Stocking your store with high-quality, desirable products is only half the battle, and shoppers must have easy access to your products.
You can climb the Search Engine Result Page (or SERPs) and potentially claim the top spot on Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help increase the visibility of your online store and boost sales.
This article will focus on SEO and its importance to online shops. Next, we will discuss search engine optimization basics for eCommerce sites. Let’s get started!
What is Ecommerce SEO?
SEO (eCommerce search engine optimization) is a method to make your online shop visible on search engine results pages. Your ability to rank highly in search engines for your products will allow you to get more customers.
Search engine optimization is cheaper than paying for paid search. Nonetheless, paid search can still be a way to get traffic. Ad-blocking software, ad blindness, and other ad-blocking tools can decrease the efficiency or cost of paid search. Optimize your search engine.
E-commerce SEO includes optimizing product descriptions, headlines, metadata, and internal link structure for E-commerce search engine optimization. For search engine optimization and user experiences, the navigational structure is crucial. Every product must have a page dedicated to traffic coming from search engines.
Ecommerce SEO focuses only on keywords that qualified buyers would be most likely to search. It also includes:
- Optimizing your website’s front and backend.
- Enhance the user experience
- Get links from other internet sources
These tasks are easy and can be completed with minimal technical knowledge. Many store managers have chosen to outsource these tasks via other websites to SEO experts.
Why Search Engine Optimization Matters For Ecommerce Websites?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) matters for eCommerce websites because it directly impacts their visibility and ability to attract potential customers. Here are some reasons why SEO is crucial for eCommerce:
- Increased Organic Traffic: SEO techniques help improve the rankings of eCommerce websites in search engine result pages (SERPs). When your site ranks higher, it is more likely to receive organic traffic from users searching for products or services related to your business.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Compared to paid advertising, SEO is a cost-effective way to drive traffic to your online store. While paid search can be effective, it requires ongoing spending. In contrast, SEO efforts, once implemented, can provide sustainable long-term results.
- Trust and Credibility: Websites that rank high on search engines are perceived as more trustworthy and credible by users. People tend to trust Google’s algorithm and believe that top-ranked websites are more reliable and relevant to their search queries.
- Targeted Traffic: SEO helps target specific keywords and phrases relevant to your products or services. By optimizing for these keywords, you attract potential customers actively looking for what you offer, increasing the chances of conversion.
- Higher Conversion Rates: Users who find your website through organic search are more likely to convert into customers because they have genuine interest and intent to purchase. This results in higher conversion rates compared to random visitors from other sources.
- Mobile Optimization: With the growing number of mobile users, mobile optimization has become a critical aspect of SEO. Mobile-friendly websites rank higher on mobile search results, ensuring you don’t miss out on potential customers.
- Stay Competitive: The eCommerce market is highly competitive, and SEO gives you an edge over your competitors. By ranking higher than your rivals, you gain more visibility and attract potential customers away from your competition.
- User Experience: SEO involves optimizing your website’s structure and content to provide a better user experience. A well-organized and user-friendly site leads to higher customer satisfaction, increased time spent on the site, and reduced bounce rates.
- Insights and Analytics: SEO tools and analytics provide valuable insights into user behavior and preferences. You can use this data to refine your eCommerce strategy, understand customer needs, and make data-driven decisions.
- Adaptability: SEO is continuously evolving due to changes in search engine algorithms and user behavior. Staying updated with SEO best practices allows you to adapt to these changes and maintain your site’s relevance and visibility.
Let’s look at some quite interesting statistics about SEO for eCommerce Websites…
44% start their online shopping journeys with a Google Search.
Search engines account for 37.5% of all traffic to eCommerce websites.
23.6% of eCommerce orders can be directly linked to organic traffic.
Now let’s get to the practical strategies found in today’s guide.
Keyword Research – The Groundwork of an eCommerce SEO Strategy
Keyword research is the foundation of any successful eCommerce SEO strategy. It involves identifying and analyzing the most relevant and high-traffic keywords that potential customers use to search for products or services offered by your online store. By understanding the search behavior of your target audience, you can optimize your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more organic traffic.
Here are some essential steps to conduct effective keyword research for your eCommerce website:
- Understand Your Target Audience: Begin by gaining a deep understanding of your target customers. Identify their preferences, pain points, and the language they use while searching for products online. This understanding will help you create a list of potential keywords that resonate with your audience.
