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By Ruchi Pardal
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01 Jan, 2024
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~ 11 minutes to read
01 Jan, 2024
~ 11 minutes to read
A hard truth – you can’t make sales if you don’t get traffic to your eCommerce website. Traffic doesn’t fall from the sky.
So, eCommerce SEO crosses our minds once or twice regarding growing ROI for online retail stores.
Needless to say, ecommerce SEO for online stores is an effective cum affordable way to increase visibility around your brand, consistently get high-quality organic traffic, and make a huge difference in your sales.
eCommerce SEO drives organic traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. It makes your online store more visible on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Increased visibility means your site will rank and get more traffic when people search for products you sell.
An eCommerce SEO service helps in improving brand awareness, filling the marketing funnel (i.e. delivering marketing messages that speak to people who are in different stages of the buying process), ranking your content better, expanding remarketing audiences, improving user experience, rescuing paid search costs and create lasting value.
eCommerce SEO strategy begin with keyword research, especially for two important pages:
Identify those high-value search terms that your target audiences use. Keywords for eCommerce websites are different from most keyword research. Why? Because most sites care about information keywords, like:
You also need to rank for commercial keywords like this:
Are you able to spot the difference?
Informational keywords are for information. Blogs and content-centric sites care about these keywords.
eCommerce keywords care about COMMERCIAL KEYWORDS that show buying intent.
Performing keyword research on a page-by-page level is important. But start with the most important pages FIRST.
Ensure your site has eCommerce tracking in Google Analytics to understand the most important pages. To get a rough sense of these pages, go to:
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages > Sort by revenue (high to low)
Related: A 5-Step Guide to Setting Up Google Analytics (GA4)
Good homepage SEO for ecommerce websites is very important. Keep call-to-action front and centre. Keep menus short and sweet. Make it easy to get back to the homepage. Make site search visible. For better SEO results, follow the below instructions.
Include your business name with the main keyword phrase you are targeting. Create a title within 70 characters and keep it appealing.
A meta description is a short description of your business within 160 characters. It is displayed in the search beneath the title tag. Briefly sketch out the content and quality of the page to encourage people to visit your website.
Create homepage content in a way that helps visitors learn more about your business and products in a clear and precise way. A cluttered homepage or too much information confuses visitors and search engines.
So, a big ‘NO’ to too much information! Just feature your top few products or services with your unique selling proposition on the homepage.
A user-friendly site structure is great both for users and SEO. Because a flat, simple architecture enables browsers to find the products they want easily.
You need to develop a distinct hierarchy of navigation, right from your homepage to product categories to the products listed within them.
The rule of thumb is to ensure visitors can reach everything in a maximum of three clicks to any product from the homepage.
You can do this with internal linking. Internal links serve two purposes.
Try to add links to relevant products or to information-rich blog articles. This improves SEO for eCommerce websites, making your site more tempting for deep dives.
For optimal ranking for eCommerce SEO, create the right URLs. Rand Fishkin, the CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, has shared a few URL guidelines for the best SEO strategy for eCommerce websites.
Remember these guidelines when deciding URLs for your product and category page.
Broken links are confusing for your site visitors and search engines. Ultimately, links let Google understand your site structure and entrust that you share valid information.
However, monitoring all links manually is difficult and time-consuming. So, use online SEO tools like the Broken Link Checker plugin or Screaming Frog. If you make any changes to the URL of a page, remember to set up a 301 redirect and let search engines know that the link has been updated.
Product pages are crucial for any ecommerce website. Optimizing them properly contributes to the overall success of your online retail store.
It enhances user experience (UX), improves search engine visibility (SEO), increases conversion rates, builds trust and credibility, and sets your e-commerce site apart from competitors.
The fundamental elements of every eCommerce store revolve around product pages and product content.
According to a report from Convertcart, “87% of customers feel that content is the deciding factor when looking to purchase an item.”
