The e-commerce industry has grown rapidly over the years, and the competition among ecommerce businesses has become more intense than ever. As an e-commerce store owner or manager, you should always be looking for ways to increase your visibility and attract more customers to your website to increase online sales. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through search engine optimization (SEO). In this post, we’ll be discussing 4 ecommerce SEO strategies to help you sell more.
1) Optimize your product collections, descriptions, and titles
2) Build quality backlinks to your Ecommerce Store
3) Use Proper Technical SEO Methods
4) Analyze and Update Frequently
1) Optimize your product collections, descriptions, and titles
One of the most crucial aspects of e-commerce SEO is ensuring that your product collections, descriptions, and titles are optimized for search engines. Ideally, you’ve already done extensive keyword research before embarking on your ecommerce journey but if not, it’s never too late to start.
Importance of Keyword Research in Ecommerce SEO
Keyword research is the cornerstone of successful ecommerce sites. It involves identifying the words and phrases your potential customers are using when they search for products like yours. Furthermore, you’ll want to see which keywords are the most competitive and have the most traffic.
For example, one of our ecommerce seo clients sells car side mirror replacements. When using the tool Ahrefs to do keyword research, we found that the long-tail search term “car side mirror replacement” to have an estimated keyword difficulty rating(KD) of 19 and monthly volume of 600 vs the term “side view mirror replacement” to have a KD of 14 with traffic of 2,800.
This tells us that we should put more focus on the phrase “side view mirror replacement” than “car side mirror replacement” because it should be easier to rank higher in Google and we will get more traffic from it.
This process helps you understand what your audience is looking for, which can guide the rest of your SEO strategies. By understanding and using the right keywords, you can speak your customers’ language, match their search intent, and have a better chance of driving targeted traffic to your store.
You can use Google Keyword Planner, for free, to find popular keywords relevant to your ecommerce store. Remember, targeting the correct keywords can help to increase your online visibility in search engine results, attract more potential customers, and ultimately increase sales. However, balance is crucial; using keywords shouldn’t compromise the readability and value of your content. Always keep your customer’s needs at the center of your content creation efforts.
Optimize Product Collections
For online stores with large catalogs, one of the first SEO strategies that we will implement after doing our targeted keywords research, is to optimize Product Categories, also known as Product Collections (depending on your ecommerce platform).
This is an often overlooked ecommerce SEO strategy. When you have an online store with a large product catalog, the likelihood of your individual product pages ranking well on search engines tends to go down. You can remedy this by making sure you or your SEO agency writes well-thought-out descriptions using some internal links to products or other categories that you want to highlight. 500 characters is a good rule of thumb for product categories.
Additionally, you want to make sure your crossing all your “T’s” and dotting all your “I’s” from a technical SEO point-of-view by writing optimized meta titles and meta descriptions.
Search engine optimization software company Moz.com recommends Meta Title Tags length be between of 55-60 characters and meta descriptions length be between 155 and 160 characters.
Write engaging Product Descriptions
Crafting compelling product descriptions is key to attracting and retaining your customer’s attention. From an ecommerce SEO perspective, it’s crucial to integrate your chosen keywords naturally into these descriptions. This approach helps search engines understand what your product is about and can improve your visibility in relevant search results.
However, while keywords are important, your primary focus should be on the customer. Product descriptions should be informative, engaging, and accurately represent your products. They should convey the benefits and features of the product in a way that speaks to your target audience, helping them understand why the product would be useful or appealing to them.
Be sure to highlight what sets your product apart from the competition. And remember, duplicate content can harm your SEO, so strive for unique descriptions for each product. This not only aids in better search engine performance but also enhances the customer experience by providing specific and detailed information about each product.
To aid in readability, use bullet points for key features or benefits, and keep paragraphs short and digestible. Ultimately, a well-written product description can increase conversions, lower return rates, and boost your store’s overall SEO performance.
Craft Search Engine Friendly Product Titles
Creating search-engine-friendly product titles is crucial for ecommerce SEO. A well-optimized product title gives search engines valuable information about your product, improving your chances of ranking higher in search results for relevant queries.
