Ecommerce SEO Guide: SEO Best Practices for Ecommerce Websites
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If you want to get more traffic and sales to your ecommerce website, then?on-page SEO
Many how-to articles and tutorials on the web offer general?SEO?advice, but far fewer specifically address the needs of e-commerce entrepreneurs.
Today, we'd like to give you a basic understanding of on-site search engine optimization for eCommerce. It will be enough to get you started, ensure you're sending all the right signals to Google, and set you up for SEO success.
Let's dive in.
What is Ecommerce SEO? Definition
E-commerce SEO is making your online store more visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs). When people search for products that you sell, you want to rank as highly as possible to attract more traffic.
You can get traffic from?paid search, but SEO costs much less. Plus, ad blockers and?blindness?can reduce the effectiveness of paid search, so you'll want to optimize for search regardless.
Ecommerce SEO usually involves optimizing your headlines, product descriptions, metadata, internal link structure, and navigational structure for search and user experience. Each product you sell should have a dedicated page to draw traffic from search engines.
However, you don't want to forget about static, non-product-oriented pages on your site, such as the following:
Create a list of keywords and related keywords for those pages. Tools like?Ubersuggest?make searching for one long-tail keyword easy and help you find semantic keywords that complement it.
Why SEO For Ecommerce Matters
What do consumers do when they need a product or service? Many perform Google searches. They're looking for options, tips, comparisons, and other information to help them make informed decisions.
If your website doesn't appear in the SERPs, you lose critical access to qualified and interested e-commerce customers. Your products might have a space on the web, but are they findable?
That's where e-commerce SEO comes in. It allows you to reach your target audience without paying for ads. Once people visit your site, you can delight them with your high-quality products, intriguing copy, and motivating calls to action.
If you only optimize your website for people, you do a disservice to your company. SEO for e-commerce addresses the first hurdle to acquiring new customers: getting people to your site.
How to Develop an E-commerce SEO Strategy
E-commerce SEO is a huge task, especially if you already have a website with many products. Yes, it might take time, but a solid strategy can speed up the process.
Keep reading for more detailed instructions on how to develop an effective e-commerce SEO strategy.
E-commerce SEO Checklist: Best Practices for Your E-commerce SEO Strategy
Look at some of the best tips for e-commerce sites lacking SEO. If you want people to find your products more efficiently, you need an ecommerce SEO strategy, and checking each item off your list will make your plan more effective.
Use the Right Keywords
Yes, keywords still matter. You don't want to overload your product titles and descriptions with these keywords, but they must be present in the copy.
Mention your primary keyword in your product headline, description, meta description, image alternate attributes, and subheadlines. Sprinkle latent semantic index (LSI) keywords throughout. These are related keywords that help Google understand your page in context.
Analyze the Keyword Search Volume
Before you use a keyword, do some research on it. Know how often people search for it (keyword search volume), how competitive it is in paid advertising (cost-per-click, or C.P.C.), and what people are looking for when they use that keyword.
Let's break it down further.
Search volume tells you how much interest a particular keyword inspires in consumers. A high search volume indicates incredible popularity, so you'll get more active searches for that keyword.
C.P.C. tells you how much people pay per click when they buy advertising based on a specific keyword. A high C.P.C. indicates increased competition. If your target keyword is highly competitive, consider finding a long-tail alternative.
Finally, user intent describes what people want to find when they type a keyword into Google's search bar. Let's say, for instance, that someone types "shower" and hits Enter. Does that person want information about shower installation, repair, baby showers, bridal showers, or something else? If you can't determine the user intent behind a keyword, add other words to the search string for clarity.
Conduct Competitor Research
If you have no clue where to start with on-site optimization for your ecommerce site, then your competitors are your best bet. Larger competitors have probably already put in the legwork for optimizing their websites, and you can learn many of their websites' secrets.
You need to focus on keywords. You'll want to analyze their home and top product page keywords.
How can you tell if a website is optimizing for a particular keyword? You can use the?Moz browser extension?to see the SEO title and description your competitors use in their title tags.
You can also use tools like?SEMrush?to see what keywords your competitors rank for on organic and paid searches.
