ECommerce SEO seems like an intimidating prospect., however if done well it can be the backbone of a truly lucrative campaign.
We’ve worked on numerous campaigns in our time and we see the same issues again and again. Fortunately, we’re here to share our tips with you – all based on learned experience. So, here’s how to optimise your eCommerce site for SEO.
Do Proper Keyword Research to Optimise your eCommerce SEO
If you are a newbie, you have probably heard about the importance of keyword research. It is essential to do keyword research for your eCommerce website. You, however, need to search for buyer intent keywords.
Targeting buyer intent keywords can help increase the conversion rate of your eCommerce site. You must search for the phrases that buyers use when they want to buy. If you understand your target audience, it can make it easy to pick buyer intent keywords.
Once you find the best buyer intent keywords, you can use them to optimize your eCommerce website. For instance, you can add these phrases to the metadata of your web pages, product descriptions, and even your product names.
Here are some of the best keyword research tools:
- Keyword Sheeter
- Answer the Public
- Ubersuggest
- Ahrefs Keyword Generator
- Google Search Suggestions
- Google Trends
Enter the phrase or keyword into these tools. The tool spits outs related phrases and keywords. People type these phrases and keywords on the search bar. These tools can even help you know the number of people searching for these terms. You can also use these tools to know the keyword difficulty of these keywords.
Read our keyword research guide here.
Optimize Your Ecommerce SEO
Do not focus too much on the technical things of your eCommerce website. It is much better to optimize your web pages and product pages for your targeted keywords.
Here are the best tips for picking the right keywords for your website:
What is Your Target Audience?
If you know your target audience, you are more likely to know the problems of your target audience. You can create products to help solve these problems.
Understanding your target audience can also help you pick the right keywords. You will know the type of phrases that your target audience searches for on the search engine. If you can understand how your customers discover products, you can pick the right keywords.
What is Your Keyword Intent?
There are both commercial keywords and informational keywords. If you search for these keywords, you get different search results.
For instance, “how to grow flowers” is an informational keyword, and “boots for men in New York” is a commercial keyword. It is essential to understand keyword intent before picking it. It is better to select commercial keywords for your eCommerce site.
What is the Keyword Difficulty?
Keywords have different levels of competition on the search engine. You must check the keyword difficulty before choosing your keywords.
Short keywords have high monthly searches. However, they are very competitive. It is hard to rank for short keywords. Long keywords, on other hand, have low monthly searches. It is, however, easy to rank for the long keywords.
It is best to use keyword research tools and data to create your eCommerce SEO campaign. For instance, you can use Google Keyword Planner to get keywords for free. This free keyword tool can help you get bidding estimates, traffic estimates, and keyword ideas.
If you have the money to spend on paid keyword research tools, you can join Semrush or Ahrefs. They provide in-depth insights into the competition, traffic trends, and related keywords.
You can use any keyword research tool to do your research. It is, however, more important to create a plan of action to target more phrases and keywords on your web pages and product pages. You can add related keywords in your product titles, FAQs, category pages, product descriptions, and where necessary.
Create User-Friendly Product Pages
Once you find the best keywords and phrases, you can now work on your product pages. You want to improve the user experience. If your product pages are user-friendly, your conversion rate can increase.
Google ranks high-quality content. It is much better to create useful and relevant content for your product pages. If you can focus on helping your visitors, they are more likely to trust you. And google will trust your eCommerce site. Here’s a good guide to creating trust.
You need to follow the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) guidelines from Google. Create and publish high-quality content. Make sure your content is truthful and informative.
Creating top-notch content can help you rank in the search engines and build your eCommerce brand. However, low-quality content can make it difficult to rank your eCommerce site in the search engines.
Remember, you will accept online payments on your eCommerce website. So, your eCommerce site is in the category of Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) websites. It is, therefore, extremely important to adhere to the EAT guidelines.
How do you make your product pages more user-friendly? What elements can you add to your product pages?
Here is an example from Patagonia on how you can make your product pages more user-friendly:
- Add several photos of your products in different sizes and colors and write short descriptions of the models on these photos.
- Add short video footage of your products in action.
- A description of your product fabric and sustainability and where you source the materials.
- The features of your product, like climate rating, sleeve construction, pocket details, zipper mechanism, and many more.
- Reviews, ratings, and quotes of your product users.
Patagonia creates high-quality content, so Google rewards them with higher rankings. They are more likely to make more money from the free traffic from Google. You can, therefore, check out product pages to get some ideas. You can use these ideas to improve the user experience on your eCommerce website.
Check out our on-page SEO guide here.
Create a User-Friendly Ecommerce Site
It is essential to create a user-friendly website. Your website architecture is very important.
If you can organize your eCommerce site properly, you can improve user experience and improve your eCommerce SEO. Improving user experience can increase your sales.
If people find it hard to navigate your eCommerce website, they are more likely to leave your website immediately. People hate complicated websites.