Begin by including the most important information and keywords at the start of the title, as search engines like Google may weigh the first few words more heavily. However, remember to strike a balance between SEO and user experience. Your product titles should not only contain relevant keywords but also be descriptive and appealing to potential customers.
A user should be able to understand at a glance what the product is. You should avoid keyword stuffing, as this can be seen as spammy by search engines and could negatively impact your ecommerce websites rankings. Also, be wary of creating duplicate titles, which can harm your ecommerce website’s SEO. Each product title should be unique to help search engines distinguish between your products.
Lastly, keep your titles concise while providing essential information. Many search engines truncate titles that are too long, which could result in users not seeing valuable information. The optimal length is generally around 50-60 characters. Use some of your target keywords to craft optimized, descriptive, and compelling product titles can lead to improved visibility, click-through rates, and conversions on your ecommerce store.
2) Build quality backlinks to your Ecommerce Store
Backlinks are a major ranking factor for ecommerce SEO, and they can help drive traffic to your ecommerce website. You can create quality backlinks by collaborating with influencers, bloggers, content creators, and guest posting on other websites. Always strive to create valuable and informative content for these collaborations to get high-quality backlinks that have a long-term, positive impact on your site’s ranking.
Understanding the SEO Value of Backlinks
Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from other websites that point to your ecommerce store. They are a critical factor that search engines like Google consider when ranking sites because they essentially act as ‘votes of confidence’.
If your site receives a backlink from a reputable source, it signals to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. The result is an increased chance of achieving higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
However, not all backlinks are created equal. The quality, relevance, and diversity of the sites linking to you are more important than the sheer quantity of links. That’s why it’s essential to focus on building high-quality backlinks from authoritative, relevant sites in your industry. This not only improves your ecommerce business SEO but also increases your site’s exposure to potential customers in your target market. Also, remember, building backlinks is not a one-time activity; it’s an ongoing process that requires time, effort, and strategic planning.
How to get Quality Backlinks for Ecommerce SEO
Earning quality backlinks is a multifaceted process and it’s important to approach it with an understanding that it’s the quality, not just the quantity, of the links that matters. Here are some strategies you can use to get more backlinks:
Create Valuable Content
High-quality, unique content is one of the best ways to attract backlinks. This can be in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos, or guides that provide value to your audience and compel other sites to link to you as a resource.
Guest Blogging
Writing articles for other relevant blogs in your industry is a great way to gain backlinks. Most sites will allow you to include a link back to your site in the author bio or within the content itself.
Influencer Partnerships
Collaborating with influencers in your industry can also be a good way to gain backlinks. This could involve sponsored posts, reviews, or mentions of your products.
Social Media Sharing
Sharing your content on social media can attract backlinks. If your content is interesting, informative, or entertaining, people are more likely to share it and potentially link to it from their own sites.
Product Reviews
Reach out to bloggers and influencers in your industry and offer them your product in exchange for a review. If they enjoy your product, this could result in a backlink to your store.
Competitor Analysis
Tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs can show you where your competitors are getting their backlinks. You can use this information to target the same sites with your outreach efforts.
Remember, earning quality backlinks takes time and effort, but the potential benefits in terms of SEO and increased visibility make it a worthwhile endeavor. If you’re not sure how to start or simply don’t have time a good ecommerce SEO agency can help write and distribute quality articles based on targeted keywords research across the internet.
3) Use Proper Technical SEO Methods
While the creative aspects of SEO, such as content creation and link building, are crucial for your ecommerce store’s visibility, it’s equally important not to overlook technical SEO. Technical SEO refers to the optimizations made to the structure and backend of your website that make it easier for search engines to crawl, index, and rank your site.
For ecommerce stores with multiple products, categories, images, and links, having a solid technical SEO strategy is critically important. This ensures your products are found easily not just by your customers, but also by search engines, enhancing your store’s visibility in the SERPs. We highly recommend having an experienced ecommerce seo company perform a technical SEO audit of your store.
In this section, we’ll delve into essential technical SEO practices, such as optimizing your site’s speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, creating an effective site architecture, and implementing structured data markup. With the right technical SEO methods, you can create a smooth and efficient shopping experience for your users while also gaining favor with search engines.
