Are you having the right product and platform for your business, but are still unable to reach the right customer? Why so?
It happens because you have yet to optimize your website. Truth is, in this line of business, a little push from ecommerce SEO services can help you reach the right crowd, AKA target audience.
Of course, there’s more to it than just that – we’ll learn more about it as we go further down this rabbit hole.
Without further ado, let’s begin learning about e-commerce SEO.
First, we’ll see what benefits SEO can bring to your e-commerce business, learn how to develop e-commerce SEO strategies, and what tools will help you attain your goal.
Hop on the bandwagon while it is still a thing!
Ecommerce SEO: What is It?
Before talking about e-commerce SEO, let’s trace our steps all the way back to the basics: what is SEO and how it works?
Search Engine Optimization is a process to rank your website over search engines. The question is why is it important to rank your website?
It’s simple. Ranking can be regarded as a sure-shot way to reach your potential customer. When your website appears on the top page, it has a higher chance of getting your searcher’s attention compared to when your ecommerce site is buried deep among the search results.
Ecommerce SEO is like plain’o SEO where you’ll try to rank your e-commerce store. To put it in context, some examples include Myntra, Flipkart, etc. It can be used to get more traffic to your website and increase your expected sales conversion rate.
The thing with SEO and ecommerce Search Engine Optimization is that search engines like Google and Bing will only position your site on top if it has all the correct and relevant information.
The higher the rank, the better your visibility will be, and correspondingly, the more traffic. Apart from the obvious, you optimize your stores with product descriptions, metadata, headlines, etc.
Let’s see more points differentiating SEO ecommerce and SEO:
- SEO is a process to rank your website’s pages for search engines like Google and Bing while e-commerce SEO deals with ranking your e-commerce store on search engines.
- You optimize your pages mostly based on a single location in regular or local SEO. However, in e-commerce SEO, you need to look out for multiple locations all at once.
- Under regular SEO, you don’t have to put any modifiers. In e-commerce SEO, you must include modifiers like deal, cheap, etc.
- In SEO, keywords are used to optimize pages and rank your e-commerce store. Therefore, the content/ description section is kept short, unique and keyword optimized – the opposite of e-commerce SEO.
Let’s take the example of a coffee recipe.
When you search for instructions and recipes on “how to make coffee”, your search engine will fill your SERP with content that relates to your search term. The most relevant page with the proper keyword will usually rank on top above the others.
The Importance of Ecommerce SEO To Your Websites
When you have an e-commerce website selling out goods and services, your ultimate goal is to make profits.
That said, this is not possible if you plan on just creating a website and leaving it as it is. On the surface, you need to work on keeping your ecommerce site optimized with appropriate keywords, clear product pictures, and accurate descriptions.
Sites that adhere to ecommerce SEO tips and guidelines do much better compared to those that don’t. With the right amount of flair, certain e-commerce stores even manage to rank for one or two products and several other sub-pages – and through this, one can earn money with SEO.
To make you understand this concept better, here’s why you should invest in ecommerce SEO:
- It can be the most effective way to quickly help you fetch the top place of a search engine
With the help of e-commerce SEO, you may be able to quickly reach and rank on the top page of search engines. Many top-notch ecommerce seo consultants agree that SEO is the best way to increase your website’s reach organically.
- SEO lasts forever indefinitely if well-maintained
Unlike other marketing tactics like PPC, ads, social media marketing, etc, that require tons of money to reach your audience, you don’t have to spend much on strategies of SEO for results.
It is an organic way of driving traffic to website and reaching out to your audience. Of course, investing in resources to aid the workflow can make your results more visible.
How to Develop an Ecommerce SEO Strategy
With SEO ecommerce, business owners and professional SEO’s aim is only to find the right E-commerce SEO strategy to help increase the domain authority of your site and of course, rank!
