SEO for ECommerce websites is an essential part of generating new customers and having a repeat and loyal customer base too. With a study finding 39% of all ECommerce website traffic comes from online searchers, it is therefore important to have a strong ECommerce SEO strategy for your business. Often visitors head to Google or search engines, rather than putting a brand or company into the URL.
In our blog post we will look at why SEO is important for E Commerce websites and key areas to look at when reviewing your plan of action, this includes having a high domain authority, site speed, keyword research and how that can differ for an ECommerce website rather than a service based website.
First of all we will look at what we mean when referring to SEO and why it can have such an impact on your level of visitors, gaining the right high quality visitors and conversion rates on your Ecommerce website.
What are SEO rankings?
When we talk about SEO this stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It refers to where your web pages on your site rank on search engines when visitors enter a search query. Search engines will show the websites it believes to be the most trustworthy, authoritative and relevant to meet the answer to the search query.
It is important to search engines, such as Google which is the market leader, that they show relevant and user-friendly results to visitors. If visitors weren’t finding quickly the answer to their problem or question, they could be drawn to use a different search engine or use the search engine less which they do not want. Their aim is to give visitors a positive user-friendly experience.
Investing time and effort into your tactics and strategy for your online store can improve the level of organic traffic your website receives. The reason being is ranking higher in the search results and for the right search queries which have a high buyer intent, naturally should lead to higher volume and higher quality leads, ultimately resulting in higher conversions.
ECommerce SEO is essential because studies found that 95% of people do not go beyond the first page of search results. Therefore an E-Commerce site needs to have an impactful ECommerce SEO campaign to ensure they have a high ranking for their relevant keywords.
Keyword Research
A ranking factor that plays huge importance are the keywords used across your ECommerce site for pages on your site, such as product and category pages. In order to do this, it is worth creating an ECommerce SEO Checklist of keywords you want to target from your keyword research.
When looking at your ECommerce keyword research, it is worth noting that you will be looking for a mixture of keywords. An initial aim is to target keywords which has a high search volume as this will likely lead to more potential customers visiting your website. There are various ECommerce SEO tools available which can help with this initial keyword research.
However not all visitors have a high buyer intent. Therefore when looking at keyword ideas, you also need to aim for keywords which will have a high intent too, as well as a high enough search volume. Naturally you will want to consider if there is high competition for those keywords too when doing your keyword research, to understand fully the keyword difficulty.
In an ideal world you want to target keywords with easier keyword difficulty, with lower competition and high search volume and high intent. This doesn’t mean to rule out though keywords with low search volume. There can be cases where the more specific keywords whilst may have smaller volume, they can have more relevant traffic so could lead to a strong conversion and also may have lower competition.
Keywords for ECommerce Websites
When it comes to a ECommerce website there can be differences in the keywords you would want to target when looking at keyword research for your Ecommerce product pages or category page for example. When search for something you are ready to buy when entering a Google search or on other search engines, it could be something like ‘Womens waterproof raincoat black’.
The search above are called commercial keywords. It shows there is buyer intent. Whereas informational keywords usually suit best to content heavy sites or for online stores, best featured within blogs.
An example of informational keywords in comparison to above, would be ‘How to choose the best waterproof raincoat’. Informational keywords are still important for ECommerce sites because they can help to built trust and authority both with the reader and when Google is ranking your site content.
Other factors to consider include geo-targeting keywords for local SEO for your ECommerce site. This refers to when a Google search refers to a location or ‘near me’. This can be important if looking to drive more traffic to your site through the search engine results pages to get them to visit a bricks and mortar store. Google found that 50% of people that do a local search visit within one day. So it isn’t an opportunity to be missed if relevant to your business.
Long tail keywords can often have lower competition due to being more specific keywords and therefore can lead to higher conversion. Long tail keywords are usually 3-4 words like the example above ‘Womens waterproof raincoat black’.
As you can see it is quite specific, therefore further along the sales funnel and higher intent to convert. If the search was ‘raincoats’ this search query is likely early on in the discovery of what they exactly are looking for, the search is still quite broad.
Keyword Factors
Once you have established the keywords you wish to target for your Ecommerce site and the relevant pages. There are various parts where they are important to be used to help your SEO efforts, this includes:
Title tags, meta description and meta tags: all important to include relevant keywords
URL: do not use the default URL, tailor this to suit the keywords and keep it short
Alt Text: This refers to the name given to product images. Google needs this information to understand its relevance for search queries so it knows where and why to rank it.
Google and other search engines are intelligent and can spot keyword stuffing a mile away, Google understand when this is happening and it will likely work against your ranking. It is essential to also avoid where possible using duplicate content, your product pages and category pages should use unique and relevant information. If they have thin content which means little information this can impact your ranking in Google searches.
To improve your content which can seem tricky for ECommerce sites, there are factors which can help such as including detailed product descriptions and reviews also help on product pages on your site.
Product descriptions which are in-depth don’t just benefit your page SEO, but also can help visitors to your site decide if the product is right for them. So it can be beneficial on more than one level.
Site Structure
Search engine rankings are not just impacted by the ability to use keywords effectively. Other factors come into play which will impact your domain authority and trustworthiness. This includes your Ecommerce site architecture.
To have successful site structure for ECommerce sites is to ensure it is simple to navigate and also scalable as your business expands and grows. To be more specific, it is viewed that visitors to your ECommerce site should be able to find what they need within just a few clicks.
The homepage as it is the most visited page will hold the highest domain authority, and that will weaken the further away a visitor goes from the homepage. Therefore the site architecture should mean the answer can be found quickly on the Ecommerce stores.
As part of the page SEO for ECommerce it should be easy to navigate around the website for example between product pages or internal links could be included to other relevant pages.
The longer you can have a visitor on site, it can lead to building increased trust in the eyes of search engines for their organic search and give you more chance to solve a visitors problem and help them find what they need.
Other SEO Tools
There are other factors which play an impact in the search traffic as there are many ways in which you can improve your ECommerce SEO Strategy. Other elements which also play a factor for includes Technical SEO.
For example, if ECommerce sites have a slow load time this directly impacts your ranking on Google search console negatively. The same applies for if your ECommerce site is not mobile and device friendly. It needs to be easily useable across all devices, not just on desktop.
Having a user friendly experience as we mentioned above is important to Google. Therefore if page speed is slow and not easy to use on mobile and other devices, that will have a negative impact and could dampen your other efforts made on your ECommerce site.
Other ways to help improve your domain authority with Google is link building, such as firstly ensuring to address any broken links. Also including relevant internal links on product pages within rich snippets of information can make a difference.
Along with relevant back links such as from press releases, being included on credible industry related resource pages and guest posts with industry experts all helps your SEO efforts positively.
How Can We Help?
We hope our blog post has been useful to see the importance of SEO for ECommerce sites and why it is essential to have an impactful strategy in place. In doing so it can increase your level of traffic to your ECommerce site.
With that traffic being high quality visitors with higher buyer intent, giving your ECommerce website in turn improved conversions from both new and returning customers.
At 1PCS Creative we are experienced in delivering effective SEO for ECommerce sites across various industries and sectors. Please feel free to get in touch to see how we can help.
Ben Webster
Creative director at 1PCS. Addicted to design, SEO, pizza and helping companies big and small succeed online.