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SEO and eCommerce go hand in hand. If executed correctly, your eCommerce SEO strategy could organically drive hundreds to thousands of qualified prospects while keeping the customer acquisition cost (CAC) to a minimum.
Unfortunately, not many know how to utilize SEO for eCommerce. Newbie marketers even have the misconception that running PPC ads on social media platforms outperforms SEO. Trust us — excessive PPC ads cannot compensate for your lack of SEO.
Luckily, we are here to help. Keep reading for a comprehensive guide on using SEO for eCommerce sites. We go beyond the standard eCommerce SEO tips. This guide extensively covers:
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eCommerce SEO consists of multiple tactics geared toward improving site visibility. There are several metrics to consider, but the overall goal is to secure a top spot on Google search engine results pages (SERPs) organically. Some widely used strategies to do so include:
Despite the benefits of SEO for eCommerce sites, many marketers still forgo these strategies for PPC campaigns. Of course, paid ads attract users. However, traffic generated through organic SEO strategies has lower ad spend and higher-quality leads.
Furthermore, you can run SEO campaigns indefinitely at no extra cost. Pages containing evergreen, relevant content will retain their top spot as long as you frequently update the crucial information posted.
On the contrary, targeting thousands of prospects through PPC ads would set you back by hundreds every day. It wouldn’t be practical for SMBs to rely solely on PPC campaigns.
Keywords are the core of any eCommerce SEO strategy. Users studying how to do SEO for an eCommerce site would do well to familiarize themselves with tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Google Keyword Planner. These platforms will be your go-to for keyword planning.
There is a misconception that marketers should only use competitive, high-ranking keywords in their content. For many marketers, this idea is far from true. You do not necessarily have to eliminate long-tail, low-ranking keywords from your SEO campaigns. Instead, use them to your advantage.
Short-tail, high-ranking keywords expose your page to a wide audience, but securing a top spot requires outperforming billions of other competitors. New websites with low domain ratings might not stand a chance against tenure, reputable platforms.
Meanwhile, long-tail non-competitive keywords have a substantially smaller audience, although brands can easily rank for these keywords. Even relatively new blogs can secure top spots with effective long-tail keyword strategies.
Should you exclusively use short- and long-tail keywords? Rank for one primary keyword, but spring latent semantic index (LSI) and secondary keywords throughout your copies. Integrate them into your headings, meta descriptions, product details, and even photo captions.
SEO is a form of digital marketing. While digital marketing consists of multi-platform campaigns to improve brand reach and conversion rates, SEO primarily focuses on website ranking.
We encourage eCommerce entrepreneurs to incorporate SEO tactics into their digital marketing efforts. SEO serves as a tool for increasing visibility.
A well-planned eCommerce SEO strategy attracts qualified, interested prospects to your landing pages, social media ads, website, and product listings. You can also use them on third-party platforms. For example, your ads on Amazon, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace will reach more customers if you use commonly searched terms instead of jargon.
Marketers can choose from dozens of eCommerce search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Having the freedom to market your brand any way you want offers excellent opportunities, but newbies might find the techniques a bit intimidating. Most do not even know where to start.
We cannot teach all the existing SEO strategies in a single guide. However, we can help you grasp the basics of the most widely used tactics, such as:
On-page SEO involves optimizing your web pages (i.e., eCommerce product listings). Avoid using complex, hard-to-spell jargon. Instead, identify the terms that your audience primarily uses, then integrate them into various parts of your web pages like captions, product titles, and descriptions, among others.
Pro Tip: Do not neglect your meta title and description. Letting your content management system automatically generate these hurts your chances of ranking. These elements also require keywords.
On-page SEO improves page visibility and click-through rates, but technical SEO reduces bounce rates. Keep visitors on your website with a fully functional, streamlined system.
Lagging servers, slow-loading payment gateways, pixelated images, and unresponsive buttons hurt user experience, ultimately driving customers away. Reports show that 70% of customers abandon their online shopping carts because of slow, buggy checkout pages.
Brick-and-mortar businesses and location-based service providers should faithfully abide by local SEO strategies. The key is to limit your audience to users within your areas. This strategy filters disinterested prospects, minimizes ad spend, and reduces the overall CAC. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to advertise your brand to users outside your service areas.
