Ecommerce SEO: How to drive more online sales
ECommerce SEO: How to drive more online sales
When it comes to eCommerce stores, you can implement multiple marketing strategies. One of those strategies is paid advertising that can give you a revenue boost. But its results are short-term and it requires constant funding.
Ecommerce SEO is the only marketing channel for an online store that promises long-term ROI. You can start implementing it with zero funding and its results keep growing over time.
In this guide, I will discuss how you can implement eCommerce SEO properly to your online store, and drive more organic traffic.
But before that, let’s discuss:
What is eCommerce SEO and why does it matter?
Ecommerce SEO is the process of optimizing eCommerce websites (that are geared towards buying and selling products over the internet) in order to get more traffic from organic searches.
Let’s take a look at some statistics that show its importance.
- 44% of people use search engines to gain information about a product (nChannel).
- Organic searches are responsible for 37.5% traffic to eCommerce websites (SEMrush).
- 6% of online shoppers order through organic search results (Businessinsider).
These statistics show with little effort and no money, SEO can help you get plenty of sales for your online business.
Now that we know how important eCommerce SEO is, let’s discuss 5 steps you can take to implement it properly to your online store.
5 steps to implement eCommerce SEO Kung-Fu
Step #1: Perform thorough keyword research
Any type of content marketing campaign should start from keyword research.
And when it comes to eCommerce SEO, its importance doubles. The reason lies in the fact that choosing the wrong keywords means you are going after the wrong customers. Those customers are not interested in your products.
So, never ignore keyword research.
These are a few steps to finding great keywords.
Generating keyword ideas: Use Amazon Suggest, Wikipedia, and your competitors’ websites to get keyword ideas that are best for your business.
Deciding on the keywords: From the above step, you find great keyword ideas. Put those keywords one by one in a keyword research tool like SEMrush and note down the keyword data. Keep these 3 things in mind when deciding which keywords to target in your content:
- Volume: There’s no definite search volume to go after in eCommerce. Keeping it between 500–5000 searches per month is a good idea especially if you have a new online store.
- Keyword fits your website: No matter how good your keyword appears to be, never target it if it’s not relevant to your products.
- Cost per Click: You want to go after the keywords that people are willing to spend their money on. After all, you are running an online store, not an informational blog.
Step #2: Optimize for on-page SEO
You have a great list of keywords. Now you should focus on optimizing your products and category pages. Best practices are:
- Include your target keyword in the title tag.
- Use copywriting techniques in the title and description tags to get more clicks. For example, you can use words like “Limited Offer!” or “X% OFF.”
- Write 1000+ words product descriptions that tell both the readers and search engines about your product. Sometimes products are so similar that you can’t write long descriptions for all products. In that case, write long descriptions for the most important pages.
- Sprinkle your target keyword 4 to 5 times in the descriptions.
Step #3: Optimize for technical SEO
Perform a site audit using SEMrush. Most common types of technical SEO issues found in eCommerce sites are:
Too many pages: This can affect your website’s SEO. In eCommerce websites, only a few pages generate the most sales. So, delete or noindex the pages that bring you zero traffic (after checking Google Analytics).
Thin content: Content that is automatically generated or provides no value to users can get you a Google penalty. The best practice is to write manual content that helps users better understand your product.
Site speed: Low site speed always puts off website visitors especially if they are in the mood of buying. To improve site speed, shrink the images’ size and upgrade your hosting.
Step #4: Start blogging
You have found great keywords using the techniques mentioned in step #1.
But there will be only a few of those keywords that you can use on your products and category pages. And you want to avoid keyword stuffing at all costs. What should you do then?
Start creating blog posts around those keywords that you can’t target on your main pages. In other words, you should start giving people information about your products. They will start to see you as an authority and eventually, buy from you.
Step #5: Build Links for eCommerce SEO
Once you have started creating valuable blog posts, start building links from authoritative resources. You want to avoid low-quality links as if you would avoid keyword stuffing in your content.
A few strategies to build high-quality links:
- Write guest posts on other blogs.
- Collaborate with other bloggers to do case studies.
- Offer other websites written testimonials.
- Find broken links on authority websites and email them to link to your content instead of the broken links.
Bonus Step: Local SEO
Optimize your website for local SEO if you own a brick and mortar business. Optimizing for local SEO increases your chances of people finding products in their own area.
Create content according to the local searches. For example, if you sell shoes in Omaha, optimize your content around all the different ways a person can search for shoes in Omaha.
Provide your accurate [NAP+W] information in your Google My Business Listing. [NAP+W] is the abbreviation for name, address, phone number, and website. This way you can come up in the results for the “near me” searches.
Now it’s your turn
Some websites offer a handful of services and they put so much effort into SEO to get more target traffic.
Now imagine if your whole website is full of products, how much effort do you need to put into SEO to get more target traffic and sales?
That’s why we have dedicated this entire article to eCommerce SEO so that you can grow your online presence.
So, have you decided to implement an eCommerce SEO strategy for your online store?
Or do you have an eCommerce story to share?
Let me know in the comments.
