Are you an e-commerce store owner struggling to carve your path on top of the page? Our a digital marketer working for an e-commerce start-up, who can not figure out the initial steps. You can take a sigh of relief now as you have landed on the right page. We are here to guide you about the e-commerce SEO best practices that are followed by experts.
An online marketplace is the dawning sphere of transactions. Owing a website has become a mandate in this digital era, as Google has become the new shopping complex. But the real game starts when you struggle to pop your site on top. Just having a digital presence is not enough.
Only E-commerce SEO can multiply your organic traffic, increase the CTR and put you on the first desk rank. Especially if you are a fresher in the town you must learn to master ecommerce SEO for emergence.
According to statistics, e-commerce sales are predicted to reach $8 trillion. So, jump into the ocean of eCommerce SEO and learn some eCommerce SEO best practices to exploit the growing opportunity. Here we have simplified the steps into an eCommerce SEO guide. Even the newbies can now upskill themselves through your e-commerce SEO guide as we made it easier for you to comprehend.
What Is E-commerce SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimisation, which means strategically optimising the website by including relevant keywords, improving functionality, and upgrading the content and user experience of the site. Search works on algorithms.SEO makes your site’s search engine algorithms friendly.
This ultimately maximises your visibility, boosts lead conversions, makes your site more eye catchy and reaps ROI. Ranking on the first end of SERP is the final goal of all e-commerce sites to ensure continuous traffic.SEO is a means to reach your goal.
Now that we have a brief understanding of SEO, let us scratch beneath the surface, by learning how SEO for e-commerce sites is done-
1. Keyword Research
To start with let us discuss what are keywords and how keyword research is done.
Keywords are nothing but specific words that your customer uses to search for something on a search engine. To optimise your ecommerce site you must know how to search and include these keywords. Customers reach the desired sites through these keywords only.
For example: if you are an online bookstore, a customer who wants to purchase a book online might use words like Hamlet book purchase or Hamlet book online etc.
There are two types of Keywords short-tail and long-tail.
Short-tail keywords are very wide terms with shorter ends we took the previous example, where customers are searching for the book so they might just type “Hamlet” ” which is a relatively wide term.
Long-tail keywords are a combination of a few words, which are more specific, and easier to target by the marketer. Like “Hamlet book purchase online”.
According to stats long-tail keywords receive higher traffic that is 15.5% as compared to short-tail keywords.
Another thing is search intent, there are four types of searchers on the net, and all of them are your potential customers. They can only become your clients when you know how to tap them right.
Commercial keywords: best Indian restaurants in Delhi
Transactional Keywords: Hamlet book purchased online
Informational keywords: What are the reviews of Hamlet?
Navigational keywords: Oxford book store log-in
So, hopefully, you have got a basic understanding of keywords by now, Moving further, let us now see various ways to search these keywords.
a) Amazon autocomplete
Source:- Amazon
Amazon is a gold mine of keywords. It might be your rival but categorising pages according to Amazon keywords works wonders.
Steps to Dig Keywords on Amazon
- Go to Amazon’s website and type your product on the search bar.
- If you deal with a large variety of products type a specific keyword for one product at a time.
- When you will enter the keyword you will see a dropdown menu.
- They are the keywords for your products.
- Now repeat this process with a different keyword related to your product.
- You will slowly understand the intent of the customers as well.
b)Google Auto Suggestions
Source :- Google
Google auto-suggest is widely used when it comes to E-commerce sites. As Google is the most used search engine, let us learn to harvest the crop from the ground.
- Go to the homepage of Google.
- Now type the most relevant keyword for your product.
- You will see a pop-down menu as search results.
- These are the keywords for your product or service.
- Now type various keywords to make a list and use these keywords in your content.
c) Wikipedia
Source:- Wikipedia
Wikipedia too categorises the pages which makes it a useful site for you. Searching keywords on Wikipedia can be a little tedious yet fruitful.
