If you wish to have a successful online business selling products, then understanding what eCommerce SEO is and how to implement it effectively is critical.
There are 4 main stages to eCommerce SEO.
They focus on building a strong foundation and a website that can be crawled, indexed and ranked, in the best possible positions by the search engines.
These stages are:
- SEO Audits
- Keyword Research
- On Page SEO
- Link Building
We are going to take a closer look at the first 3 stages and how these strategies can be used to improve your eCommerce store.
Most people skip these and go straight to link building… don’t make the same mistake!
SEO Audits
A lot of website owners who have problems ranking their site and gaining good levels of traffic often don’t do one very important thing…
Regular site audits
eCommerce stores very often develop issues like:
- Duplicate content
- Missing or duplicate title tags
- Missing or duplicate meta descriptions
- Missing alt tags
- Missing canonical tags
- Deindexed pages
- Broken links
- 404 errors
- 302 redirects
…all of which can be dealt with effectively by carrying out regular SEO audits.
Along with the issues above, SEO audits also focus on site speed.
Site speed is incredibly important and has become an official Google ranking factor as it can dramatically impact the user experience.
Having a slow website can do a lot of damage to your business.
By ensuring your site loads in 3 seconds or less you will be able to maximise rankings, traffic and user experience.
Another element you need to be aware of when conducting a site audit on your eCommerce store is site architecture.
Simply put…
Your visitors need to be able to get from your homepage to your product pages, within three clicks.
This not only helps user experience but it helps search engines to crawl your site.
SEO Audit Tools
There are some great tools on the market that help you conduct a full SEO audit quickly and efficiently. The best tools are premium tools, however they usually have some pretty good trials you can take advantage of… wink wink. I would recommend using these tools:- GT Metrix (site speed)
- Screaming Frog (site audit)
Keyword Research
Keyword research differs slightly when it comes to eCommerce stores because the intent of visitors you want to attract is different.
To attract the right kind of traffic, these are things you need to bear in mind whilst researching keywords.
Intent
The goal here isn’t just to get as much traffic to your site as possible…
But to get qualified traffic. Or in other words, people who are at the right stage of the sales funnel and ready to hand over their cash!
Using keywords with the intent that matches your business goals will stop you wasting not just your own time but your visitor’s too.
Search Volume
Your keyword might tick all the other boxes but if no one searches for it, then it’s useless.
You can easily determine a good search volume for a keyword by looking at other high traffic keywords and use them as a benchmark.
Search volume varies from niche to niche so remember a low number of searches for one niche may be a high number of searches for another. Do your research.
Competition
As with all keyword research, you need to be realistic about which competitors you are going to do battle with.
If the first page of the SERP’s is full of big names for your keyword… then you are probably going to need to find an easier keyword to work with.
Usually, long-tail keywords are much better to use as the competition isn’t as fierce but they still get pretty decent levels of search volume.
Relevance
Make sure to use keywords that are actually relevant to the product/service that you are selling. This seems basic but people are still getting it wrong.
To ensure you have a great conversion rate, make sure anyone coming to your products pages knows what they are going to see before visiting your page.
How many times do you click on a search result and find it’s not what you were looking for… annoying right?!
Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research can be simple to do when using the right combination of tools.
You can find all the data you need from some of these premium tools:
But don’t forget to check out their trial periods if you aren’t already signed up.
And to make keyword research even easier…
I have developed an intelligent spreadsheet that analyses the data found by these tools and tells you exactly which keywords are right for your business.
To learn how to use these tools and get access to my intelligent keyword research spreadsheet visit this full guide.
On Page SEO
Images
When it comes to images there are two things which you need to focus on.- SEO friendly
- High-quality photos
Product Descriptions
The product description is your opportunity to build trust and show exactly why they should be buying this item. This is something that manufacturer descriptions don’t offer so don’t be tempted to just copy and paste these into your descriptions. Product descriptions must:- Be unique
- Show the benefits
- Then show the features/specs/FAQs
Title Tags
Powerful title tags are going to draw browsers to click on your search result. Including your keyword will help crawlers identify what your product is and rank accordingly. And using a power word will attract more visitors. For example, if you are selling drones, you could use a title like… Drone Series 2020 – The Best Drone For Beginner Flyers This is one of the strongest ranking signals you can optimize for your product page.Meta Descriptions
If you are facing tough competition with title tags, then your next focus should be your meta description which is often the deciding factor when choosing which result to click on. You can use 320 characters to pull the attention to your result. This is a great opportunity for including additional keywords and also your opportunity to convince the searcher that your page is going to solve their problem. You can mention a common query related to your product and then answer it with a call to action. Headings and Subheadings
Heading & subheadings create a good structure on your product pages. They make it a lot easier to skim read and quickly find the information you need.
(This is also true for search engine crawlers)
Make sure you use a mixture of main keywords and LSI keywords in these different headings maximize optimization.
Internal links
Internal links are really valuable to eCommerce stores because they can be used to direct traffic to your best selling pages.
Not only that but they also help search engines find, understand and index new pages.
Using internal links within your product descriptions is a great way to increase your average basket spend:
See how amazon does it:
Testimonials & Reviews
Testimonials and reviews are a really powerful way of building trust for your products.
People believe people.
So if you have a bunch of people giving your product great reviews, you are more likely to close the sale of anyone who was sat on the fence about buying your product
You can build testimonials and feedback by simply providing excellent service, quality products and then asking for them.
If you have got the first bit right then your customers will be more than happy to leave a great review. But remember this also works the other way… so ensure customer service is high on your agenda.
Schema Data
Schema data can be used to make your SERP more attention-grabbing.
As competition is fierce these days you need to use every trick in the book.
By adding the right kind of schema data you can jazz up your search results to include extra information like:
- Star rating
- Rating */10
- Pricing
- Review data
- Stock availability
The more positive information you can offer at this stage, the better.
Wrapping It Up
Now you have built a strong foundation for an eCommerce website that attracts qualified traffic, you can then move on to marketing your content on platforms like:
- Social Media (Facebook, Twitter etc…)
- Forums (Quora,Yahoo Answers etc…)
And link building strategies such as:
Guest posting:
- Testimonial backlinks
- Broken link building
Remember to complete regular SEO audits to keep your website in top condition and always focus on providing fantastic user experience.
