Creating an ecommerce store is not a great deal today. You can set your online store up and running in no time with a readymade ecommerce website builder or sign up with an online ecommerce platform. The real task is reaching your audience.
According to Insider Intelligence, the value of the global ecommerce market will reach $6.3 trillion in 2023 and $8.1 trillion by 2026. By the data, you can presume fierce competition among ecommerce sellers.
Many ecommerce businesses make the mistake of relying on paid marketing campaigns to overcome competition and miss out on the massive opportunity of SEO. Paid marketing tends to cost companies higher compared to SEO. SEO helps bring organic traffic, qualified leads, and higher conversions with a higher ROI.
Ecommerce SEO is like that one thing an up-and-coming actor needs, Visibility. But it takes a lot of effort and experimentation. Now, is there anything of value you can get without effort?
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Ecommerce SEO is a powerful marketing technique to increase the website's visibility on search engines and drive more organic traffic.
Ecommerce SEO is a long-term investment and once you rank and generate traffic, you will sell even when sleeping. You can make your ecommerce website SEO friendly by using the exact words your buyer uses to search for a product or category in your product titles, descriptions and alt images.
Sounds simple? But that is not all, Ecommerce SEO is a lot more than stuffing just keywords on your website, it is about creating content that matches the buyer's intent at every stage of their buying journey - Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action - and understanding search engines’ best practices.
This blog will help you optimise your online store using Ecommerce SEO strategies and best practices.
Doing SEO for Ecommerce can seem like a mountainous task with 100s of pages to be optimised, checking broken links, improving site architecture and so on. A proper SEO strategy will break it down into smaller tasks and let you focus on the important goldmines first. Optimising your ecommerce store using an SEO strategy is a continuous process as the algorithms of search engines are ever-changing. Hence having a solid SEO strategy in place and tweaking it when necessary will help you systematically approach SEO and give better results.
Here are the different areas of SEO that you need to know and keep in mind while crafting your Ecommerce SEO strategy:
Keyword Research is the first and most crucial step in SEO for Ecommerce. You need to do in-depth keyword research to identify relevant terms and phrases that your target audience uses.
Determine Keyword Intent
Understanding the intent behind the keyword is the base of any keyword strategy. For example, a How to search intends that the searcher is looking for information and a Best product category search intends that they are willing to make a purchase.
There are 4 types of keyword intent that you need to know before getting started with your ecommerce strategy:
1. Informational Intent
Keywords with informational intent indicate that users are seeking specific information or answers to their queries. These keywords typically start with phrases like how to, what is, or tips for. Understanding and targeting informational keywords allows you to create educational content, blog posts, or guides that provide value to your audience and position your ecommerce brand as a trusted resource.
2. Navigational Intent
Keywords with navigational intent indicate that users are searching for a particular website or brand. These keywords often include brand names, website names, or specific product names. While navigational intent keywords may not directly lead to sales, optimizing your website for these keywords ensures that users can easily find your ecommerce site when searching for your brand or specific products.
3. Transactional Intent
Transactional intent keywords demonstrate that users are ready to make a purchase or take a specific action related to buying products. These keywords often include phrases like buy, order, discount, or coupon. Optimising your product pages, creating compelling offers, and incorporating transactional intent keywords can help attract buyers and drive ecommerce sales.
4. Commercial Intent
Keywords with commercial investigation intent indicate that users are researching or comparing products before purchasing. These keywords often include terms like best, top-rated, review, or comparison. Targeting commercial investigation intent keywords enables you to create comparison guides, product reviews, or buying guides that assist users in their decision-making process and establish your brand as an authority in your niche.
Leverage Amazon to Research Keywords
When it comes to keyword research for Ecommerce SEO, Amazon is a goldmine of valuable insights. As one of the largest online marketplaces, it offers a treasure trove of data on consumer behaviour, search trends, and popular products. By leveraging Amazon for your ecommerce keyword research, you can gain a competitive edge and optimize your ecommerce website for SEO. Here's how:
1. Explore Amazon's Autocomplete Suggestions:
Simply type in relevant seed keywords related to your products or niche, and observe the suggested search terms that appear. Take note of the most relevant and frequently occurring suggestions for further analysis.
