If you an online business owner? Then you know how important it is to be visible on search engines, specifically on the first page results. By achieving this goal, you can build a strong online presence, gain the trust of your audiences, and ultimately drive more sales. But with so much competition in the digital world, how can you ensure that your e-commerce site stands out? The answer is simple: having a solid ecommerce strategy.
Ecommerce SEO is simply applying SEO best practices for your online store. This may sound very straightforward but a lot is going on in every process. Furthermore, the algorithm is updated from time to time, making things more complex. You should constantly adjust your SEO strategy and monitor each result for you to appear on top of the search results.
This SEO guide is intended to give you an introduction to search engine optimization for e-commerce. Here, we will understand what is e-commerce SEO as quickly and easily as possible. We will also provide an Ecommerce SEO checklist to help your brand gain more visibility online.
Understanding SEO for Ecommerce
When you search for something on Search Engines, you will be taken to the search engine results page (SERP). This page includes 10 organic results that could potentially answer your query.
Now, in Ecommerce SEO, the goal is to bring your online store to the SERP when your target audience your products. It is all about generating organic traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to your website.
Ecommerce SEO is comprised of different practices. It involves optimizing headlines, product descriptions, meta data, and internal link structure. SEO best practices are also applied in the navigational structure of your website not only for the search engine but also for your audiences.
Why is SEO important for Ecommerce?
Having a strong presence online is critical for the Ecommerce industry. In today’s world, different digital marketing strategies can deliver this as result. For instance, social media marketing harness social media to reach more people and convert them into leads. Influencer marketing target the followers of online celebrity. Despite these newer practices, the power of SEO still cannot be ignored.
According to BrightEdge research organic search drives 53.3% of all web traffic. This means that customers are constantly looking for information online.
But being on the search engine is not enough. It is extremely important for you to get your online store as high up in search engine results as you can. A study conducted in 2013, found that only 4.8% of searchers make it to page two of the SERP. What’s more, only 1.1% of searchers go to the third page.
You can imagine how the percentage falls further through the pages. Over time, the number of searchers clicking through to websites from search results has also decreased. So, if you are an online business owner, it’s important to have an SEO strategy that will improve your website’s search ranking.
Ecommerce SEO Checklist: 5 Best Practices for Your Ecommerce Website
Crafting an SEO strategy for your Ecommerce site can be very time-consuming. If you to stay ahead of the competition, you need an ongoing effort, constant checking, and a deep understanding of the latest SEO best practices and trends.
Fortunately, there are some fundamental practices that you can take to improve your website’s visibility online. The following SEO checklist below is a great way to get started. While these steps might be straightforward, they can you avoid common SEO pitfalls and establish the right foundation for success.
1. Target Relevant Keywords
The first step in crafting an SEO strategy for an E-commerce website is to identify those high-value keywords. These keywords are the search terms that searchers potentially use in finding your products or business.
Now, there are different ways to know keywords related to yours. Probably the easiest way is to use keyword research tools. These tools provide keyword suggestions, showcase your ranking, and so much more. If you want to get all these features, you may however need to pay a monthly subscription fee.
For those startups who can’t afford the monthly payment, there are other ways to identify keywords for free. One is through search engine suggestions. You read that right. Search engine, particularly, Google has an autocomplete feature. When you type your search query, Google provides you with relevant queries. Furthermore, when you scroll through the end of the SERP, you’ll find more search queries. These terms can be used as your target keywords as these are actual queries of searchers.
You can also use this practice on marketplaces, like Shopee and Lazada. These websites are great sources of keywords, as the platforms are product-focused. You can easily find keywords that are related to your products.
When searching for keywords, our suggestion is to pick those long-tail forms. The long-tail keywords are longer forms of your main keyword. These are specific and have lower competition. You can expect higher conversion rates if you rank high on these keywords.
2. Site Architecture for E-commerce
The search engine and your audience should know where they are on the site, and how to navigate to other pages. They should be able the right stuff from your online store.
The most effective way to do this is to simplify your site architecture. Your website needs to have a distinct navigation hierarchy, from your homepage to product categories to the products listed within them.
To improve both search engine and user experience, our recommendation is to make every page on your website closer to your homepage. The rule of thumb is to make sure your visitor reach any product or page within three clicks This not only ensures easy navigation but also helps search engine crawl the site faster and easier.
Our suggestion is to make every page of your site closer to your homepage. The rule of thumb for search engines and visitors is to make sure people can reach everything within three clicks. From the homepage, they should only have to make a maximum of three clicks to get to any product on your website. When your site has a clear site structure, you can encourage your user to stay longer on your e-commerce site and engage more with your content.
3. On-page SEO for Ecommerce
If you are using Shopify, then this step will be much easier to take. The Shopify platform has already built-in features to easily set up On-page SEO. Below is your checklist to make sure you set up everything:
- Canonical tags
- Website sitemap.xml and robots.txt
- Social medial linking and sharing options.
- Edit meta data: title tags, meta tags, the meta description (include keywords)
- Edit your URL for blog posts, web pages, products, and collections.
4. Create top-quality content
Having quality content on the website plays a crucial part in Ecommerce SEO. We suggest setting up a specific page on the ecommerce website for blogs.
Blogging is a form of content marketing strategy. It is a powerful marketing strategy that helps your website to target and rank for specific keywords. With consistent quality blogs on your website, you can improve your ecommerce site authority, increase visibility in organic search, and build your reputation online.
You can also use blogs to address your audiences’ concerns related to your industry. By producing high-quality content, you can establish yourself as a trusted source of information. Moreover, you can easily present your product as a solution to your problem.
This not only helps you rank higher SERP but also generates a steady stream of traffic to your website.
5. Link building
Link building is also a critical component of any successful SEO strategy. It is the process of acquiring backlinks (from external sites) to improve site authority, visibility, and ranking potential. Link building is particularly important in ecommerce because it can directly impact the sales and revenue of the online shop.
For a starter, when your ecommerce site receives high-quality backlinks from other reputable websites in your industry, it signals to search engines that your site is a valuable and trustworthy source of information. This, in turn, can improve your search engine rankings and visibility.
Users who click on your links from other sites also mean that they are already interested in your products. This can lead to higher conversion rates for your e-commerce business.
SEO marketing services for E-commerce
The above checklist may help you get started in Ecommerce SEO. But there is so much more about this practice. It’s an ever-evolving field that requires consistent effort. Let Be Global Ecommerce brighten you on the right path.
We have a team of SEO and ecommerce marketing specialists who are dedicated to helping your business succeed online. With their expertise, we can develop and execute SEO marketing strategies that will help your products rank on the first page of Google and other search engines.
