E-commerce SEO is the search engine optimization of online stores. Writing long descriptions and relevant keywords on each product page is an example of optimization. Getting backlinks from relevant websites can also improve your online store’s ranking.
E-commerce SEO is the process of driving organic traffic (i.e., non-paid or free) from sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to your e-commerce store.
The United States is currently the second largest e-commerce market with a revenue of US $862.4 billion in 2021, placing it ahead of Japan and China. With an increase of 22%, the US e-commerce market contributed to a global growth rate of 18% in 2021. Fast forward to 2022 and its value is about US $905 billion.
Importance Of Ecommerce SEO
Now you know what SEO is and what it does. But why is it important?
We have said that SEO is the best marketing technique ever used. This is how it works.
According to one study, 68% of online experiences begin with a search query. Among online shoppers, 81% check Google or another search engine before making a purchase. Many internet users do not have a score. name in mind, or even know what they are looking for.
By helping your e-commerce website rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs), SEO helps you enjoy higher traffic levels. The higher your rank, the better you will get the lion’s share of the leaderboards. For example, Advanced Web Ranking reports for websites that rank high in the SERPs and have a click-through rate (CTR) of more than 40%.
You might think that paid advertising does the job of getting you on the first page – after all, the first result on Google’s search page is usually advertising. This assumption is often wrong for two reasons, however:
First, it may surprise you to know that people hate ads, especially on SERPs. Research shows that 70-80% of users avoid paid ads and choose to click on organic search results (unpaid results) instead. That’s not to say that paid ads don’t work, but you won’t do it. but as a tactic that appeals to the masses?
Second, paid advertising is not as effective as SEO. This is because paid ads make sense for small search types – they are only suitable for users who want to buy now. Compared to this, SEO allows you to target all of your customers, regardless of their stage in the buying process. So, if they are still asking “what is the best way to make coffee?” or start searching for “best coffee makers for $100”, your website could be their go-to place for help.
How To Create an Ecommerce SEO Strategy
Let’s take a look at some of the top tips for eCommerce sites that are lacking in the SEO space. If you want people to find your products easily, you need an e-commerce SEO strategy, and checking everything on your list will make your strategy more effective.
Use the correct keywords
Mention your keyword and product title, description, meta description, additional image attributes, and keywords. Sprinkle Latent Semantic Index (LSI) keywords everywhere. These are related keywords that help Google understand your page and context.
Do competitor research
If you don’t know where to start with site optimization for your e-commerce site, your competitors are your best bet. The biggest competitors, in particular, have already done things to optimize their websites, and you can discover many of their secrets themselves on their websites.
Focus on home page SEO
Home is where most businesses focus their SEO budget and energy. Although this is one of the main pages of your website to improve, it is not the only one you should focus on.
That said, you want to optimize your homepage properly. The main things you need to add, and upload are the following.
Simplify your site design
When adding products and articles to your store, remember that site design plays an important role in search engine optimization. In particular, you want to have a different level of navigation, from your homepage to the product category to the products listed there.
Search engines will discover your pages and products on your website based on a clear, easy-to-follow, and shallow internal linking system. The rule of thumb for search engines and visitors is to make sure that people can find everything in three clicks. From the first page, they will need to make three maximum clicks to get any product on your website.
Upload a product page
Product pages are the lifeblood of your business, so you’ll want to put a lot of effort into optimizing them. Most e-commerce store owners just write a few lines of text about each product and throw in an image or video. You need more information on your product page for Google to find. Here are the main things you want to work on.
Use responsive design
Nowadays, people do business on their mobile. Using responsive design for your e-commerce website can not only lead to a better user experience, but also better search results. Google’s first mobile index uses mobile friendliness as an indicator.
Reduce page load speed
Page load speed is also a ranking indicator, both for desktop and mobile. The faster your page loads, the better Google will rank you.
How to reduce page loading speed? Focus on removing as many unnecessary things from your page as possible. For example, a large background image covered with a white column may not be necessary. Likewise, remove any plugins or add-ons that don’t help your e-commerce results.
Create Backlinks for Ecommerce SEO
Backlinks are another ranking factor that Google uses to determine where your page ranks in the SERPs. The more backlinks you have from high-quality sites, the more authority your site has. Building backlinks for e-commerce sites don’t have to be difficult. Guest posting on blogs related to your niche is an easy and effective way to build links. Just email the blog owners you like and give them at least three potential guest posting ideas.
Important Ecommerce SEO Checklist
Technical SEO is the foundation of any successful SEO strategy.
Follow these steps to make sure your SEO techniques are in place:
1. Make sure your website can be crawled
If a search engine can’t crawl your website, it can’t index your content.
Specifically, it can’t rank your product in search results. Indexability, crawlability, speed, content, schema markup, and overall usability of your site are all important aspects of SEO technology.
If these things are put in the right way, the rest of the e-commerce SEO strategy will fall into place.
2. Troubleshooting pages with 4XX error
Google search engine is an incredibly useful tool for all websites. Once your site is up and running, your first step should be to address any pages with errors.
These are broken pages that Google can’t crawl, often due to outdated sitemaps, unavailable products, or temporary server errors.