- Brainstorm Relevant Keywords: Make a list of relevant keywords that directly relate to your products or services. Think about different variations, synonyms, and long-tail keywords that potential customers might use in their search queries. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and keyword research tools can be helpful in generating keyword ideas.
- Analyze Competitor Keywords: Research your competitors’ websites to identify the keywords they are targeting. This can provide valuable insights into the competitive landscape and reveal keywords that are driving traffic to their sites. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to conduct competitor keyword analysis.
- Consider Search Intent: Understanding search intent is crucial for selecting the right keywords. Determine whether users are searching for information, looking to make a purchase, or seeking specific product details. Choose keywords that align with the search intent and reflect the products or services you offer.
- Use Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific phrases that target niche search queries. They often have lower search volume but higher intent, leading to better conversion rates. Incorporate long-tail keywords into your content and product descriptions.
- Assess Keyword Difficulty: Evaluate the difficulty level of each keyword, which refers to how challenging it is to rank for a particular keyword in the SERPs. Strike a balance between high-competition keywords and low-competition, high-conversion keywords in your strategy.
- Prioritize Keywords: Categorize your keywords based on their relevance, search volume, and competition. Prioritize high-value keywords that are both relevant to your products and likely to attract significant traffic.
- Monitor and Update: Keyword research is an ongoing process. Regularly monitor the performance of your selected keywords and make adjustments based on changes in search trends, user behavior, or new product offerings.
By conducting thorough keyword research, you can identify the most valuable keywords to target and optimize your eCommerce website accordingly. Implementing these keywords strategically in your product titles, descriptions, meta tags, and content will significantly improve your website’s visibility, driving relevant traffic and increasing the likelihood of conversions. Remember that staying updated with the latest search trends and continuously refining your keyword strategy is essential to maintaining a competitive edge in the ever-evolving eCommerce landscape.
Search Intent in eCommerce SEO
Search intent describes the information or goal that the searcher seeks through their query. These are some tips to keep your mind busy:
- Are they looking for E-commerce product page searches?
- A category page.
- What is a « buying guide, » and what article does it contain?
Think about it. What type of content would someone search to find if they were looking for « x » instead? Google allows users to search for a term and see the results, and Google does not display all categories when you try ranking a product for a specific term. SEO for eCommerce focuses mainly on understanding search intent, identifying eCommerce-related keywords, improving search engine rankings, and assisting with conversions.
How to Create an Ecommerce SEO Strategy
It cannot be easy to optimize your E-commerce search engine, especially if there are many products on your site. Although the process can take time, a well-planned strategy will make it faster.
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Prioritize Pages
What pages do you get the most traffic to your website? These are the most visited pages. Optimize for a certain product or your flagship product to get people’s interest.
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Prepare A Workflow
SEO is a complicated process that requires you to fulfill many requirements, and this is especially true when you mix SEO and Ecommerce marketing. This includes adding metadata, choosing keywords, naming images correctly, and adding alternate attributes to images.
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Take A Look at The Competition
The SEO eCommerce strategy has to be competitive. Review the websites of your top competitors and compare their SEO efforts. Look for ways to improve your website.
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Follow Up With CRO
CRO (conversion rates optimization) allows you to scale up your website without losing customers or resources. CRO should also be done the same way as SEO.
Ecommerce SEO Checklist: Ideal Practices to Build A Robust Strategy
Let’s examine some SEO-related tips that can help E-commerce sites. An E-commerce search engine optimization strategy will help people find products faster, and taking each item off your checklist will improve your strategy.
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Put the Right Keywords
Yes, keywords do matter. Although you don’t want keywords to overpower product titles or descriptions, they must exist in the copy.
The primary keyword should be mentioned in the product title, description, meta description, and subheadings. Incorporate (LSI) Latent semantic Index and keywords all over. These are the keywords that Google uses to understand the context of your webpage.
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Do Competitor Research
Your best bet for finding out where to start when optimizing your eCommerce website is to check out your competition. Larger competitors will likely have done the hard work of optimizing websites, and you can also find a lot of their riddles on their websites.
Keywords are what you should focus on. You will want to focus on the keywords they use on their homepages and their topmost product pages.
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The Homepage SEO Is Everything
Businesses tend to focus their SEO efforts and budget on the homepage. Although it should be the first page of your website you optimize, it’s not the only one.