Steps to find keywords that will help you in e-commerce SEO
- Go to Wikipedia.
- Type the product and keywords related to your product.
- You will get a lot of information on the page.
- Identify the words or phrases used for your product.
- Check the content box.
d) Google Trends
Source:- Google Trends
Google Keyword Trends is a tool that is not just used to find unique keywords but also displays detailed information about preference changes with time and zone.
Steps to scan this tool for mining keywords for e-commerce SEO
- Go to Google Trends.
- Search for your product or keywords related to them.
- The ‘related queries or section’ will provide an in-depth list of new keywords.
- To check the change in popularity of your keyword look at the ‘interest over time’ graph.
- You can refine the search according to zones as well by ‘regional interests’.
- Add new keywords and export the data.
e) Semrush keyword tools
Source:- Semrush
Semrush is an excellent AI SEO tool for e-commerce SEO. It provides completely automated features like content creation, optimisation, rank tracking, link building etc. that are essential for a successful SEO.
Though it is a paid version, the costs are worth it as you get a picture of related keywords CPC, search volume, keyword difficulty, competitor’s keywords, and refined metrics for analysis in Magic Keyword Tool.
f) Sub Reddit
Source:- Reddit
Reddit is an open discussion forum, you can find keywords by studying your consumer’s conversations about the product.
Join the groups on this platform to examine the words or phrases used by the consumers to discuss your product.
There are many tools to research keywords like keyword tools. io,ubersuggest and Google keyword planner.
Moving on further we need to pick up the concept of technical SEO.
2. Technical SEO
Technical SEO means changing the overall functionality of the site for better performance. The site architecture is one of the key drivers of e-commerce SEO and directly affects the rankings of the site.
- Site Architecture
It is the basic foundation of the site, how product pages are interlinked with one another, which affects the user’s flow. The appearance and usability of the site depend on the site’s architecture. Once you have managed to generate a lead, the second step is to retain your customer by offering a free-flow site.
2-star instructions must be followed while designing the site
- The site should be simple and understandable
- The homepage should be fewer (3 most likely) clicks away from every page.
Now we will tell you the perfect recipe to prepare an ideal sitemap-
- Make a quick introspection using these questions
-Search queries on and off your website.
-Your top traffic pages.
-Your top exit pages.
Once you have got answers to these, resume your journey while keeping these in mind.
- If you want to include drop-down menus on your navigation bar, code it in HTML.
- Name your category pages with short-tail keywords.
- Use filters if you have more than 20 products.
An ideal site map should be like these-
What we do wrong is this-
A confusing sitemap hampers the SEO for e-commerce, as it makes it very difficult for the customer to locate the product.
b) SEO Audit
Before going further let us learn about SEO audits. Knowledge of e-commerce best practices is incomplete without it.
SEO audit tools critically analyse the page speed, errors, broken links, schema markup, URL structures, and usage of robots. ex text file of the site.
Once the gaps are detected, the technical team fixes them for better ecommerce SEO.
SEO audit tools
Raven tools
Ahrefs
Semrush
Google search console
Google Analytics
SE ranking
c) Site Speed
It is a well-established fact that Google uses page speed as part of algorithms while ranking your page.
Not only that according to stats, delayed loading can abode your cart by 29.8%.So it is not just important from an e-commerce SEO strategy point of view but also affects your sales.
The top 3 reasons for slow loading speed are-
- Slow hosting and servers
- Large image sizes
- Bloated coding
Ways to fix this
– invest in a good content delivery network.
– Upgrade your hosting servers
– Use web-optimised images
d) Bloating site
A bloating site means that the site has too many pages. When it comes to e-commerce sites, they tend to have too many product pages. This impacts the CMS, page speed, and duplicity of content.
Ways to fix this
– There are plenty of pages that don’t draw any traffic, just simply put them on the delete list. You can check these on Google Analytics.