Increase your Site Speed for Ecommerce SEO
The speed of your ecommerce website plays a vital role in your search engine optimization strategy and user experience. Both search engines and users favor fast-loading pages. From a search engine perspective, a faster website is likely to satisfy users therefore it is more likely to rank higher.
For users, a site that loads quickly provides a better experience, reducing the chance of them bouncing and increasing the likelihood of them staying longer and making a purchase. There are several strategies to optimize your site’s speed.
- Reduce the file size of your images without compromising their quality – tools like TinyPNG or JPEG Optimizer can help with this. Secondly, leverage browser caching to store parts of your site so that users don’t need to load the entire site each time they visit.
- Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to eliminate unnecessary characters and spaces in your code that can slow down your site.
- Uninstall unnecessary plugins. Ecommerce platforms such as Shopify have a large network of plugins that can be installed to increase functionality on your site. Unfortunately, many of these plugins contain poorly written code which can negatively affect your site speed.
- Consider implementing a Content Delivery Network (CDN) such as Cloudflare to distribute your site’s load and shorten the distance between users and server resources. Remember, improving your site’s speed is a continual process, and tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights can provide detailed suggestions specific to your site. In an ecommerce setting, where every second can impact conversions, focusing on site speed optimization is crucial.
Make Sure Your Ecommerce Website is Mobile Friendly
Search engines like Google have implemented mobile-first indexing, which means they primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking. Mobile-friendliness is no longer an option, but a necessity for ecommerce stores.
With the majority of online shopping now done via mobile devices, having a site that’s easy to navigate on a smaller screen can significantly improve the user experience and your conversion rates. When updating or developing your ecommerce website, you may want to ask your ecommerce agency to use a mobile-first development mindset.
This means that they design your ecommerce store for mobile devices first and then make it work for desktop computers vs the old way of doing it which was to design it for desktop and then make it work for mobile.
To ensure your ecommerce site is mobile-friendly, your website design needs to be responsive. This means it automatically adjusts to fit the screen size of the device it’s being viewed on.
Make sure text is easily readable without zooming, links and buttons are adequately spaced and easy to tap, and images are properly optimized to load quickly without consuming excessive data. Avoid using Flash or other software not common on mobile devices.
Additionally, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights Test tool to identify any potential issues your site might have. Remember, a mobile-friendly ecommerce site not only improves the shopping experience for your customers, but it also boosts ecommerce websites visibility in search engine results, contributing significantly to your ecommerce SEO efforts.
Effective Site Architecture for Ecommerce SEO
All Ecommerce SEO experts will tell you that effective site architecture is a fundamental aspect of technical SEO for online stores. A well-structured website ensures that both users and search engines can easily navigate and understand your site, impacting user experience, site usability, and SEO. Read on to find out how to properly structure your store.
Firstly, aim for a logical and intuitive structure. This typically involves having a hierarchy of categories and subcategories that accurately represent your product range. For instance, a clothing store might have main categories like ‘Men’, ‘Women’, and ‘Kids’, and within these, subcategories such as ‘Tops’, ‘Bottoms’, ‘Shoes’, etc. Each product page should only be a few clicks away from the homepage.
Secondly, maintain a clean and consistent URL structure that reflects your site hierarchy. URLs should be readable and give a clear indication of the page’s content.
Thirdly, breadcrumb navigation can significantly enhance the user experience by providing a quick way for users to understand and navigate your site structure.
Finally, an XML sitemap, submitted to search engines via their Search Consoles, can help them understand your site structure and crawl your site more efficiently.
Write effective Meta Titles and Descriptions
Meta titles and descriptions are fundamental components of SEO that have a direct impact on your ecommerce store’s visibility in search engine results.
The meta title, often displayed as the headline in search results, provides a concise explanation of a page’s content and should ideally be between 50-60 characters to avoid being truncated in the SERPs. It’s crucial to include relevant keywords in your meta title, but it should also be engaging and appealing to users.
Meta descriptions, on the other hand, offer a brief summary of the content on your page and typically appear under the meta title in search results. These should be approximately 160 characters and written to encourage users to click on your page. Think of it as a mini-advertisement for your content. Including a compelling call-to-action or highlighting unique selling points can make your meta description more enticing.
