How I built a Magento website to gain over 2.8 million impressions on Google.
Developing a website isn’t easy if you’re doing it from scratch. HTML, CSS and PHP can be quite burdensome when put into a larger production environment. Luckily, we live in an era where there are software — i.e. Shopify & Bigcommerce, and frameworks — i.e. Magento and Woocommerce, that make our lives easier by the day.
Our site, directmachines.com was built using the Magento framework. Known to be more technical than their peers Woocommerce and Shopify, Magento is a framework that allows for low-cost scalability and powerful strength. Taking quite a bit of time (around 3 months!) to develop this product, I ran it through many different developers and plugins (which did rack the bill up quite a bit). Overall, the total development costs for the site were under a few thousand dollars, and we had a fully functional, national ecommerce brand. But what was the next step — was it to wait and see who comes, or push people towards us?
How to get search traffic
To get search traffic on a site, we must pay close attention to both our winners and our losers. Anything that doesn’t build an audience base isn’t worthwhile unless it builds on a bigger initiative that will pay itself out. Utilizing Google MyBusiness, Google Search Console and Google Analytics, I put myself out there to find out how to get Google to like us.
Hooking us up to the Google sphere, it becomes evident that Google will tell you what it likes and doesn’t like. They’ll notify you constantly, that problems arise in your site, that people want to
know more about certain items, or that they are gravitating towards particular content. Based on this, I embarked on a two-fold strategy: optimizing our website and enhancing our content.
Website Optimization
Magento, while powerful, can often be bloated and slow if not properly optimized. We focused on several key areas for optimization: enhancing site speed, improving user experience, and deploying a mobile-first strategy. Using a combination of caching techniques, image optimization, and code minification, we managed to reduce our page load times significantly. User experience was enhanced by streamlining the navigation, reducing unnecessary clicks, and creating a clear, concise checkout process. Since a majority of our traffic was coming from mobile devices, we ensured our website was fully responsive and optimized for mobile viewing.
Content Enhancement
Enhancing content is a continuous task. We aimed for content that is not only SEO friendly, but also engaging and informative. We regularly updated our product descriptions with more detailed information and keywords relevant to our audience. Additionally, we started a blog on our site, providing useful tips, product reviews, and industry news. This served to engage our customers and increase our website’s authority in the eyes of Google. We also incorporated user-generated content such as reviews and testimonials, which further boosted our SEO.
Our SEO efforts began paying off after a few months. Our impressions on Google started to rise, reaching over 1.2 million. This surge in visibility led to an increase in traffic, sales, and repeat customers. But the work didn’t stop there. SEO is a continuous effort, and in order to maintain and further increase our visibility, we have to consistently update our website, monitor our analytics, and continue to generate valuable content for our users.
Overall, building a Magento website and scaling it to reach over 2.8 million impressions on Google was an engaging and educational journey. The beauty of this digital marketing sphere is its constant evolution, requiring us to stay on top of the latest trends, updates, and strategies. We’re excited about the future and the potential growth of our eCommerce brand.