Don't stop your research with keywords. Check out your competitors' landing pages to see how they use the specified keywords to optimize those pages.
Focus on Homepage SEO
Most businesses focus their SEO budget and energy on the homepage. While it is one of the top pages of your website to optimize, it is by no means the only one you should focus on.
That said, you do want to?optimize your homepage well. The key things you want to add and optimize are as follows:
Homepage Title Tag
The SEO title tag is one of the most crucial elements of on-site search optimization. It should include your business name and the primary keyword phrase you target. You should write this title tag in?less than?70 characters and in an appealing way to search visitors, as they will see it in search results.
Homepage Meta Description
While this is not important for?keyword rankings, the meta description for your homepage is a 160-character description of your business that will also appear in searches beneath the title tag. Write it to encourage people to visit your website.
Homepage Content
The content on your homepage should help visitors learn more about your business and the products you have to offer clearly and concisely.?Avoid overloading visitors with too much information. Consider featuring your top few products on the homepage and your unique selling proposition.
Cluttered home pages can confuse visitors as well as search engines. For instance instance, you sell products in many different categories. Google will struggle to identify what you sell and who you're targeting with your products, so get specific about what your site offers.
Simplify Your Site Architecture
As you add products and categories to your store, remember that site architecture is essential in search optimization. You want to have a distinct?navigation hierarchy, from your homepage to product categories to the products listed within them.
Search engine bots will discover your pages and products on your website based on a clear internal linking structure
The rule of thumb for search engines and visitors is to?ensure people can reach everything?within three clicks. From the homepage, they should only have to make a maximum of three clicks to get to any product on your website.
Internal Linking
Internal links serve two primary purposes:
Linking to related products or to information-rich blog articles can help improve ecommerce SEO and make your site more tempting for deep dives.
Product pages are the lifeblood of your business, so you should focus a lot of your energy on optimizing them.?Many e-commerce store owners write a few lines of text about each product and throw up an image or video.
Your product pages need more information so Google can find them.?Here are the specific things you want to work on.
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Product Name
The name of your product is essential. In most cases, it's also used in your product page's SEO title and URL. You should consider adding a common search term or keyword phrase to your products.
For example, if you sell?T-shirts, include "T-shirt" or "tee" in the product name. That way, the keyword will also appear in the SEO title and URL.
As a bonus, when people share your product on Facebook or Pinterest, that keyword will be in the title of the shared post.
Image Optimization
Images are an essential part of your product page. Put yourself in your customer's shoes for a moment. Are you more likely to buy a product from a site that clearly depicts it from as many angles as possible, from a site that has no image at all, or from one that is small and illegible?
Not only are images necessary for your customers,?but?they are essential for search optimization.
To properly optimize your images for search, start with the filename. Don't add pictures named?IMG0010.jpg?to your product pages. Instead, use the product name and main keyword, such as eastcoast-skinny-jeans.jpg.
If you have alternative views of your product, include keywords that people would use if they were searching for those images in search.
Also, when you add your images to your product page, include the product name and keyword in the A.L.T. text for the image.
The result? Your images can now appear in Google Image Search, as shown in the image above, or the main search results page as a part of the additional media showing.
Video
Add video to your product page to help your customer feel more confident about their purchases. The video can be basic information about your product (like a commercial), a how-to video on ways to use the product to get results, or testimonials from people who have used the product.
Publishing videos offsite on networks like YouTube can be a great way to attract and educate potential customers about your products.
Educational D.I.Y. videos, for example, can show people how to create something unique by incorporating your products. Once they get into working on that project, they'll be more likely to buy your related products.
Customer Reviews
Reviews are another way to boost customer confidence in your product, so if you have a good product, be sure to allow them.
Bad reviews aren't always a bad thing, either. If you have a higher-priced item with great reviews and a lower-priced item with so-so reviews, then people will be more likely to choose the higher-priced item, resulting in greater sales for your business.
F.A.Q. Content
Do people ask questions about your products? Of course, they do. Having product-specific F.A.Q. Content on your product pages is a?key to conversions.
If customers have questions you don't answer, they'll go somewhere else to find those answers — and likely buy from the source that answers them.