Use Structured Data Markup aka Schema Markup
Structured data markup, often referred to as ‘schema markup’, is a form of microdata that allows you to provide explicit clues about the meaning of a page to search engines. It’s essentially a language that search engines understand and use to better comprehend your site’s content.
This can lead to enhanced visibility in the SERPs through rich snippets, which are search listings that include extra information like reviews, product price, and availability.
For an ecommerce store, there are specific types of structured data that can be particularly beneficial, such as Product, Offer, AggregateRating, and Review schema.
These can add significant detail and call attention to your search engine listings, potentially increasing click-through rates.
Implementing structured data requires adding the appropriate markup to the code of your website. Although, most modern ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce include some level of structured data out-of-the-box. If you’re unsure if your ecommerce website is currently using schema markup, simply navigate to Google’s Rich Results Test and input your website’s URL.
While implementing structured data markup can be a bit technical if it’s not included by your shopping cart platform, it’s a powerful way to make your ecommerce store stand out in the SERPs and improve your overall SEO.
Optimize Images for Search Engine Optimization
A picture is worth a thousand words and sites like Amazon have trained consumers to rely on product pictures more than ever. In addition to being an important factor in conversion rate, pictures should also play an important role in your ecommerce seo strategy. Properly optimized images can significantly improve your site’s speed, user experience, and visibility in search engine results pages. Here are the key areas to focus on:
Descriptive File Names
Before uploading an image to your site, ensure its file name is descriptive of what the image represents. For example, ‘red-cotton-dress.jpg’ is much more informative than ‘IMG_001.jpg’. This helps search engines understand the content of the image and can improve your SEO.
Alt Tags
Alt tags, or alternative text, serve two primary purposes. They provide context for search engines to understand the image, and they offer an alternative description for visually impaired users using screen readers. Like file names, alt tags should be descriptive and include relevant keywords where appropriate.
Proper Image Size and Compression
Large, high-resolution images can slow down your site, negatively affecting user experience and SEO. It’s essential to resize your images to the exact size they’ll be displayed on your site and not any larger. Once resized, compress your images to reduce their file size further. Tools like TinyPNG or JPEG Optimizer can help with this, decreasing load times without noticeably affecting image quality.
Images in Product Collections
When using images in product collections, ensure they are consistent in size and style for a professional look and feel. Use high-quality images that accurately represent the products. This not only improves user experience but can also contribute to SEO as these images might appear in image-based searches related to your products.
Store owners with large catalogs might be worrying about the amount of extra time this will take them to implement but fear-not! Most ecommerce platforms have plugins that can do most of this work automatically for you. Simply find your platform’s app marketplace and search for “image optimization”
Remember, image optimization is not just about SEO; it directly impacts the shopping experience in your ecommerce store. High-quality, well-optimized images can significantly improve product perception, increase user engagement, and ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.
Use Proper Heading Tags
Using proper heading tags is an essential aspect of SEO, particularly for ecommerce stores with large amounts of content. Heading tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) not only structure your content and make it more readable for users, but they also help search engines understand your content better.
Your H1 tag should be reserved for the main title of your page and include your primary keyword. Usually, this would be your product title. It’s important to have only one H1 tag per page.
Subsequent headings (H2, H3, etc.) break down your content into digestible sections. H2 tags are generally reserved for main section headings, while H3 and lower are used for sub-sections within those.
Ensure each heading is descriptive and contains relevant keywords. However, remember to avoid keyword stuffing – the content should always be written for the user first, with search engine considerations secondary.
Using a logical hierarchy of heading tags not only improves the SEO of your ecommerce store, but it also enhances the overall user experience by making your content easier to navigate and absorb. This is particularly crucial in product descriptions and blog content, where properly structured information can greatly impact a customer’s willingness to engage with your content and products.
Write Effective Meta Titles and Descriptions
Meta titles and descriptions are fundamental components of SEO that have a direct impact on your ecommerce store’s visibility in search engine results. Think of them as sign posts for your ecommerce website.
What are Meta Titles?
The meta title, often displayed as the headline in search results, provides a concise explanation of a page’s content and should ideally be between 50-60 characters to avoid being truncated in the SERPs. It’s crucial to include relevant keywords in your meta title, but it should also be engaging and appealing to users.
