How to Increase the Visibility of an Online Store Operating in the Food Industry?

The development of the online grocery shopping sector

Although there’s been a meteoric rise in the popularity of online shopping in recent years, many people still associate buying food products only with visiting very conventional shopping centers.

However, if you keep an eye on the situation on the market, you can boldly say that the trend is changing rapidly.

The food industry is very appealing for e-commerce and digitalization is not only about being trendy but also about making everything more convenient for consumers. An increasing number of well-known grocery store chains are offering their products both in brick and mortar stores and online. Consequently, they meet the requirements of the society and continuously modernize their offers.

Food industry trends in 2020

• acceleration of digitization,
• multichannel sales,
• linking purchase motivation to health and nature,
• care for the environment.

The year 2020 in the food industry will be a time of healthy food with very short composition. Consumers are more and more frequently looking for products that will include information about health benefits and help them to overcome all possible ailments. In the current year, we’re supposed to witness the launch of even more products signed as eco, bio or organic.

The e-commerce market in the food industry is also expanding due to the fact that more and more people are in constant rush and that their awareness of the importance of eating healthy is growing. It also results from the Sunday shopping ban introduced in many countries and growing customer expectations.

How to increase the visibility of your online food store with the use of SEO?

Local SEO

When doing SEO for food stores, it’s advisable to focus on local SEO. After entering the phrase “online grocery stores”, the search engine itself provides us with the most frequent results.

If you select keywords for your business, pay attention to the so-called long tail phrases which are more specific and precisely describe your services and offer. Focusing on these aspects will allow you to improve the visibility of your e-store and meet the customer requirements.

Moreover, long tail phrases will help you to stand out from the competition displayed in the search results together with your shop. After entering the specific city you want to buy products in, you’ll be provided with only these companies that really deliver groceries in a given area, not in the other end of the world.

External linking (industry websites and blogs)

If you run an online grocery shop, you should consider cooperating with famous bloggers who create lifestyle content and share new trends or advice with readers. Obtaining quality links from other websites is one of the most relevant ranking factors that can significantly affect the position of your site in the search results.

Social media fanpage

Running fanpages in social media will allow you to evoke some kind of social activity around your brand. It’s an opportunity to attract users, tell them about your special offers or contests. Various graphics, word games or gifts can effectively encourage users to interact – either by commenting on your texts, sharing the profile or liking the content.

A social media fanpage influences not only your brand image. From the SEO point of view, being active on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube enables obtaining additional external links.

Cooperation with influencers

Currently, social media profiles run by active mums who, on the one hand want to devote themselves to childcare and on the other don’t want to give up professional work, are becoming increasingly popular. The same applies to people who want to pursue their hobbies but at the same time lead a very busy lifestyle. Cooperating with influencers who publish content closely related to lifestyle is beneficial not only when it comes to finances but also if you want to improve your brand image.

This form of advertising is particularly attractive due to its reach. Generally influencers have a devoted group of fans who trust them and consider the recommended products or services as valuable and remarkable. Influencer marketing is an effective and modern way of advertising the brand and it’ll certainly appeal to a growing number of potential customers.

Website UX

It’s important to ensure that customers who are decided to buy and enter your website can easily navigate it and get what they need. When it comes to SEO, the products on your offer should be visibly divided into categories and subcategories and the content needs to be optimized for keywords with the highest search volume.

Tabs such as shopping lists, recommended products, inspirations or special offers can significantly accelerate the shopping process. Thanks to them, users will be able to freely navigate the site and quickly select products that are of interest to them. Think about enabling customer reviews, they highly affect the decision making of potential customers and inspire trust in the brand.

To sum up

A properly implemented SEO strategy can help you improve the visibility of your online grocery store in the search results. Your potential success is influenced by: local SEO, running a social media fanpage, obtaining quality external links, cooperating with influencers and designing a functional and well-optimized website.

Online grocery stores are becoming increasingly popular, therefore, it’s worth taking care of unique content which will make your site stand out from the crowd. Improving the position of your website in the search results will allow you to attract new potential customers and convince them to stay with you for longer. However, if you still want to learn more about getting more repeat customers, go to one of our previous articles.