Having a general F.A.Q. Page on your website is also a good idea. Answering basic questions about your website's security, shipping, and return policies can increase buyer confidence, leading to more sales.
These days, people do considerable shopping on mobile. Using a?responsive design?for your e-commerce website can not only improve user experience but also improve search results. Google's?mobile-first index?uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal.
Reduce Page Load Speed
Page load speed?is also a ranking signal for desktop and mobile. The faster your pages load, the better Google will rank you.
How do you decrease page load speed? Focus on subtracting as many unnecessary elements from your page as possible. For instance, a vast background image covered mainly by a white body column might not be necessary. Similarly, remove any plugins or add-ons that don't contribute to your e-commerce business's bottom line.
Image Size and Dimension
The larger your images, the longer a browser takes to load them. If you reduce an image's size from 1,000×1,000 pixels to 500×500 pixels, you've reduced its "weight" by half. You can save your pictures as lower-quality JPG (JPEG) with a program like Adobe Photoshop.
Just click "File" and "Save as…"
You can save your image as a JPG (JPEG) with a quality level between zero and 12.
Simply moving the arrow from a 12 to an 8 can drastically reduce the file size. In this case, the image went from 125K to 82.4 K.
Create Backlinks for Ecommerce SEO
Backlinks are another ranking signal Google uses to determine where your pages belong in the SERPs. The more backlinks you have from high-quality sites, the more authoritative your site becomes.
Building backlinks?for e-commerce sites doesn't have to be complicated. Guest posting on blogs related to your niche is one easy, white-hat way to build links. Email the owners of the blogs you're interested in and offer them three or more ideas for potential guest posts.
Best Ecommerce SEO Tools
If you want your ecommerce SEO strategy to work, you need the right tools. The following are some of the most helpful websites for improving your on-page and off-page SEO for greater visibility in the search engines.
Ubersuggest
I mentioned?Ubersuggest?briefly above. This is a highly beneficial tool for isolating the best keywords to target for your ecommerce site and for finding related keywords to help boost your rankings.
Simply type in a keyword related to your product. The tool will scrape various sources on the web for information about related keywords, C.P.C., search volume, and more.
Ahrefs
Use?Ahrefs?to optimize and track your ecommerce SEO strategy. It's great for finding backlinks to your site as well as to your competitors' sites. If someone has linked to your competitor, you might be able to snag a link to your own site by emailing that person and establishing a rapport. Offer to link to his or her site, then suggest one of your high-quality posts that they're audience might be interested in.
ScreamingFrog
ScreamingFrog?is great for finding problems on your site, such as broken links, missing meta descriptions, and duplicate content. When you identify those problems, create redirects or add missing content so you don't get penalized in the search engines. The free version offers plenty of useful tools, but if you have more than 500 URL extensions, you might want to upgrade to premium.
MOZ
MOZ?is the ideal tool when you want to track and find keywords, find link-building opportunities, and analyze competitors' page metrics. There are free and paid versions, so you can decide how much power you need to fuel your ecommerce SEO campaign.
Why You Should Combine SEO With CRO
I briefly touched on C.R.O. above, but what do conversion rates have to do with SEO? The answer is that they're two stages a consumer must go through to purchase your ecommerce products.
If people can't find your site (SEO), they can't convert to your offers. Similarly, if you haven't optimized for conversions, all the visitors in the world won't bring you sales.
Combining SEO with C.R.O. gives you a robust set of strategies to help you drive conversions and generate sales. E-commerce has become increasingly competitive, so you need ways to get more people to your site and through the sales funnel.
Start by analyzing your site carefully with?heatmap, scroll map, and confetti reports. View how people engage with your site so you can optimize each page for conversions. As long as you've optimized for SEO as well, you can generate consistent traffic and convert a higher percentage of it.
Conclusion
Many?ecommerce business owners?want to jump straight to?canincreasing conversions. That's the right mindset, but you're a step ahead.
You have to get people to your site before converting them on your offers. Beginning with ecommerce SEO sets you up for success.
Let's take a look at our checklist for ecommerce SEO:
If you follow those steps, your ecommerce site will rank better in the search engines and generate more prospects for your C.R.O. efforts.