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Everything You Need To Get Started On Walmart – SEO Guide and Selling Strategies

The eCommerce cult has grown tremendously after the once-in-a-lifetime crisis – COVID-19. In these unprecedented times, the majority of the world is shopping online, and the market has evolved a new type of customer – the one who wears pajamas, find something of their interest, and the next second you’ll realize they own it.

There are several eCommerce marketplaces that allow anyone with a great product idea to reach millions of potential buyers. One such popular marketplace is Walmart that accounts for a significant part of eCommerce transactions happening every day.

To keep the platform competitive, Walmart uses a specific set of algorithms to determine the position of a product. Unlike the standard search engine optimization, the key elements to rank on an eCommerce platform depends on various vital aspects.

In this content-rich guide, you’ll learn everything about Walmart SEO that’ll help you to hit the bull’s eye for your products. There’s also a section about selling strategies that’ll help you grow your sales, revenues, and ultimately, profits.

SEO In Walmart – The Fundamentals

Back to the basics, SEO is the art of increasing the number of organic visitors to your website by using strategies to make your website cater to the requirements of search engines. The rules and algorithms used in SEO are changed frequently to make searching more convenient for a user.

Similarly, Walmart, as an eCommerce platform, is also considered as a search engine for products with a specific set of rules and algorithms to rank their product listings. With that said, there must be a set of things that impact the product rankings on Walmart.

video tutorial on how to improve your product listing on Walmart

How To Improve Your Rankings on Walmart

As an entrepreneur, getting your items listed on Walmart isn’t merely enough (Paid ads, ninjas, aside, please!). To ensure that you stay in the long run, you need to rank your products on the top of Walmart. Here’s how you can optimize your listings for a better chance of ranking:

Insightful Product Shelf Descriptions

When you list a product on Walmart, you’re allowed to highlight the three most important details about your product in a dedicated and highlighted space. Therefore, it’s an excellent opportunity for you to catch user’s attention and make them captivated towards your product.

Moreover, the product shelf is also a sweet spot to optimize for your best keywords. However, as a word of advice, make sure you don’t make this space crowded with stuffed and unnatural keywords. Instead, you should consider focusing on the user and let everything else flow naturally.

For a head start, you can list 3-5 significant benefits of your products using a bullet-point formatting structure with 1-2 keywords incorporated. Moreover, you also need to keep the product information understandable and to-the-point.

While optimizing this section, make sure you never repeat any details, make spelling or grammar mistelle, and include meaningless information that doesn’t resonate with the user. If everything’s done right, you’ll have a clean and insightful product shelf description for your listing.

Better Images, Attributes, and Prices

Often ignored by the majority of businesses, attributes, images, and prices can ultimately make or break your rankings on Walmart. It’s fascinating to realize that how stupid yet powerful are these rules to rank your product higher on eCommerce platforms.

As a general rule of thumb, select and upload a high-quality and useful picture of your product (Please!) because it helps in attracting buyers to your listings. Moreover, while uploading a photo, make sure to keep it clearly captured, high-resolution, and well-lit.

Furthermore, like in the product shelf description, avoid copied, wrong, and repeated images at all costs. Boundaries are certainly a big no for the pictures in your listings too. It’s also a wise decision to avoid images with watermarks, graphics, logos, overlays, and graphic texts.

In simple words, you should not try to lure people with unnecessary details and ritzy graphics. Always try to keep it ethical and straightforward to make the most out of it. With good images, you can have a significant edge over your competitors.

Talking about the attributes, they need to be completely relevant, targeted, and precise because they’re used for filtering products. Moreover, make sure you never select the “Other” category as it decreases the visibility of your product.

The same goes for the product price as well. It’s by far the leading factor that affects the rankings of your products. To make sure it’s optimized, make sure you keep a keen eye on the price quoted by your competitors and understand your position in the crowd.

Positive Customer Reviews

Whether you believe it or not, customer reviews play a dominant role in the rankings of your products. Moreover, they can even influence the way your audience makes decisions. With positive feedback, you cannot only build credibility but also improve your rankings.

To make your product stand out with reviews, you can ask your previous buyers to leave an honest review on your product page. Additionally, you should also spend time reaching out to unsatisfied buyers and try solving their problems.

Clear and Concise Product Title

The best thing about Walmart is that they’re incredibly particular about the information of products. That’s the exact reason why they keep a keen limit on the word count of product titles. Therefore, you need to keep it creative yet precise while ensuring that they’re appealing to buyers.

You need to optimize your product title with potential keywords while adhering to the word limit. Here’s a formula that’ll help you make a winning title for your product – Brand + Specification + Quality Definition + Item name + Another Specification + Pack Count.

Furthermore, always make sure you keep it between 50-75 characters, keep the product name creative, and never use any symbols or special characters. It’s also wise to include a few helpful attributes and write about the specialty of your product.