– Chunk off the non-performing product pages by combining them with super pages or by discarding them.
– Once you have dealt with deadweight pages that are around 20-50%, improve the leftover pages.
e) Schema Markup and rich spinnets
These are the brief description that occurs beneath the name of the site on the Google page. The fun part is that Google does pick up sites using these as well. So, we easily optimize them to please Google.
Ways to write markup schema while doing SEO for e-commerce site
– Product schema markup=this includes brand name, images, URL and description
-Review schema This includes reviews, ratings, date of the ratings, worst reviews etc.
As a beginner, you can use tools like the Schema app or structured data testing tool.
f) 404 error
When we delete a page that has been discontinued or a product is out of stock, consumers receive a 404 error.
How to tackle 404 errors for better SEO for e-commerce sites?
-Redirecting the page using 301 redirects is the best option. If your product has a huge organic traffic 90% of the traffic will reroute to a new page.
-For repetitive 404 errors create a custom 404 error page which contains the link to the previous page on which the customer was before landing on this page.
– Create innovative custom pages to avoid frustration among users.
– In case the product is out of stock add a notify link to the page.
g) Canonisation issues
This means whether Google can determine your site without a WWW tag. Remove the www. From the name of the site and then search it.If you are directed to some other site that means there are canonlisation issues.
Just add rel=” canonical” to the product pages to avoid duplicity of content and products.
To know more about this refer to the link-
h) Mobile-friendly design
You need to optimise the website design for mobile users to cater for the entire potential customers.
Right steps-
3. On-Page SEO
Now that we have learnt about keywords and technical SEO, tell us how to implement our understanding by optimizing the site. On-page SEO is a crucial part of ecommerce SEO as pages are the foundation of the site. These are the ones that interact with the customer and become the brand voice. The website is the ultimate deciding factor of your SEO, so dedicate a good time to decorating it with underneath terms.
- URL
As discussed earlier, what works for a developer who is training for ecommerce SEO best practices, is gaining insights on a good URL.
Creating a good, short, clean URL is the trick. Adding descriptive parameters to your URL hikes your ranking and trustworthiness of the site.
Few things that you must remember while rewriting your URLs-
- Create a short and simple URL
- Use lowercase letters.
- Dashes are recommended instead of spaces, underscore, percentages, and exclamation points.
- Include targeted keywords
- Make clean URLs instead of dynamic ones
b) Meta title and descriptions
One thing that you must practice while creating your title tags is adding the targeted keywords with action keywords. These keywords are CTA words, which climbs your CTR.
An ideal title tag looks like Best Luxury Bags In India NOW!
We are listing some of these action words for your help-
- Buy NOW
- Sale
- Hurry
- Exclusive
- Try it now
- Shop now
- Subscribe
- Learn more
- Best
- Win
- Free
- Cheap
- Free shipping
- % off
- Guarantee
- Lowest price
Use your creative skills to mingle up these words in your title tags and meta description with keywords. You will see the magic happening. These are some of the action words used by top-performing sites to buffer their sales.
The game does not end here, giving the right meta description for your page also increases the CTR.
These are some tips to consider while crafting your Meta for e-commerce SEO
- Add customer-specific keywords. A lot of companies include words like new collection or summer collection etc to target a particular audience.
- Write your meta as a headline of an article
- Do not exceed 155 characters.
Words to be included while writing meta description for better CTR-
- New
- Sale
- Instant
- Easy
- Quick
- Best
- Special offer
- Discount
There are many more words like these, which you can Google for curating an interesting meta description.
c) Internal linking
Internal linking occurs automatically in e-commerce websites. If you have still not taken advantage of this link then start linking your pages now, by following the guidelines.
Internal linking can be one of the best e-commerce SEO strategies. Linking high-authority pages with best-selling product pages creates maximum sales on an e-commerce site.
There are many ways to internal link a site, we are teaching you the topmost ways followed by experts to who do SEO for e-commerce.