Some of the most effective, straightforward ways to apply local SEO to your campaigns include:
Developing a feasible eCommerce SEO strategy is one thing, but assessing its short- and long-term efficacy is another. As we mentioned above, several criteria affect SEO. While these factors create some marketing leeways, too many variances make it difficult to track progress. As a result, marketers are left wondering whether their SEO marketing efforts are working.
Unlike PPC results, SEO campaign statistics are not written in black and white. The numbers you pull from your social media campaigns mean nothing until you and your team extensively analyze them.
Is there a quicker way to track eCommerce website SEO results? No, but you can streamline the process. Avoid drowning in random data and numbers by committing to the following eCommerce SEO best practices:
Google ranks websites based on reputability, trustworthiness, and website traffic. However, you cannot manually predict the criteria affecting these factors because Google updates its algorithm daily.
The best way to track website progress is to use an SEO website audit tool. Use systems like Ahrefs, Moz, GrowthBar, and SEMrush on your website to accurately gauge page optimization and navigability. The best eCommerce SEO strategy satisfies both Google crawl bots and site visitors.
Note: Audit systems score differently. For instance, Ahrefs uses the Domain Rating (DR) as their primary metric, while Moz dubs their’s Domain Authority (DA). For accurate comparison results, only rely on one platform. Using various metrics will compromise the precision and consistency of your site audit data.
Add Google Analytics to your eCommerce dashboard. This system gives marketers in-depth insights into their campaign’s performance based on several object metrics. Success is subjective, so quantify your campaign results with objective criteria.
You can view various statistics through this dashboard but focus on website visitors and customer engagement ratings for daily updates. Assess whether users are engaging with your brand. See how many users click your ads, browse your products, navigate between pages, and add products to their online shopping cart.
Increasing your website traffic might seem great, but these are just a means to an end. Focusing solely on vanity metrics yields inaccurate predictions. When tracking the progress of any SEO marketing campaign, always refer to your shop’s conversion rates.
For instance, let’s say your campaign generates an extra 10,000 visitors after a month of using SEO for your eCommerce website. Before deciding that your campaign is a success, compare these numbers with your conversion rates as well.
Ideally, eCommerce shops should have a conversion rate of 1% to 2%. In this situation, 100 to 200 users from your 10,000 visitors should have made a purchase. If your shop generates less than that amount, you might want to recalibrate your ads.
Keyword research is an important part of SEO and needs to be done right. You’ll want to make a list of relevant topics based on your industry, fill those specific topic buckets with keywords, and then understand how these keywords can be used to address user search intent.
SEO tools allow you to gauge your site traffic and rankings. Tools such as Google Analytics can help you identify weaknesses or issues that may be harming your SERP rankings.
To increase your chances of ranking, it’s important to create a strategy that implements a number of SEO techniques. Some techniques include the following: implementing content optimization, enhancing your site’s user experience, allowing for voice search, and focusing on topic clusters aside from just keywords.
Monthly SEO plans allow you to closely track your campaign’s growth and adjust your campaign as needed. As such, these SEO plans are an extremely popular option amongst small and enterprise businesses alike. Agile teams can research and implement new strategies without being restricted by time, which is essential for long-term success.
Google will be focusing on one primary phrase, so you want to target that as the main keyword for each page. It's okay if there are other secondary keywords, but make sure you limit yourself to around three or five phrases per page.
The key to eCommerce search engine optimization (SEO) lies in customization. Remember: no two companies share the exact marketing needs. Even rival brands that sell similar products would not benefit from copying each other’s retail SEO strategies. See how you can utilize eCommerce SEO best practices for your business.
If you don’t have time to optimize your eCommerce site — don’t worry. Instead of spending several months understanding eCommerce SEO principles, opt to hire a professional marketing team. At Bliss Drive, we have the skills and resources to take your marketing campaigns to the next level. Leave your marketing needs to us, and focus on your daily shop operations.
Do you need a more in-depth primer on how eCommerce works? Bliss Drive can help! Use our eCommerce 101 guide as a reference to learn everything you need to know about becoming a successful online entrepreneur.
