Are you struggling with your ecommerce SEO (search engine optimization) efforts?

Don't worry.

This detailed guide will help you make ecommerce SEO a reality.

But why care about ecommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO works.

A recent study found a year-on-year increase in organic revenue and traffic figures for ecommerce brands practicing search engine optimization.

Wolfgang Digital
Image via Wolfgang Digital

SEO should, therefore, be a crucial part of your ecommerce strategy if you want increased traffic and revenue.

But how should you run your ecommerce SEO strategy?

We provide a detailed guide below.

But first, we give you more reasons why you need to make ecommerce SEO a critical part of your marketing strategy.

Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.

Why is Ecommerce SEO Crucial?

In an analysis of 5 million Google search results by Backlinko, they found that the number one result in an organic search gets an average 31.7% click-through rate. They also found that the number one organic result has a 10X more chance of getting a click compared to one in the 10th spot.

It's also crucial to remember that organic search remains a dominant source of traffic compared to paid, social media, and others.

BrightEdge
Image via BrightEdge

Additionally, 98% of internet users aged 16-64 use a search engine on different devices for online searches.

We Are Social
Image via We Are Social

So, yes, implementing ecommerce SEO makes it easy for your target audience to find your products.

Ignoring it also means you risk your site not being visible to potential customers as they go through their buying journey.

And when your ecommerce site is not visible on search results, very few people will know about your products, and thus you sell less and experience slow growth.

What's worse?

Your competitors who practice ecommerce SEO will have their sites visible to potential customers, thus increasing their sales and profits.

But, that albeit being the crucial reason your ecommerce business needs SEO, it's not the only one.

SEO is also cost-effective due mostly to the fact that organic search traffic is free.

There's no cost for impressions, clicks, or conversions.

Of course, you will have to get an SEO professional, but you can direct high traffic volumes to your site without paying directly for it.

And finally, the effects of implementing ecommerce SEO last longer.

Unlike paid advertising, where if you stop paying, traffic in most cases drops, ecommerce SEO works for you for a long time.

Ecommerce SEO is, therefore, a must-have for ecommerce brands that want increased visibility and continuous growth.

But now that you know why you need ecommerce SEO, how do you tackle it?

7-Step Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization Guide

Are you ready for a strategy that brings in great results?

Follow these steps when implementing your ecommerce SEO and discover how stores that rank succeed.

1. Keyword Research

Ecommerce SEO is different from a regular site's search engine optimization.

Why is this?

Your primary goal is to drive targeted traffic that converts.

However, for this to happen, you need thorough ecommerce keyword research.

In other words, you need to discover what terms or phrases your target audience uses when looking for your products online.

But why care about what people look for?

Having this information can help you create the right descriptions and content for search engines while also using the language your target audience understands.

And if you want to rank higher on the search engine results page, you need to give the bots crawling your site the right signals.

But what keywords matter in ecommerce?

To answer this question, you need first to understand the types of phrases you will encounter in your keyword research.

These include a head term, long-tail keyword, and LSI keyword.

Head term: Broadly describe something, e.g., “women's shoes.”

Long-tail keyword: Contains three or more specific phrases. An example of a long-tail keyword includes “women's leather boots low heel.”

LSI keyword: Relates to search terms your audience uses.

Additionally, it's essential to understand the difference between commercial or buyer intent keywords and general keywords. The latter can bring you lots of traffic, but they don't specifically have buyer intent.

For example, when a searcher keys in “shoes,” they are probably at the first stage of their customer journey.

On the other hand, we still have long-tail keywords like “shoes for women,” which clearly show someone looking for women's shoes, but they may not be ready to purchase yet.

The former, buyer intent keywords, are more precise.

For example, “women's leather shoes for work” has a clear commercial intent.

So, how do you find these commercially intent and specific keywords?

The Process to Find Ecommerce SEO Keywords

Here is a process you can use to find commercially intent keywords.

Amazon

According to a recent study, most online shoppers begin their search on Amazon.

eMarketer
Image via eMarketer

And if this is how your potential customers begin their search, then your keyword research should start on the platform.

But how do you carry out the research?

Type a seed keyword describing your products on Amazon search

Amazon
Image via Amazon

Doing this gives you a list of terms people search relating to your product. These terms, both targeted and long tail, can increase your chances of conversions and may have less competition.