- Similar products-when a customer comes to a product page you can display similar products beneath as thumbnails, by the heading you may also like and link the pages.
- Complimentary categories-say your customer is looking for a baby body wash then they might need a baby cream or shampoo also. So, you can simply display these products as customers also purchase or you may also need them in the sidebar or beneath the product.
- Breadcrumbs navigation- Amazon is the best example of this. It gives a link to a category, sub-category and product all on the product page as the navigation bar.
d) Product and category content
When it comes to product description and categories implementing an e-commerce SEO strategy becomes difficult. But do not worry, we are here to train you. By the end of this topic, you will have gained pretty good knowledge about e-commerce SEO best practices.
We will guide you to prepare a highly-rated content page for your site now
- Learn to write 1000+ product descriptions
The fun fact about Google is it can only understand in-depth descriptions. Adding on giving full details of your products enhances the user experience.
It might be tedious to write wordy descriptions for all products. In that case, you can do it for top-rated pages or products.
Always remember Google can only understand your site through your content, so pay great attention towards it.
- Scatter the keywords
It is very important to place your targeted keywords in the product descriptions at least 3 to 5 times. Experts suggest that placing keywords on the top of the page helps to rank faster. Do not stuff your content with keywords. Just use them in a manner that Google gets to know what your content is all about.
- Latent Semantic Indexing keywords
Now this is something new for you, these keywords are the keywords that are closely related to the targeted keywords. For example, if your targeted keyword is “children’s storybook” then LSI keywords are-
Learning, adventure, creativity, vocabulary, fantasy, imagination etc.
You can use Amazon product pages and Google keyword planner to search these keywords. Once you have made a list of these words, use them in your descriptions.
- Product reviews
Inculcate product reviews on the product page to strengthen the reliability and trustworthiness amongst the customer. It provides realistic insights for the users.
e) Images and product videos
Source:- Ajio
Images are a great source for e-commerce SEO. Add alt tags in the images to make them search engine-friendly. Videos are the game changers,quicksprout found out that 12% of customers are derived to purchase a product by adding a video.
Videos induce confidence in general viewers and increase your engagement time at the same time. So, investing in videos is a win-win situation. You get more customers and rankings at the same time.
4. External link building
After content, links are one of the most crucial factors. Google primarily looks for these two factors for rating your site.
There are many ways to build authentic links for your site, we have listed some below
- Competitor analysis-
Many tools like Semrush and Ahref tell about the competitive edge. What is working for your competitors will also work for you.
- Guest blogging-
Contributing to other companies websites as a guest blog writer helps a lot. It nurtures the relationship between your site and others. Try to get linked to other sites as much as possible.
- Influencers
Join hands with today’s rising influencers. Try to place your links on their sites or channels.
- Skyscraper link building
This technique simply means creating better content than your competitors. In this way, you can surpass the previous links to build new links.
5.Measure Performance
We have given you 5 steps of e-commerce SEO strategy, and now knowing the basics you must implement them. There are many tutorials available on YouTube to acquire in-depth skills on each step.
After implementation to test your understanding, you have to measure the performance of the site. E-commerce SEO fruits within a few months of sowing the seeds. Here are a few parameters against which you can measure your outcomes.
| Factor | How to measure? |
| 1 Organic Traffic | Google Analytics |
| 2 Position in SERP | Google search console(free),Semruch;Ahrefs;moz(paid) |
| 3 Click -Through Rate | Google search console |
| 4 Engagement rate | Google Analytics |
| 5 Technical SEO | Semrush and other paid tools |
| 6 Conversion rate | Google Analytics |
| 7 Keyword position | Paid tools like Ahrefs and Semrush |
These factors give a detailed report on the current situation of your site. If you are still unable to get a hands-on SEO, there is no harm in investing in SEO service providers. As a digital player, you are already aware of the power of the net. Right SEO is the only key to unlocking the door of the front page on SERP.
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