Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is fundamental to the success of any e-commerce site. Overlooking this key strategy can significantly affect your sales and the number of customers your store attracts.
SEO is low-hanging fruit for e-commerce websites and thus should be utilized to its fullest.
SEO Consultant for Page 1 Brands, Bill Widmer, says that even though SEO has the highest ROI of any e-commerce marketing campaign, “most online shops are put together with little to no consideration of search engines.” He goes on to state that, “Instead, we rely on social media or paid ads. Which are great and all but require a constant effort and stream of income.”
Implementing SEO will take work on the front end, but the benefits are well worth the effort. And to be a competitor, it’s essential to optimize your site for search engines. But where do you get started with SEO, and how do you know you’re implementing the most up-to-date and efficient strategies?
We’ve compiled the most important and recent information to get you started with SEO for your e-commerce business, so you can ensure you’re not losing out on customers.
The First Step to Improving your E-Commerce SEO Ranking
SEO will help you drive free, recurring, high-converting traffic to your e-commerce store, and it’s highly recommended that you put time and effort into this vital step in growing your website traffic. In addition to increased traffic, SEO helps set you apart from the competition and displays your products more effectively.
Google has released Best practices for e-commerce in Google Search. They have stated what many e-e-commerce merchants struggle with: being discovered.
“Acquiring customers and building a relationship with them is an important driver of business growth, and Google can help shoppers discover your site at each stage in the shopping journey.”
Google’s set of guidelines is meant for developers who are building websites and want to make sure that the site works well with Google.
As an e-commerce merchant, you can take several steps to optimize your site and hopefully drive more high-converting traffic to your site.
Before you jump in, it might be a good idea to assess where you’re currently at and fill in potential gaps and issues.
Perform an SEO Audit
To get started with SEO, find out where you lack the most and what you need to focus on to boost your site’s SEO. There are many tools to help you establish what needs to be done, and one tool is SEMrush. This tool has free options as well do this for your website and perform well a competitor analysis.
According to LinkedIn Learning, an SEO audit will enable you to analyze the keywords you’re currently ranking for and where your primary backlinks are coming from and how you can compare this data against your competitors.
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing tool for your SEO needs. It offers paid plans which start at $119, but you can utilize their tool for a free trial. Set up an account by entering your email and creating a password.
You then want to click on the SEO option, and this should take you to the SEO dashboard. Now, on the left-hand side, you can see the different elements of your website that you can observe. You can see your competitive research, your keyword research and your link-building research. You can also do some rank tracking as well. It’s essential to also investigate your competitors. What keywords are they ranking for, and where are they getting their backlinks from? This information can help inform your SEO decisions in the future.
To get an overview of how well your website is currently performing in search you can enter your website to the “Domain Overview.” With this feature, you’ll get a complete overview of a domain and its online visibility, and you’ll be able to analyze a domain’s growth trend over time. You can also see the top keywords that bring the most traffic from organic and paid channels.
The Domain Overview feature helps you analyze competing e-commerce stores and shows you key metrics such as authority score, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, number of backlinks and display advertising. You can also check these metrics by localization and view your competitor’s engagement metrics.
There are plenty of other SEO tools available, many of them free. Bookmark this collection of the 105 Best Free SEO Tools and how to use them so you can come back to it whenever you need it.
Top E-Commerce SEO Strategies
Keyword Research
Keywords are essential because they are what bring potential customers to your e-commerce site. You’ll want to focus on search intent and target both short-tail and long-tail keywords. What are customers searching for when they are looking for products? Which phrases and product-related words will they type into their search bar? Having information about your target audience and what they are looking for is the foundation of your keyword strategy.
Keywords in the e-commerce space can be highly competitive. SEO and keyword research are therefore crucial to optimize your website and strategically utilize keyword opportunities.
There are several types of keywords. Short-tail keywords are words and phrases around one to three words long and tend to be quite broad.
On the other hand, long-tail keywords usually have a higher number of words and are generally more descriptive. According to LinkedIn Learning, it’s recommended that your target long-tail keywords most of the time as they are less competitive, more specific, and you’re therefore more likely to rank higher in search.
