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eCommerce SEO 101: An Overview

SEO is a crucial step for you eCommerce business, here are some key considerations you should consider when optimising your site with SEO in mind.

Having the best eCommerce website in the world is only the first step in generating sales - if you want people to be able to find it in Google and other search engines, you’re going to need SEO. And while it’s not possible to teach you all the secrets to SEO success in one article, we can certainly do our best to give you an overview. So here’s a good starting point, covering some of the key considerations for optimising your website, whether you’re tackling SEO for your eCommerce website yourself, or have hired a professional: eCommerce SEO 101.

Why do SEO for your eCommerce website in the first place?

Well, the main reason to do SEO for eCommerce is to increase the number of visitors to your website, with a view to them purchasing your products. You don’t just want any old traffic, you want to reach potential buyers.

It’s certainly true that other marketing channels are available: email, affiliates, PPC or even offline such as TV or billboard advertising. But the beauty of SEO is that you reach people when they’re actively looking for a product like yours - they’re already warmed up to buy from you.

In addition to this, SEO is “always on” and it’s “owned media” - meaning you’re generating traffic from your own website, rather than running campaigns which stop when you stop paying. Because of this, SEO tends to generate the best ROI of any channel, because there’s no ongoing “cost-per-click” - beyond what you may be paying an eCommerce SEO agency or eCommerce SEO consultant to help you.

In addition to this, SEO drives nearly 10 times more traffic than PPC and can support every stage of the buying process from research and consideration, through to purchasing and brand loyalty. However, it is a slow, cumulative process with lots of elements to consider, so paid channels are better if you need an instant hit of traffic, while your organic traffic builds up.

The Building Blocks of eCommerce SEO

When we look at eCommerce SEO services, they need to cover three basic areas: Technical SEO, Content and On-Page SEO and finally Off-Page: Links and Mentions. You can think of these as a pyramid, which was the classic diagram used in the industry leading Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which our SEO Director used to get started 15 years ago! The pyramid has been updated a little since then, but it’s still basically the same - every eCommerce SEO strategy needs to start at the bottom and build upwards for the best chance of success.

The Building blocks of SEO: Basic SEO Pyramid

Technical SEO for eCommerce

This is the foundation of SEO as it concerns whether search engines can access your website to “crawl” and “index” it. Crawling is when the search engine “robots” (sometimes called “spiders”) visit your website, read the page they’ve landed on and follow links to the other pages on your site to do the same. Once they’ve discovered the pages on your website, they can then “index” them, which means to keep them in their records to return them for relevant queries when people search. Whew!

The key aims of technical SEO are to ensure that you have no blocks in place, that search engines can actually “see” your content and to make sure they can get to all the pages on your site via links.

An eCommerce technical SEO checklist might include:

  • Does the website display for Search Engines, with links between pages in HTML? (Search engines can only “see” textual content, so if your site uses a lot of images and JavaScript, you need to have solutions in place)
  • Is it mobile-friendly? Google is going to stop indexing websites which don’t work on mobiles from July 2024 
  • Are all pages linked to? Ensure all pages are linked and none are “orphaned” - you can use an HTML sitemap as a failsafe
  • Create an XML sitemap This is a technical file which gives Google a plan of the pages of your site. You submit this to:
  • Search Console: This allows you to submit your website to Google; adding the XML sitemap will give Google a direct idea of which pages to index. Bing also has its own version: Webmaster Tools
  • Use canonical tags: This relates to the topic of duplicate content, which is a whole post in itself. But, essentially, each page should have its own canonical tag which contains its own URL.
  • Manage duplicate content: This can be a tricky problem for eCommerce websites. The aim with SEO is that all pages should be unique, but in cases where there are known duplicates, such as on search results or similar-but-different category pages, you need to indicate which is the original and prevent duplicates from competing. There’s a deeper dive into eCommerce SEO duplicate content here.
  • Manage filters and faceted navigation: If you’re running an eCommerce site or have a love of online shopping, you’ll know that filters and facets help to refine the products you’re looking at - by colour, size, style, price, you name it! The problem is, this creates a lot of thin and duplicate content, by changing the URL but only rearranging the products on offer, thereby not changing the content very much. It’s important to keep Google focused on your main category pages and not the variations generated by filters - this can be done with a mix of canonical tags, robots noindex tags, robots.txt and more. Read more here.
  • Site speed: This is a minor but actively promoted signal that Google uses to rank websites - the faster the better. Speedy sites also persuade people to buy more.

Content and On-Page SEO for eCommerce

Although having the technical set-up in place removes the first stumbling blocks, the next step is the most crucial: actually having great content on site and adding “mark-up” (aka labels and explanations in the code). The content on site needs to be high quality and perfectly targeted to your human audience - but just explained and made easier to understand for your search engine readers too.