Trust-Winning Short Summaries

There’s also a section known as “Short Description” found either above or below the ‘Product Shelf Description” that can accommodate 500-1000 characters about your product. To make the most out of this space, you need to keep it keyword-rich and well-crafted.

While writing this short description, you must include the product name, potential keywords, and brand name. Moreover, try to define the audience about your products and their features within 8-10 sentences in one single paragraph.

It would be best if you also were clear with your grammar and spellings. Try using easy-to-understand language with suitable and not-stuffed keywords. Furthermore, make sure you never copy from another website and make it uniquely appealing by keeping it completely straightforward.

Feature-Rich Long Descriptions

The last section that allows you to incorporate content in your listings is the “Long Product Descriptions” box. It provides you the liberty to write 250-300 words about your product. However, while optimizing it, you need to avoid fluffiness with a couple of tips in mind.

Start by describing the product in this section in under 250-300 words and list all the benefits a user can achieve through your product. If you believe there are any relevant synonyms for your product, make sure you use them too.

Moreover, try to include 1-2 keywords here without stuffing them and keeping them natural. Make sure the section doesn’t feel awkward or lengthy to read and avoid spelling mistakes at all costs. Using bullet points to highlight facts and figures is also worth doing.

Selling Strategies To Boost Your Sales on Walmart

If you’ve used any other marketplace such as eBay or Amazon, you may have already realized that the same rules don’t apply to different eCommerce platforms. To make sure your products are a hot-selling entity on Walmart, you need to keep these strategies in mind:

Never Run Out Of Inventory

There’s a thing known as Buy Box on the Walmart marketplace that helps you boost your overall sales gradually. Even if you have the best rates and quality in the market, you can’t defeat your competitors without maintaining a proper and supple inventory of products.

Therefore, to make sure that you hit the jackpot with the Buy Box, you need to have more of the same items in stock than your competitors. This is a significant factor that can ultimately make or break your chance of converting a potential customer.

Maintain An Amazing Customer Support

It’s a no-brainer that the in-store Walmart customer support is nothing but a waste of human resources. Moreover, in comparison to the customer-oriented marketplace Amazon, you need to keep your status high to sell better on Walmart.

On the contrary, excellent customer support is not just about helping the customer is a problem. It’s built on several metrics such as standard shipping rate, product shipping rate, query escalation rate, and electronic shipment confirmation.

Leverage The No-Fees Feature

If you’re a seller on Amazon, you may have realized that you need to pay for almost everything, from FBA, account subscription, and shipping to storage, seller referral, and many more things. However, in the case of Walmart, you only need to pay a referral fee based on your product’s category.

With that said, you should use these savings to supercharge the other areas of your listings, such as providing free shipping, running promotions, expanding your inventory, or anything else that makes your shop more attractive to buyers.

Provide The Unavailable

Walmart has a slew of product variety in their marketplace, many of which can also be purchased from other online sources. However, the fine line of difference between Walmart and other sites is the depth and breadth of inventory.

For instance, if there are two sellers who sell the same products on their own website but run out of inventory, it’s an excellent chance for you to make immediate and fast profits. Therefore, keep a keen eye on what’s not available elsewhere in your industry.

Maintain A Competitive Price

If you’re already familiar with the Buy Box feature snippet of Walmart, you may already know that price is a concerning factor, but not necessarily the determining one. The best way to capture the Buy Box in Walmart is by keeping your price competitive.

Therefore, while setting the price rules of your products, you need to remember a couple of tips, such as not trying to make your prices lowest while affecting your profits and considering both the shipping costs and product price in mind.

Get Some Words Out

When it comes to online shopping, reviews matter a lot. They’re one of the most prominent ways to establish trust in your audience without meeting them face-to-face. With a positive and better set of reviews, you have higher chances of selling your products.

Reviews are also necessary for the rankings of your listings on the marketplace. Buyers never like to scroll past the first page. That’s where you can harness the power of positive reviews, improve your rankings, and enjoy higher sales.

Run Promotions Strategically

The fastest and most effective strategy to draw the audience’s attention to your listings is by running strategic promotions and discounts. Depending on your requirements, Walmart allows you to use two different types of banner promotions – Clearance and Reduced.

The former allows you to display a “CLEARANCE” badge on your product that indicates the customers about a cost-efficient deal. If you have slow-moving stock, seasonal items, or excess inventory, this promotional banner is undoubtedly a perfect match for you.

The latter can be used on products costing more than $100 in your inventory. This promotional offer allows you to provide a 5% discount on your products. With this offer, you can gain enough traction that you need to start getting your initial sales on the platform.

Watch this video by Neil Patel to understand Ranking parameters on Walmart.

The Takeaway:

In a nutshell, the secret sauce to achieve success in Walmart is to optimize your listings for both rankings and sales. With the tips, tricks, and strategies stated above, you’re bound to achieve success in eCommerce with this audience-rich platform.