According to e-commerce statistics, e-commerce sales will hit the $5 trillion mark this year while the numbers will surge to $6 trillion by 2024. It is estimated that the entire ecommerce industry will grow by $11 trillion from 2021 to 2025. As more and more people shop online, the demand for e-commerce stores shot through the roof. 

With lower barriers to entry, more and more businesses started opening their online stores leading to a mushrooming growth in online stores. According to rough estimates, there are around 12 million to 24 million online stores in the world. With millions of online stores veering to attract customers to their stores, this creates cut throat competition.

How can your e-commerce website survive and thrive in such a competitive environment? By mastering the art of E-commerce SEO. If you don’t know how to do SEO for E-commerce websites, then this guide will tell you everything you need to know about succeeding with E-commerce SEO.

Table of Content

What is E-commerce SEO?

Is SEO Important For E-commerce Websites?

What are the Advantages of Doing SEO For E-commerce?

Types of E-commerce SEO

Off Page SEO For E-commerce

SEO For E-Commerce Product Pages

How To Do SEO For E-commerce Websites?

Keyword Research

Content

Product Page Optimization

Page Speed and Mobile Friendliness

URL Structure

Link Building

What is E-commerce SEO?

E-commerce SEO is the process of optimizing your online store to rank higher on search engine results pages. This includes creating product descriptions by naturally inserting the right keywords and attracting backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites. 

The primary purpose for doing SEO for E-commerce is to attract more organic traffic to your online stores through search engines. As a business owner, you want your online business to show up in search results when someone searches with a relevant keyword and E-commerce SEO can help you with that.

Is SEO Important For E-commerce Websites?

Yes, SEO is crucial for E-commerce websites. With a vast majority of people searching for products through search engines, your e-commerce website should be fully optimized to rank higher on SERPs. This allows your product pages to show up in search results when someone searches with a relevant keyword. Without SEO, your e-commerce website will lose out on a major chunk of customers using search engines to search for products.

What are the Advantages of Doing SEO For E-commerce?

Some of the advantages of doing SEO for E-commerce are:

  • Consistent and relevant traffic
  • Increase brand awareness
  • Improves customer experience
  • Builds trust
  • Low customer acquisition cost and higher ROI
  • Boost sales and revenue
  • Remarketing audience targeting

Types of E-commerce SEO

SEO can be divided into two major types

  1. Off page SEO for E-commerce
  2. SEO for E-commerce product pages

Let’s look at each one in more detail.

  1. Off Page SEO For E-commerce

Some of the common off page SEO techniques for E-commerce includes:

  • Social media marketing
  • Link building
  • Guest posting
  • Press release
  • Video marketing
  1. SEO For E-Commerce Product Pages

Here are some do’s and don’ts for doing SEO for E-commerce product pages.

Do’s

  • Write unique meta title and meta description for every product page
  • Optimize meta title and meta descriptions for every product page
  • Use structured data
  • Include customer reviews and ratings
  • Use high quality images and videos

Don’ts

  • Copy and paste product description from manufacturer’s website
  • Ignore call to action
  • Miss out on internal linking opportunities
  • Charge the wrong price
  • Neglect mobile friendliness

How To Do SEO For E-commerce Websites?

Here is an E-commerce SEO checklist that you can follow to optimize your online store for search engine visibility. 

  1. Keyword Research
  2. Content
  3. Product Page Optimization
  4. Page Speed and Mobile Friendliness
  5. URL Structure
  6. Link Building

Let’s look at each one in more detail to give you a better idea about them.

1. Keyword Research

When doing keyword research for your e-commerce website, you need to consider the user intent behind the keyword. Keyword intent can be classified into four major categories:

  • Informational keywords
  • Commercial keywords
  • Transactional keywords
  • Navigational keywords

So, how will you determine the intent behind a particular keyword? There are many ways to do that. You can analyze the SERPs and see what is ranking for that particular keyword. Analyze the paid results at the top of the SERPs for identifying commercial intent of a particular keyword. You can also use Google Auto Suggest and People Also Ask sections to uncover untapped keyword opportunities.

Content

Once you have identified the keywords you need to target, it is time to create content around it. Wondering what type of content you should create for your Ecommerce website? Here are some of the formats you can adopt.

  • How-To articles
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • New product launch announcements
  • Discounts and Deals
  • User generated content
  • A glossary page

Create content for every stage of the buying cycle so whether your prospects are in the awareness, consideration or decision stage, they will find some helpful content on your e-commerce website.

Product Page Optimization

Write descriptive product descriptions which include the right keywords. Don’t forget to add high quality images and videos to make the page more interactive and interesting for buyers. Online shoppers want to see products in action and these images and videos can help you make a great first impression. Include some user testimonials to build trust and add a compelling call to action to persuade users to take the desired action. 

Page Speed and Mobile Friendliness

Online shoppers don’t like to wait. If your e-commerce website takes longer than three seconds to load, most users will abandon your website. With more and more people using their smartphones to access the web and shop online, it is imperative that your e-commerce website is responsive and delivers a great experience on any device.

Here are some of the steps you can take to reduce your ecommerce page load times:

  • Compress images and videos
  • Minify code
  • Reduce the number of redirects and HTTP requests
  • Use a content delivery network
  • Improving your server response time

URL Structure

Your e-commerce website might not have too many pages early on but when you start adding new product pages, this number can grow quickly. This can add to the complexity especially if you don’t have a simple website structure. Use a simple website URL to make it easy for both search engines and users to find the product they are looking for. Use your keyword in the URL and avoid stop words. As a rule of thumb, make your URL as readable and understandable as possible.

Link Building

Once you have done all the hard work, it is time to acquire relevant backlinks from high authority websites in your industry. This will show search engines that your website is credible, which will increase the chances of your e-commerce website to rank on top of search results. Instead of chasing quantity, look for acquiring fewer quality backlinks. A single quality backlinks can trump many low quality backlinks.

How do you optimize your Ecommerce website for search engines? Share your SEO process with us in the comments section below.

November 7, 2022
SEO For E-commerce Websites: The Ultimate Guide To Generate More Sales

SEO For E-commerce Websites: The Ultimate Guide To Generate More Sales

According to e-commerce statistics, e-commerce sales will hit the $5 trillion mark this year while the numbers will surge to $6 trillion by 2024. It is...