And even though not every store sells the same product as you, this does not change the fact that the industry is competitive.
Social media marketing can only do so much in e-commerce. You are selling online in an era of constant search engine algorithm updates, expensive advertising, and thousands of products. This makes SEO campaigns for e-commerce a necessity.
If you previously thought that ecommerce SEO was just an option, think again. Organic search in ecommerce is about strategy rather than budget, and long-term customer loyalty rather than one-time buyers.
It is an activity you should follow to get consistent traffic and higher business revenue.
Why is ecommerce SEO important in 2024?
As a buyer argentina phone number resource how many times have you looked at the second search results page of Google or another search engine when looking for a product?
Let me guess, sometimes once? Rarely twice? But never three times?
This is how most buyers work. They want to buy something and they want to be quick about it. Unless they are buying an investment-heavy item like a TV or a Laptop, they do extensive research and even consider offline options.
But for most products, websites that don’t rank in the top 10 don’t get visited very often. Even for those that do, the top five get more clicks than the bottom five. The first search engine results page gets 39.8% of all search query clicks . And ecommerce SEO is how you can strive for that position. Wow. That’s a lot of pressure, right?
Fortunately, you can rely on a number of processes for ecommerce SEO that will help you achieve the online visibility you strive for.
Ecommerce SEO is the process of improving an online or Shopify store’s online presence and site visibility in search engines and search engine results pages. These strategies may include creating keyword-focused content, optimizing product pages, blogging, etc.
Strategies for planning SEO campaigns for eCommerce in 2024
Improving e-commerce keyword research
Keyword research is the stepping stone not just for ecommerce SEO, but for all SEO strategies in general. Keywords guide your SEO strategy. However, the strategy will differ from a traditional keyword research strategy for ecommerce. This is primarily because you are targeting commercial keywords, not just informational keywords.
Choosing the right keyword
To know your keywords, you need to understand user intent in your search queries. “How-to” and “lists” are informational queries, while product names, terms, and categories all fall into transactional queries. Research what the top informational, commercial, and navigational intents are. You can look at keyword results for competitors and build your strategy around related keywords.
Keyword research tools
The year is 2024. You can no longer play the guessing game when it comes to keywords. Use keyword research tools. You can also check out Google’s and Amazon’s autocomplete predictions. Keyword research tools like SEMrush make your job much easier by researching and analyzing keywords. It also tells you keyword volume, competitor keyword, ranking position, and other metrics that help you decide which keyword to use.
E-commerce keyword research
Source: Semrush
Monitor on-page SEO
On-page ecommerce SEO means optimizing your product pages to make it easier for search engines to find your pages. How do you do this? By optimizing
Title Tag: Include the primary keyword in the page's H1 title tag so it reflects the page themes.
Image Optimization: Make sure the image quality is top notch and that you include an alt text description to optimize the image for image results in search engines.
Metadata: Meta description can help increase your click-through rate. Include the necessary keywords and meet the minimum word requirement. Feel free to add promotional copy that will get you support, such as “Free shipping” and “50% off.”
URL: Include your primary/secondary keyword in your URL. It helps you stand out in competitive niches.
Product Description: Write unique and engaging copy that details your product to grab attention and reduce on-page thin content on your profile. For example, if you sell shoes, you could talk about how it cushions your feet, how easy it is to put on and take off, and how comfortable it is to bounce around in. In the example below, the brand talks about togetherness and friendly get-togethers to promote their Gas Grill.
Product description optimization
Source: Crazyegg
Optimizing website structure
As an ecommerce store, you will have hundreds and thousands of product pages, but how these pages are structured and organized will impact your ecommerce SEO.
Structuring an ecommerce website
Source: AccuRanker
Every time you add a new category and add or remove products , the website architecture becomes complex. If the structure is compromised due to this, it will result in a poor user experience and will also negatively impact your site’s SEO performance.
Optimizing your structure involves streamlining your navigation and using the right keywords to create informative content and help users understand your product. Remember that ecommerce product pages suffer from thin content.
To fix this issue, you can hide these pages from search engines or even add a blog below your product details. You can also add canonical tags, which tell Google which is the "main version" of a URL. This way, Google will ignore duplicate content that can hurt your search engine rankings.
Work on technical SEO
Conduct a technical SEO audit to check if search engines can easily discover your sites, if page speed is optimized, and if it is mobile-optimized.
The faster your store loads, the higher the chances of ranking high in search engines. Fast web pages can provide a smooth user experience, which is something that every search engine prefers and looks for in a website to decide its search engine ranking .
It also results in better website engagement and more organic traffic because your site is easier to crawl. Here are some ways you can optimize your eCommerce SEO:
Submit your Sitemap to Google Search Console: Creating a sitemap eliminates indexing and crawling issues. A sitemap contains a list of all your site pages and tells Google which pages to crawl and index
HTTPS: Search engines place great importance on website security to ensure that users are shown reliable and secure results for their search purposes. As an online store, you need to adapt to a secure version of HTTP, which increases the likelihood of your site being displayed in search engines.
Ensure mobile optimization and site speed: Most ecommerce buyers shop on their phones. You need to make sure your site is equally responsive on mobile devices and that the mobile site loads quickly. You can use tools like PageSpeed Insights or the Chrome UX report to check page speed. A responsive website and mobile-friendly design will help you deliver an outstanding user experience across a variety of screen sizes.
Focus on link building strategies
Many brands often overlook link building strategies in eCommerce due to the confusion that many marketers have about where to get links, how to get them, and what they mean for internal linking. However, link building can provide the same boost to eCommerce SEO as it does in other industries.
Google takes into account the number of backlinks, quality of backlinks, and relevance to determine the credibility and trustworthiness of a page. It also decides the authority of a page based on the number of incoming and outgoing links. Here are some ways to build quality backlinks:
Guest Posts: You can reach out to bloggers and write and publish articles on someone else’s website in the same niche as yours. In return, you earn backlinks and generate traffic from the articles written.
Guest posting is a popular and legitimate way to reach a wider audience, improve search engine rankings, and build your brand authority. For example, if you’re an online retailer that sells women’s clothing, you could target fashion and beauty magazines and websites to contribute articles and receive backlinks.
Review and product directories: List your online store in multiple directories. Make sure to include consistent business information to get links from local citations and review platforms like Yelp.
Press Mentions: You can take advantage of sites like HARO or PR sites where you can contribute content and write press releases in exchange for a backlink.