You should optimize your homepage. These are the most important things that you need to optimize or add.
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Shorten Your Site Architecture
Search optimization is key when adding products or sorts to your online store. You should have a hierarchy of navigation, which starts with your homepage, moves through the product categories, and finally to the products.
Search engine bots will determine pages or products on your site if you have a clear and logical inner linking structure.
Search engines and users should use the same principle: Make sure everyone can find everything under three mouse clicks. The visitor should not have to go beyond the homepage to find any product.
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Optimize Product Pages
Your product pages are your company’s lifeblood, and therefore, you should put a lot of effort into optimizing them. Many eCommerce store owners add a few words to each product and then upload an image or a video.
Google will need additional information to locate your product pages. These are the things that you should be working on.
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Responsive Design Is the Best!
Mobile shopping is a major part of the modern world. You will have a better user experience and better search results if your website is responsive. Google’s mobile-first Index uses mobile-friendliness for ranking signals.
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Speed Down Page Load
Mobile and desktop users are affected by page load speeds, and Google will rank you higher if your pages load quickly.
How can you reduce page load speed? You should try to remove as many unnecessary elements and components from your webpage as possible. It might be unnecessary to have a large background image covered mostly by a column of white text. You should also remove plugins and addons that do not contribute to the bottom line of your eCommerce store.
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Link Building
Link building is an important part of off-page optimization. This is where you can increase your search engine rankings through actions, not on your site.
Your site’s authority, relevance, trustworthiness, discoverability, and relevancy will be increased by linking to other websites, and this will pass on the « link juice, » which increases your search engine ranking.
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Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to the part of the process that makes sure your site meets all technical requirements for search engines, with the ultimate goal of optimizing rankings.
It addresses backend issues that Google uses to crawl, render, index, and find your site.
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Backlinks for Ecommerce SEO
Google uses backlinks as a ranking signal to determine the rank of your pages within the SERPs. You will become more authoritative if your site has more backlinks coming from quality sites.
Backlinks can be built for eCommerce sites without being difficult. It’s easy to create backlinks by guest posting on blogs relevant to your niche. You can email the bloggers you are interested in to offer three or more guest post ideas.
Conclusion:
In 2023, eCommerce SEO remains an essential aspect of driving organic traffic to your online store and increasing sales. By understanding the importance of keyword research, search intent, and optimizing your website for both users and search engines, you can create a robust eCommerce SEO strategy.
Prioritize pages based on traffic, conduct competitor research, and optimize product pages to enhance user experience and search engine rankings. Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and loads quickly, as these factors play a crucial role in SEO success.
Link building and technical SEO are vital components of off-page and on-page optimization, respectively. Building high-quality backlinks can boost your site’s authority and relevance, while technical SEO ensures your site meets all technical requirements for optimal rankings.
Lastly, using the right eCommerce SEO tools can simplify and enhance your keyword research and backlink analysis. Google’s free tools like Search Console and Keyword Planner are invaluable, while paid tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Pro offer advanced features for in-depth analysis.
Remember that eCommerce SEO is an ongoing process, and staying up-to-date with the latest SEO trends and search engine algorithms is crucial to maintain and improve your online store’s visibility.
By following the guidelines and utilizing the right tools, you can effectively climb the SERPs, drive targeted traffic, and boost your online sales, ensuring the success of your eCommerce venture in 2023 and beyond. Happy optimizing!
FAQs
Why is it important for eCommerce?
Search engine optimization is essential for eCommerce, and it helps increase visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engine optimization is essential for eCommerce as it increases search engine result page (SERPs) visibility. By creating pages that address user intent or keywords, you can optimize your website for users. You will rank higher in search results if you have backlinks to other websites. Additionally, you will get more page ranking for keywords you use. Marketing can be cheaper if you use organic search results.
How do eCommerce sites do SEO?
Ecommerce websites can SEO by optimizing product pages to keywords and building blog content. Requesting backlinks from relevant websites is another way to build page authority. Search engines will identify your website’s « freshness » if you can create new pages with explicit content regularly.
How can eCommerce SEO benefit my online store more than paid advertising?
While paid advertising can be effective, eCommerce SEO provides long-term benefits and is more cost-effective. By focusing on organic search traffic, you attract qualified leads actively looking for your products, leading to higher conversion rates without ongoing advertising costs.