually relevant. If you force it by spamming, it’ll work against your search visibility efforts.

2. Optimize For Mobiles

Did you know that 55.22% of all global website traffic comes from mobile devices? Ever since smartphones hit the scene, desktop usage has dropped, while mobile and tablets have soared. It was around 2016 when mobile officially became the dominant device for using the internet.

Your website needs to be optimized for mobiles; if it isn’t, it can negatively impact your search rankings.

In 2015, Google released its “Mobilegeddon” algorithm update, prioritizing mobile-optimized websites for mobile searches. Since then, Google has taken it a step further: as of 2018, its index became “mobile-first.”

So, what’s the best way to optimize your website for mobile? Simply use a responsive web design. This is a feature that allows your website design to scale its dimensions, depending on which device is being used.

Image Source: Blue Corona

3. Improve Site Speed

The speed at which the pages of your website load is extremely important. It has a direct influence on user experience, as well as your search rankings. Research has shown that the longer it takes a page to load, the higher the bounce rate.

Image Source: Ironpaper

Even Google’s research has supported this connection.

Image Source: Link-Assistant

This is significant because user experience influences search rankings. If all your website visitors are leaving because your pages load slowly, what is this saying to search engines?

Also, consider Google has stated that for mobile searches page speed is a ranking factor. This is important because mobile searches make up the majority of internet searches today.

Conclusion

Not all the actionable strategies outlined in this post will apply to you. Implement as many as you can; it will improve the visibility of your website on Google and Bing. SEO is an investment; it’s not something that happens overnight.

Are you looking for an agency that can help you increase the visibility of your product website on search engines? Please contact our SEO team today to learn how Vine Digital can help you improve your SERP rankings.

Glossary

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

A unique selling proposition (USP) is a marketing strategy that informs potential customers how a brand’s product or service is superior to competitors. USPs are used as a tactic to differentiate a brand from the rest of the marketplace.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy concerned with improving the search rankings of websites and pages.

Long-tail Keyword

A long-tail keyword is a type of keyword that’s relatively low in search volume and not too competitive to rank for. They’re typically long phrases, such as “how to wash a car.”

Strategically speaking, long-tail keywords provide opportunities to gain search traffic for lower-ranking websites.

LSI Keywords

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords are keywords that are semantically related to a primary keyword, in the context of search engines.

Internal Links

Internal links are hyperlinks between pages of a website. They’re links that link to the same website, just a different page.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a metric that measures how many of your website visitors visited one page then left. It can also be determined for a single page.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

A search engine results page (SERP) is any results page shown on search engines like Google and Bing. When you type something into Google, the first page of results is a SERP, as is the second.