SEO for Ecommerce: 6 Top Tips for Your Strategy
What is SEO and why should you bother?
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the work of shaping your website around the keywords your customers use, and fixing the technical details behind it, so it ranks higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Google and other search engines send bots to crawl every page on your site. What they find is indexed, then ranked by algorithms that decide which pages appear, and in what order, when someone searches.
The easier you make it for those bots to read your pages and match them to the right keywords, the higher you rank. Higher rankings mean more people see your store, and for an Ecommerce site that is the whole game: more organic traffic, more leads, more conversions, more revenue.
SEO is part technical and part creative. Analysing data matters, but so does how the site looks and feels. User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design carry just as much weight in your rankings.
This LoudCrowd guide covers 6 areas of SEO for Ecommerce that will move your site up the rankings and earn you more organic traffic and sales.
1. Audit your site
Before you change anything, audit your site so you know how it performs today and where the problems are. On an Ecommerce store the usual finds are broken links, duplicate title tags across product variants, missing meta descriptions, slow category pages and products Google has never indexed.
Tools such as Google Search Console, Ahrefs, OnCrawl, SEMrush will crawl your site and flag the errors that are holding your rankings back. Pick the one that fits your budget and the size of your store.
The audit report shows you which parts of the site need fixing first and gives you a starting point for the SEO work ahead.
Do your competitor research now too. Look at the pages that already rank for your target keywords and work out what they are doing that you are not: where their backlinks come from, which content earns them the most traffic. Then copy what works.
2. Conduct keyword research
Google processes around 5.6 billion searches a day.
That is… a lot of search terms.
Keyword research tells you which of those searches are relevant to your products and carry real traffic. That list becomes your content plan.
Here are two ways to find the right keywords for your Ecommerce SEO strategy, and one way to decide where to use them first.
Mind-mapping
Start with the main terms people use to find what you sell. Branch each one into related searches, then repeat: “running shoes” leads to “trail running shoes”, “running shoes for flat feet”, “cheap running shoes”.
Run the list through a keyword tool to see which carry the most value - those are the ones that belong on your site.
You end up with a web of related keywords that attract real traffic. Place them on the right product pages and each page has a better chance of ranking.
Semantic searching
Search engines read keywords in context. Use related terms together on a page and Google understands what the page is about, so it shows up for more of the searches that matter. This is semantic searching.
Google does not rank a page on one keyword alone. Pages that place a high-volume term well and surround it with related terms get better-quality traffic. That is why the mind-map is worth the effort.
Choose which pages to prioritise
Ecommerce sites have hundreds or thousands of pages, and optimising all of them at once is not realistic. Every page should get there eventually, but start with the ones that make you money.
Use Google Analytics’ Ecommerce tracking to find your highest-revenue pages and optimise those first. They already sell; set them up properly and they will sell more. A small lift on a page that brings in orders is worth more than a big lift on one that does not.
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes work that makes your site faster, easier to crawl and clearer to search engines. Here is where to focus.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumbs are the trail of links (Home > Category > Product) that show visitors where they are on your site and let them step back a level without hitting the back button. Search engines favour sites that use them because they make shopping easier.
They also give your store a clear structure that bots can follow, so more of your product pages get crawled and indexed. More indexed pages means more chances to be found.
Clean URL Structure
Your URLs should make sense to a person at a glance, and to a bot too.
The URL is one more clue Google uses to work out what a page is about. A URL that reads /mens/running-shoes tells it far more than /product?id=4821, and helps the page show up for more searches.
Clean URLs also get shared more on social media, which brings in extra traffic for free.
Structured Data Markup
Schema markup tells search engines what kind of page they are looking at, so a product page is treated as a product and not confused with an article or blog post. It is not a direct ranking factor, but it puts your products in front of more relevant searches, and that traffic converts better.
It also earns you “rich results”: listings that show the product image, description, price and reviews right on the results page. Those listings take up more space and get more clicks than a plain blue link.
Canonicalisation
A canonical tag is a line of code that tells search engines which version of a page is the main one. Sell a t-shirt in several colours and you probably have a URL for each. You want Google to rank the master product page, not the one for the blue version.
Canonicalisation makes sure the master page is the one that ranks, and that every link pointing at any of the variations counts towards it rather than being split across duplicates.
Site Speed
Speed matters more than most store owners think. Search engines want to send people to sites that load quickly, so a slow site gets pushed down.
