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Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for the livelihood and success of any ecommerce store. After all, people can’t buy from you online if they can’t find you!
To stand out and attract potential buyers, your ecommerce site must rank well in search results for the keywords your audience is searching for.
In this article, we’ll break down ten powerful SEO tips specifically for ecommerce sites. These strategies will help you drive more organic traffic to your site, improving visibility and converting visitors into loyal customers.
Let’s dive in!
Understanding ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO is the process of optimizing your online store to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for target keywords.
The goal is to increase organic traffic (non-paid traffic) to your ecommerce site by making it easier for search engines like Google to understand and rank your content. This, in turn, helps potential customers find your products when they search for related terms.
At its core, ecommerce SEO focuses on optimizing various elements of your ecommerce site, including ecommerce product pages, category pages, and even blog content, to target the right keywords that align with user intent. These keywords are not just random terms but are strategically selected to match what your potential buyers are looking for.
Unlike traditional SEO, which can sometimes emphasize broader topics, ecommerce SEO zeroes in on transactional search intent—people who are ready to make a purchase or compare products.
Ranking for these “bottom-of-the-funnel” keywords can directly impact your sales by bringing high-intent traffic to your ecommerce store.
Key components of ecommerce SEO include:
- On-page optimization: On-page SEO involves refining product descriptions, images, meta tags, and URLs to ensure your product and category pages are well-optimized for your target keywords.
- Technical SEO: Ensuring that your site structure, speed, mobile responsiveness, and overall user experience meet the standards set by search engines.
- Content marketing: Developing valuable, keyword-rich content such as blog posts, how-to guides, and FAQ sections that not only rank in search but also address customer questions and drive them toward conversion.
- Link building: Acquiring backlinks from reputable websites to boost your site’s authority and search engine rankings.
10 SEO tips for ecommerce sites
Now that we’ve covered the basics of an ecommerce SEO strategy, let’s dive into the actionable tips. Here are ten essential SEO tips for ecommerce sites to help you boost your organic traffic and increase sales.
1. Do keyword research to find the right keywords for you
Any ecommerce SEO strategy starts with keyword research, a.k.a. identifying relevant keywords and adding them to your ecommerce site.
What are the terms you want to rank for?
Say you’re selling aromatherapy products. Your ecommerce site should probably include common terms like “essential oil” or “scented candle.”
However, it’s important to understand that there’s a lot of competition in that market. Many ecommerce websites will be fighting over general terms like these.
That’s why you should dig deeper to find long-tail keywords. While fewer people search for these, they’re more specific, which means the competition is lower. For example, some long-tail keywords might be “ceramic essential oil diffuser” or “white ceramic diffuser.”
You can check how competitive the target keywords you select are by using keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner.
Since you own an ecommerce store, you’ll want to focus on a specific type of user intent on your landing pages: the transactional type, where the user is looking to buy something. These are called the bottom-of-the-funnel keywords.
If you want to delve more into content marketing, you might consider starting a blog where you also answer users’ informational inquiries. They might wonder “how to use ceramic diffuser” or “how long can you burn a candle.”
However, your main task as you get started with ecommerce SEO is to optimize your product pages, product categories, product names, and descriptions to rank for relevant keywords.
2. Use structured data on your ecommerce website
The structured data markup is a handy feature to add to your ecommerce website, as it helps search engines provide users with more information about the products you sell directly in the search results. This will be even more motivation to click!
Display your star rating, number of reviews, price, and availability to increase CTR and give your customers a better user experience.
If you’ve created your own ecommerce site and are technologically savvy enough, you can add structured data yourself.
There are plenty of guides that can help, like this one from Google Developers that provides you with code you can copy and paste for different features. If you can’t do it alone, talk to your developer who can easily help you implement it.
3. Optimize your product images for search engines and customers
Images are an excellent on-page SEO tool for any ecommerce site. Using low-quality images is one of the main ecommerce site mistakes you want to avoid.
Just as people want to see the food before they order, they also want to see the product before they buy—from all angles.
One of the first image optimization ecommerce tips is to make sure the photos you upload are high quality but no larger than 100KB. Otherwise, your website loading speed might suffer.
Next, if you want people to land on your ecommerce site via image search, add alt text featuring a relevant keyword to every image. Additionally, avoid file names like “image 1” and use words that describe the product instead.
4. Improve your website speed
If you want to boost your site in search rankings and get more organic ecommerce website traffic, focus on improving its loading speed.
In every SEO checklist you read, there’s a heavy focus on website speed because customers expect things to happen quickly especially when they’re on an ecommerce website shopping.
You can check your site speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.
Here are some actions you can take to help your website load faster:
- Optimize images and reduce file sizes.
- Don’t use too many plugins.
- Choose your website hosting service carefully.
- Use a plugin to save a copy of your website on users’ browsers. That way, it will load faster the next time they visit.
- Use lazy loading so your product images don’t load unless the user scrolls down to them.
- Ask your developer to eliminate any unnecessary code.
5. Optimize your website for mobile
In 2019, Google released its mobile-first indexing policy, which gave websites’ mobile versions increased legitimacy. Plus, in the fourth quarter of 2021 mobile devices accounted for more than 50% of global website traffic!
Failing to optimize ecommerce pages for mobile is like throwing money out the window.
Ideally, you should create a responsive website that automatically adjusts according to the user’s screen size.
