Ecommerce Guide Overview

An ecommerce website allows businesses to sell physical goods, services, and digital products directly to their customers over the Internet rather than at a physical, brick-and-mortar location or store. With an ecommerce site, businesses can process orders, take payments, manage their shipping and logistics as well as provide customer service.

For businesses with an ecommerce website that are looking to increase traffic, attract more customers, and acquire more revenue, SEO can help them reach their audience effectively with the right strategy.

Here we explain what ecommerce SEO is, how it works, why SEO is important for e-commerce, and best practices that will help you with your store in search engines.

Table of Contents

❓ Firstly, What is SEO for E-commerce?

✅ Why is ecommerce SEO Important?

🔧 Key Components for a Successful Ecommerce SEO Strategy

✉️ Contacting Ecommerce Specialists

Firstly, What is SEO for Ecommerce?

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the method used to make your website more visible and rank better on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Ecommerce SEO is different from a standard content-heavy site. The reason is, that you don’t want to bombard customers with loads of content, you want to structure your collections and product pages in a way that pushes products and product imagery as high up the page(s) as possible in order to help convert more customers into sales.

Here are some of the tasks associated with ecommerce SEO:

  • Performing keyword research
  • Improve the site’s structure
  • Optimise on-page SEO elements > Read our on-site SEO tips.
  • Creating quality content
  • Building backlinks from other reputable websites
  • Improving user experience – have you heard of Core Web Vitals?
  • Fast loading times
  • and much, much more!

Why is Ecommerce SEO Important?

Business owners often have so much to think about daily that make things like SEO fall by the wayside. Not prioritising your online strategy can lead to gradual declines in traffic, rankings, revenue, and overall brand awareness.

Here are just some of the reasons why SEO matters for ecommerce;

New Customers

Improved SEO can lead to your website appearing more in search results, allowing more people and potential customers to discover your brand.

Increased Sales

When a potential customer finds your website or products in search, they will then often take the time to check them out, browse your website, and decide if it is a good fit or suitable for what they need. By ranking higher in search results for relevant keywords, you attract leads that are more likely to convert into sales for your business.

Product Visibility

For sites that sell goods, ecommerce SEO helps to increase the visibility of your products which means that you are more likely to be found by potential customers actively searching for products that your business offers.

Cost Effective

SEO for ecommerce sites is very affordable and cost-effective, especially when compared to other online marketing channels such as paid ads. Optimising your website helps to draw in valuable organic traffic that is visible 24/7, compared to paid activity, where you will have to have a budget in order to stay visible.

Improved Customer Experience

By investing in ecommerce SEO and optimising your website, the overall user experience will be greatly improved throughout and a more positive on-site experience leads to a positive association with your brand, more time on site, increased conversions and repeat sales.

Builds Trust

Users of Search Engines are more likely to trust organic search results than they are paid ads. Ranking higher in the results pages of the search engine helps to build trust and credibility for your brand.

Key Components for a Successful Ecommerce SEO Strategy

Here are some search engine optimisation best practices to help increase your online store’s visibility and boost sales.

Finding and Using the Right Keywords

This is the process of finding out which relevant words and phrases people are using to search for relevant products online. These keywords will then be used to optimise various pages of your site so that you appear higher in organic search for those terms and generate more traffic.

Useful and Informative Content

Arguably one of the most important aspects of SEO for any site is to create unique, high-quality, helpful content. Make sure that the content you create for each page;

  • Matches the search intent of the keywords used
  • Uses appropriate language that is simple and easy to understand.
  • Isn’t too technical for the audience and explains everything properly
  • Incorporates relevant search terms in the body of text as well as URL, headers, meta descriptions, and meta titles.
  • Is formatted in a way that makes it visually appealing and suitable for skim reading with things like page breaks, headers, bullet lists, etc.

Making Sure Your Ecommerce Site is Technically Sound

Improve your site’s architecture by optimising the technical aspects which affect SEO such as – page speed, HTTPS, indexation, XML sitemap, and mobile friendliness. Doing so helps Google crawl all product pages, makes it easier for users to find products, and transfers link equity throughout the site to improve rankings.

Source: Statista

The User Experience On Your Website Matters

One of the key ranking factors for Google is user experience and they leverage user statistics to determine which sites will rank in which order on their search engine.

If a website takes a long time to load or has a high bounce rate for example, then this can negatively impact user experience and in turn rankings.

Optimising your site can help to provide a better experience for your audience and if Google sees this then rankings can go up, more people see and visit your site, and sales increase.

The Hardest Part of SEO, Building / Acquiring Links

A very important ranking factor for Google is backlinks which link to your site from other sites. Search engines view backlinks as an endorsement that helps to improve trust and authority which can significantly boost traffic. This is why having valuable, credible backlinks to your site should be a crucial part of any ecommerce SEO strategy.

Here are some tips for successful link building;

  • Create engaging content that can get other sites to link to your page
  • Claim any unlinked mentions where your brand or product has been mentioned online without a link
  • Perform a backlink gap analysis which can show you which websites link to your competitors but not your site. This allows you to analyse links and reach out to see if they would like to link to some of your great content.
  • If you are a retailer or seller, then be sure to ask suppliers to add your link to the relevant site.

Contacting Ecommerce Specialists

Our team of ecommerce specialists are on hand should you need any assistance in optimising, growing or creating an ecommerce store. Get in touch with us today and start maximising your store’s potential today.