2. Analyze Product Titles and Descriptions:
Pay close attention to how sellers craft their product titles and descriptions. These elements often contain keywords and phrases that resonate with potential customers.
3. Utilize Amazon's Best Sellers Section:
Explore these sections within your niche to identify keywords associated with top-performing products. Analyse descriptions, and customer reviews to uncover relevant keywords that indicate demand and consumer preferences.
4. Leverage Customer Reviews and Q&A Sections:
Customer reviews and the Q&A section provide invaluable insights into consumer language and preferences. Look for recurring keywords, phrases, and pain points customers mention in their reviews. These insights can inform your keyword strategy and help you address customer needs effectively.
Use SEO Tools to Research Keywords
You can’t put every keyword in the search bar and scrutinise the search engine results page to identify intent, search volume and competition. You can use SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to do the grunt work for you and speed up your Ecommerce SEO process.
You can also use the free Google Keyword Planner which gives you rough search volume data for your keyword research.
On-page SEO is pivotal in enhancing your ecommerce website's search engine visibility. Craft compelling product descriptions, title tags, and meta descriptions incorporating keywords to ensure your content is SEO optimised. Make your content unique, engaging, and valuable to search engines and users.
Optimise your Ecommerce Product Pages
With all the keyword research data you can optimise your product pages for SEO first as they are the most important for an Ecommerce business - a page that drives sales.
There are a number of details you need to optimise for product pages and they are:
Product Description
Product descriptions fall under priority in SEO best practices. Write compelling and unique product descriptions that incorporate primary and long-tail keywords naturally. Give an introduction to the ecommerce product, and highlight your product's key features, benefits, and unique selling points. Ensure the description is informative, engaging, and encourages users to take action.
Product URL
Create clean and descriptive URLs that include the primary keywords related to the product. Avoid using generic or random strings of characters. A well-optimised URL is one of the easiest ways to gain an upper hand over your competitors.
Product Title Tag
Include primary keywords at the beginning of your title and accurately describe the product to help search engines understand better. Optimise the title tag within the recommended character limit.
Product H1 Tag
Use the H1 tag to emphasise the primary keyword and create a precise heading for the product page. Make it descriptive and informative while maintaining relevance to the product.
Product Alt Image Text
Alt text, although is for visually impaired users to listen to the text on the screen, it is a chance for you to include keywords and describe the product.
Product Meta Data
Meta descriptions might not help you rank better but they increase the click-through rates. Including primary keywords in the meta is useful because Google highlights the words that match the search keywords.
Off-page SEO refers to optimisation activities performed outside of your website, such as link building, social media engagement, and content promotion, aimed at improving search engine rankings and driving organic traffic.
Off-page SEO techniques and link-building strategies play a crucial role in SEO for ecommerce by enhancing the visibility and authority of your ecommerce website. By implementing these strategies, you can improve search engine rankings, drive targeted traffic, and boost online sales.
Guest Blogging and Content Outreach
Guest blogging can increase high-quality backlinks to and from your ecommerce website. Collaborate with relevant industry experts, bloggers, and websites to contribute high-quality guest posts.
Influencer Marketing and Brand Mentions
Partnering with websites with high domain authority but who aren't your direct competitor is a great way to build backlinks to your website that increase your ecommerce website's visibility.
Social Media Engagement
Leveraging social media platforms to engage with your target audience and build brand awareness. Collaborate with influencers in your niche on social media to drive product sales.
Online Directories and Business Listings
Submit your ecommerce website to industry-specific online directories and business listings. Optimise your listings with accurate and keyword-rich descriptions to improve your website's visibility in local search results.
Online PR and Digital Press Releases
Using digital press releases for new product launches, partnerships, or unique campaigns increases backlinking opportunities for your Ecommerce SEO strategy.