Here are some ecommerce SEO strategies you can get started with:
- Arrange and prioritize your pages: Product pages that bring the majority of the audience should be given priority. However, if you personally feel like focusing on a certain product, optimize for that first.
Source: Medium
- Have a well-sorted plan and workflow: Have a strategy that is well thought after. Search Engine Optimization SEO for e-commerce stores requires unique product descriptions, optimized keywords, images, metadata, etc.
- Understand that CRO is a much-needed concept: CRO stands for conversion rate optimization. It akes sure that all the web traffic coming your way is converted into paying clients.
- Check the competition: Keeping track of what your competitors are doing will help you to know whether your seo strategy is as good as theirs. If not, you can always choose to make changes accordingly.
- Optimize your website as per smartphones: People these days are more on their cell phones. Knowing this, if you want your e-commerce store to pop up whenever they are searching for that particular product, you need to have a mobile-friendly site.
So, How to Improve Your E-Commerce Website
It’s easy to have an e-commerce website. However, to keep working on improving its overall growth is not an easy task.
Let’s see what it takes to improve SEO of your e-commerce website:
Doing Ecommerce Keyword Research
It’s not possible to reach your target audience without making sure that your website has all the right keywords in it. Whenever potential buyers look for a product, they will search for it using a string of specific words or phrases.
This is the same even for affiliate marketing where you will be required to use a set of highly convertible keywords that would bring in customers.
For example, somebody wants to buy a pair of shoes. What could be the words they would use to find it? “shoes” or, if we want to be more specific, “red-colored shoes”. These words could be the keywords that will help you appear on SERPs whenever your customer is looking for a product.
But the competition on these short and vague terms like “shoes” is immeasurable. In such cases, you’ll be better off using long-tailed keywords like “lady shoes Selangor.” This way, you can target your audience for a specific product, service, or location.
When you are looking for the keywords, keep the following things in mind:
Keyword Types: To improve SEO of your website, try to use a mixture of different keyword types.
- Short-Tail Keywords: Short-tail keywords consists of no more than three words with a relatively high search volume. They are also named after the main term keywords. These words tell you about the general products the e-commerce website is dealing with. Examples: “shoes”, “purses”, etc.
- Long-Tail Keywords: Long-tail keywords are the phrases that are more specific and detailed than its counterpart. Examples: “best red-colored shoes online” or “top 10 restaurants near me”. The best part of using long-tail keywords is that there is less competition so it can be relatively easier to rank your website.
- Geo-Targeted Keywords: Geo-targeted keywords are based on certain geographical areas. You can use these keywords to target a specific country or state. Suppose your searcher is looking for a pair of shoes in Malaysia.
One example can be: “good pair of shoes in Malaysia.” You’ll get a list of links that will help you find what you searched for in your specified location.
- Latent Semantic Keyword: LSI keywords are similar to your main keyword. These keywords help the search engine understand what your content is all about. For example: using the term “footwear” instead of “shoes” or “automobile” instead of “cars.”
Competition: When it comes to keywords, competition is an important factor that one should look for. Check out your competitor’s page and inculcate keywords to help your website rank. Many ecommerce SEO experts recommend choosing a keyword that has a medium level of competition for an e-commerce business that is just starting.
Cost Per Click (CPC): For paid advertisements, pay attention to the Cost Per Click (CPC) metric. It tells you how much money you will be spending on each click to drive traffic to your website.
Auditing and Researching The Competitor
When you have no clue how seo website optimization works or are new to this, it becomes difficult to understand what is right. In such a case, conduct competitors’ research to know the market.
It also keeps you updated with the ongoing ecommerce trends in the industry. Work on it in a stepwise manner to break down all the elements involved:
- First of all, do in-depth market research using tools like Google Trends, Survey Monkey, etc., to know who your competitors are.
- Now go through their web pages to check what keywords they are using, their backlink profiles, what kind of content they post, etc.
- Next, collect all the data which will help you improvise your website SEO and compare it with your very own strategies.
