Implementing e-commerce SEO strategies presents an opportunity for even small businesses to drive traffic to their sites, and see their e-stores and listings perform better on search engines.
What is e-commerce SEO?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of modifying or adding content to a website to improve its performance on search engines. This includes practices such as keyword research, link building and content optimisation.
In terms of e-commerce, it’s about continuously doing these things to drive more traffic to your online store – whether that’s the retail side of your website or your listings on online marketplaces.
Why is SEO so important?
When shoppers are looking for a specific product, they’re likely to start their journey on a search engine of some kind. Often, it’s a well-known one like Google, but equally they may go to a global online marketplace like Amazon too.
They’ll type in a search term ‘bicycle helmet’ or ‘hemp t-shirt’ and the websites or listings that come up on the search engine results page (SERP) will be the ones they’ll click on. E-commerce SEO is how you can make your site or listing one of those search results.
Of course, the aim for all businesses is to be amongst the first few results on the first page of the SERP – but there’s a lot of competition. There are a range of strategies that you can employ to boost your chances of securing one of those spots – all of which come from e-commerce SEO.
How does e-commerce SEO work?
The foundation of e-commerce SEO involves making your website or product listings more attractive to search engines. Whether it’s Google or Amazon, these platforms want to provide the best results for their users. So, a more attractive page to them is one that answers the user’s queries best.
By making the right tweaks to your website, product descriptions and content, you can show search engines that your product is the best fit for the user.
E-commerce SEO practices
There are two main areas that SEO practices fall into: those that are user-facing and those that are search engine-focused.
User-facing SEO practices cover all the changes you make to the page or listing that the user can see. These content-focused practices include:
- keywords
- content optimisation
- SEO content creation.
The practices that happen behind the scenes are just as important, but are tailored towards showing search engines that your website is worth trusting, and seen by users:
- technical SEO practices
- link building.
Keywords
The word or phrase your potential customers type into search engines are known as keywords, and search engines show results that include them. That means the process of identifying these, known as keyword research, is an important one if you want to reach more customers.
When it comes to finding keywords, you can use SEO tools to find search terms shoppers are using that relate to your product or service. It’s also worth researching what your competitors are ranking for, to find keyword opportunities. But not all keywords will be suitable for your business.
In cases where there’s a lot of competition for a keyword, search engines are likely to feature established, higher authority websites on the SERP. For smaller businesses with less authority online (lower domain rankings), it’s important to go for realistic keywords that have a lower ranking difficulty.
Think of easier keywords as low hanging fruit. You have to eat those to grow bigger and reach the fruits higher up. The same applies to keywords. Once you rank for the easier keywords, search engines start to trust you and you can go for the more difficult ones.
How to implement: use an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Moz and start searching for keywords surrounding your product or service. These can then be used in your product descriptions or blogs to drive traffic to your site or listing.
Content optimisation
This practice is focused on improving the content you already have online through adding more detail to your content, and utilising keywords in it. You can optimise:
- web copy
- product descriptions or listings
- blogs.
Whether you run your own e-commerce site or list your products on an online marketplace, there’s always something to improve on. Search engines are constantly scouring the web for the best results for their users – and once you expand content and use keywords on your e-commerce site, you give yourself the best chance of being picked up.
How to implement: review your website and add detail wherever possible – even add in an FAQs section to answer common queries or showcase your product features. Next, sprinkle target keywords into your existing content. To maximise your chances of ranking for a given keyword, include it in:
- the main heading
- subheadings
- meta title and description of the page
- the main body of your content.
Remember to not include keywords too much. This is known as keyword stuffing and can be detrimental to your performance.
SEO content creation
Creating new content is another way to support your product listings and drive traffic to them. This is usually done by writing blogs that link to your product pages – helping to build that authority, which we covered earlier. You can also build content around keywords that relate to your products and target customers who are at different stages of the purchasing process.
How to implement: create and publish your own content that uses your keywords and contains relevant links to products. You could write:
- how-to guides
- pieces that show off the benefits of your product or service
- advice on how to use or maintain your product
- customer stories.
If you don't have writing expertise in your team, outsource SEO copywriting and get fully optimised content delivered to you.
Technical SEO
The way that your website is set up and operates has a huge impact on whether search engines consider showing your site to their users. Technical aspects, for example site security and user experience can all be worked on to prove to search engines that you’ll provide a high-quality experience – but this requires technical expertise.
How to implement: have an SEO audit completed for your website and make any necessary changes to your site based on recommendations you’re given. These could include:
- deleting duplicate content
- improving site architecture
- enhancing site speed and security
- simplifying navigation.
Link building
Good SEO is about building trust with search engines like Google and link building does this through the associations it promotes. Getting other trustworthy sites on the internet to link to yours makes Google more likely to see your e-commerce site as reputable and reliable, and feature it on search results pages. This also goes a long way in building your website’s authority too, enabling you to target more competitive keywords too.
Link building strategies:
- Guest posting: pitching to big blogs and media publications, then writing articles for them in exchange for a link to your website or product listing.
- Creating shareable content: carrying out research that others will use in their own content and link back to you.
- Working with journalists: providing your expert insights to journalists and earning a link in their article.
- Blogger campaigns: ask bloggers to write and publish a review on their websites in exchange for free products.
How to implement: choose your preferred link building strategies and start researching and reaching out to publications or journalists.
E-commerce SEO really has the power to boost your presence online and get your products or services in front of the right people.
This article was written by Neil Sheth. Neil is the founder of Writefully and Bubbli Digital, which helps businesses create social media content, SEO copywriting services and rank on Google. Neil has been running digital marketing campaigns for over 12 years and has worked with over 300 businesses across multiple industries.