It is better to organize your site properly to make it easier for your visitors to navigate it. If you are selling shoes on your eCommerce site, you can create three main categories, including sandals, formal, and sneakers. Then, create subcategories and product pages.
It is vital to have a clean, balanced, and predictable website architecture.
In addition, you need to keep the URLs of your product pages short and clean. Short and clean URLs can improve your eCommerce SEO.
The descriptions of your productions can help improve the SEO of your eCommerce site. Do not use unnecessary words in your descriptions. Write brief descriptions. Do not forget to add your keywords and phrases to your product descriptions. Plus, add your keywords to your URLs.
Fix Usability Issues to Aid Search Engine Optimisation
It is easy to purchase products online because of the top eCommerce websites, such as Zappos and Amazon. The top eCommerce websites focus on improving the shopping experience of their customers. Do not use complex shopping processes and confusing elements since they offer a bad shopping experience to your customers.
According to Norman Nielsen Group, around 56% of customers succeed at purchasing a product on the internet.
One of the major ranking factors of Google is user experience. If you can, therefore, fix usability issues on your eCommerce site, you are more likely to get more organic traffic. Increasing your organic traffic can increase your sales.
Here is how to fix usability issues on your eCommerce site:
Session recording tools – You can use them to record the number of your website visitors and know what they do on your eCommerce site.
Quantitative analytics tools – You can use them to know the highest exit pages on your website.
Qualitative analytics tools – Use online feedback forms to ask your website visitors about their experience on your website.
All these tools can help you improve the experience of your visitors on your eCommerce on your website.
Use Structured Data Markup to Improve SEO for eCommerce
Once you improve your product content, you can now add technical features to your eCommerce site. One of the best technical features to add to your eCommerce site is structured data markup.
It can help your potential customers get more product details before they visit your website. It can also help your eCommerce website rank for Rich Snippets. The Rich Snippets are the product details that appear on the first page of Google. Reading the Rich Snippets can help users understand more about the product before visiting the product page.
Review count and star ratings can improve your eCommerce SEO. It is, however, more important to get more clicks from Google. According to the Search Engine Journal, people are less likely to check out products if they have under 4-stars. It is, therefore, more important to get over 4-stars.
How to Add Structured Data Markup?
You can use two ways to show structured data of your products.
Firstly, you can manually add structured data markup to your eCommerce site. If you are savvy, you can add it on your own. You can find a tutorial on Google to help you manually add it to your site. You can just copy and paste the code to save time.
Secondly, you can use an app plugin to add it to your eCommerce site. If you use Shopify, you can find a wide range of structured data apps to add to your store. It is easy to use them since they automatically add structured data to your product pages. It, however, cost money to use these apps.
Check out our full schema guide here.
Build Backlinks to Improve eCommerce SEO
If you want to improve off-page SEO for your eCommerce site, you need to focus on building backlinks. Backlinks can improve your eCommerce site’s search engine rankings.
Backlinks are just links from other websites. They are mostly called inbound links or incoming links. If several websites link to your website, Google is more likely to trust your website. Therefore, you are more likely to get higher search engine rankings.
It is essential to build quality backlinks from high-quality and credible websites. Do not just build backlinks from any website. Google is smart, so it can easily identify poor-quality backlinks. If you build poor-quality backlinks, Google is more likely to penalize your website.
Here is how you can build high-quality backlinks for your eCommerce website:
Write high-quality content and post them on other blogs and websites in your niche.
Use influencer marketing to get reviews and shoutouts from popular bloggers and influencers in your niche.
Ask for webmasters to link to your website on their website. You can even exchange links with these webmasters.
List your eCommerce website on the top listing websites and directories.
Create Helpful Content
Google focuses on ranking high-quality content. It is, therefore, beneficial to create helpful content. If you can create high-quality content, you are helping Google provide the best content on the internet. You, however, need to consider the needs and desires of your target audience. You can use your content to solve the problems of your target audience.
For instance, if someone is searching for the name of your product, they are more likely to find your product page on the first page of Google. They can visit your product page to read your content and learn more about the product. If the product can solve their problem, they are more likely to purchase it.
Check out our guide for building links here.
Here is how you can create better content:
Create useful content with a clear conclusion – Use your content to teach your visitors something new. If you can help your readers, you are more likely to increase your sales.
Focus on Quality over Quantity – A lot of businesses focus on creating more content. Do not focus on quantity. It is much better to focus on quality. Creating the best content on the internet can help you rank higher and increase your sales. You can analyze the content of your competitors. Then, create better content.
Write for People – Do not write for the algorithms. It is much better to write for people since people will read your content. Do not even try to use your content to try to manipulate Google’s algorithm.
Fix Broken Links
If you want to improve the user experience, you need to fix broken links. If your website visitors click on your URL and get an error, they are less likely to stay on your website. Broken links can increase your bounce rate. If you detect broken links on your website, you need to fix them immediately. Having broken links on your eCommerce website can ruin your business.
If you’re interested in help with SEO for your Irish website – then contact us today.