Planning Your Site Structure
Site structure means the way you put out your content over your website. If the structure of your website is systematic, it will help users find whatever they are looking for easily.
In addition, site structure enhances user’s experience (UX), which further helps Google understand, crawl, and index your ecommerce site properly.
While planning out your website structure, you should keep in mind of the following things:
UI (User Interface): refers to all the objects (buttons, icons) that let a user interact with the digital products (mobile devices, PCs). To improve the SEO of one’s website, one should aim to make it user-friendly.
Having more than one navigation option can help users navigate a website seamlessly. If the user has a comfortable experience on the website, the chances for them to make a purchase increases.
Silo Structures: Silo structures help you logically organize your content. If your website has a good silo structure with category pages, the search engines will index your website faster. Users can easily scroll from one page to the other without any confusion. A good silo structure helps the search engine crawl relevant content and rank it.
Internal Linking: You can link relevant pages within your website via internal linking. It helps Google with understanding your content and ranking them by boosting your SEO. You can also create link bait to get good quality backlinks.
Focusing on Homepage SEO
The homepage is the first page of your website. So naturally, businesses give their best to optimize it. Here we will take a look at the major things you should focus on while working on homepage SEO:
Title tag:
Your title tag should have the name of your business and the main keyword that you are using throughout your website. It should consist of no more than 60 characters and be attractive enough to capture the customers’ attention.
Meta Description:
Meta description describes what your website or product is all about. The optimal length is usually between 120-150 characters. Make the most out of this description and come up with something that pushes people to come to visit your website.
Content:
The content of your homepage should be clear as a crystal. Generally, this page also requires SEO optimization tips to shine on search engines. It showcases properly what your website is about and what products you offer. However, keep in mind to not put too much information on your homepage to avoid confusion amongst your visitors.
Optimizing Product Pages
Product pages are the whole essence of an e-commerce business. Without them, no e-commerce business could function. You might have come across several e-commerce platforms where you may see many pictures and a few lines about the product.
It confuses the search engine as well as the user. The important things that you should keep in mind while framing your product pages are:
The name of your product: Mentioning the name of your product might sound simple, but it isn’t. It is the only way through which your potential buyers will find you. Your customers should already know what they want to buy. All they want is to get directed to the product page they are looking for. While writing a product name, you should:
- Try not to use any fancy names.
- Use only relevant keywords
- Make it simple
Image Optimization:
Blurry will not get you anywhere. You need to use high-quality images to grab the eyes of the consumer. Not just the quality of pictures, the name of the image also needs optimization. It would help if you used the proper name for your image. You can also use the product name in the image’s ALT text.
ALT text helps the search engine to crawl your website and rank it. If your image fails to load, then the ALT text appears on the screen to describe what the image is all about.
Videos:
Videos have now become the game-changer for any store. They make people relate to the product and understand how to use the product or service. DIY (do it yourself) and how-to-do videos in particular have been trending these days.
Source: YouTube
- Reviews:
Everybody goes through reviews before making any purchase on an e-commerce site. With the help of reviews, you also start popping up on organic search results of your target customers.
Don’t be disappointed if you see a negative review of your product. Bad reviews can sometimes have the exact opposite effect and make people believe that your product is authentic. In times like these, they might give your product a shot to see whether the reviews are true or not.
You may be interested in: Reputation Management Via Reverse SEO
- FAQ Page:
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) help you interact with your customers one on one and answer the questions they have in their minds. In addition, it makes them understand better whether the product is good enough for them.
Pro Tip: To increase your reach, you can put up these videos on Youtube as well. Millions of people watch content on YouTube every day. Doing so may increase your chances to be more visible.
Employing A Responsive Design
Chances are, you will find people purchasing online through mobile devices more so than PCs. The reason is that a smartphone is an accessible gadget. You open it up and just type what you are looking for.
