SEO Best Practices for E-Commerce Website Strategy

Smartly incorporate keywords and optimize page content across devices to drive more traffic and more sales.

Every hour, millions of people search the web for the products and services they need. And most people don't click past the first page of results. As a small business owner researching how to market your business, you've probably come across the term "search engine optimization" or SEO. This is the process of adjusting the content and structure of your website to improve your search rankings, typically on Google, which has by far the largest market share among search engines.

As the owner of an E-Commerce business, you already know that you have enormous competition, all competing for the same customers. If you want to get more customers, people have to be able to find your products and services online even without knowing your business. SEO can help potential customers find you online looking for solutions to their problems or products or services they already know they need.

Creating an effective E-Commerce SEO strategy in your e-commerce and website creation plan improves your traffic, attracts more attention to your business, and generates more income. To get started, you need to know how SEO works. Read on to learn more about E-Commerce SEO best practices for your website.

What is SEO?

E-Commerce SEO is very similar to SEO for any other website. You're trying to show bots crawling the Internet that your web page is the most relevant to a search term. This is how you generate organic traffic (traffic that you don't have to pay for) for your E-Commerce store.

Effective E-Commerce SEO can boost your page to the top of a Google search engine results page (SERP ), right below paid ads and next to sponsored sidebar content, without you paying. nothing; It just requires an investment of time and effort.

When Google and other search engines crawl sites, they consider several factors to determine SEO ranking, including:

• How often are relevant keywords used on your site?
• In what context are those keywords used?
• What level of authority does the content on your site have?
• The quality of your site's links
• How often other sites link back to your page
• What level of authority do those other sites have?

SEO is divided into 2 categories: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. On-page SEO includes elements directly on your website, such as the keywords you use, the sources you link to, the structure of your content, and the format of the page. Off-page SEO involves external elements such as backlinks to your site from other sources. Read our article What is SEO and How Does It Work for more basic information about SEO before continuing.

SEO Best Practices for E-Commerce

Your goal for your site is to combine on-page and off-page E-Commerce SEO to rank as high as possible on the first page of search engine results. Data shows that 67% of clicks go to the top 5 results in the list. One of the easiest parts of on-page E-Commerce SEO to address is your keywords. Check out these E-Commerce SEO tips to improve your rankings and increase web traffic.

Tip 1: Do your homework

E-Commerce SEO keyword research is somewhat different from keyword research for another type of page, such as a blog. E-commerce keywords are oriented towards purchase intention and product descriptions. You are trying to rank in SEO not only in the top search results but also in the top shopping search results.

Use keywords wisely

In 2017, Google released its Panda update. Since then, its algorithm has aimed to move high-quality content to the top of its results, leaving out content packed with keywords designed to take advantage of the system.

If you overload your E-Commerce store page with keywords, even when they don't make sense, you will create a bad user experience (UX) for your customer. Keyword overload indicates low-quality content, and Google's Panda algorithm punishes pages for it by moving them lower in rank.

You want your site to have the best and most valuable results your audience can find for your particular category. And part of that is using the right keywords in the right way: basically, writing like a human being, not like a computer.

Use Google and Amazon suggestions

Autocomplete suggestions from sites like Google or Amazon can be a huge help in finding the right keywords to target. If you sell athletic shoes, for example, try typing “best athletic shoes” or simply “best shoes” into Google to see what suggested searches come up.

Suggested searches for “best shoes” include “best shoes for nurses,” “best shoes for flat feet,” and “best walking shoes.” You can include those keywords in your product descriptions and on the store page where appropriate so that Google crawlers (the bots that search for relevant content on pages) know that your page is a good result for those terms.

Extrapolate that to what your target audience, runners, in this case, will be searching for. You'll want your hypothetical sneaker store to rank well for terms like "best running shoes," "men's running shoes," "women's running shoes," etc.

Tip 2: Target the best keywords

Four factors determine which keywords are most effective to target.

• Volume: How many times is a keyword searched on average? The more searches, the more potential there is to increase traffic to your site
• Competition: How many sites have that same keyword and how common is it? The less competition there is, the more likely you are to rank higher for that term
• Relevance: How closely the keyword relates to your product or service – make sure you only include keywords that fit your product
• Intent: What people are trying to find when they search: For e-commerce SEO, use keywords that people would search for when searching to buy specific items, such as “men's size 42 running shoes”

The sweet spot you should aim for is high search volume, but low to medium search competition. If you choose the keyword “shoes” for your store, it may be relevant to your product, but it generates 5 billion results on Google alone. It is a keyword with very high search competition.

Long-tail keywords, typically 3 to 4 words, greatly reduce reach. The longer the keyword, the more specific it is and the less competition it will have.

You can also try using latent semantic indexing (LSI) keywords to increase your site's search rankings. LSI keywords are terms that are often found together and relate to a broader context. For example, a site that lists the word "apple" along with "Honeycrisp" or "Golden Delicious" would rank for searches about the fruit. A page that used the word "Apple" along with "iTunes", "iOS" and "iMac" would rank searches for the technological brand.

You don't have to do all the work yourself. There are tools you can use to find out which high-ranking keywords are most relevant to your customers. Ubersuggest shows you the best keywords for a domain or phrase in the industry for free. Mozbar can show you keyword competition. If you have a little more budget, you can try a paid tool like SEMrush.

Once you've found the right keywords, use them anywhere they fit naturally and make sense.

• page text
• Product Descriptions
• Your URL
• Headers
• Image Alt Text

Tip 3: Optimize your on-page SEO

The right keywords can take you a long time on your journey to the top of search results, but you'll also want the rest of your on-page E-Commerce SEO to contribute.