If you take your search further into Amazon categories, you can see the best category pages to use for your products.

best category pages
Image via Amazon

And if these appear too broad for your site, click on the categories to see the subcategories.

categories to see the subcategories
Google Search

Visit Google.com, and as you start typing, it will offer suggestions for possible keywords.

Google Search 2

The bottom of the page will also give you a related search section with other possible keywords.

Google Search 3

As you can see, the search gives you more long-tail keywords you can use for commercial intent searches.

For example, in our shoe research, we get “womens mid calf boots with heel,” womens mid calf boots low heel,” and “womens mid calf boots with buckle.”

Pro Tip: Repeat your search on Amazon with the keywords found on Google to discover more phrases searchers use for your product.

Google Search 4

Keyword Search Tool

With the keyword research results from both Google and Amazon, identify a keyword tool of your choice and use it to get more keywords. Some of the best tools include Semrush, Ahref, and Google Keyword Planner.

Semrush Keyword Search Tool
Image via Semrush

Semrush can also help you identify what keywords your competition targets, their page authority, and where they get backlinks.

Semrush Keyword Search Tool 2
Image via Semrush

On the other hand, if you use the Keyword Planner tool by Google, you can also get variations of the keywords. Additionally, using this tool can give you an idea of each keyword's search volume and competition.

keyword search volume and competition
Image via Google Keyword Planner

But how can you identify keywords for your ecommerce SEO?

Identifying Ecommerce SEO Keywords

Three things matter when identifying the best keywords for your ecommerce SEO:

  • Search volume
  • competition
  • Commercial intent

However, before we get into details on these three factors, you have to make sure that the keywords you found match items your ecommerce site sells. This way, those who visit your site do not leave immediately without converting.

Using keywords that don't match can also hurt your search rankings.

So, do all the keywords chosen fit the products available on your site?

If they do, it's time to examine them for the other three crucial considerations.

Search volume

Do people really search for the keyword you want to rank for in your ecommerce SEO strategy?

And if they do, how many have an interest in it?

A high search volume on search engines means users search for the term. However, it may also mean that there's lots of competition when ranking that same keyword.

It's therefore important to remain realistic when comparing the ranking competition and search volume.

Search volume
Image via Google Keyword Planner

You can also check Google trends to see people's interest in the phrase over a specific period.

Google Trends
Image via Google Trends

Knowing trends can help you know what keywords to focus on if you have seasonal products.

Ranking Difficulty/ Competition

How hard will it be for you to rank the phrase on Google's first page?

To discover this, use Semrush's Keyword Difficulty feature.

Ranking Difficulty and Competition
Image via Semrush

Generally, if your ecommerce website is new, you need to work on phrases with low keyword difficulty.

And why is this?

It’s can be quite a challenging task ranking for phrases with high keyword difficulty.

Commercial Intent

Are those searching for the phrase ready to purchase?

For this, use the competition feature on Google Keyword Planner to know how many people bid on the phrase in Google Ads.

phrase in Google Ads
Image via Google Keyword Planner

If many people bid for it, then you can make money from it. That's why you should work on sticking to those keywords with high or medium competition.

You also want to consider the “top of page bid” search results in your keyword research. These tell you how much people spend on Google Ads for a single click for the phrase. And in this case, the higher the amount they want to spend, the better.

top of page bid
Image via Google Keyword Planner

Pro Tip: Hire experts in the ecommerce SEO space to perform a thorough keyword research for each page on your site. Based on the results, you can focus on the crucial ones first.

2. Site Architecture

Your ecommerce site structure is the starting point of your visitors' experiences and is crucial for the success of your ecommerce SEO strategy.

And whether they stick around or not highly depends on how easy it is for them to find what they want in the least amount of time.

What's more?

An excellent site structure can make the work of crawling ecommerce sites easier. It can make it easy for them to discover your pages.

Best of all?

It makes it easy for search engines to choose what site links to show in your rich snippets, along with their titles and descriptions.

Site links are great because they can showcase the most important pages on your site, optimize your branding efforts, and help you attract links to the site.

Site Architecture Google Search
Image via Google

So, how do you make sure site architecture does not derail your ecommerce SEO strategy?

Have a web design with a 3-click max hierarchical structure that enables visitors to reach products with the third click.