We know that most of the audience makes their purchase decisions over mobile devices. So why not design the website so that you can reach out to your potential customers easily? It will boost any low hanging ecom business within months and help create a loyal customer base.
Source: awwwards
A responsive mobile design should prioritize:
Page Loading Speed:
Sometimes, it takes a lot of time to load a page on your mobile phone. And precisely because of this, you might lose your valuable customers. By optimizing your website’s loading page, you can decrease the bounce rate on your website.
When you do manage to increase the loading speed of your website page, you will notice a gigantic difference in your sales. Some easy ways to help speed up your page loading speed are:
- Eliminating unnecessary elements
- Removing redirects
- Optimizing images
Image size and dimension:
By optimizing your product image size and dimension, you stand a chance to attract more customers. It helps reduce the page loading speed, which is an important factor in strengthening the SEO for ecommerce website or other devices.
On the other hand, if your image size is huge, it will take longer to load, which will affect your customer retention plans.
Some tips for optimizing your image are:
- Image size should be 500 x 500
- Image format should be in JPG, PNG, JPEG, BMP, or TIFF
- Image should be of 72 and 300 dpi resolution
Building Quality Backlinks
Many people confuse backlinks with links. Whereas backlinks are links that come from other websites, inbound links are in line with the information currently being displayed on the website.
The more inbound links you have, the more likely your ecommerce site will rank higher on search results pages.
Building quality backlinks for SEO is an ongoing process that can be achieved by using a few different techniques – some of which include:
1) Guest blogging – Guest blogging is a powerful way to get a link from a popular site with high domain authority which can improve your search engine rankings. It can help you establish yourself as an authority in your field.
2) Outreach – This strategy involves reaching out to other bloggers and websites that you want links from and asking them for a link exchange.
3) Social media marketing – Link building via social media is the act of asking other online businesses/brands to display a link on their website leading to yours. It’s especially important for companies because every like, click, or even share is considered an act of good faith.
The key takeaway here is not to just dive in and build backlinks blindly. You’ll have to build quality links for SEO and website traffic – and this can be done with the application of different SEO link-building tips and strategies.
Too much of a hassle? Working with an established SEO agency could be an option.
E-Commerce SEO Tool Recommendations For Your Ecommerce SEO Strategy
Now you know what is SEO for ecommerce and why it is important, let’s dive into the best tools that will help you form a solid SEO for ecommerce sites strategy :
All-In-One SEO Tools:
Known to be a keyword research tool that provides you with the best pool of keywords to help you grow your e-commerce store. In addition, it gives you 1000+ suggestions of related search queries that will give you plenty of options to choose from.
SE Ranking is a cloud-based tool for marketing professionals. It helps you perform keyword ideas research, do competitor analysis, check backlinks’ quality, and much more. It is not just your regular search engine optimization SEO tool; some additional features like White Label help you present the SE Ranking tool in a personalized way.
Further reading: SE Ranking In-Depth Review
Created in 2008, SEMRush is one of the most popular SEO tools in the marketing industry. Its unbeatable features help marketers perform tasks with ease. You can analyze domains, get keyword suggestions, track the performance of your website, and do backlink analysis and audits.
Another popular all-in-one SEO tool is MOZ. It helps you master your SEO developments and attain your goals. One can perform in-depth keyword research, link profile analysis, customize reporting, and always stay ahead of their competitors. With MOZ, you can improve SEO onsite and social growth.
With Ubersuggest, you get three free searches in a day. First, you get a detailed list of keywords, and with that, you are provided with details like SEO difficulty, CPC, Paid difficulty. Your options get narrowed down with this, and you can choose wisely. The audit function is pretty sleek too!
Content Tools:
- Jasper (previously known as Jarvis)
Copywriting got easier with Jasper. It is an AI tool that makes sure your content is grammatically correct and sounds as natural as possible. You can write flawless copies for your Facebook ads, marketing emails, and website copies with this content tool.