The types of content, like product specifications, reviews, FAQs, and videos, are vital for consumers when purchasing a product or visiting its website.
Optimizing every element on your e-commerce product page may not be necessary. Let’s focus on the essential elements that require attention: The product’s name, descriptions, images, and reviews.
Your product’s name is very important. Using it in the SEO title and URL of the product page could be a bonus.
It is advisable to add a common search term or keyword phrase to your products.
Let’s say you’re selling smartphones. You should make certain to include the brand and model in the product name.
For instance,
You can include specific keywords in the title and URL. This detailed product naming helps customers find the exact device they want.
| Page Title | URL |
| Samsung Galaxy S21-TechHub | www.techhub.com/samsung-galaxy-s21 |
Images are a crucial part of your product page. An unoptimized image holds up to 75% of the total webpage weight. To properly optimize images for website search, you must follow the below-mentioned steps:
Video offers a room to your customers to become more confident about their purchases.
So, create videos with basic information about your product. DIY and educational videos can be incorporated with your customers too easily.
‘How-to videos on ways to use the product’ is a plus for obtaining results. Videos on your testimonials from people who have used the product also offer better results.
Good reviews boost customer’s confidence. On the flip side, bad ones demotivate them. So you have to check reviews about your products accordingly.
A FAQ page is like an asset on any eCommerce website. The main motive of this page is to answer questions frequently asked by customers related to products.
Through the FAQ, try to answer basic questions about your products, their features, website’s security, shipping, and return policies. This can increase buyer confidence, leading to more sales.
Mobile users often search for a product or service when they’re in dire need for your products. So, make sure your website is responsive and mobile-friendly. Responsive design offers customers a room to make purchases.
On the other hand, using responsive design for an eCommerce website boosts user-experience and improves search results.
Note that Google’s mobile-first index uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
The faster your pages load, the better for ranking.
A page load time of 2 seconds or less is good.
Pointers for enhancing page load speed:
Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML:
Backlinks have a crucial role in eCommerce SEO. The more backlinks you have from high-quality sites, the more authoritative your website is.
For an eCommerce website, building backlinks isn’t difficult; you have to boost the probability of guest posting on blogs related to your niche.
Also Read: Techniques That Improve Page Load Speed of Your Website
As a store owner, you collect personal information from your customers. Make sure that their information is encrypted and safe. If people browsing your eCommerce store feel unsafe, they may jump to your competitor’s website.
In addition, Google has declared HTTPS a ranking factor for websites. Also, your competitors may have moved to HTTPS because HTTPS prevents cyber criminals from intercepting the data and the information your customers enter on your website.
To obtain an HTTPS certificate, connect with the ResultFirst team.
Ubersuggest offers keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audit features. It aids in discovering keyword opportunities, competitor insights, and data-driven SEO suggestions.
A comprehensive tool for SEO analysis, Ahrefs excels in backlink tracking, keyword research, and competitor analysis. Its robust features assist in understanding and enhancing website performance.
Primarily a website crawler, Screaming Frog identifies SEO issues like broken links, duplicate content, and missing metadata. It aids in comprehensive site audits and optimization.
Moz provides various SEO tools, including keyword research, site audits, and link analysis. Features like MozBar and Moz Pro help improve search visibility and site performance.
Choosing the best eCommerce platform for SEO is very important as it directly impacts your business. There are many platforms, but not all are suitable for your business. Some of the popular platforms include:
SEO strategy for eCommerce websites can be complex and challenging due to search engine algorithm updates and excessive industry jargon. It can take time to carry out and get the hang of this whole SEO thing.
But, if you need this eCommerce SEO guide, it will certainly be worth the effort. Thorough and correctly implemented optimization can yield potentially far higher click-through rates and sales than through paid search.
We hope you liked our article on SEO for ecommerce websites.
Also Read:
6 Unique Strategies To Increase ROI For Your Ecommerce Business
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