An example of a great site architecture should look like this:

Site Architecture Hierarchical Structure

With this kind of site structure, you concentrate link authority on your category and product pages while improving their ability to rank. You also make it easy for Google to find your pages and index them.

Take, for example, if you want to purchase concealers on Sephora.

Once on their homepage, if you hover on their Makeup category feature, it gives you the option to head straight to concealers. And if you click on concealer, you get a list of products you can choose from.

Sephora

Basically, you can get to products in one click!

They also make it easy to get to products by giving you the option to filter results.

Sephora 2
Image via Sephora

But that's not all your site architecture involves.

Other elements to include in your website design:

Simple navigation menu: Avoid adding pages not needed in the menu.

Prominent parent categories: Customers should see the parent categories no matter what page they visit.

Include subcategories: Use them to increase click-through rates.

Take a look at the example on the ecommerce store below. They leverage the hover method to help visitors shop by subcategories.

Chewy
Image via Chewy.com

Noticeable search bar: It should prominently feature at the top of each page on your site. See how Chewy.com, in the example above, features their search box.

Separate mobile menu: Consider creating two different menus, one for mobile and one for desktop.

Optimize URL structure: Make URLs short, separate keywords with dashes, and don't include unnecessary characters. Additionally, include product attributes searchers may use in their search, avoid spaces between words, and use lowercase.

Secure site: A secure site can help you gain audience trust.

Create user-sitemap: Have a page displaying all the crucial categories and subcategories. Doing this makes it easy for visitors to find the products they want.

Petco
Image via Petco

Add breadcrumbs: This consists of internal links that make it easy for users to go to the homepage or previous section.

Add breadcrumbs
Image via H&M

Pro Tip: If you add breadcrumbs to your structured data, you can give your website an additional advantage on SERPs.

3. On-Page SEO

Now that you know what keywords to use for your ecommerce SEO, it's time to optimize your product and category pages.

Category Pages

Most ecommerce sites pay attention to the homepage, product pages, and landing pages and completely forget to add the category page to their ecommerce SEO strategy.

They forget that the product and category pages link up so that if the latter does not look great, visitors will not visit the former.

And while you shouldn't use too much text on your category pages, you should include enough of it to include target keywords.

But how do you ensure your category pages have enough text to help you rank for your target keywords?

  • Have a short description of the product category that includes your primary keyword.

Grove
Image via Grove

  • In addition to the category title, include headings and subheadings on the category page. The subheadings can optimize the page copy.
  • Make sure each product featured on a category page has a product name, short description, and price.

Grove 2
Image via Grove

But don't stop at that:

Create supplementary content on your site to support your category pages.

For example, write collapsible content, where visitors can choose to see more or less information. Doing this enables you to add information without overwhelming visitors.

What's more?

Create FAQ sections with keyword-rich text and useful information. You should also include shopping guides that explain what a shopper should consider when purchasing products from that category.

Lowe's Home Improvement
Image via Lowe's Home Improvement

Product Pages

According to a study, 45% of online shoppers visit the product detail page when purchasing.

Catalyst and Kantar Study
Image via Catalyst and Kantar Study

Ensure that the ecommerce SEO content on your product pages satisfies your visitors' intentions.

But how?

Start by using different variations of your keywords in your product descriptions, alt texts, and image alt text without overstuffing. Your copy should also provide value to the visitor.

Then conduct an analysis of competitors in your niche and find out:

  • What characteristics they mention for their services or products
  • Product page designs and colors used
  • Where they place calls-to-actions and how many each of their product pages has
  • Whether they have multilingual ecommerce sites

Then, once done with your research, optimize your product pages with:

Titles and Meta Descriptions

Include details like the product names, brand, model, and any other crucial information.

Chewy.com does a great job with its titles and meta descriptions by including the most important details, keywords, and elements.

Meta Tags
Image via Google

They also have structured data highlighting the ratings, the number of reviews, price, and whether items are in stock.

Including this information in your structured data can increase your chances of appearing on rich snippets. It can also help you drive clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and sales.

FAQs

Optimize your ecommerce SEO strategy by creating a FAQ section or a question and answer section on the product pages and adding it to your structured data.

Chewy FAQs
Image via Chewy.com

Unique Descriptions

Avoid using the same descriptions for all products.

Instead, create unique descriptions that improve the chances of the individual products ranking for keywords.

