Google is the most favorite search engine for shoppers to find a product. It means a good deal of natural traffic may come from the search engines. To get top ranking in SERPs, you must learn a slew of rules or search engine algorithms updated time-to-time. In other words, whatever true for today may not be for the next year.
I belong to a team of seasoned SEO professionals with an updated knowledge of contemporary SEO practices and a proven record of measurable success. I have observed that a lot of texts floating on the web giving tips to improve e-Commerce SEO.
Unfortunately, the majority of those are barely working or outdated. Therefore, I have decided to give some practical tips those indeed can help e-Commerce merchants to see some solid results.
Begin E-commerce SEO with SEO Audit
If you are going to start building a house without any engineering drawing what will happen to your mission? The same goes true when you start e-Commerce SEO without conducting a thorough SEO audit. Here I am talking about SEO audit because I am going to give tips for existing e-commerce storefronts. If you are going to build a new one from scratch, you have to think about the technical SEO consideration begins right from the site development process.
Various SEO audit tools are available in the market.
ScreamingFrog
- It is an excellent tool to find lapses and bugs in code.
- Good to find missing canonical tags.
- Title tags, Meta descriptions, Alt tags, which are missing or duplicate.
- Searching 404 error page, de-indexed pages, 302 redirects
SiteLiner
It is the best tool to audit duplicate content on your e-commerce website.
SEMRush
- Check loading speed, store architecture,
- Many tasks that you can do with the Screaming Frog tool.
Focus on Keyword Researching E-commerce SEO
I believe right keyword research for your online store is an art and it needs to focus on four parameters, such as
- Search volume
- Intent (awareness, interest, evaluation, and purchase keywords/phases of the funnel)
- Relevance
- Competition
To do keyword research, most e-commerce SEO experts rely on Google tool, SEMRush, Ahrefs, and so on. Remember the keyword researches of your immediate competitors are highly beneficial to know the behavior of the search algorithm and success formulas of your competitors quickly.
Optimizing Keywords in E-commerce SEO
During your keyword research, you may find tons of keywords, and it will make you confuse a lot. Let me explain how to segregate your keywords with the keyword optimization strategies in mind.
- Long-tailed Keywords:
Once upon a time, long-tail keywords had a significant impact on the search, but with the RankBrain algorithm, search engine becomes more intelligent than before, and LSI keywords have gotten importance in ranking.
- Medium-Sized Keywords:
Mid-size keywords have a higher search volume than long-tail keywords, but you have to face more competition that demands more links and quality content to rank. So, leverage it for higher ranking.
- LSI Keywords:
Latent semantic indexing keywords are synonymous of a primary keyword and augment the contexts of the keyword use and its placements. LSI keywords make it possible to use long-tail keywords or an entire phase to clarify the contexts of the search.
Therefore, by using LSI keyword generators, we can get the right sets of LSI keywords for our primary targeted keyword.
Optimizing Meta Tags in E-commerce SEO
Conversions in e-commerce depend on clicks by shoppers and higher Click through Rate (CTR) is only possible with optimized Meta tags like titles and description. Let’s see how we can optimize title tags for higher CTR.
Use heading analyzer to do the best title tag optimization. Heading analyzer will tell you that what you are missing in your title tag. However, you must consider the following points in title optimization. For instance, infusing emotion into your title by using emotional keywords, which will give you more likes and shares on social media. Use brackets in your titles because it gets the immediate attention of readers in the SERPs.
Use power words because they are capable of drawing searchers in and trigger CTA. E.g., Insane, Effective, Case study, Fast, Proven, Best, and Definitive guide. Use figures and facts like numbers and statistics in the title. It impresses and convinces the readers at first glance.
Optimizing Meta Description in E-commerce SEO
Description as its name suggests describing the content further like titles or headings. It provides immense opportunity to include your business keywords including primary and LSI keywords to enhance your chances to catch a quality audience, which read further after seeing Meta title at the first place.
Last year Google had increased its length cap from 170-230 something, but today it seems it is again reducing the length of description in SERPs without any official announcement.
Well, whatever it may be, but the infusion of emotion, information, and relevant keywords certainly improve your ranking as well as visibility and readability as a whole by giving the right contexts.
Optimizing Heading (H1 to H6) Tags in E-commerce SEO
Search engine counts heading tags as team leaders who represent the entire team. Similarly, heading tags are representing page and paragraphs of text underneath. The H1 tag represents the title of the entire web page while H2, H3 are representatives of paras.
Therefore, by the best SEO practice, use H1 once only on a web page, H2 not more than twice or thrice depending on the length of the page. Use H3 and rests of heading tags freely by following the hierarchy of the content layout and structure/architecture. You should have clear in your mind that what you want to highlight using various heading tags. Those are not mere paragraph separators, but meaningful for the readers a lot.
Optimizing Images in E-commerce SEO
Images cover the major portion of e-commerce content. Today images taken from various angles are trendy on product pages because the 3D rotation of a virtual object is costly technology to implement.
Images for featured products, upcoming products, and top-selling products like sections are grabbing eyes and improve the conversion rate of e-Commerce. However, images need deep optimization in size, resolution, quality, zooming, and visibility in SERPs.
Search engines have devoted an entirely separate section for image searches and results. Bots have gained capacities to index images, texts within photos, and contexts to render its relevancy.
Today, we have high-quality advanced image compression engines available almost free on the web. It gives high-quality images with extremely low-KBs. Thus, image compression/optimization helps e-commerce fast loading without losing quality at all.
Other optimization techniques are giving an image a Title, Description, and Alt tags. These all are ways that crawlers can know something more about images and based on included keywords, you can get good ranking for it.
Optimizing Schema Data in E-commerce SEO
Unlike other websites, e-commerce products and tons of its attributes. Showing some of the key attributes in SERPs may help you to gain an edge over the competition. For example, the first thing is price, availability, rating, and review data.
Technically, it is possible with structured data markup or Schema.org integration with your online store. It is only possible with the help of experienced e-commerce developers.
Optimizing Content in E-commerce SEO
Content is always king on the web, and it is equally true for e-commerce too. Some hands on my experiences with content compel me to give you some advice:
- Write content on e-commerce by following three ‘C’- Clean, Concise, and Comprehensive manners.
- Write great product description by giving an overview in bulleted points, key features in details, give technical specifications, and include mini-FAQ if possible on product pages.
- Try to place the important content above the fold.
- Write a concise and engaging introductory paragraph.
- Content must be perfect at language point of views like spelling and grammatical error-free.
- Check content for readability and plagiarism using reliable tools.
- If possible take help of professional content writer with SEO flair to create SEO-friendly content for on-page and off-page campaigns.
Optimizing CTA (Call-to-Action) in E-commerce SEO
CTA is the final point where shoppers go to hit the e-commerce goal-Conversion. Therefore, the significance of CTA optimization is higher than other SEO practices for your e-commerce website. Let’s check some best CTA practices.
- Make CTA UI element prominent by applying design techniques including size, color, white space, fonts, and style. It improves visibility.
- Make CTA texts and graphics intuitive that can automatically inspire shoppers to take appropriate action in favor of the business.
- Use action words, sense of urgency, and supporting secondary texts augment CTA further.
- Try to integrate various incentives along with CTA.
Conclusion
E-commerce SEO is a vast subject and not up to these given top ten tips. Your interests in e-commerce SEO demands professional help to achieve the best results over the investment in various SEO activities.