In addition to keyword optimization, on-page SEO includes the following elements:

• Mobile Optimization
• Site structure
• Usability
• Internal links

Mobile Optimization

Make sure your site design is mobile-friendly. Your store must respond and adapt to whatever screen size the user uses. They should be able to use all of the site's features equally on both desktop and mobile.

Site structure and usability

You should also structure your store page so that it is easy to search and use. Headings, subheadings, numbered or bulleted lists, and white space make pages easily scannable.

Another user experience best practice is to make sure all pages on your site are within a few clicks of your home page. For e-commerce, people should find the product they are looking for as quickly as possible.

You can do this by organizing products into broad categories and then narrowing them down to more specific categories. For example, your footwear website could divide products into "Men's" and "Women's" and then divide them into categories such as "Sneakers," "Boots," or "Sandals."

E-commerce stores usually have little or "light" content on their pages compared to sites like blogs. They also have to manage content duplication: some products fit into multiple categories and are displayed on multiple pages. To solve this, it is useful to add a canonical tag to the code of certain pages; These tags tell Google which version is master.

Internal links

Internal links increase a site's authority on a topic in the eyes of Google. Internal linking is when you link one page of your website to another. As with keywords, remember not to overuse this technique, as it could penalize you in the same way that keyword overloading would.

For example, if you mention contacting someone at your company for more information, it's natural to link that text to your contact page. If you mention a topic you've already blogged about, you can link to that blog post to get more traffic.

However, too many internal links can dilute your site's authority, so you should only use them when they make sense. Since you can create your anchor text for internal links, it's wise to make each one unique. Duplicate anchor text could make Google crawlers think your page is not legitimate.

Tip 4: Write attractive product descriptions

Having quality product descriptions is key if you want your visitors to convert into paying customers once they reach the product page. Product pages should be written to drive conversions using relevant sales copy and images.

However, your product descriptions should also be optimized for search engines. You've already done the hard part and searched for relevant keywords, so now you need to find a way to include them in product descriptions where possible without reusing the same keywords in different product descriptions so that search engines search engine know which pages to rank for each keyword.

To write compelling product descriptions, consider your customers and what they look for when they visit your product pages. In many cases, they will make for a quality product that solves your problems. For example, someone searching for loose-leaf tea will look for characteristics about where the tea is grown and what flavors are there.

Your product descriptions don't have to be long and shouldn't be. Instead, they should be detailed to help visitors understand the product and convince them to make a purchase.

Tip 5: Write alternative texts for images

Alt text helps search engines understand photos because they can't read them like they could copy them onto a website. Since search engines like Google cannot view images, they need descriptions to understand what an image shows. Alt text provides search engines with the necessary description they need to better understand the content of a page.

Alt text is important for SEO because you can use keywords to describe images and help search engines rank your pages for target keywords. Screen readers also use alternative text to improve the accessibility of a website for the visually impaired. Therefore, you should avoid overloading the alt text with keywords. Instead, write alt text for humans and search engines using your target keywords whenever possible, as long as the alt text still makes sense.

Remember that the goal of Google and other search engines is to help people find relevant content based on their query and search intent. If you insert keywords into your alt text, you'll send the message that you don't care about users and are instead trying to target search engines.

Tip 6: Avoid duplicate content

Duplicate content is content that is repeated in more than one place on the web. Duplicate content may appear on your website or it may be copied from another website and placed on your site. E-commerce websites can sometimes have duplicate content when they reuse product descriptions from another website, especially if they source their products from a manufacturer. However, you should avoid doing so because it can hurt your rankings and prevent you from gaining online visibility.

Instead of duplicating content, create unique content that is engaging and informs and educates your visitors. While rewriting product descriptions or content that another company has already created for you is time-consuming, it's worth it to increase the chances of your web content ranking above your competitors.

You should avoid duplicating content of any kind, not just product descriptions. If you copy blog posts or content that is not yours from another source, search engines may penalize you for it. Ultimately, it's simply not worth the risk of duplicating content on your website, even if you are allowed to use that content for E-Commerce marketing purposes.

Tip 7: Keep URLs short

Complex URLs make it harder for search engines to crawl your site because they can't figure out which pages relate to other pages in your website's hierarchy. Meanwhile, short URLs improve user experience by telling visitors what a website is about before delving too deep. You should include keywords in your URLs, but only when it makes sense. Overloading keyword URLs will do more harm than good, so focus on user experience rather than search engines and you might be surprised by an increase in rankings.

Tip 8: Make sure your website loads quickly

Page speed is another SEO factor to consider. Part of technical SEO, loading time affects the overall performance of your website. For example, if your website loads slowly, you can expect visitors to quickly become impatient and leave the page entirely. While page speed can and will affect your conversions, it can also affect the organic traffic to your website.

Page speed is a direct ranking factor, so improving page speed can help increase rankings and visibility. Page speed reduces bounce rates and increases the number of page views on your website. Of course, you can also improve your conversion rate because visitors won't have to wait for a page to load. Some ways to optimize your website's loading times are to compress images, cache your website, and optimize your website's code to reduce the amount of code it requires to function.

Optimize for higher e-commerce traffic

There are many ways to boost your E-Commerce SEO and maintain the quality of your content. All you have to do is research the best terms for what you offer and build them into your site in a thoughtful way. Next, make sure your site has a solid structure on all its pages so that people have a good user experience. Do this and you'll be well on your way to greater visibility and more online sales.