“The first page of Google captures 71 percent of search traffic clicks and has been reported to be as high as 92 percent in recent years” This is the power of SEO, and for eCommerce marketing, it matters the most! SEO done right will rank your site higher than your competitor so that consumers can organically find you.

Traffic creates sales, and SEO creates traffic. If you are a Fortune 500 company or just a startup, you can’t miss SEO. 49% of the eCommerce websites said that they rely on SEO most of the time to increase sales and traffic. In this article, we will discuss the strategies that focus specifically on the eCommerce industry.

Why SEO for eCommerce matters

What if your eCommerce website doesn’t rank at the top? You will lose a lot of users, and your product might not be findable on the web! This is where SEO comes into action. The only way to reach out to a broader audience without running ads is SEO. Once people start visiting your website, you can impress them with your products and services. It will help you improve the brand image and force the customers to visit your site again and again! 

Though ads are said to be more efficient in brand building and bringing the traffic, the moment you stop paying, there will be little or no traffic! SEO will work for you every time and save a lot of money! 

Keyword research for eCommerce Sites

700,000 Google searches every 60 seconds! Such a huge number! Along with this, 100,500 digital words are processed every day. To rank your website on the top, there will be some golden words (targeted keywords) getting the most clicks. 

Thus if you want to reach a more significant section of customers, you must make an extensive list of targeted keywords. Keyword research includes two primary steps: Listing all pages on your site and mapping appropriate keywords to each page. For eCommerce sites, the category page and product page must be paid special attention in terms of optimization. 

Amazon suggest

Now before you head towards using some advanced tools, first visit your competitor’s website – Amazon. Go to amazon.com and in the search box, type your product name, and get the list of all the keyword suggestions. All those long-tail keywords tend to convert better and are quite competitive. The keywords suggested by Amazon can work great for category pages. 

Use keyword tool dominator

Keyword tool dominator is one such amazing tool that can scrape Amazon’s search suggestions and would also suggest some more long-tail keywords. After this, we have the best tool, Google Keyword planner. Through the search volume and CPC, you can decide your targeted keywords. 

eCommerce website architecture

What is site structure and why does it matter?

Site architecture means how the pages on your website are arranged, and it matters the most for eCommerce sites because there can be several pages dedicated to each product! Therefore, the site structure should be smooth so that it is easy for the user to navigate and jump to the desired pages. 

Optimizing the pages

The most crucial navigation features are the main menu, additional menus, search functions, and home page structure. Don’t populate the main list with tons of categories as it might be very confusing for the user and for search engines to crawl the site. To manage the left categories, you can have an additional menus option. The search option will help the customers in looking for the exact product the customer is looking for! 

Optimizing the URLs

Regarding the URL structure, they should have a logical and natural flow. One must use hyphens rather than spaces or underscores. Try to keep the URL below 70 characters. Another aspect related to this is the use of breadcrumbs. Using breadcrumbs will reduce the number of clicks to reach a higher-level page. It also improves the discoverability of the different sections and pages. 

Optimizing Title Tag

Add modifiers like “Buy!”, “Exclusive deals” and “Cheap prices” to get more long tail traffic. Some other common terms are :

• Review
• Best
• Online
• Free Shipping

Use click magnet words like “X% off”, “Best Price”, “Discounted Price”, “Overnight Shipping” and “Lowest Price” to increase Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Optimizing Description tag

Increase the CTR by including the phrases like “Great Selection”, “Fresh Arrivals”, “All Items on Sale”, “FREE Shipping”, and “Exciting Offers

On-Page SEO for eCommerce sites

The first and foremost step is to optimize the meta titles, descriptions, and H1’s. Though many sites use a templated approach and use the same content for every web page, it is recommended to write unique and well-optimized tags for the most important one! While writing the meta titles, include your primary keyword along with some long-tail keyword variations. Always try to mention your USP (price, offer, free return, shopping, etc.). 

