Looking for a way to increase traffic for your online store? If that’s your goal, you must learn about ecommerce SEO.
Ecommerce SEO often needs clarification with just having the right keywords in your product description. But that is in the past, and keywords are just the tip of the iceberg.
If you want to grow your e-commerce store and rank in search engines today, more than just inserting keywords into your product descriptions is required. If you optimize your ecommerce store properly, it can be easier to sell and attract attention to your store. That’s scary.
However, this blog aims to optimize your e-commerce store for search engines to attract the right audience and generate good sales.
What is Ecommerce SEO?
Ecommerce SEO is a way to optimize his website for a store to rank higher, increase traffic and attract potential customers. When you search for a product on a search engine, you get your desired search query results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
The point of SEO is to help brands rise to the top. In essence, ecommerce SEO is an umbrella term that refers to various optimization techniques that help improve your page’s rank in search engines.
If you want to grow your store, keep reading as we break down this overarching term and offer some solid optimization areas to help you grow your ecommerce store. Before we get into that, let’s look at some key ecommerce stats.
Why Ecommerce SEO Matters
Ecommerce SEO is more important than ever. Here are some statistics that show its importance.
- By July 2022, Google was responsible for over 83.84% of all desktop search traffic. Bing followed with 8.88% and Yahoo with 2.55%.
- According to 2022 live stats, Google is performing 99,000 searches per second for him, which equates to about 8.5 billion searches in just one day.
- 61% of marketers believe their top priorities are search engine optimization and improving their company’s organic presence.
- 90% of all searchers have already made it clear which brand they want to buy at the start of their search.
- Brafton says more than 95% of his searchers only look at the first page of results.
Looking at the stats above, you can see how important it is for him to optimize his website for better search engine rankings.
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The Most Effective Ecommerce SEO Strategies
There are many things you can do to improve the SEO of your store. We’ve put together a final list of the top 8 best practices to help improve the SEO of your online store.
1. E-commerce keyword research
Sell the right keywords!
Keyword research is one of the most powerful pillars of any ecommerce SEO strategy. Because KW allows search engine algorithms to recognize the target group they want to attract, when a relevant user inserts the target KW into the search bar, the search engine will show your website in the results if it is properly optimized.
Even if you struggle to rank well on Google, you can still target the “People Asking This” and “People Searching This” sections.
Learn how to do keyword research properly.
Suppose you are dealing in leather jackets. Then search for the most relevant keywords. But how do we recognize them?
The platforms below can help you identify relevant, product-related keywords with minimal effort.
1.1. Amazon Suggestions
One of the largest e-commerce sites, Amazon, is a treasure trove of keyword searches. A list of product-specific long-tail keywords is provided. For example, “blue leather jacket”.
Such keywords improve conversion rates and make long-tail keywords less competitive. You can start your keyword research by entering the keywords that best describe your product. Consider different keywords and write down all relevant keywords to help your ecommerce SEO strategy. Feel free to flash and repeat this process for any major products you sell on your e-commerce site.
You can also find more keywords by digging deeper into Amazon’s various category pages. For example, if you’re looking for keywords related to “jeans,” search for the item on the category page, and you’ll be presented with many options.
The keywords you can get from the example above are:
- casual straight jeans
- retro jeans
- slim fit jeans
- boot cut jeans
- skinny fit jeans
- fitted jeans
- Loose jeans
This is just a simple example of Amazon’s effectiveness at finding the right keywords.
1.2.Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an amazing keyword research tool with a dedicated keyword explorer section to help you find the best keywords for your target audience. This is a paid tool that allows you to not only conduct keyword research but also develop your entire ecommerce SEO strategy.
Searching for a specific keyword on Ahrefs will give you a set of matching terms and insights like traffic potential, related questions, and more.
Based on the example of the blue leather jacket, Ahrefs gives us the following information:
You can also get a complete SERP overview showing the website’s top rankings, number of backlinks, domain authority, traffic and top keywords for a specific keyword, as shown below.
More importantly, ecommerce SEO tools like Ahrefs can also help you find LSI (Modern Semantic Index) keywords for your website. These keywords are similar to the original and are considered a ranking factor by Google.
1.3. Keyword Tool Dominator
The Dominator Keyword Tool is another great tool for finding relevant and ranking keywords. Get data from multiple sources such as:
- Etsy
- Bing
- eBay
- Google Shopping
- Walmart
- YouTube
Also, each keyword is assigned a score as follows:
The search parameters are great; you can dig deep to find the best keywords.
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2. Optimize your ecommerce store architecture
It doesn’t matter if your e-commerce site is small or large. Website architecture makes a difference.
If your website is based on a content management system, “CMS”, such as WordPress, then you don’t need to worry, as the architecture of your website is already in place.
2.1. E-commerce website architecture
The structure of your ecommerce website should be simple so that the link juice flows smoothly from top to bottom.
In the image above, each product page can be accessed with just three clicks from the home page.
Home > Category > Subcategory > Product
An informal rule among UX/UI developers is known as the “three-click rule”. So pages that require him to click more than three times to return to the home page should be reconsidered. Make sure the user journey is simple.
2.2. Add Breadcrumbs
You can also add breadcrumbs to optimize your website architecture. Breadcrumb trails are useful for both the web designer and her SEO expert.
This allows Google bots to understand the website hierarchy better and helps online visitors understand their current location on the website.
Google also displays breadcrumbs in its search index. An SEO expert believes this will simplify the user experience on his SERPs. Next, he needs to know about the three types of breadcrumbs.