If your Ecommerce site takes more than three seconds to load, 40% of visitors will leave before the page finishes loading. Stack that on top of an average bounce rate of around 50% and you are paying to bring in people who never see a product.
Compressing images, minifying code, lazy loading and the right plugins will all shave seconds off. Test with Google’s PageSpeed Insights before and after each change so you can see what it bought you. LoudCrowd’s guide to website speed walks through each one.
4. On-page optimisation
On-page SEO is everything on the page itself, code and content, that you can change to rank higher. These are the on-page factors that matter most for an Ecommerce store.
Title Tags
Title tags (also called meta titles or HTML titles) are the blue headlines on a results page that people click to reach your site.
They tell both people and bots what the page is for, so they need to match what is on it. A good title tag does two jobs at once: it satisfies the algorithm and it makes a shopper want to click.
On product pages, put the search term at the front of the tag. On your home page, lead with your brand name. Keep the whole thing under about 60 characters so Google does not cut it off.
Power Words
Power words make a title tag more clickable. They come in two types: seductive power words and emotional power words.
Seductive power words push people to click and buy. For Ecommerce sites that means “Free”, “New” and “How to”. Emotional power words spark curiosity, which also gets the click.
H-Tags
H-tags mark text as a heading so bots know how the page is structured. H1 is the page title, H2s introduce each section, and H3s and below break those sections down further.
Clear headings let shoppers scan a page and find what they came for. That keeps them on the site, and since search engines notice a high bounce rate and rank you lower for it, good headings protect your rankings too.
Image Alt Text
Alt text is a short written description of an image. Bots use it to understand what the picture shows, and screen readers use it for visually impaired visitors. An image without alt text is invisible to a search engine - it may as well not be on the page.
Give every product image alt text and describe what is actually in the picture. “Navy men’s waterproof running jacket, front view” does a job; “IMG_4821” does nothing.
5. Off-page optimisation
Off-page SEO is everything that happens away from your site but still affects how it ranks. These are the methods that work.
Build strong backlinks
A backlink is a link from another website to one of your pages. Search engines treat each one as a vote of confidence: if plenty of sites link to you, you must be worth linking to. The more you have, the higher you rank.
Quality beats quantity. One backlink from a website with a DA of 90 can be worth more than hundreds of links from lower authority sites. Google also gives more weight to links from sites in the same field as yours, so chase relevant links before you chase volume.
Good sources for a store: suppliers and manufacturers who list their stockists, local press, trade publications, and bloggers who review products in your category.
Content Marketing
Your target keywords need a home on the site, and blog posts are the easiest place to put them. Write about the problems your customers are trying to solve with the products you sell, and link to those products from the post.
A running shop might cover how to choose shoes for flat feet, or when to replace a worn pair. Those posts rank for the keywords, and the people who land on them are already looking for what your store offers.
Use Social Media
Social media drives traffic, and it gives every blog post you write a second audience. Write the content once, share it everywhere.
Regular posts put your store in front of people who have never searched for it. Showing products in use builds trust, and trust moves a browser closer to a buyer.
If you sell locally, post in local community groups too. It supports your local SEO and gets your name in front of people nearby who are likely to buy.
6. Consider Buyer Intent
Not everyone who searches is ready to buy. Your site should catch people at every stage, from first look to checkout, and the keywords you choose decide which stage each page speaks to.
Transactional keywords
Transactional keywords carry the strongest intent to buy: “50-inch flat-screen TVs for sale” or “Coffee shops near me”. These searchers have done their research, know what they want and are choosing where to spend.
If you run PPC, sort your keyword list by transactional terms and look for the ones with the least competition and difficulty. Transactional terms are expensive to bid on, so the low-competition ones are where your ad budget goes furthest.
Long tail and short tail keywords
Use both. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific searches; short-tail keywords are the short, broad ones.
Example:
Long tail: “running shoes that are comfortable for long-distance”
Short tail: “running shoes”
Short-tail terms get searched more, so they bring more traffic. Long-tail terms bring less traffic, but a bigger share of it converts.
Someone searching “running shoes” is at the top of the funnel, still working out what they want. Someone searching “running shoes that are comfortable for long-distance” is at the bottom, ready to buy. Write your product descriptions to catch both.
How can LoudCrowd help you with Ecommerce SEO?
LoudCrowd builds Ecommerce SEO strategies for businesses that trade locally and nationally. You get a named consultant, prices published up front (from £497 a month plus VAT) and a plan judged on revenue, not rankings for their own sake.
Get in touch for a free website audit and we will show you where the quickest wins are.