This blog comprehensively guides you through eCommerce SEO and how to implement it on your site to achieve targeted traffic. So whether you are:
You are in the right place, for this blog can be helpful in meeting your need.
SEO has the highest ROI for any marketing campaign; we all know that by far, but despite this fact zero consideration is given to search engines while building an online store. Utilizing social media and paid ads is fine but it is high time you jump into the SEO movement. Why?
Let’s consider the stats for that matter –
There you have it, your store’s position in the search engines matter. And if you do some more research on popular eCommerce sites and analyze their increase in organic traffic, you’ll be even more convinced. They truly own their SEO strategies and yes, SEO matters.
Now let’s just hop in…
The best eCommerce SEO strategy must include the following –
Keyword research is the first step to any SEO campaign. It is essential, cannot be skipped, and doing it wrong means not reaching enough people. Below level online visibility means below level conversion rate. Neither of these is healthy for your business’ growth.
Keyword research not just involves finding keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume, but also understanding user intent. In the eCommerce store, people search for products, and there are three ways of finding the ideal product-focused keyword:
(Keyword research in eCommerce is very different from general sites. Most sites involve in informative keyword whereas eCommerce is product specific)
Let begin with our eCommerce giant –
Amazon Suggest: Amazon being the biggest eCommerce site and also your competitor is a keyword goldmine and ultimate place to understand buyer intent. How do you do it? Let me show.
For instance, imagine yourself to be a seller of Refrigerator and its accessories. The first step is you head to amazon and type your product keyword, say refrigerator.
Amazon prefers targeted keywords or long-tail keywords as they are less competitive, convert better than head terms. Now you know what visitors are looking for. So, if you have refrigerator locks to sell, ‘refrigerator locks for children’ is the ideal keyword, long and less competitive.
Similarly, Google Suggest does the same with its auto-complete feature and shows relevant queries –
And the keyword tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Ubersuggest.
When the list of keywords appears in the tool, consider these two – Search Volume and Keyword Difficulty (KD).
Also, with these tools you can keep an eye on your competitors and the keywords they are ranking.
Piece of advice: Keywords with low KD and high search volumes are easier to rank for, like these long-tail keywords and the one below –
And this head term is high in difficulty and not easy to rank –
Once the keyword phase is complete, the next step is to organize the store to make it navigable. And there are three rules to keep in mind –
Super good keywords with a complicated site structure is a backlash to your SEO efforts.
How does a bad architecture look like?
This…
Imagine being the customer and try and reach the product X. It would take about seven clicks for the product. This is an example of poor site navigation and hurts the search ranks.
The homepage of your site is the most authoritative page. And when a visitor clicks through categories, some authority is passed to the next page. (Previously, this was called PageRank). This passage is a great way of getting backlinks to your product pages.
But with a deeply complicated site architecture like the one above, the authority dilutes by the time visitors reach the product page.
Here’s a flowchart of an ideal eCommerce site structure to get the most authority to your best product pages.
(Piece of advice: If your site’s structure is messed, instead of moving around pages, better hire an SEO freelancer in India)
On-page eCommerce SEO is optimizing the content strategically with relevant keywords.
This step is vital as it helps achieve better ranking in the SERPs. So, here are the on-page factors you might want to pay attention to:
Some common modifiers buyers look for are –
You can also make use of click-magnet words like ‘free shipping’ or ‘x% off’ to boost CTR.
Those ratings and reviews look good right? Yes, to buyers as well. This provides an extra bit of information and increases the CTR rate. Even, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines recommend adding markup to product pages.
(You could use schema.org to complete this step.)
Technical SEO is important for all websites for providing the
best possible user experience. The vitality only doubles up for eCommerce
because of the vast number of pages. SEO is not all about keywords but also
active links, site speed, and more.
So, however effective your off-page SEO is, technical SEO is icing on the cake
that can pull it to Google’s top rank. For that matter, technical SEO audits
are crucial.
Here are some SEO tools you can use for eCommerce site audit:
What to focus on while auditing?
<meta name = “robots” content = ‘noindex”>
However, sometimes two similar pages exist
for a reason. Maybe they are the same product with slight variation. For such
matters, implementing the canonical tag
is helpful. A canonical tag (or
rel canonical) helps search engines understand which URL is the master copy and
needs to be indexed.
(Piece of advice: Implementing canonical tags can be tricky; you can hire an expert
SEO freelancer in India.)
Here are three things SEO experts recommend coping up with the site speed issue.
Did you know? – A SEMrush study claims, 60-65% of websites with HTTPS appear on Google’s page one.
Link building, for eCommerce site, is rewarding. Getting backlinks from websites with high domain authority is a major ranking factor. But this isn’t something you can do in a day; it’s time-consuming and needs effort.
Here I am sharing a ‘few’ tactics you can implement –
Have a look at this eCommerce website…
Hire an SEO freelancer in India to do these jobs for you while you concentrate on the business.
This takes us to the next and last step.
eCommerce or not, content is the king of SEO, and you cannot
deny it. 7 out of 10 people likely came across your online store through an
article and not a paid ad.
Content is like fillers for the gaps, it gives you the scope to play with
relevant keywords more, get a higher rank, and more backlinks.
Content marketing is a huge entity in itself. It requires research and building up the strategy; mostly for the audience and less for your business. Discussing this would require another 1000+ words of reading, so here is a link to the post on content marketing instead: A Step by Step Guide to Content Marketing Strategy.
An effective content marketing is responsible for building a strong brand image and driving in more traffic.
Finally, it’s time for me to hear from you. Was this blog helpful? Did I miss anything?
If you have further queries, I am an experienced SEO freelancer in India. Feel free to get in touch.
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