Here are examples of each keyword type shown in Google Search and what they help you achieve in terms of search results:
Short-tail Keywords:
Note that such keywords have many search results, as they are pretty competitive.
An example of a short tail keyword is “workout clothes.”
You’ll also notice that this is a buying intent keyword. One way to identify this is to see that a lot of the search results that are returned are links directly to a page where your searcher can go and make a purchase. This might be a keyword that you utilize and optimize one of your sales pages for.
Long-tail Keywords:
Using the category example of “workout clothes,” a long-tail keyword could be ” reflective cold weather running gear.” Notice how this long-tail keyword has fewer search results. It’s less competitive, and the content that ranks high is less geared at buying intent and more informational. Google interprets this keyword as someone looking for information before making a purchase, which is why content creation is essential for e-commerce sites.
LSI Keywords
These are keywords related to your main keyword on any given page. To find these keywords, scroll to the bottom of the SERP, and you’ll find search suggestions that are relevant to your keyword.
“Depending on what mindset your searcher is in, they will expect to see different results in the search engines.” The mindset of your customer could be buying or simply looking for more information on a product. You’ll want to ensure you’re capturing both. You will need to have both content keywords and buying intent keywords.
In SEMrush, you can use the Keyword Gap tool – a lot of traffic might be taken by indirect competitors, like blogs and affiliate sites. Ensure you’re aware of any keyword gaps so that indirect competitors aren’t ranking higher for those targeted keywords.
Performance Marketing Manager at Lunar Strategy Tim Haldorsson underscores the usefulness of SEMrush in keyword research and says it’s a good starting point to understanding the competitive landscape.
He then does a regular Google search to understand what kinds of articles and websites are ranking on the keywords. “Then usually I look into the top-ranking website and what their backlink profile is to see what large websites that are linking to their page and if these are some links that I could go after.”
He advises looking at the top-ranking websites for the keywords you’re targeting. Look at their backlink profile to see which big websites are linking to their page and if these are links you could potentially go after as well.
“I also use SEMrush to get “related keywords” of the main keyword; these are usually less competition and easier to rank for.”
Efficient Crawling – Building a Silo Structure
Structuring your e-commerce site and optimizing user experience is detrimental to your success. Your site should be easy to navigate, intuitive and esthetically pleasing. Make sure visitors can easily navigate your site to find the products they are looking for.
“This also helps search engine robots with indexing your Web pages quickly and gives your SEO brownie points in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.”
A silo structure is a way of categorizing the content on your website, making it easier for your website visitors and search engines to index the content and find the relevant information. It helps boost user experience and ensures that search engines can easily find your content.
We go further in-depth on optimizing your site for crawling in our conversation with affiliate marketing expert Ben Hill. Read more on How to Succeed at Affiliate Marketing.
Optimize Your Product Page
If you’re having issues with customers not adding products to their cart and you’re not sure why or how to fix it, there might be an issue with your product page.
The purchasing decision should be as intuitive and straightforward as possible.
“The paramount goal for your product pages should be to build user confidence by providing all the information necessary,” says Rosara Joseph, Content Strategist at VentureWeb.
Four things come together to create a genuinely great product page:
- The Product
- Your brand
- The copywriting
- Your page’s design and user experience
Make sure you have a clear call-to-action (CTA). Your number one goal is for people to “add to cart.” Therefore, your CTA needs to be front and center. Troubleshooting your product page should be your first course of action.
“Let’s start with the basics: the Add to Cart button is the most important component on the page and should stand out from the surrounding content. The area around the button should be uncluttered so that no distractions or obstacles block the user. It should also be immediately visible when you first land on the page – i.e. if your product description pushes the add to cart button below the bottom of the browser, it’s time for a redesign,” says Maria Bonello, Director of Strategy at SMAKK Studios.
The product page for LARQ showcases a sleek design, with a discrete but promptly placed “shop now” button, which is a clear CTA.
Intentionality is key to designing your product page. The visual feel of your e-commerce store should represent your brand well and inspire people to buy your product. Everything from the content, CTA, user experience, images and overall branding needs to work together to create a unique shopping experience.