- Location-based breadcrumbs – One of the most common types of breadcrumbs, highlighting the position of pages within the site hierarchy. Users can access similar pages using location-based breadcrumbs.
- Attribute-based breadcrumbs – Like location-based breadcrumbs, the only difference between the two is that attribute-based breadcrumbs use specific keywords or other attributes to represent web pages rather than page titles. Perfect for e-commerce websites.
- History-based Breadcrumbs – These breadcrumbs show a user’s path to any of her web pages. This allows users to access her website through various routes.
2.3. Optimize Sitelinks
Google adds website links to all websites in organic search. Check out the links on the Cloudways website showing the pages most visited by users.
Unfortunately, the process is fully automated, so we can’t tell Google which pages to include as links to your site. However, a website with a neat page structure and neat pages makes it easier for Google to find eye-catching website links.
2.4. Maintain a Proper Internal Linking Structure
Make sure your product pages are properly linked to each other. For example, at the bottom of a particular product page, you can have a link to another product as a featured product or within the product description.
Leverage internal links to facilitate user navigation. You can link to pages containing complementary products or pages related to your products.
Internal linking techniques increase traffic to other pages on your site and help tell search engine algorithms that you are an authority on the subject.
2.5. Setting up the regular version
An e-commerce store can present architectural challenges due to the abundance of products, tags, and categories. Ecommerce stores with large product bases often have overlapping products and categories.
Duplication can confuse search engine algorithms and make your pages difficult to index. The result is lower rankings and less traffic to your store. However, you can avoid this problem by using canonical tags.
By providing the canonical version of your product, you are telling Google which pages are relevant for indexing and ranking. Canonicals make ranking your preferred content easier for search engines so your site’s pages don’t compete.
2.6. Check the URL
Cluttered URLs are a problem for many e-commerce stores, hindering indexing and ranking.
Setting up the right URL is an important part of ecommerce SEO. Let’s analyze the URL structure to fully understand it and then review some helpful URL configuration tips for your ecommerce store.
Take this blog link as an example.
- “https://” is the log that the website is safe.
- “www” is a subdomain.
- “Cloudways” is the root domain for this entire URL structure.
- “.com” is a top-level domain, also known as a TLD.
- “/blog/” is the slug, and “/ecommerce-seo” is the permalink.
Now that you understand the URL structure, it’s time to tackle page slugs and permalinks. Many stores need clearer page URLs, confusing Google and even users about what they sell.
The image above clearly shows the difference between good and bad URLs. You don’t want to lose sales because it’s easy to fix, right? Here are some URL tips to keep in mind.
• Be user-friendly: Search engines are focused on providing the best human experience for their users. If your URL is easy to understand, you are more likely to appear in the rankings.
• Use primary keywords in URLs: This increases your chances of ranking well in the SERPs.
• Be brief: The ideal URL length is less than 50 characters.
- Avoid keyword stuffing: Search engine bots have gotten smarter and can no longer be fooled by keyword stuffing. Consistent URLs and page content:
It’s a bad SEO strategy if the URL needs to communicate what to expect in the page’s content.
3. On-page SEO strategies for e-commerce sites
Now that you understand e-commerce website architecture better let’s look at how to modify the elements on your e-commerce store page. On-page SEO is optimizing the content and code of every website page.
3.1. Prepare a keyword list
First, create a list of keywords to target in your ecommerce store. Let’s say you want to target Black Friday. Therefore, you need to find keywords related to Black Friday. For example, “Best Black Friday Deals” or “Best Black Friday Deals”.
We recommend you keep searching variations until you find a relevant keyword with minimal difficulty. Feel free to use whatever tools you like. Once your keyword is ready, check for variations and add them to your main, category, and product pages.
3.2. E-commerce product description
There are no hard and fast rules for writing effective product descriptions for search engines. But before you start promoting, you should keep the following key points in mind for the best ecommerce SEO strategy.
Notes
- Increase your click-through rate (CTR) by using click-friendly keywords like ‘25% off’ and ‘lowest price’ in your product meta title.
- You can add modifiers like ‘buy’ or ‘offer’ to drive more traffic.
- Try to include phrases like ‘large selection’ and ‘free shipping’ to maximize his CTR on product pages.
- Product descriptions can be 300-800 words for regular products and over 1000 words for mass-produced products.
- Analyze your competitors when adding keywords. Compare 3-4 product descriptions from stores in similar niches to assess how often that keyword was used.
- Display key features on product pages.
- Create internal links on product and category pages.
- Use at least 3-5 links in your product description.
Also, add a “review section” to the product page. Have the buyer join her web store and write about their experience so that your ecommerce site ranks for review-related keywords and generates more traffic.
• Reviews matter
Reviews are important to any e-commerce business. Having authentic testimonials on your website can greatly influence a potential buyer’s purchase decision.
Because even after e-commerce becomes popular, people still need to be more willing to shop online. Your voice can change the game in your favour.
Also, companies with good natural customer reviews rank higher in the SERPs than companies without reviews.
We also recommend adding a tabular structure to your product specs and reviews to make it easier for search engines to find your snippets. His SEO of ecommerce product pages is an important part of the overall optimization and integration of your ecommerce SEO strategy.
3.3. Optimize for Featured Snippets
A product description, landing page, or blog should be written in a way that ranks for featured snippets. Featured snippets are the top-level descriptions that appear in Google search results. Searching for a keyword online may see featured snippets at the top of the first page. If you see featured snippets, your relevant content should be optimized accordingly.
Conclusion
We have discussed each and everything important for your business through SEO services, which plays a very important role in the success of any business out there.