Before establishing an ecommerce website SEO strategy, you must understand the basic definition of SEO. Then, what is SEO? Basically, it is a website optimization process that aims to get a good ranking on search engine results.
With that being said, how does ecommerce benefit from SEO? A proper SEO implementation can significantly impact the presence of ecommerce websites, not to mention its direct effect on store sales or revenue.
So let this article be your expert guide to the journey of ecommerce SEO definition, how to create, and free ecommerce SEO tools!
What Is Ecommerce SEO?
Ecommerce SEO optimizes your online store for better presence and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs). Like traditional SEO strategy, ecommerce SEO strategy for ecommerce websites also aims to increase organic traffic and attract potential customers.
However, this niche has unique tactics that help a business outperform in this $6.3 trillion market, as revealed below.
SEO strategy for ecommerce ensures a website’s product pages appear among the top and first page of organic search results on search engines. However, while traditional SEO focuses on ranking for better visibility, the goal of ecommerce SEO goes beyond: increasing conversions and sales.
This is why SMEs are willing to do paid Google advertisements while doing an ecommerce website SEO strategy to rank high in search results. If a website doesn’t rank within the top 10 results, it can receive significantly less traffic.
Hence, it’s essential for ecommerce businesses to prioritize SEO alongside other marketing strategies due to high return on investment (ROI) and long-term benefits generation.
How To Create An Ecommerce SEO Strategy?
As ecommerce SEO is still a part of SEO, you still need to optimize basic steps while establishing an ecommerce SEO strategy:
- Ecommerce keyword research
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO
- Link building
- Ecommerce Keyword Research
To rank on search engines, something about the page must match the users’ search intent, right? And a specific keyword or keyphrase would be the most potential.
Like the traditional method, the SEO strategy for ecommerce sites starts with detailed keyword research. This means you have to identify a set of potential key terms that your target audience might search for.
In ecommerce, potential keywords are those with high volume, low KD, relevant, and a mix between informative and commercial. Why?
While informational keywords are included in blogs to educate users about a specific product, commercial keywords are there to call out for the next action: purchase. Here are some steps to conduct keyword research for ecommerce SEO:
a. Determine if you are choosing the right keywords
With basic SEO tools like Google Keyword Planner, you can have an in-depth overview of how a specific performs, such as its volume and CPC. These analytic metrics enable you to understand users’ search intent better.
Moreover, advanced SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz can analyze competitors’ usage for key terms. So, you can look at those results and gain more insights to exceed expectations.
b. Use Amazon for keyword research
If you are doing ecommerce, you must know about Amazon. The volume of users accessing Amazon and searching for products to buy is an excellent source of high buyer intent keywords.
Believe it or not, this platform can significantly impact your ecommerce SEO strategy performance.
Start typing your seed keyword on Amazon, and note down the autofill suggestions. This platform’s tool is called Amazon Keyword Tool, which automatically scrapes Amazon’s autofill suggestions for any keyword. The tool allows you to download the keywords to a CSV file.
c. Find keywords through competitor research.
As mentioned, analyzing your competitors and their keyword usage can provide valuable insights for you to stand out by creating different experiences.
Type your keyword into Google, select a competitor, and review their category and product pages for potential keywords. Ahrefs and SEMrush are extremely helpful in this case.
Remember, consider other factors, such as domain authority, and don’t blindly use the same keyword as your competitors. Also, ensure you have breadcrumbs set up correctly, as it enables Google to scan and index your site.
- Technical SEO
SEO strategy for ecommerce sites also involves technical SEO to optimize a website’s technical aspects, affecting the overall performance in search engine rankings.
While shoppers may not directly interact with these optimizations, they are essential for ensuring that search engine crawlers can effectively understand and index your website.
Site architecture is one of the most impacted technical elements of users’ shopping experience. It refers to arranging your website’s navigation, category, and product pages.
The primary purpose of a site architecture is to efficiently present highlighted products to potential customers while minimizing their need to click extensively to locate them. By strategically structuring your ecommerce site, you can improve discoverability and streamline the customer journey, leading to increased engagement and conversions.
a. Simplify and make it scalable.
We all like a fast and straightforward process when buying new products. Hence, don’t underestimate the simplicity because it might be the easiest and fastest way for buyers to scroll your site.
In contrast, complex navigation and excessive layers of categories can negatively lose buyers’ patience while discovering a website. To conclude, create an accessible site structure for users to find what they want without clicking through multiple levels.
b. Implement a three-click rule.
No page on your site should be more than three clicks away from any other page, that’s a three-click rule implementation.
This rule aims to simplify both the users’ and search engines’ navigation process and make it accessible to all areas of your website. As mentioned, buyers who go through too many clicks to reach a specific page may lose patience and drop out in the middle.
c. Prioritize indexable and rankable pages.
Choose which site on your page needs to be indexed and ranked by considering its importance and relevance. Experts suggest optimizing and promoting pages most likely to drive traffic and conversions.
In ecommerce SEO, best-selling product pages or product category pages are best to use.
- On-page SEO
The importance of on-page SEO in traditional SEO and ecommerce is the same. It is still optimizing various website elements that directly impact your SEO performance and users’ experience. The two highest-value sites to optimize for on-page SEO are:
- Product category pages
- Product pages
Some factors in on-page optimization you should consider:
a. Logical internal linking
The more details your SEO campaign, the higher recognition your page receives from search engines. Internal links are the most evident proof of that statement.
You cannot randomly attach internal links without a logical structure throughout your website. The best logical internal linking practice is creating menus and navigation systems that guide users and search engine crawlers to relevant content.