Additionally, it’s crucial to optimize your product listings and update them whenever necessary. Product listings that are outdated, irrelevant, confusing or otherwise uninteresting will drive customers away and damage the business.
For Amazon sellers with many product listings that need updating, it can be tedious and time-consuming to do it manually. However, one way to make the process more streamlined, straightforward and efficient is to use flat files. Flat files allow Amazon sellers to change product listings quickly and in bulk, which saves ample time and headache. For more information about flat files and how to use them in your Amazon business, check out this post on how to update listing through flat file.
Localize SEO
E-commerce localization will help your business cater to other countries and give your business an advantage in reaching cross-culturally. Localization is not just about translating your content word for word but recreating the tone and ensuring it resonates with the intended market.
You will need to translate every piece of content on your e-commerce store, including product information, graphics and blogs. Make sure you’re optimizing your product pages for the local language with keywords in the titles of the products.
It’s also vital to remember cultural nuances between countries. For instance, there is a big difference between European Spanish speakers and Spanish speakers in Mexico or Argentina. It may not be enough to translate your site into Spanish. There can be substantial cultural differences between countries that speak similar languages.
Read more about common e-commerce localization mistakes.
Link Building – Build Authority Across the Web
“Link building is about building relationships with other websites and pages,” Tim Haldorsson says. His advice is to engage with other people’s content, either on social media or blogs and websites.
“After you already have a relationship with a domain, then you can reach out and ask to write a guest post or do a content swap.”
In a case study from SEMrush, marketing agency electrIQ share how they helped a wine e-tailer grow non-branded organic traffic by 600%, tripling its annual revenue.
They focused a considerable amount of their efforts on building the store’s backlink profile. Regardless of your content, without a strong backlink profile, it is unlikely to show up anywhere.
“We put our top three competitors into the Backlinks Analytics Tool and were able to determine; these are the publications we want to reach out to with our new pieces of content to see if they want to include a backlink to us,” Brandon Amoroso, Founder, electrIQ marketing says.
You can also have guest content, where someone from another website can contribute a guest article to your website. You can also do the same for their website and build a link back to your site, which can help you build authority in the search engines.
SEO Tools You Should Use
We have compiled a collection of the 105 Best Free SEO Tools.
SEO expert Tim Haldorsson recommends the following SEO tools:
- SEMrush – SEO, content marketing, competitor research, PPC and social media marketing from just one platform
- Moz – SEO software and data to help you increase traffic, rankings, and visibility in search results
- Google Trends (Free)
- Google Keyword Planner (Free)
- dev (Free Website audit tool)
Content Creation
The water bottle company LARQ provides content on several lifestyle-related topics on their e-commerce site. They sell water bottles, but they have inspirational content related to travel, interviews with health experts and updates on their non-profit work digging wells.
Content creation is an essential way of driving traffic to your e-commerce site and ensuring a higher ranking for your product pages in Google. Good content also helps you build authority across search engines and increase your link-building efforts. Content is also a perfect way to infuse your e-commerce site with solid keywords that drive traffic.
Here is an example from the e-commerce vitamin store Ritual.
They are in the health and wellness niche and share content related to healthy eating and of course, supplements. This is not a sales page, but it could help to lead someone towards a sale. The purpose of this content is to help inform shoppers and position the brand as an expert and thought leader on the product they are selling.
There are a few key things to remember when creating high-performing content for your e-commerce business.
Firstly, your content page should be full of helpful content and resources for your customers.
Ensure that your content is insightful and gives your users helpful and inspirational content, rather than creating a low-quality or thin page. Search engines are becoming increasingly intelligent, and if users aren’t finding your content meaningful in any way, chances are the algorithm will pick up on that.
Make sure you give your sales page some TLC also. Keyword placement is crucial, and you’ll want your URL to have your keyword, in addition to the title of your web page and the description and content of your pages.
Keywords should also be added to any meta tags and in your meta title and meta description text.
Ritual’s sale page has its main keyword “multivitamin,” both in the headline and the product’s description. The URL for the page is: https://ritual.com/products/essential-for-women-multivitamin
Note that the keyword “multivitamin” is both in the headline and description of the product.
