Part 1: Keyword Research for Ecommerce Sites
1.1. Get a Complete Inventory of the Pages On Your Site
1.2. Prioritise Your Pages
1.3. Find and Map Keywords to Each Page
Step 1. Find a Head Keyword
Step 2. Find Long-Tail and Related Keyword Variations
Part 2: On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Sites
2.1. Optimize Your Meta Titles, Descriptions, and H1’s
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2.2. Optimize Your URLs
You’ll find that a lot of CMS’ make these messy by default. For example, WooCommerce adds /product-category/ into the URL for all category pages, which looks kind of messy in my opinion. There are plugins you can use to combat this. But honestly, they’re sometimes more hassle than they’re worth. So my recommendation is not to worry too much about this unless your URL looks seriously disgusting.
2.3. Write Unique Product & Category Descriptions
2.4. Add Schema Markup
Product Pages
Add markup to your product pages so Google can provide detailed product information in rich Search results — including Image Search. Users can see price, availability, and review ratings right on Search results.
Category Pages
A category page listing several different products (or recipes, videos, or any other type). Each entity should be marked up using the relevant schema.org type, such as schema.org/Product for product category pages. However, if one item is marked, all items should be marked. Also, unless this is a carousel page, the marked items should not link out to separate details pages.
12 great ecommerce SEO strategies for your online store
Now that you have answers to “what is ecommerce SEO,” and “why does SEO matter for ecommerce,” it’s time to dive in and get started! Check out these 12 ecommerce search engine optimization best practices to boost visibility for your online store!
1. Perform keyword research to rank in relevant search results
Your keywords help your products appear in front of your shoppers. Search engines, like Google, use keywords to determine your page’s relevancy in search results. So, it’s critical that you choose the right keywords for your product pages so you can appear in relevent search results.
From this search, you can get a list of keyword ideas you can use on your product pages. So, for example, if “seashell décor for bathroom” is relevant to your product page, you can use that as a keyword on your page.
While some short-tail keywords, keywords that contain one or two words, can work well for your business, they generally have a lot of competition. Not to mention, it can be difficult to know what someone wants if the search short-tail keywords.
As you can see, the search intent with long-tail keywords is much clearer than with short-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are also more niche than short-tail keywords because they’re more specific in what the searcher wants to know. So, to nail your ecommerce SEO strategy, still to longer key terms.
2. Create helpful content
After you select a primary keyword and a handful of related keywords, you’ll want to get working on your content marketing strategy for ecommerce. Content helps you rank in different search results and drive more relevant traffic to your page.
To get started with creating content, you need to drum up topics. Stick to industry related topics that help you drive relevant traffic to your page. You can then find relevant keywords to integrate into your content.
- Incorporate your target keywords: Let your audience know exactly what they’re looking at by including your keywords throughout your page. You want your keywords to sound natural, so avoid stuffing in too many keywords.
- Match the search intent: When you create content, make sure your content matches the search intent. Take your keywords and search to see what other companies write about a topic. It will help you create content that matches the search intent better, so you can rank in the results.
- Format your content properly: Content that ranks is conversational. It presents information in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. Avoid using an excessive amount of technical and industry terms to make your content approachable.
- Make it easy to skim: You want shoppers to quickly find the information they’re looking for when they land on your site. Make sure that your content is easily scannable. Break up your pages with short paragraphs, bulleted lists, and headings so shoppers can scan to find the information they need.
Learn about digital marketing strategies from the experts at WebFX.
3. Produce click-worthy title tags
More importantly, though, you’ll want to place your primary keyword right at the beginning of your title tag. Searchers tend to read just the first few words of your title, so you want to let them know right away what they’re looking at.
As you optimize title tags, make sure you stay within the character limit. You only have 60 characters for your title tag, so you’ll want to try and stick to title tags that are about 55 characters to give yourself some wiggle room. Otherwise, you risk your tag getting cut off.
4. Craft eye-catching meta descriptions
Meta descriptions play an important role in providing shoppers with information about of your page and getting them to click on your link. Enticing meta descriptions will drive traffic to your online store.