URLs can be optimized in the following way:

• yourdomain.com/category-name (category page)
• yourdomain.com/category-name/subcategory-name (subcategory page)
• yourdomain.com/category-name/subcategory-name/subcategory-name (sub-subcategory page)
• yourdomain.com/category-name/subcategory-name/subcategory-name/product (product page)

Writing product descriptions

The next step is to write unique descriptions for product pages and category descriptions. Doing this will tell the visitors more about the category and help Google understand more about the page. Google ranks the pages according to an algorithm in which content matters the most. So, if your page or any product has no substance, the rank will go down. 

LSI keyword

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) are those words and phrases that are closely tied to the main keywords. The easiest method of finding such words for eCommerce sites is to use the same process used by your competitor site. So, if Amazon is your biggest competitor, then search any product and find those unique keywords used by them. Another tool to be used is Google Keyword Planner. It will suggest such words and phrases. 

The final step is to spread these words and phrases in the product description and category page content. 

Use short and keyword-rich URLs

Reports suggest that short URLs rank higher on Google’s first page than longer ones. Though eCommerce sites’ URLs are usually longer due to the presence of categories and subcategories, you must try to keep  it under 50 characters. Also, try to stuff the keywords in the URL. 

Get rich snippets displayed in Google through product review

By implementing schema markup on eCommerce product pages, rich snippets can be generated. It is a special code that gives search engines a deeper understanding of your page’s content. For this, you can use Structured Data Markup Helper.

Technical SEO for eCommerce sites

Delete the unnecessary pages

The major problem faced is that eCommerce sites have thousands of pages because each product has its dedicated page, and then you must have unique content for it too! So, rather than writing so much content, you can delete those pages that aren’t producing any sales over the years and combine them into one! You can use Google Analytics to check whether or not these pages are driving much traffic. 

Improving site speed

The second most crucial problem is site speed. It is officially one of the components of Google’s algorithm. The rate decreases due to bloated code, using large image files, and slow hosting and servers. The best solution can be first to upgrade the hosting and further invest in a CDN. CDN will make your site more secure from attacks. Using the compression extensions, you can optimize the images. 

Solving the issue of duplicate content

This problem occurs if the site creates unique URLs for every version of a product or category page Or you have copied some portion of the content and used it at many places. If those pages get indexed by Google, it will rank down the site. The possible solution can be to noindex those pages so that they aren’t brought in search engine traffic. Another alternative that is used by experts, is the use of canonical tags. After the search engine encounters a canonical tag, it will treat the pages with duplicate content as separate pages. 

Content marketing for eCommerce sites

Through analytical tools, find out which topics are trending the most. You can start a blog section on them and then further market the same content on social media and newsletters. 

Spread the content on various platforms

Rather than producing dozens of articles every week, begin marketing the content via various channels like email lists, online forums and communities, Q/A sites, bloggers and influencers, and social media networks. 

Secondly, product guides can ramp up your sales. It is basically about teaching the people how to use your product or service. Answering all the readers’ doubts and giving the intricacies of the project can improve your sales and brand image too! 

Tools used for SEO

Free SEO Tools: 

These include Google Structured Data Testing Tool, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Google Tag Assistant, SEO Site Checkup! Through these tools, you can easily track and monitor the keywords, make reports, visualizations, etc. But these tools won’t give you more suggestions on improving the SEO. 

Paid SEO tools: 

SEMrush: It is one of the most trending tools that look after all the aspects of digital marketing – SEO, paid traffic, social media, content, etc. 

Moz Pro Keyword Planner: It offers the best keyword suggestions through rankings, trends, volume search, etc.

Ahrefs: Many marketing and SEO experts recommend this tool because it provides the exact keywords that can ramp up your ranking. It also gives suggestions on how you can improve the overall rankings.

Conclusion

With the right set of strategies and advanced tools, you can improve your website’s ranking and increase your sales. When you implement the above plans in the right way, you will see a surge in traffic on your website, more conversions, and repeat visitors. 

Techies Infotech is a state-of-the-art digital marketing agency in India that looks after all the components of marketing – content, SEO, PPC ads, social media, etc. We have a team of experts looking after individual departments. We use the most advanced tools and provide real-time information with detailed reports about the progress made. Contact us anytime, and you will get the best deal with the best team!