As a result, proper internal linking can distribute link authority across your site and improve overall crawlability.
b. Image optimization
Promoting products might require many images to help buyers visualize better. However, it might affect loading time when opening up the ecommerce site. Hence, image optimization is necessary when implementing an ecommerce website SEO strategy.
The solution is: using the proper file format to compress images and providing descriptive alt text. This step can enhance user experience and improve page speed, resulting in better engagement and search engine rankings.
c. Mobile-friendliness
Mobile usage for online shopping is the most visible buying habit you have ever seen. And probably experienced, too.
With 45% of consumers using their phones to shop online, it is a sign to start optimizing your digital shop on mobile. Ensuring your ecommerce site is responsive and adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes is crucial.
Mobile-friendly sites are always the top priority in search results, leading to better organic traffic and improved user experience.
d. Structured data markup
Data markup is an underrated element when doing SEO strategy for ecommerce website. In fact, search engines give higher value to this factor than you think.
Implement structured data markup, allowing search engines to have additional context about your products, categories, and other elements on your ecommerce site. The information provided in data markup helps search engines understand and display relevant information in rich snippets.
- Link Building
Traditional SEO has link building, and so does ecommerce SEO. However, in this niche, backlinks are more special than regular ones.
Link building is acquiring backlinks from other websites with high domain authority. It serves as an endorsement and signal of trust to search engines. While traditional SEO seeks credible websites to establish backlinks, ecommerce SEO targets bloggers, retailers, or influencers to acquire these links.
Here are four unique link-building opportunities that are effective for ecommerce SEO:
a. Resourceful page link building
To have high authority, your partnership must be to resourceful pages relevant to your industry or topic. These third parties compile valuable resources and often provide opportunities for including your website as a credible reference.
Reach out to the owners of these pages and request a link to your website if it aligns with the content.
b. Utilize influencers
Influencers are uniquely specialized in an ecommerce website SEO strategy. Collaborate with industry influencers with large followers or owning high domain authority websites.
*Tip: Instead of paying them for social media promotion, ask them to include a link to your website within their content or blog posts. This tactic is more long-lasting and has higher credibility than social media, which might easily be skipped due to the amount of new posts.
c. Broken backlinks
There are many errors that occur to a link, such as 404, 502, etc. Your mission is to identify broken links on websites in your niche using tools like Check My Link. Once we know the issue links, make immediate replacements, as it might affect your SEO performance.
d. Guest posting
This SEO content strategy requires writing informative and valuable content for other blogs or websites in your industry as a guest author. This allows you to establish relationships with industry experts and gain exposure to their readership. In return, you can include links back to your ecommerce website within the guest post, boosting your SEO rankings.
Best Free Ecommerce SEO Tools
Lucky for you. As the technology advances, so does the ecommerce tools. Utilizing in-depth reports from these tools can help save effort while gaining valuable insights into your campaign’s performance. Here are some paid and free ecommerce SEO tools experts are using:
- Google Keyword Planner: This free tool from Google helps you find the right keywords to target for your ecommerce store. It provides valuable data on search volume, competition, and suggested bids for each keyword.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics offers valuable insights into your website’s traffic, user behavior, conversion rates, and much more. It identifies errors and makes data-driven decisions to best optimize your webpage.
- Google Search Console: Search Console enables you to monitor and maintain your website’s presence in search results. It provides information about your website’s indexing status, search queries, backlinks, and more.
- Screaming Frog: This powerful website crawler allows you to analyze your website’s structure and identify SEO issues. It provides detailed reports on broken links, duplicate content, meta descriptions, and more.
- MozBar: This free browser extension by Moz provides instant SEO metrics while browsing any webpage. It gives you insights into page authority, domain authority, link analysis, and keyword difficulty.
- SEMrush/Ahrefs: While SEMrush and Ahrefs might offer unique functions, both provide basic SEO metrics for keyword research, backlinks analysis, ranking, etc.
- Yoast SEO: A popular WordPress plugin, Yoast SEO helps you optimize your ecommerce website’s content for better search engine rankings. It offers XML sitemap creation, meta-tag optimization, and readability analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I create an ecommerce SEO strategy?
Creating an SEO strategy for ecommerce websites involves several steps to ensure your online store ranks well in search engine results and attracts targeted organic traffic. As mentioned above, here are four-step approaches to developing an effective ecommerce SEO strategy:
- Ecommerce Keyword Research
- Technical SEO
- On-page SEO for Ecommerce
- Link Building
Is SEO worth it for ecommerce?
Yes, SEO is worth it for ecommerce. It increases organic visibility, attracts targeted traffic, improves conversion rates, delivers long-term results, and provides a cost-effective marketing channel.
With a well-optimized website, you can gain a competitive advantage and drive long-term growth for your ecommerce business.
How to increase ecommerce sales with SEO?
To increase ecommerce sales with SEO, you must:
- Optimize product pages with relevant keywords
- Improve website loading speed
- Enhance user experience
- Implement structured data markup
- Create high-quality content
- Build backlinks from authoritative websites
- Analyze and adapt your SEO strategies
See more: Local SEO strategy
Conclusion
In this digital era, the shift from traditional selling to ecommerce has forced SMEs to follow the trend and learn how to stand out. Having the right ecommerce SEO strategy is the only way for ecommerce businesses to survive in the competitive market. We hope this guide has awakened you to start doing ecommerce SEO strategy today.
Want expert advice before doing ecommerce SEO? Contact ROI Digitally for marketing consultation now!
Co-Founder & General Manager @ ROI Digitally
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