Most importantly, avoid using the manufacturer's descriptions on your product pages.

Reviews and Testimonials

Request and make it easy for people who buy on your site to leave genuine testimonials and reviews. Furthermore, content from other consumers influences 79% of consumers to purchase.

Stackla
Image via Stackla

Additionally, reviews and testimonials can help you build trust while also giving you access to fresh, unique content.

Chewy Customer Review
Image via Chewy.com

Note: Remember to include the reviews and testimonials in your structured data.

Videos and Images

Use high-quality images and videos to bridge the gap between offline and online purchasing while also instilling confidence in your products.

Allbirds does a great job with great images of the products in different angles and videos showing how the product looks while in use.

Allbirds
Image via Allbirds

4. Technical Ecommerce SEO

With ecommerce SEO, ensuring the technical side of your site is ship-shape can help you improve its searchability.

But what's the best process when improving the technical side of your ecommerce SEO?

Start with a technical SEO audit that helps you make sure search engine bots can properly index, crawl, and interpret your site. You can leverage technical SEO experts or use tools such as Ahref, Semrush, ScreemingFrog, DeepCrawl, etc.

Then work on fixing issues including:

  • Low-value pages
  • Missing HTTPS security
  • Duplicate content/ pages
  • Slow page speed
  • Over-indexing
  • Poor navigation
  • Broken internal links
  • NO XML sitemap
  • 404 pages
  • Non-optimized meta-tags

By fixing these issues, you improve your website performance while also improving the user experience.

But now that you know what issues need fixing, what components should you include when optimizing the technical side of your ecommerce SEO?

Site Speed

According to the latest Google updates, speed makes up part of the ranking factors the search engine considers.

The largest Contentful Paint or (LCP) is part of the Core Web Vitals that determine the time taken by a page when loading from a user's perspective.

Site Speed
Image via Google

It focuses on the user's ability to see and interact with your page. And ideally, according to Core Web Vitals requirements, your LCP should happen within 2.5 seconds from when the page a user clicks on starts loading.

Web Vitals
Image via Web Vitals

It's also crucial to note that visitors will leave without purchasing or seeing other products you offer if your page takes too long to load.

So, how can you optimize for page speed?

  • Reduce server response time
  • Enable browser caching
  • Leverage Content Delivery Networks
  • Enable website compression
  • Optimize site images
  • Ensure mobile responsiveness

Schema Markup

Also referred to as structured data, it's the code you embed on ecommerce sites to make sure search engines return informative and relevant results to searchers in the form of rich snippets. Adding the schema markup can boost your rankings and ecommerce SEO efforts.

Common rich snippets for ecommerce include ratings, price, reviews, events, recipes, product markups, etc.

Common rich snippets
Image via Google

XML Sitemap

This text file lists all files and pages you consider important on your ecommerce website and helps search engines find and index them.

Think of it as a roadmap you implement in your ecommerce SEO to tell crawlers where each of your pages is.

It also provides information such as:

  • When you last modified each page
  • The priority of each page on your site
  • The frequency at which you update each page.

Crawl Errors

If your ecommerce site has crawl errors, then users who visit it will not get the information they need. These crawl errors can also taint your reputation, reduce traffic to the site, and increase bounce rates.

That's why instead of having too many 404 errors, you should have 301 redirects that take users to new landing pages.

Robot.txt

It tells search engines what sections or pages they should crawl and display from ecommerce sites.

You, therefore, need a Robots.txt file to block pages you don't need seen.

Metadata

In ecommerce SEO, you use metadata to summarize your pages in HTML. It includes your meta description, meta title, canonical tags, title tags, keywords, and Google structured data.

These are the most important forms of metadata for ecommerce SEO, and they help crawlers understand your page and display rich snippets.

5. Content Marketing

To increase the chances of your ecommerce SEO strategy working, you need to implement content marketing for ecommerce.

In this case, you create articles, blog posts, infographics, videos, etc., that you share with your audience to generate leads, build brand authority, and drive conversions.

So how can content marketing to boost rankings, traffic, sales, and revenue for your ecommerce SEO strategy?

First, you need to understand that content marketing will involve communicating with your customers and providing value without hard selling. This way, by consistently delivering valuable content, you can build trust and get loyal customers.

Ready to kick off your ecommerce SEO with content marketing?