One of the major components of ecommerce SEO is optimizing your product description. Jarvis helps in creating amazing product descriptions within minutes.
For creating SEO-friendly content, try using Surfer. Surfer also helps you plan out your content, perform competitor research and optimize your content. The team of Surfer keeps on making additions to the tool periodically to help its users.
Some of the most talked-about features of Surfer is:
- LSI keyword finder
- Natural Language Processing
- New Keyword Finder
If you are looking how to get your website to the top of google, you should try Rank Math. It is a WordPress plugin that can help you achieve a high SEO ranking and focuses on on-page SEO.
Besides, this tool suggests long-tail keywords, checks your article, and examines whether you’ve used your targeted keywords in your content. Overall, it performs all the necessary functions.
ProWritingAid has several features that help you write articles and blogs separately. You can use it for free and check whether your content has:
- Vague grammar
- Poor word choice
- Dull readability
- Incorrect sentence formation
Affiliate Marketing Tool:
Since 2000, ShareASale has been offering its services in the world of affiliate marketing. An easy to use the tool, you can make money in two ways through it:
Pay Per Lead: You will earn money whenever a potential customer visits the vendor’s page and fill out the form.
Pay Per Sale: Similarly, you earn whenever a reader makes a purchase using the link provided in your blog. You get a commission.
This is the best tool to create error-free content. Used religiously by almost all content writers, Grammarly helps create amazing content that makes sense and is engaging. The free Grammarly option helps you in a limited way – so if you want to reap all the benefits it offers, you can consider subscribing to the premium version.
Yoast is a popular WordPress plugin filled with various features that will help you optimize your e-commerce website. Yoast has a paid and a free version.
The Yoast SEO free version is filled with amazing tools perfect for people who are just starting with their e-commerce stores.
Analytical tools:
The Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an advanced website crawler that monitors your site’s onsite SEO and detects any major issues.
Roles of CRO in Ecommerce SEO
No business can run without money. To make money, one needs to convert potential customers into actual customers.
In this case, executing some ecommerce SEO best practices can help you grab maximum organic traffic.
But what will you get from all the traffic if you cannot convert them?
Here is where CRO comes into the picture. Conversion rate optimization is a method to convert your traffic into consumers.
But how you ask? Let’s see how CRO matters in SEO.
1. Understanding customer behavior: One can bring in a pool of visitors to their e-commerce website after optimizing their sites with all the ecommerce SEO strategies, but will these visitors turn into customers? From adding things on your wishlist to looking for the other product, CRO administers all the activities on your website. Through this, you can figure out your potential customer and target them.
2. Improves User’s Experience: SEO is one of the methods for driving traffic on an e-commerce website. However, you need CRO to understand your user’s experience and improve your website. For example, when a visitor leaves your site without purchasing anything, CRO will help you figure out what went wrong and where improvement is required.
3. Important part of Sales Funnel: SEO is important to create traffic amongst the audience, which is a vital aspect of the sales funnel. CRO will help an SEO business turn that audience into consumers for reaching the end stage of the sales funnel, i.e., conversion.
Maximum website conversion takes place when both CRO and SEO work together. With the help of both, you will reach your goal and attain maximum profit in your online e-commerce business.
Final Word
SEO is an important aspect that every e-commerce site shouldn’t turn a blind eye to.
Unfortunately, most people are not aware of how to optimize website for SEO and how it can do miracles for their websites.
Also, some people believe that investing in SMM and PPC campaigns will bring in more buyers.
However, this is not entirely true!
SEO might be an old concept, but it has shown its relevance by boosting sales for every type of business to date.
So if you want to optimize your sites and are looking for an ecommerce SEO agency that can help you out, then One Search Pro is here!
Our team will look after all your problems and make sure that you achieve your set goals.
To know more about the best ecommerce SEO company or if you need any assistance related to ecommerce SEO, contact us.
