Ecommerce continues to play an increasingly significant role in retail, with forecasts indicating it will make up close to a quarter of total global retail sales by 2026. So, if you sell anything, you need an online store AND ensure it’s as visible as possible. To do this, you need SEO.
Understanding the basics of ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO can be defined as “a strategy that helps web retailers rank higher in search engine results.”
Traditional SEO services for most business websites focus on various tasks that help improve the website’s visibility in Google, using blog posts and backlinks to target specific keywords. However, ecommerce site SEO must also consider buyer intent, so the focus turns to product metadata, headings, product descriptions, and traditional SEO tasks.
SEO is essential for any website but doubly crucial for ecommerce sites as it is the primary way to drive traffic to your product pages without using PPC. If you have an ecommerce store and need SEO, you are taking advantage of a massive opportunity.
Conducting keyword research for ecommerce success
Keyword research is the crucial foundation of any SEO strategy, as it helps us to understand what terms your potential customers are using to find the products you are selling and how we can optimise your ecommerce website to help them find you.
The key terms you need to understand when it comes to ecommerce keyword research are:
- Search intent – why is someone searching a specific term? Are they looking to find more information about a product, or do they want to buy?
- Search volume – the average monthly searches for a particular keyword search word or phrase
- Keyword difficulty is a metric that evaluates the difficulty of ranking on the first page for a search term, with a score of 0 to 100.
On-page optimisation strategies for ecommerce websites
Once we have identified the keywords we need to target, we can use them to optimise your product pages for better search results by using them in various ways, such as:
- to optimise product titles and descriptions
- to create SEO-friendly URLs and navigation structure
- in meta tags, headers and alt tags for improved search visibility
We will also look at optimising site speed and mobile responsiveness to improve user experience.
Building a solid internal linking structure
Internal linking is another crucial part of SEO, and it is vital for ecommerce websites as it helps to improve the navigation and user experience on your website, especially if you have a large number of product pages, category pages and informational pages. It can also help search engines discover and crawl all the pages on your site, leading it to rank better on the search engine results pages and bringing in more traffic and customers.
Earning high-quality backlinks for ecommerce websites
We’ve talked about how critical high-quality backlinks are for SEO before, and this is even more so when it comes to ecommerce sites, as not only does it help search engines find new pages on your site, but it also helps them decide which pages should rank higher in the SERPs.
However, this only works if the backlinks built are high quality, using white hat SEO techniques such as guest posting and getting your business listed in trusted website directories. These techniques take longer than black hat techniques, but using black hat techniques can get you penalised by Google, which is why we steer clear here at Zool.
The power of technical SEO for ecommerce websites
Ecommerce sites are more complex than non-e-commerce sites as they usually have many categories, sub-categories and product pages. This makes it even more important to give search engines what they want.
In recent years, Google has put even more emphasis on sites that load quickly, as they see it as a signal of site quality, and so are more likely to reward that site in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Your website architecture is important as it influences how customers interact with your site and navigate from product to product. We use breadcrumb navigation, internal linking and descriptive URLs to help with this.
Mastering SEO is fundamental for ecommerce websites to stand out from the crowd and win customers over your competitors, so you should partner with Zool for your ecommerce implementation. To take the following steps to improve your online visibility with Zool, please get in touch with us at 01625 238 770 or email us at [email protected].
Mastering SEO for Ecommerce Websites: Boosting Your Online Visibility
SEO / Jul 17, 2023
Ecommerce continues to play an increasingly significant role in retail, with forecasts indicating it will make up close to a quarter of total global retail sales by 2026. So, if you sell anything, you need an online store AND ensure it’s as visible as possible. To do this, you need SEO.
Understanding the basics of ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO can be defined as “a strategy that helps web retailers rank higher in search engine results.”
Traditional SEO services for most business websites focus on various tasks that help improve the website’s visibility in Google, using blog posts and backlinks to target specific keywords. However, ecommerce site SEO must also consider buyer intent, so the focus turns to product metadata, headings, product descriptions, and traditional SEO tasks.
SEO is essential for any website but doubly crucial for ecommerce sites as it is the primary way to drive traffic to your product pages without using PPC. If you have an ecommerce store and need SEO, you are taking advantage of a massive opportunity.
Conducting keyword research for ecommerce success
Keyword research is the crucial foundation of any SEO strategy, as it helps us to understand what terms your potential customers are using to find the products you are selling and how we can optimise your ecommerce website to help them find you.
The key terms you need to understand when it comes to ecommerce keyword research are:
- Search intent – why is someone searching a specific term? Are they looking to find more information about a product, or do they want to buy?
- Search volume – the average monthly searches for a particular keyword search word or phrase
- Keyword difficulty is a metric that evaluates the difficulty of ranking on the first page for a search term, with a score of 0 to 100.
On-page optimisation strategies for ecommerce websites
Once we have identified the keywords we need to target, we can use them to optimise your product pages for better search results by using them in various ways, such as:
- to optimise product titles and descriptions
- to create SEO-friendly URLs and navigation structure
- in meta tags, headers and alt tags for improved search visibility
We will also look at optimising site speed and mobile responsiveness to improve user experience.
Building a solid internal linking structure
Internal linking is another crucial part of SEO, and it is vital for ecommerce websites as it helps to improve the navigation and user experience on your website, especially if you have a large number of product pages, category pages and informational pages. It can also help search engines discover and crawl all the pages on your site, leading it to rank better on the search engine results pages and bringing in more traffic and customers.
Earning high-quality backlinks for ecommerce websites
We’ve talked about how critical high-quality backlinks are for SEO before, and this is even more so when it comes to ecommerce sites, as not only does it help search engines find new pages on your site, but it also helps them decide which pages should rank higher in the SERPs.
However, this only works if the backlinks built are high quality, using white hat SEO techniques such as guest posting and getting your business listed in trusted website directories. These techniques take longer than black hat techniques, but using black hat techniques can get you penalised by Google, which is why we steer clear here at Zool.
The power of technical SEO for ecommerce websites
Ecommerce sites are more complex than non-e-commerce sites as they usually have many categories, sub-categories and product pages. This makes it even more important to give search engines what they want.
In recent years, Google has put even more emphasis on sites that load quickly, as they see it as a signal of site quality, and so are more likely to reward that site in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Your website architecture is important as it influences how customers interact with your site and navigate from product to product. We use breadcrumb navigation, internal linking and descriptive URLs to help with this.
Mastering SEO is fundamental for ecommerce websites to stand out from the crowd and win customers over your competitors, so you should partner with Zool for your ecommerce implementation. To take the following steps to improve your online visibility with Zool, please get in touch with us at 01625 238 770 or email us at [email protected].
