The creation of online stores is a trend of 2020-2021, and it was not by chance. The main reason for such a boom in the development of online stores, and in general, Internet resources — were quarantine restrictions and falls, which will not leave the world alone. Every owner of an offline store or restaurant wakes up with the thought that tomorrow his business may be closed due to quarantine restrictions - and therefore all entrepreneurs are trying to transfer their business to the Internet as quickly as possible.

The Internet is not afraid of a pandemic, and allows entrepreneurs to continue their commercial activities even when the work of offline establishments is strictly prohibited. Thanks to such opportunities, online trading has become incredibly popular and in demand, and competition on the Internet has become inexorably growing.

In order to create a successful online store in 2021, you need not just to develop a unique design and intuitive structure, you need to study the competitors, the niche in which you plan to trade and what chances your resource will eventually bring you profit. The last point is especially important, because in the conditions of increasing competition, it is very easy to” drain " the entire budget for advertising and burn out.

In this article, we will look at the preparatory stage of optimizing an online store. It is best to conduct it during the creation of the resource, because this way you will get rid of the need to dive into the wilds of the structure and system files after launching the resource. Next, we will look at the issues of primary optimization, competitor analysis, and the environment in which you plan to trade. And also find out if the user is able to independently optimize the resource, let's start!

Analyze the resource's competitors and create a plan for further actions

Creating an online store is difficult, but optimizing it and making it competitive against other resources is even more difficult. To do this, you will need to study both your target audience and the resources of your competitors. Target audience analysis will allow you to:

• Understand the age, interests, and preferences of users who may be your potential customers
• It will allow you to divide the target audience of the created online store into different segments, after which you can choose which of the received target audience segments interests you the most.
• Find out the search queries of your potential buyers.
• This information will give you the opportunity to create an effective semantic core, with the help of which your Internet resource will be optimized in the future.

Thanks to the information you receive, you can get a database, based on which you will be able to build a plan for the optimization itself in the future. It is important to note that when creating a semantic core, it is necessary to carefully select search queries, since it is often possible to find negative keywords among them. Negative keywords are words and phrases that are indirectly related to your niche. With their help, users can search for a product or products that have nothing to do with the specifics of your online store. Such requests may lead to traffic generated by your online store, but not targeted. Using negative keywords in the optimization and creation of contextual advertising for an online store can lead to the fact that you will spend the entire advertising budget of your resource on users who are not interested in your products.

In order to avoid such a situation, you need to carefully approach the selection of search queries for the semantic core, which will take a fair amount of time. On average, the semantic core of an online store is configured from several hundred thousand search queries, and each of them can theoretically bring non-targeted traffic. It is difficult to cope with such a volume of requests alone, and if you have never dealt with optimization — it will be almost impossible to do this work efficiently.

As for the analysis of competitors, you can use it to find weaknesses in their resources and fix them. Focusing on the search results leaders, you can learn a lot of useful things for creating the structure and design of your online store. Not to mention that the words that are used in the content on the site of competitors can help you achieve targeted traffic on the pages of the created online store. Taking the leader of the output as a reference point, you need to carefully analyze the competitor's site, study its structure and capabilities. With this information, you can easily repeat the successful layout of the tabs by adding something from yourself.

It will also be useful to analyze the catalog, because the lack of products and too few categories can affect further promotion. Therefore, when developing the structure of an online store and creating a list of product categories, pay attention to the number of categories of your competitors, so you can increase the chances of your created online store to successfully promote.

Working with the semantic core

In addition to analyzing competitors and potential buyers, it is also important that you pay attention to creating a semantic core. As we said earlier, the search queries in this core can play a crucial role in the success of the promotion of the online store you created. Therefore, every request present in the kernel must be investigated properly.

After you get rid of negative keywords in the semantic core of the site, you can start optimizing the pages of the Internet resource. To do this, you need to use the selected search queries in different parts of the site, which can ultimately lead the user to your resource, if the search robots consider it your resource — the most relevant.

Relevance is a parameter that determines how much information published on your site matches the user's search query. If the content on your site can solve the problem of a potential customer, then your site is likely to be in the top of the search results. This will have a great impact on the success of its promotion, but optimizing pages by keys alone is not enough for a successful site.

Creating optimized content

Despite the fact that many entrepreneurs put content creation at the very end of the to-do list for creating an online store — in fact, the best solution is to create content before the development begins. For effective search promotion, several articles will be too few, not to mention the unique product descriptions and the selection of the most successful frames. In order for the catalog of the created online store to be fully optimized, it is necessary that you pay attention to both the creation of the structure and design, and the development of content.

By introducing keywords from the semantic core into the content created for the site pages, you can make the pages of your resource more relevant to the user's search queries, which will positively affect the speed of the resource promotion. Despite this, it is also important not to forget about the expertise.

The expertise and usefulness of the content published on the site, judging by the statements of the search giant Google, will soon become the main parameter for ranking pages. That is why when creating content for the search promotion of an online store, try to publish as much expert information as possible using professional vocabulary. Thus, if the content published by you is reliable and unique — the number of chances of effective search promotion of the online store created by you will be an order of magnitude higher.

Creating a competent link and setting up navigation on the website of the online store
If the site that you create will eventually be a small online store, then the work on linking and navigation will not become vital for your resource, unlike large online resources. For online stores, the number of products in which exceeds several hundred, or even thousands, the creation of a competent linking between articles and products is vital. With the help of such a link, users reading an article in the site's blog can go to the page that interests them in one click simply by using the link of the resource. Also, competent linking will allow you, in addition to informing customers with the help of articles, to also push them to buy. To do this, you will need to embed the search queries of the target audience segment you are interested in in the content on the site pages. In addition to the ability to once again provoke the user to a targeted action, with the help of linking, you can significantly improve the navigation on the site, for which users will respond to you with a growing turnover.

You can achieve loyalty by different methods, but thanks to a comfortable surfing on the site and a quick search, you can get regular customers who, due to the comfort and convenience, simply do not want to get acquainted with the products of your competitors.

Solving problems with a limited range of products and services

The niche that you choose for your online store does not have to be popular. The popularity of a niche is directly related to competition, because the more popular the products of a particular group or niche become, the more resources are created in this direction. Creating an online store for wholesale purchases or a resource that deals with the goods of the manufacturer's company-you may face problems with promotion.

In order for the first users to visit your resource, the standard semantic core will not help you, it will need to be significantly upgraded. With such a resource, you will need to analyze the search queries of your national writers and try to find mixed topics that are more in demand than your niche. Thus, looking for a certain position-the user can get to your resource, and even if he leaves empty-handed-the level of traffic will start to grow, which means that the promotion will move from the dead end.

Professional qualification and whether it is necessary for the described manipulations

Despite the fact that in the text format, the preparatory stage of optimization looks very simple — in fact, it will be almost impossible to understand all this without experience. In order to effectively launch optimization and influence the further promotion of the online store you created, you will need a solid set of skills and knowledge. But what if you have never encountered the optimization of online stores, but you need to launch an effective promotion of a newly created resource? In this case, you can always ask for help from specialists who will make the list of works you need in a much shorter time and with higher efficiency.

Where to order the creation and optimization of an online store

If the online store you created needs optimization or you have not yet taken up development and want to order an online store from professionals-contact the team of the Gloss web studio for help. Our studio has been creating online stores and other resources for more than ten years, as well as optimizing them and further promoting them. Our specialists can create for you an intuitive structure, modern design and carry out high-quality optimization of the resource in a short time. We are also engaged in the development and creation of contextual advertising, so if your site needs high-quality promotion — you can always order the necessary service on the website of the web studio Gloss.