What are Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions, on the other hand, offer a brief summary of the content on your page and typically appear under the meta title in search results. These should be approximately 160 characters and written to encourage users to click on your page. Think of it as a mini-advertisement for your content. Including a compelling call-to-action or highlighting unique selling points can make your meta description more enticing.
Remember, while it’s important to include keywords in both your meta titles and descriptions, your main focus should be on providing clear, enticing information to potential visitors. The ultimate goal is to convince searchers that your page contains the answers or products they’re looking for, which in turn can lead to improved click-through rates and higher rankings in the SERPs. Again, remember to avoid keyword stuffing and ensure your meta titles and descriptions accurately represent the content on the page to prevent high bounce rates.
4) Analyze and Update Frequently
In ecommerce, resting on your laurels can result in missed opportunities and declining rankings. Regular analysis and updates are crucial to sustaining and improving your online stores search performance. This involves monitoring your site’s analytics to gain insights into user behavior, reviewing and updating your keywords, reviewing heatmaps, refreshing outdated content, and ensuring that your site structure continues to provide a user-friendly experience as your product offerings evolve.
Regularly Monitor Your Site’s Performance
Consistent monitoring of your ecommerce store’s performance is an integral part of your SEO strategy. Key metrics such as impressions, click-through rates (CTR), bounce rates, and conversion rates provide valuable insights into how users are interacting with your site and how effective your ecommerce SEO efforts are.
What are Search Impressions for Ecommerce?
In the context of ecommerce, search impressions refer to the number of times your website or specific pages of your website appear in search engine results for a particular query. This is especially crucial for ecommerce businesses, as search engines often serve as the initial point of discovery for many potential customers.
For example, if a user searches for “organic coffee beans” and your online coffee store appears in the search results, that counts as one impression, even if the user doesn’t click on it. Impressions are a valuable metric for understanding the visibility of your ecommerce store in search engine rankings
What does Click-Through Rate or CTR mean?
Click-through rate (CTR) is a key performance indicator in digital marketing and SEO that measures the number of clicks advertisers or website owners get on their search results relative to the number of impressions. It’s calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of impressions and multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage.
A low click-through rate in organic search traffic can mean that your title tags and meta descriptions are not grabbing the user’s attention or that your targeted keyword research might have missed the mark.
What is a Bounce Rate?
Bounce rates can help identify potential issues with specific pages if users are leaving quickly without engaging further. If you’re experiencing high bounce rates you’ll want to manually check the page in question to see if it’s displaying properly or if there are any other underlying issues such as broken image links, missing descriptions, etc.
What is Conversion Rate?
Conversion rates show the percentage of users completing a desired action. Typically, for ecommerce sites this would be making a purchase. The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors and multiplying the result by 100 to get a percentage. For example, if your online store had 100 visitors in a day and 5 of those visitors made a purchase, your conversion rate for that day would be 5%.
Regularly reviewing these metrics allows you to identify trends, uncover opportunities, and spot minor issues before they escalate. For instance, a sudden spike in the bounce rate might indicate a problem with a particular page loading correctly, while consistently low conversion rates could signify an issue with your checkout process. By maintaining a close eye on these metrics, you can make data-driven decisions and continually refine your ecommerce SEO strategy for optimal results.
Summary
Ecommerce SEO is an ever-evolving space, and you need to stay on top of its latest trends and best practices to succeed. By implementing the above-mentioned SEO strategies, you can help your e-commerce store rank higher, attract more traffic, and ultimately increase sales.
Remember, SEO is an ongoing process, and it requires constant tweaking and experimentation to achieve results. So, keep testing and optimizing, and you’ll soon notice a positive impact on your site’s organic traffic and conversions.
About our Ecommerce SEO Services
Ecommerce Maven is your one-stop solution for comprehensive ecommerce SEO services. Our offerings range from detailed technical SEO audits that scrutinize every aspect of your site’s SEO health to creating SEO-friendly content that drives organic traffic and engages your audience. Our team of experts is also skilled in link-building strategies, helping to enhance your website’s domain authority and visibility on search engines. But our services don’t stop there.
We believe in a bespoke approach, tailoring our strategies to your unique needs. Get in touch with us to discover how we can boost your website’s SEO performance and take your ecommerce business to new heights.