3. Check the blocked pages
You also want to check your crawled pages because Google can’t index them because of the code in your robots.txt file. Although this list is usually pages you don’t want search engines to crawl, such as shopping carts or customer profile pages, you should double-check it to make sure no important pages are blocked by robots.
4. Add strategic branding to your site
Strategic tags are HTML tags that allow Google to display pricing, ratings, availability, and other product details directly on search results pages.
Adding it to your site is easy and you need to do it. This ensures that your product is featured on the first page of results and Google’s shopping tab.
5. Target-specific, keyword-based marketing
One of the biggest e-commerce mistakes business owners make is targeting the wrong keywords.
Most search terms with search volume are associated with the highest score. While they do well in search, it’s the specific, low-key keywords that will make the difference.
6. Focus on the subject matter
You want to make sure that the keywords you are targeting reflect the true intent of the searcher. Google’s RankBrain helps determine whether a query is informative or commercial. As an e-commerce site, you want to make sure that you are targeting business keywords. You can find out the type of a word by searching for it in an incognito window to see the results.
If this question leads you to the main product page, you are on the right track.
7. Don’t run away
Once you have identified the keywords that are relevant to your market, try to make sure that multiple pages are not posting for the same keyword. If two pages rank for a specific query, Google won’t know which one to show first, or at all.
You don’t want to put all that effort into keyword research for your business only to have users direct them to the home page instead of the product page. Google Search Engine can show you the rankings, clicks, impressions, and CTR of the pages on your website to determine if there is independent competition for specific keywords.
8. Avoid duplicate content
Google promotes unique, high-quality content, and websites with duplicate content will pay the price.
If 60% of the information on a page matches another page, Google may consider it a duplicate. From an e-commerce perspective, if you have product pages for the same item, but in different colors or sizes, those pages can be considered duplicates.
Enabling all these options on one page will not only solve this problem, but it will make your site more responsive and user-friendly.
9. Update any lightweight content
Google also searches for pages with hot content. If a product page doesn’t have detailed descriptions and specific images, it may not be indexed.
The reason is that Google does not think that the page will satisfy the user’s intent because there is little information to provide. Visit your product to ensure that all descriptions, images, specifications, and other important information are clearly defined and available to visitors.
10. Mobile-first indexing
For at least 90% of websites, Google uses mobile-first impressions to determine your ranking based on your mobile site content, not the desktop version.
With mobile browsing exceeding desktop browsing, you want to make sure your website and products are optimized for these devices. Make sure you have detailed descriptions and visual content on your mobile site so that potential buyers can find your products effectively.
Best Ecommerce SEO Tools
1. Ahrefs
Ahrefs tops our list, and for good reason. Ahrefs is a great e-commerce SEO tool that can help you with keyword research, competitor analysis, link building, and more. This is a phenomenal e-commerce SEO tool that you can use quickly and efficiently to build a comprehensive SEO strategy for your online store.
From detecting broken links to determining the rank of your posts, Ahrefs is a great tool that can give you a complete picture of your website’s quality and how far you have to go. It can also help you do a good backlink analysis and find pages that link to your competitor next to the pages that link to you. It’s one of the best tools you can use to track your store’s performance.
2. KWFinder
Next, we have KWFinder. This is another awesome eCommerce SEO tool you can use to find trending keywords. If you are looking for some of the best e-commerce tools to boost your business growth. As the name suggests, KWFinder is a great tool that you can use to quickly search for different keywords.
The user interface is clean and neat, it puts all the information you need right at your fingertips. If you don’t want to get a complete response to your keywords and just want the basics and give you enough actionable data, you should consider KWFinder.
3. Google Search Console
Google Search Console is an amazing tool that you can use to measure your website’s search traffic and get detailed reports on its performance. With a comprehensive search engine, you can easily rank your content on Google.
It allows you to submit sitemaps and URLs that you can submit for crawling. This is a great tool that will give you a detailed report on how Google understands your website and what you can do to improve it. If you are looking for a great eCommerce SEO tool, this is it. Google search engine is ranked as one of the best SEO tools for e-commerce sites.
4. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another great eCommerce SEO tool that you should use. It’s designed to give you instant insight into how many people are using your site, and it tells you how they’re interacting with it. If you are looking for the best eCommerce SEO tools you can use, this is a great choice.
Above all, it is free. If you want your eCommerce store to rank well in Google, you need to understand how to carefully monitor your traffic. Collections are a great way to do this.
5. SEMRush
If you need an eCommerce SEO tool that you can use to improve your store and your conversion rates, you can’t go wrong with SEMRush. It’s a unique tool that gives you all the information you need to identify high-level positions and those who need promotion. SEMRush works with some of the biggest brands in the world. When it comes to keyword research, especially PPC keywords, this is a huge choice. Likewise, it also provides options for on-page SEO. Like Ahrefs, you can also use it to identify keywords.
Conclusion
SEO for eCommerce is time-consuming and challenging, we’ve created this eCommerce SEO checklist for you to follow with a step-by-step implementation process to get the rankings you want.
To make eCommerce SEO next, you need to have a good eCommerce website design for your business. An important SEO strategy is implemented in the planning process, and you need to prepare it properly to get the highest ranking.
Are you ready to take the first step?
Tell us your thoughts in the comments