Browse your entire website on mobile and ensure that:
- all images and videos are displayed correctly,
- the website loads fast,
- all text is legible, and
- there are no on-page ads that might not work on mobile.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the user experience needs to be similar across all devices. Users should have access to the same type of content on mobile as they do on desktop.
6. Optimize your URL structure
URLs are an important factor in user experience and can boost your ecommerce SEO efforts. Not only do they tell site visitors what to expect from a link, but they also let search engines know what the page is about.
Try to avoid extremely long URLs containing lots of numbers and no relevant keywords.
A good URL for a product page featuring a white ceramic diffuser could be something like yourwebsite.com/diffusers/white-ceramic-diffuser.
Adding the keyword to the URL will help improve your site structure, help you rank higher, and draw more people to your products.
7. Stay away from broken links
Just as optimized URLs help both customers and search engines, broken links are an inconvenience for both.
Imagine a customer excited to buy a product from you, only to click on the link and realize it’s broken. That’s a poor customer experience, and your sales will suffer.
Whenever you update a URL, set up a 301 redirect so both customers and search engines find what they were looking for.
Luckily, you don’t have to track all your links manually. You can use SEO tools like Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider.
8. Do internal linking right
Linking to your product and category pages internally is like sending a signal to Google that these are important pages. This is called “link equity” or “link juice,” and it refers to passing authority from one page to another.
While this is much more impactful coming from backlinks on high-authority external websites, linking to your own content helps ecommerce SEO, too.
If you have a blog, include internal links to your products in your articles to give them a little boost and show relevant new products to your customers.
9. Focus on link building
One of the most powerful ecommerce SEO strategies is to get other ecommerce websites to link to you, which shows Google you’re a relevant, authoritative website that people should see.
Backlinks will earn you referral traffic and help you sell more. However, not many websites are open to linking to product pages or category pages. You may have more luck if you have a blog that others can link to in their posts.
To earn quality backlinks, reach out to other websites in your industry and offer to write a guest post for them focusing on free guest posting websites for wider exposure.
You can also get organic links by focusing on unique, high-quality content that answers people’s questions or helps them somehow—this is the kind of content people are looking for, which means it’s the kind that other websites will link to.
10. Avoid duplicate content
Finally, make sure you always write unique content so that you don’t cannibalize your own website and damage your ranking in search engines.
If you sell multiple similar products, you might be tempted to use the same product descriptions or simply change a few words here and there. But that’s a mistake. Whenever possible, try to come up with unique descriptions.
How to measure the success of your ecommerce SEO strategy?
No matter what ecommerce SEO plan you choose, you need to track your progress and results so you can optimize the online shopping journey and bring more traffic to your website.
You can use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to do that. Here’s how they can help:
- Google Analytics can help you identify relevant keywords that are converting, the leads that are coming from organic search, your top-performing content, where referral traffic is coming from, and much more. Here’s how to get started with Google Analytics.
- You can use Google Search Console to check the queries that drive the most organic traffic to your ecommerce website, check the CTR of your product pages, control the indexing of your category pages, track the performance of your URLs, and more. Read more about how to use Search Console here.
FAQ
How to improve ecommerce SEO?
Improving ecommerce SEO requires a multi-faceted approach. First, perform keyword research to find keywords that match what your potential customers are searching for. Optimize your product pages, including product titles, descriptions, and image alt text, to include these keywords naturally. Focus on improving your website speed and mobile-friendliness, as both are crucial for ranking higher in search engines like Google. Additionally, use structured data to enhance product listings with rich snippets, improve internal linking to guide users to important pages, and build high-quality backlinks to increase your site’s authority.
How do I get SEO results for ecommerce?
To get results from ecommerce SEO, consistency is key. SEO is a long-term strategy, and it takes time for search engines to crawl, index, and rank your content. Start by implementing a well-researched SEO plan that includes optimizing for keywords, creating quality content, fixing technical SEO issues like site speed and mobile responsiveness, and building authoritative backlinks. The more you optimize and refine your SEO efforts, the more traffic and conversions you will see over time.
Is SEO good for ecommerce?
Yes, SEO is highly beneficial for ecommerce websites. An SEO strategy helps increase organic traffic, which means more potential customers are visiting your online store without running paid ads. This can lead to higher conversions and sales. Additionally, strong SEO helps improve brand visibility and credibility, as appearing in top search results signals to customers that your site is trustworthy. SEO is also cost-effective compared to paid ads, as the traffic generated is sustained over time without recurring costs.
How do I structure an ecommerce site for SEO?
Structuring your online store for SEO starts with a clear and intuitive ecommerce site architecture. Organize your website into a logical hierarchy with well-defined product categories and subcategories that make it easy for both users and search engines to navigate. Use SEO-friendly URLs that include relevant keywords and avoid overly complex or lengthy URLs. Ensure that product and category pages have unique meta titles, descriptions, and high-quality content to differentiate them from one another. Implement internal linking to distribute authority across important pages and improve overall user experience.
Wrapping up
We hope these ecommerce SEO strategies help you craft an effective search engine optimization strategy for your online store.
By focusing on ecommerce keyword research, optimizing your ecommerce site for speed and mobile devices, leveraging structured data, and building quality backlinks, you can significantly enhance your search engine rankings and attract more customers.
Remember, ecommerce SEO is a long-term investment that requires consistent effort and monitoring. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track your progress and make informed decisions.
About the author
Laura Voicu is a content marketing specialist at Oracle’s GloriaFood, a business that provides restaurant owners and managers with a free, do-it-yourself online ordering system that allows them to take food orders on their own website.
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