You will want to drive buying intent traffic to your sales page. Therefore, make sure those are the types of keywords you target. This will help your page show up in Google when potential customers are looking to make a purchase.
Each type of content on your e-commerce site will help you achieve your overall goal of boosting your SEO efforts.
How to Optimize Your E-Commerce Site for Mobile
In the current mobile-first landscape, your site must cater to consumers who browse on their phones. Here are some key considerations to consider as you optimize your e-commerce store for mobile.
Loading Speed
Make sure your page loading speed is up to par. Slow loading time can negatively affect your bottom line.
About 40% of shoppers are likely to leave a site that takes more than three seconds to load—every second counts when it comes to loading speed. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to see how your site holds up.
Streamline the Checkout Process
“Brands lose 23% of customers by asking them to proceed through additional steps during the checkout process,” according to U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
If you require a customer to register for an account or enter additional personal information, it adds extra friction to the process and can discourage someone from completing their purchase.
“The ability to accept any kind of payment method is also important. Make sure customers can access Apple Pay, PayPal, Visa Checkout and other forms of mobile or digital wallets to complete the transaction.”
Integrate Your E-commerce Store with Social Media
An increasing number of social media platforms are optimized for e-commerce stores. Utilize these platforms to sell directly to your followers.
For example, Instagram released “Instagram Shopping,” a set of features that makes it easy for users to shop your brand’s photos and videos across the platform.
Ad Spend and PPC
It’s hard for an e-commerce store to survive solely on organic traffic. You’ll need to allocate a piece of your budget towards ad campaigns. To ensure you’re spending your money in the right place, you need to pay attention to Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).
According to Insight Matters, “Return on ad spend is an e-commerce metric that measures the effectiveness of your ad campaigns and their raw profitability.”
Here is the formula for calculating Return on ad spend:
RoAS = (Revenue – Total Ad Spend) / Total Ad Spend
This formula works across all advertising media such as:
- Google Ads
- Facebook Ads
- Youtube Ads
- LinkedIn Ads
Here’s an example of how we’d calculate e-commerce RoAS in practice. Suppose you spent $3,000 on an ad campaign on Google Ads. Using your e-commerce checkout statistics and tracking via Google Analytics, you see that the campaign generated $15,000 in sales.
Your RoAS, therefore, is 4x i.e. ($12,000 / $3,000).
It’s common to also state the RoAS as a percentage, in which case, for this example it would be 400%. Some platforms, such as Google Ads, calculate RoAS a bit differently, so pay attention to the definition used on your ad platform.
A word of caution on prioritizing RoAS. RoAS alone is not enough. To make accurate decisions about your ad campaigns, you need additional metrics for a better picture. In particular, you need to combine RoAS data with gross margin and LTV (lifetime value) data to understand the whole picture.
Here is how these other data points will help you:
- Gross margin– This shows you how much money your business gained from sales after subtracting the cost of goods sold (COGS).
- LTV – This is the amount of net profit that will accrue to the business from a customer over the lifecycle of their entire patronage of the business.
Source: corporatefinanceinstitute.com
HubSpot offers a free Ad Spend Calculator where you can plan for ad spend success by estimating a few key metrics.
Tim Haldorsson shares a case study on PPC (pay-per-click) from his marketing firm Lunar Strategy. PPC essentially means that you are buying traffic from search engines. When someone types in specific keywords or phrases to the search engine, you can pay to have your website on the search engine result page (SERP).
The SERP will display the ads you create to direct visitors to your site, and the fee you pay is based on whether people click your ad.
Haldorsson explains the importance of planning and strategizing before you deploy a PPC campaign. Consider your goal in the amount of weekly leads/customers coming in and how much you’re prepared to pay in terms of cost per lead. It would help if you also considered what value you get from a lead on average.
Below is an example of budget spending from Lunar Strategy:
This will vary based on your individual needs, but the graph provides an idea of spending your budget across different categories.
In Conclusion
E-commerce SEO should be a high priority for any e-commerce store owner. There are many components that you need to address, but it will be worth it. An increased effort in your site’s SEO will yield results in terms of increased sales and traffic that you otherwise would have missed out on.