Well, if you are, the following are ways you can leverage content marketing in ecommerce:

Start a Blog

While it may be hard to fully optimize for the long-tail keywords in your product descriptions, incorporating blogging as part of your ecommerce SEO can solve that problem.

And while starting a blog may seem like hard work, it can help you drive traffic and build a more profitable business.

So what should you consider when creating a blog for your ecommerce SEO strategy?

Your content purpose: The content you create for your business should aim to attract, engage, and delight your customers.

During the attract stage, leverage ecommerce SEO-informed content to draw in users researching on search engines. In the engage stage, create content that provides solutions and starts conversations with your audience.

Then, in the delight stage, create content catering to those ready to purchase while also engaging those who already purchased.

Choose topics wisely: Your ecommerce SEO topics should consider problems your audience needs fixing.

And the good thing?

You can use tools like Reddit, Quora, AnswerThePublic, etc., to discover informational queries people post or ask about your products.

AnswerThePublic
Image via AnswerThePublic

Create unique content: Use data collected on customer questions to create content that educates, informs, and entertains your audience.

Internal links: Interlink content to improve authority and rankings.

For example, if writing about the benefits of a concealer, link to another article on how to apply it. Ultimately, you will also need to link to a product page with the concealer to encourage purchase.

User-generated content: Share content produced by influencers, employees, customers, or brands you partner with to gain audience confidence. These can include reviews, tweets, guest blog posts, quotes, testimonials, etc.

Implement CTAs: Include calls-to-action in your blog posts encouraging readers to take the next step.

Include calls-to-action
Image via Lowe’s Home Improvement

Amplify content: Promote blog content on other channels, including social media, email, forums, Q&A sites, etc.

Promote deals and offers: Use your blog to promote offers or deals you may have on your ecommerce site.

Make product announcements: Your blog is also a perfect place to inform customers of an upcoming launch or make product announcements.

Enable social sharing: Start by creating content worth sharing, then embed social buttons and encourage your readers to share.

BarkPost
Image via BarkPost

Embed videos: Create videos that demonstrate product use, provide inspiration, or explain concepts. Furthermore, 69% of consumers prefer to learn about products from short videos. 94% of them also watch explainer videos to learn about a service or product.

Include quality images: Use them to explain concepts, represent statistics, break text, and keep readers interested.

Go Beyond Your Blog

In what other sites does your audience hang out?

These can include social platforms, forums, Q&A sites, social media groups, etc.

For example, if you sell watches, you can look for sites like Reddit or Quora that feature watch collectors.

Reddit

Image via Reddit

Additionally, seek out forums with a community of watch collectors.

WatchUSeek Watch Forums
Image via WatchUSeek Watch Forums

Then, scour these sites looking for phrases and keywords they use to describe your products. You can also use the questions they ask to create content for your blog posts, videos, or social content.

How does this content strategy help with ecommerce SEO?

It helps you drive links to your website while also increasing your social shares.

However, for this to happen, you need to create valuable content that educates and contains most of the elements we mentioned when creating blog posts.

And if you create great content, you will find that other sites link to your ecommerce blog, thus increasing your visibility and improving your ranking chances.

And this brings us to the next section of your ecommerce SEO strategy: link building.

6. Link Building

A challenging aspect of running ecommerce SEO involves link building- the ability to create great content and implement outreach techniques that boost visibility.

And if you do manage to create backlinks, you increase your chances of ranking higher on the search engine results page.

Backlinko
Image viaBacklinko

But what tactics are these?

Check out link building strategies you can use to boost your ecommerce SEO efforts:

Create Linkable Assets

Depending on your niche, identify ecommerce SEO-based content that can help you attract links. These include gift guides, original research, reports, tools, best lists, etc.

For example, take a look at this downloadable gift guide from Molly's Spirits website.

Molly's Spirits
Image via Molly's Spirits

Write FAQ Pages

Incorporate long-tail keywords when answering questions in your FAQ section.

Doing this improves the probability that people who find these answers relevant can share them on social media, forums, or Q&A sites.

SoundCloud
Image via SoundCloud

Perform Niche Edits

Look for content from web owners listing the best products in your niche or discussing topics related to what you sell. Then request them to insert your product among the list or as one of the options.

For example, if your ecommerce store sells camping gear, you could reach out to a web admin who writes about the best places to camp or roundups on the best camping gear.

