Tips to Optimize Your Website for Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce

What if someone told you 20 years ago that you’d be able to legally have cannabis delivered right to your house?

With the tempting boom of E-commerce, this is now a daily occurrence – and a major business opportunity for investors.

The cannabis industry is only getting bigger. According to the Cannabis Industry 2017 Annual Report, by 2025, sales of recreational and medical marijuana will reach $24 billion.

So how do you tap into this growing market and make your business known?

You move from retail to e-commerce.

Why E-commerce SEO boosts online sales

More and more people are turning to online stores to buy cannabis. This means that if you want your business to be their first choice, your website needs to rank high in search results, load fast and look good.

In other words, you need E-commerce SEO.

This concept may sound foreign and complex. But here’s why you should consider it:

• 80% of shoppers compare prices and reviews online before purchasing from a physical store
• 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search results
• 53% of mobile users abandon a website if it takes over 3 seconds to load

Simply put, you need a powerful online presence to increase sales.

Consumers don’t trust a website that doesn’t work smoothly and look clean. And they’ll never buy from a website that doesn’t even make it to their first-page in search results.

That’s why you need an E-commerce platform that’s SEO-friendly.

But how do you know which platform is right for your business?

How to choose the right E-commerce platform for SEO

Let’s take a look at 3 E-commerce giants that are great for SEO: Shopify, Magento, and WooCommerce. And see what sets them apart and which works best for your business.

1. Shopify

When to use it: if you want a full package for building your own store, that also comes with cool features and useful SEO plugins.

Shopify entered the market when recreational marijuana became legal in Canada.

Since then, it’s now processing over 100 online orders per minute.

With over 100 payment gateways, the platform has a mobile-friendly format and features quality themes with over 50 different templates.

What makes Shopify stand out is that it provides the cleanest user experience, and also the largest range of plugins that help optimize your website for search results. Another unique benefit is that you can use it to sell an unlimited number of products.

How to optimize for SEO:

• Keep a simple site structure
• Avoid using sliders
• Use smaller images
• Optimize product pages (title, meta description, keywords)
• Don’t clutter your page with unnecessary apps;

but do use these: Yoast, SEMRush, Plug in SEO

2. Magento

When to use it: if you’re a large company or a fast-growing startup looking for complex solutions.

Magento is the web home for international behemoths like Ford and Coca-Cola. It’s currently being used by over 150,000 online business owners.

Some of its perks include multi-stores, advanced SEO tools, catalog management, and smart search filters for shoppers.

Here’s another cool feature – Magento allows you to display different versions of your website based on user language and location. This is a really useful tool if you plan on selling to more than one state and have to match the needs of different regional markets.

So what’s not that great about it? It’s complex and requires heavy servers and skilled developers to work well.

How to optimize for SEO:

• Eliminate duplicate content
• Use short URLs
• Don’t use default descriptions
• Enable all caching features to speed up your site

3. WooCommerce

When to use it: if you already have a website (preferably on WordPress) and you need help turning it into an online store.

30% of all online stores use WooCommerce.

What makes it unique is that it includes a WordPress plugin and most of its features are free.

WooCommerce features more than 1,000 SEO and performance plugins. It has built-in analytics and it’s designed to scale with your business.

How to optimize for SEO:

• Enable breadcrumbs
• Optimize product slug
• Add alt text for product images

Conclusion

Regardless of the platform you choose for your E-commerce store, it will be highly customizable, drive more traffic to your website and grow along with your business long-term.

You can also try reaching out to a local SEO professional. They’ll be able to guide you towards the software that best fits your marketing needs.