5. Generate user-friendly URLs
6. Enhance your site architecture
As an ecommerce site, you have hundreds of pages on your site. From your category pages to individual product pages, you have a lot of pages to keep organized. When performing SEO for ecommerce sites, it’s essential to have a solid architecture that promotes ease of navigation for your customers.
Ecommerce SEO Summary
As you discovered, the basic idea and definition for what is SEO in ecommerce are optimization strategies that are specifically used for an online store to make it more visible on the search engine results pages.
By putting all of those strategies together, you can rank an ecommerce site for the queries that matter most for the online store or shop.
I’m the creator of SEO Chatter. I’ve been fascinated with SEO since 2005 and have spent most of my waking hours consuming SEO content from the top professionals in this field. My goal is to share the best tips and news about search engine optimization so you can get more traffic to your website.
Local SEO for ecommerce
If you combine your online store with a brick-and-mortar one, you also need to focus on local SEO. Discover how your online and offline stores can support each other to make each other stronger. Write content optimized for your locale and build good landing pages that help you get noticed for searches in your area.
Local SEO plugin by Yoast SEO
To help you start with local SEO, we’ve built a handy tool for WordPress sites: the Local SEO plugin for Yoast SEO. The Yoast SEO add-on for local SEO enables you to make your site more accessible for local searches. For instance, it adds proper business location schema structured data for your shop — even for opening hours and the like. It even helps manage details for multiple locations if you have those. In addition, the Local SEO plugin for WordPress helps you get your details in Google Maps.
Marketing and ecommerce SEO
You can sit and wait for people to show up in your online store, or you can act. While not technically SEO, marketing is still at your disposal — and there’s a lot you can do. We’ve already talked about content marketing, but we’ll also discuss social media, ads, and video marketing.
Social media
Everybody knows social media can do a lot of good when used right. So, use it to your advantage. It won’t help your store rank better, but it can help you get and build an audience. It can function as an extension of ecommerce SEO, and it is a wonderful way of contacting your customers. Social media marketing is essential for your branding — it’s where people can see you and what you do. Make the most of it!
Video marketing
Video is huge, and its growth is nowhere near stopping. Invest in video marketing if you have the budget, or you can do it yourself, of course. Just make sure it looks good and represents your business. We’re not going to dive deep into this, but we’d like to point out some things to look out for.
With video, it’s important to know beforehand what you want to achieve. Do you want to get recognized on YouTube and have your videos rank well there? Then that’s where you should focus your attention as simply adding a few videos to your store won’t help in this situation.
Do you want to produce the best videos on your ecommerce site? Then you need to think about where you want to host these and how to make these click with your audience. Want videos to do well in the organic search results? That’s something else entirely.
Running paid ads
Placing ads (in search engines) is another way to stand out from the crowd. It gives you the option to bid for specific keywords and — depending on your niche — can get you a relatively cheap way to the top of the search results.
Fledgling stores often rely on paid ads to get noticed in the search results. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. But, with paid ads, you must keep paying, or else your stream of customers will dry up. It’s not a sensible strategy to just focus on running paid ads. Combine it with SEO, social media, and content marketing.
Google Shopping feed / Merchant Center
While it is good to focus on getting your products found in Google’s organic search results, most online stores also put effort into Google Shopping. Google helps curious customers find the best products for the best prices in the Shopping section.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Google made it free for merchants to add their products to the Shopping section. Simply sign up for Google Merchant Center, correctly fill in all the required data about your business and follow the guidelines.
There are two listings available: standard and enhanced. For the standard listing, Google can pick up the product structured data you’ve added to your product listings to show your products in the organic search results, Images, Lens, and more.
If you want the enhanced listing, you need to add a valid product data feed to Merchant Center. In addition to the destination listed earlier, this will allow your products to appear on Google Shopping and YouTube. The product feed must contain all the data Google wants for your specific product. Otherwise, your listings won’t appear. Be sure to add great images and links to live product pages. And keep the listing up-to-date, especially the pricing!
Google Merchant Center helps you get your products on Google Search, Shopping and YouTube
Resources:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/ecommerce-seo/
https://www.webfx.com/seo/glossary/what-is-ecommerce-seo/
https://seochatter.com/what-is-ecommerce-seo/
https://yoast.com/ecommerce-seo/