And although you may have to pay to get your website listed, the link you get can bring great returns, especially if it's from a high authority site.

Leverage Digital PR (Public Relations)

Public relations may be a traditional method of promotion, but with the right tactics, you can get the press, journalists, and bloggers to write about your products.

For example, if you release a crazy product, get involved in charities, or offer crazy discounts that get people talking.

Identify Unlinked Brand Mentions

Typically, when people feature your product or mention it, they link to it.

But sometimes, they don’t.

And when this happens, you can reach out to the content owner and ask them to add the link.

But how do you find out?

Set up Google alerts that inform you when someone mentions your brand name or one of your products.

Google Alerts
Image via Google Alerts

Partner With Affiliates and Influencers

Partnering with affiliates can boost your ecommerce SEO efforts.

Why is this?

You get links from niche or high-quality sites.

However, for your affiliate program to work, you need to run a program that pays well and work with those who can drive high conversion rates.

On the other hand, influencers can boost your ecommerce SEO efforts by creating social media posts directing their audience to your blog or product pages. They can also write reviews on their sites referring people to your ecommerce site.

However, make sure the influencer you choose has an audience interested in what you offer. They should also have influence and an engaged audience.

An excellent example of an ecommerce brand succeeding at influencer marketing is Daniel Wellington. They offered watches to selected small influencers with the condition that they had to show the watch in their content and include the hashtag #danielwellington. The brand also gave these influencers a discount code to share with their followers.

Partner With Affiliates and Influencers
Image via Instagram

Need help with the task of finding and effectively running successful campaigns with influencers?

Get our ebook: A Reliable Guide to Influencer Marketing [Ebook]

Work with Influential Niche Bloggers

As a way to build your ecommerce SEO link-building strategy, approach influential bloggers in your niche and ask them to review your products.

And if they write a good review, they can boost your ecommerce SEO efforts by helping interested buyers make informed decisions.

Everything Fusilier
Image via Everything Fusilier

However, research these bloggers and check their domain authority on tools such as MozBar.

Guest Post

Using guest posting for your ecommerce SEO can hurt or build your company.

For this reason, ensure you only write for authoritative blogs with high traffic in your niche.

You also need to create quality content that provides value to readers of the publication so that they can feel compelled to check out your brand.

Leverage Partner and Vendor Sites

Are you running a campaign with a partner?

Ask them to mention your products on their site. For example, they can list your products in their screenshots or cite you as an example when creating guest posts.

What's more?

Approach vendors and request them to mention you on their website or blog.

7. Local SEO

Would you like your products to become accessible across a specific geographic location?

Then you need to invest in local SEO.

As part of your ecommerce SEO strategy, local SEO can increase visibility to your brand while also enabling you to reach a wider audience.

Furthermore, when COVID-19 hit, most consumers sought to buy from local companies. And if your business operates in a certain local area, you need to make it easy for these consumers to access your products.

Accenture
Image via Accenture

So, how can your ecommerce brand succeed with local SEO?

Get Google My Business

Establishing your brand on Google My Business makes it visible when people use keywords related to your business on Google searches and maps.

However, ensure you've completely filled out your profile on the page. This way, you can increase your chances of appearing among the coveted Local Pack. These are the three local businesses appearing on the first-page search results.

Get Google My Business
Image via Google

To optimize your page even further, start publishing posts, adding images, and including calls-to-action. You can also add announcements, blog post links, sale posts, etc.

Add Reviews

89% of consumers say they check reviews before purchasing. 45% also say they've increased their use of reviews more now than in the past.

Canvas8
Image via Canvas8

So, the first thing when boosting your ecommerce SEO efforts with reviews will involve offering exceptional products that exceed expectations. Build your online reputation, then ask customers to leave reviews on your Google My Business Page.

And once they leave reviews, reply and engage even with those who leave negative reviews. Enquire about their issues and provide solutions with speed.

Focus on Geo-Targeted Keywords

To invite a local audience to ecommerce stores, use geo-targeted keywords in your product page copy, ads, landing pages, and social posts. These include keywords with your city, town, street, country, state, etc.

You can also dive deeper with your ecommerce SEO research to identify phrases people in your geographic location use.

Build Local Citations

We can not forget the crucial role link building plays in ecommerce SEO.

