Having a webshop made

Unfortunately, reality isn’t quite as idyllic as we’ve presented it above. But that doesn’t change the fact that having a webshop built is an attractive option for many companies. Provided, of course, that you get visitors through the door – in that respect, there’s no difference from a physical store. In this article, we explain why SEO is a great solution for that, how SEO for webshops works, and why our SEO agency is ideal for guiding you in developing your online store.

A webshop or web store is an online platform that allows the owner to sell products or services via the internet. Webshops are as old as the world wide web. As early as the early nineties, pizzas and vacations were being sold online. In the second half of that same decade, things moved even faster with the arrival of Amazon, eBay, and Google. When many stores were recently forced to close their doors during the corona crisis, webshops again saw a massive influx of customers. An interesting revenue model, in other words.

A webshop is always open and accessible from anywhere. In principle, everyone with an internet connection is a potential customer for your web store. That makes the potential huge. However, it is important that your target audience either already knows you or gets to know you.

There are even more advantages to having a webshop made for yourself. For instance, web stores offer you valuable insights into your customers. Based on their data, you can show personalized offers and recommendations, run targeted marketing campaigns, and build customer loyalty.

Moreover, as a webshop owner, you are very flexible. Spot an opportunity in the market? Nothing stops you from expanding your range in the short term. By linking your webshop to your ERP (enterprise resource planning), you can closely monitor your stock. And of course, online you enjoy all the possible benefits of SEO.

Because you like making a lot of profit, obviously. No more than 5% of your online visitors actually make a purchase. That percentage is fixed (and is usually even much smaller). To boost your sales, it’s therefore important to attract more people to your web store. And that happens in an organic, sustainable way by ranking high in the search results.

Compared to other methods like paid advertising and social media, SEO is the most efficient online lead generator. Anyone who has just started might have a different opinion. You put so much time into getting the technical side of your webshop right, providing relevant content, and adding internal links and backlinks. Yet your web store remains well hidden behind the first ten search results of Google.

The secret of SEO? Persistence. SEO is a long-term strategy that only bears fruit after consistently investing time and effort for several months. With the knowledge you gain on our website, you can easily get started yourself. Or you can outsource your SEO to our team of experts.

In essence, a webshop is a website. So the three pillars of SEO remain important. Because a webshop mainly consists of product categories and product pages, there are some different emphases.

1) Technical

This is the foundation for your SEO. Websites where it’s a mess behind the scenes never rank high in the search results. The essence is user-friendliness. If people enjoy visiting your website, Google is happy to lead them there. As an SEO expert, we’d like to share the following reminders:

• Website architecture: the importance of this cannot be overstated. Map it out beforehand, stick it to your computer screen, and stick to it. Your visitors and Google will thank you.
• Menu structure: flows directly from your architecture, so that visitors don’t have to click more than 3 times to land on the page they’re looking for. Breadcrumbs clearly indicate to your visitor and to search engines where they are and how they got there.
• Readable URLs: flows directly from your menu structure, so preferably “theicecreamman.be/vanilla/boxes/liter” rather than “theicecreamman.be/vanilref87302”.
• Title structure: find the balance between clear and concise, so preferably “Box Vanilla 1 Liter – Ice Cream Man” rather than “DELICIOUS tasty ice cream vanilla ice BOX 1L 😍”
• Pro tip: Google has no use for the pages where your customer completes their order and pays. So shield these from crawlers.

2) Content

As always, extensive keyword research is essential. After all, that forms the basis for relevant content, which Google absolutely loves. Our golden tip: focus on your category pages. That’s where you want visitors to browse through your extensive range. Then continue working on the pages that score well. Is the “ice cream cakes” category doing well? Then branch out further towards “ice cream logs”, “ice cream lambs”, “fruit ice cream cakes”… This way you optimize specifically to make the match between your product and the visitor even stronger.

A few more things you definitely shouldn’t forget:

• Keep working on your conversion rate. Increasing from 100 to 150 visitors in your webshop is nice, but increasing from 1% to 2% who also take an action during that visit is even better.
• In the absence of a physical object, most visitors in a webshop are seduced by images. Make sure they grab attention but, above all, aren’t too large. That reduces the speed of your web store and thus the user-friendliness. There’s also much more to learn about image SEO.

3) Authority

Do you have a well-thought-out website architecture and content that fits it perfectly? Then placing internal links is the logical next step. Your menu and breadcrumbs are already a first step. When you talk about your preparation with real vanilla pods on the “vanilla ice cream” category page, you naturally link to all other product categories with vanilla ice cream, such as “boxes of vanilla ice cream” and “vanilla ice cream cakes”. This way you build strong content clusters, which Google loves.

Backlinking for a webshop is a bit more difficult. Contributing guest content about your expertise on another website, getting an article with you as the subject placed by a news medium, or asking your suppliers for help are ways to get others to link to your website. Make sure you have natural links and keep at it. In the long run, you’ll reap the benefits by positioning yourself as an expert, both to your target audience and search engines.

For search engines, a separate website is a separate website. In other words, if you launch your webshop separately from your website, you have to prove all the technical stuff, content, and authority to Google again from scratch. So go for “www.theicecreamman.be/vanilla-ice-cream”, “www.theicecreamman.be/chocolate-ice-cream” and so on rather than “www.theicecreammanwebshop.be”.

The price for having a webshop made depends on a number of factors. As is often the case, you can go as basic or as crazy as you want. The total cost is influenced by many different factors, including functionality, design, possibility for adjustments, need for updates, your budgets for hosting and marketing, and the platform you choose. In that respect, there are many similarities with having a website made.

Want to dip your toes in the water and see how much online interest there is for your products? Then it’s best to start with a basic webshop with category pages and products. You can find options online for a few hundred euros, but to be sure of quality, you should count on a budget of around 3,500 euros.

Want a bit more bells and whistles? Are you offering thousands of products that all deserve equal attention? Do you have a liquor store with functions such as avoiding sales to minors and taking deposits into account? Then it’s probably a better idea to partner with a developer. Count on an investment of at least several tens of thousands of euros.

That also depends on your needs, wishes, and budget. We list some well-known platforms with their pros and cons.

WooCommerce

A plugin for WordPress and the most popular open-source e-commerce solution in the world. We understand that all too well: WooCommerce has enormous possibilities, is extremely user-friendly, and loves SEO (just like us). You do need a fair amount of technical background for it.

Shopify

For Shopify, almost no technical knowledge is required. Great for getting off to a flying start, but we’ll warn you now about the frustrations that arise when you notice that Shopify isn’t exactly set up for search engine optimization. And that’s what life is all about, after all.

Wix

Suffering from the same issues as Shopify: perfect for getting started, lots of layout options with existing choices, but few SEO possibilities. Moreover, with Wix you are stuck with the platform and its limitations, unlike, for example, the independent WordPress.

Magento

You’d better not start this without a professional developer by your side. There’s a hefty price tag attached to this platform. But you get what you pay for. Magento is an extremely powerful platform with extensive functionalities. So it’s recommended if you have the ambition to take on the well-known internet giants.

We have built several web stores ourselves and know the process inside out. Today, we are the perfect SEO agency to guide you when having a webshop made is the next step in your business plan.

We consult with your developer and ensure that everything is technically sound. With a competitor analysis, we look at how much and what kind of traffic other webshops in your sector receive, and keyword research gives us inspiration for relevant content. Naturally, we also take care of links to build your authority. Thanks to SEO, you attract more visitors to your webshop in a sustainable, natural way.