Key pointers for an on-page eCommerce SEO checklist:

  • Keyword research: Look at GoogleAds Keyword Planner or SEMRush to understand the relevant terms users are typing into search engines.
  • Audience research: Understand what your users need and aim to provide the answers/products they’re looking for.
  • Create rich content:  Key pages for eCommerce sites are PDPs (product detail pages), , category pages (or PLP, product listing pages), home and about pages:
  1. Product pages need to give detailed overviews and descriptions, along with all the specifications relevant to the product (size, colour, dimensions, materials). These usually target the name of the product only - such as “Blue Suede Shoes”. Reviews also form part of the important copy on product pages. Imagery is also an important part of the content which will help to sell your products.

  2. Category pages often get overlooked when companies are starting out in eCommerce SEO, but they are true pillars of the website, which may attract more search volume and stay constant while products change. Usually, a few short paragraphs of copy are sufficient. These would target the name of the category, such as “Mens Shoes”.

  3. Home and About pages are crucial for positioning your brand and demonstrating your trustworthiness. You want to use your copy to explain to users who you are, what you sell and why they should buy from you - using as much “proof” as you can in the form of reviews, testimonials, awards and more.
  • Page Titles and Meta Descriptions: Implement hand-written page titles and meta descriptions, unique for each page and within character limits. Include the keywords you are targeting and any specific brand messages, features and benefits you want to convey.
  • Avoid the overuse of AI for content generation: While it can be tempting to look at ways of completely automating content, particularly for enterprise-level websites with tens of thousands of products, letting the copy robots run rampant is going to do you more harm than good. AI can’t be trusted to create good content alone and search engines are on the lookout to downgrade sites which overly rely on it. Human-crafted copy with real thought for your users is what will generate the best rankings and sales. You can supplement this with dynamically generated elements and perhaps some AI, but you need to give everything close human approval and final touches.

Other mark-up elements include:

  • Heading Tags: Ensure each page has one keyword rich <h1> which describes the focus of the page, using <h2> tags in a secondary capacity.
  • Image Alt Tags: Implement hand-written alternative text for all the website’s images, for screen readers and search engines alike.
  • Structured Data: Make use of Schema markup for website features. On eCommerce websites, there are specific Product schemas you can use.
  • Social Media Mark-Up: Implement Twitter Cards and Open Graph tags for Facebook, LinkedIn and more. 

Off-Page SEO for eCommerce: Links and Mentions

Once you have a great, well-built website with all the right technical settings, populated with content that’s perfect for your users and marked up so search engines can understand it, then it’s time to look beyond your own website. Now comes the step of building the reputation of your brand and website across the web and even offline.

In the age of AI, where almost anyone with the right prompts can claim to be an expert, search engines reward high authority, original, quality websites more than ever. Unfortunately, this can often mean that the biggest brands with the longest reputations (and usually the biggest budgets) get rewarded more than anyone else. However, newer or smaller players can still build their online footprint and authority - and if you have outstanding products, which people really want, you’ve won half the battle.

A link or mention on another high authority website is a vote for the trustworthiness of your website and builds its authority. The higher your authority, the higher your rankings are likely to be.

The starting points for eCommerce link building:

  • Take ownership of profiles: Claim relevant social media channels, Google Business Profiles, Bing Places for Business, etc.
  • Register in local and industry directories: Look for the highest quality local and industry directories only.
  • Request a link from business contacts: If you have great relationships with buyers or suppliers, seek a link from them.
  • Understand where your competitors get links: You can use tools from SEMRush, Ahrefs or Moz to look at competitor backlink profiles for inspiration.
  • Create brilliant content that people want to link to naturally: If you can put a blogging strategy in place to create content which is truly helpful and original, it will attract links by itself.
  • Provide resources for other websites:  To get a feature on another website you might want to partner with them to create great, relevant content they can publish in return for a link.
  • Look to PR and digital PR: Supplying information for news stories, features and getting the word out about the great work you are doing yourself is another way to get high authority links.

All of the ideas and checklist points here are starting points - there’s more that you can do and SEO is always evolving. Plus, every website and business is unique, with its specific setup, challenges, strengths and characteristics. Getting started, staying consistent, seeing what works and optimising towards it is the way to go with eCommerce SEO - like all SEO.

How to Put This All Together into One eCommerce SEO Strategy?

I guess it can seem like a lot when you lay it all out - and it kind of is! But as with any big project, the secret is breaking it down into projects and working through them, one bite at a time! Here’s how we tackle things as an eCommerce SEO company.

If we are building a brand new eCommerce website, it’s important to start with keyword research and content planning, to inform the architecture of the website, ensure we have pages dedicated to all important keywords and get SEO baked into the site from day one. We can then build the technical SEO with the right set-up from the get-go.

If we are working on an established website, it’s usually best to start with a technical and on-page audit, as this can fix errors which may be quick wins. We can then work on the content and eventually off page once the health of the technical SEO is restored.

It’s important to have visibility on changes, which is why monthly reporting and calls to chat through progress are recommended, along with overall result and strategy reviews at least biannually. Communication is key and optimisation is always ongoing.

If you would like to learn more about SEO, ensure you have it from the start on your new website or get an eCommerce SEO audit on your existing site, then don’t hesitate to get in touch. Happy optimising!

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