Forum and Community Participation
Engage in relevant forums, communities, and Q&A platforms related to your industry and build backlinks to your ecommerce website. This can drive targeted traffic and establish your brand as a knowledgeable authority in the field.
Technical SEO refers to optimising website infrastructure and technical elements to help search engines crawl your website and improve user experience. It focuses on site speed, mobile responsiveness, indexing, and structured data.
If you thought that SEO is easy, all you need to do is put in some keywords then you might as well think that Google is a fool. The purpose of SEO is to ensure that your website is perfect in all ways possible, including the technical and the non-technical aspects of your website.
To make your Ecommerce SEO strategy fool-proof you need to have a solid technical SEO strategy in place. Here are the technical SEO best practices that your ecommerce website should follow to help search engines understand your website better:
Site Architecture
A well-structured site hierarchy makes navigation simple and improves crawlability. Make your links well connected so that no page takes more than 3 clicks from another page.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a file that provides all the information about pages and files on your website. Search engines read this file to effectively crawl your website.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is a code with structured data that describes the elements on your website in a way that search engines can understand. By providing additional information to search engines, schema markup improves search engine understanding, generates attractive rich snippets, enhances targeting and categorization, optimizes for voice search, and gains an advantage in local SEO. Implementing schema markup on your websites aligns with ecommerce SEO best practices.
Several types of ecommerce schema markups can be used for ecommerce websites. Here are some common types:
1. Product Schema: This schema describes individual products, including attributes like name, description, price, availability, and more.
2. Review Schema: Review schema allows you to provide ratings, reviews, and testimonials for your products, helping to build credibility and attract potential customers.
3. Offer Schema: Offer schema provides information about product discounts, promotions, and special offers, encouraging users to buy.
4. BreadcrumbList Schema: Breadcrumb schema is the list of pages on your website that helps to create a navigational breadcrumb trail, showing the hierarchical structure of categories and subcategories on your ecommerce website.
5. Organization Schema: Organization schema provides information about your ecommerce business, including name, logo, contact details, and social media profiles.
6. Local Business Schema: If you have a physical store, local business schema helps to provide location-specific information, such as address, phone number, and opening hours.
7. FAQ Schema: FAQ schema allows you to mark up frequently asked questions and their corresponding answers, making them more visible in search results and improving user experience.
Page Load Speed
Nobody waits for a page that takes forever to load. And Google which prioritises user experience considers this as a key factor for ranking. Optimise website speed by minimising code, compressing images, leveraging caching, and using a reliable hosting provider.
Hreflang
Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to identify the language-targeting region of a webpage. You can have the same page in alternate languages. Hreflang is an important SEO feature that helps search engines show the appropriate page to users based on regional language.
Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs inform search engines to display the page you want to show in search results as the principal page. Use canonical URLs or tags when you have different URLs for a page or different versions of the same page. Canonical URLs prevent content duplication.
Internal Linking
A strong internal linking structure, connecting relevant pages within your website is an often overlooked SEO strategy. It also helps users navigate the right pages and find what they want.
Mobile Responsiveness
If you want to look up something at an instance, would you use a mobile or desktop? Undoubtedly mobile. Now if you don't have a mobile responsive site you're going to lose a lot of potential visitors. And Google considers this a ranking factor for websites. A solid SEO strategy for ecommerce should include mobile responsiveness of the website.
Duplicate Pages and Content
Regularly audit your website for duplicate pages and content. Use canonical tags, 301 redirects, or content consolidation to resolve duplication issues and ensure search engines properly index and rank the most relevant version of your content.
Although there are multiple ways to market your ecommerce business, SEO stands out as it is a cost-effective way to drive traffic to your ecommerce website and increase sales. Remember, SEO is a continuous process, so regular monitoring, analysis, and adaptation are vital to stay ahead of the curve and maintain a competitive edge.
Understand these Ecommerce SEO strategies to increase organic traffic to your website or you can hire an Ecommerce SEO expert to do it for you. Either way, make sure that you are taking advantage of SEO for your ecommerce website.
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, Yourstore
11th July 2023