And for this reason, you need to build quality backlinks to your site from customers, local businesses, newspaper websites, etc.

You can also guest post on businesses with local websites relevant to your business or get listed on local online directories.

Guide to SEO Bonus Tips

Optimize for Mobile

Starting 2021, Google started predominantly using the mobile version of content to rank and index websites.

Additionally, most frequent online shoppers rely on smartphones when purchasing.

Episerver
Image via Episerver

Have a fully responsive mobile version of your site and focus on speed.

Optimize Checkout

A great part of providing exceptional experiences involves ensuring a seamless checkout process.

So, what tactics can help you improve the checkout experience?

  • A/B test it regularly
  • Offer many payment options
  • Be transparent about pricing
  • Include trust signals
  • Avoid ads at checkout
  • Offer guest checkout options

FAQs

Q1.  Is SEO important for ecommerce?

A. Yes, it is.

With ecommerce SEO, your brand can drive organic traffic, rank on search engines, drive sales and increase revenue. It also makes it easy for your target audience to find your products.

Q2. How do I use off-page SEO for ecommerce?

A. Some of the best off-page ecommerce SEO techniques you can use include:

  • Promoting on social media
  • Asking buyers to leave reviews on third-party review sites
  • Listing ecommerce stores on directories.
  • Getting your store listed on websites that run roundups
  • Guest posting
  • Posting on forums and Q&A sites
  • Getting partners and vendors to list your brand on their site
  • Working with influencers and affiliates

Q3. How can I do SEO for ecommerce website?

A. Use this simple guide to SEO:

  • Conduct keyword research
  • Build your site architecture
  • Create an ecommerce on-page SEO strategy
  • Handle technical issues

For other strategies you can use, check out the post above.

Q4. Why is SEO important for your online marketplaces?

A. With ecommerce SEO, you get your products in front of an interested audience looking for options, comparisons, and product information on search engines. It helps you reach audiences without the need to pay for ads.

Then, once people get on your site, ecommerce SEO helps you delight them with intriguing copy, exceptional experiences on your site, quality products, and actionable calls-to-action.

Q5. Why do we need ecommerce SEO?

A. The following are reasons you need ecommerce SEO:

  • Ecommerce SEO makes your products visible to potential customers as they go through their buying journey.
  • Ecommerce SEO is cost-effective in that you don't need to pay to get your content in front of an interested audience.
  • Ecommerce SEO improves as you continue adding to your strategies, thus making your efforts long-lasting.

Q6. What are the best enterprise-level ecommerce SEO tools?

A. Some of the enterprise tools to use in your ecommerce SEO include:

  • Semrush
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Ahrefs
  • BrightEdge
  • Moz Pro

Q7. What is eCommerce SEO, and is SEO important for eCommerce?

A. Ecommerce SEO involves tactics you use to make your online store visible on SERPs. It's a process that entails getting your products to rank high on these search engines so that people who search for products you sell can find them.

Ecommerce SEO is crucial because it can help you increase visibility, drive traffic to your product pages, and boost sales.

Q8. Can I do SEO on my own?

A. Yes, you can, if you have the right strategies in place and a thought-out process of implementing them. However, you can also choose to hire an SEO agency to handle your ecommerce SEO efforts.

Check out Attrock’s SEO services for more information.

Q9. How does e-commerce increase sales?

A. The following are strategies ecommerce sites use to increase sales:

  • Build brand authority and audience trust
  • Use paid social media
  • Effectively use email marketing
  • Run promotions
  • Run affiliate and influencer programs
  • Leverage remarketing tactics
  • Run Google ads

Check out more strategies to increase ecommerce sales

Q10. Is the ecommerce market growing?

A. Yes.

Retail ecommerce sales in 2020 amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars worldwide. Studies estimate that in 2022, this number will grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars.

What's Keeping You From Running an Effective Ecommerce SEO Strategy?

Though it may take time, if you follow this guide to ecommerce SEO, your brand will be one step ahead in ensuring growth.

Implementing this guide to SEO can also bring you quality traffic, high click-through rates, and conversions. However, you also need to be patient and work on improving the results from each of the SEO tactics you implement.

Do you need further explanations on either of the steps in this guide to ecommerce SEO? Comment below, and we can offer further tips and tactics to make your ecommerce SEO strategy a reality.

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