How SEO Works In Different Industries

Shared Strategies

Firstly, let’s just highlight the core concepts of SEO which will always be important regardless of the website:

• Keyword research – you always need to make sure you’re trying to rank for the right keywords.
• Content – content should always be relevant, readable, meaningful and high-quality.
• Backlinks – backlinks will always be used to rank your website and pages, although backlinks are more important in some industries compared to others.
• Website speed – you should always be trying to ensure your website loads fast for your users.
• Website structure – your website structure should always be organised to easily differentiate main pages, blog posts, products etc.

eCommerce Websites

Driving search traffic is vital for eCommerce websites – there’s always going to be people searching for your products, and if you target the right keywords they are very likely to purchase your products without having to do much convincing.

Many eCommerce websites are image-focused to quickly showcase their products to the visitor. However, a page filled with images and no content will do nothing for your SEO. When it comes to optimising your eCommerce website, product descriptions and product category descriptions are immensely important. Not only do these descriptions provide the necessary relevance that search engines are looking for, they also provide great opportunities to internally link to relevant categories and product models. 

However, no one wants to read 5 paragraphs of text when they’re browsing products to buy – so how do you please Google with content without hurting user experience?

Your optimised descriptions and content can be hidden until toggled such as text accordions or a “read more” button etc. This way of organising the text will still count towards your SEO: anything included in the HTML document of a webpage is counted by Google for ranking purposes.

For more tips about writing content for eCommerce websites, you can read our blog here.

Physical Business

For “physical business” I am only including local businesses where the goal is to drive people to the physical business location as opposed to website conversion. For example, restaurants, cafes, shops etc.

The most important thing for these businesses is the Google Map Pack. This is the section of the search results where Google lists around 3-5 local businesses relevant to your search term. Arguably, being listed in the map pack is far more important than appearing as #1 in the website results. Think about your own searches – if you search something like “Chinese restaurants near me” are you more likely to click a business listing or a website result?

In order for a business to improve their local listing rankings, they need to invest in local SEO and optimise their Google My Business page:

• Business address.
• Business hours, including special hours on days such as Christmas, Easter, New Years etc.
• List your business in the correct category.
• Ask for customers to post reviews.
• Create additional business listings on other business directory websites.

You can read more about optimising your Google My Business with this helpful blog from Search Engine Journal.

Health/Medical

SEO for a healthcare or medical website is one of the most difficult niches. Because healthcare and medicine is such a sensitive topic to write about, Google has to be very careful in ranking medical websites – as these search terms can have a big impact on a user’s physical health and wellbeing. 

In order to rank your medical website, you need to focus on EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). This is about proving your expertise as a real medical professional, which can be achieved in various methods:

• For example, if you’re a GP with your own website, you need to have your website included on the NHS’s official online GP listings. 
• If your medical websites include blog posts, you need to include a descriptive author bio which clearly shows who has written the content and what qualifies them to professionally write about medical topics.
• Utilise real images of your staff, office/practice, equipment etc. This serves to show your business and staff are actually real, as opposed to random people from Shutterstock.