E‑commerce SEO

How does e-commerce SEO work?

E-commerce SEO is a free way of getting more traffic to your website by making it more visible on search engine result pages (SERPs). A well-ranked page will receive more traffic, so you want your page to rank as high as possible.
For your web pages to rank higher in SERPs, you need to ensure your website is optimized for search engines — from the keywords you use, to the technical setup of your web store, and whether your web store is mobile friendly all have a huge impact on SEO optimization.

From a more practical standpoint, here are 4 areas to consider when setting up your e-commerce SEO strategy:

Content

Optimize your content with search terms for which you would like to be found: including your URL, H1 header, content, meta description and meta title.

Technical setup

Optimize the technical part of your web store: like for example HTTPS, mobile-friendliness, page speed, indexation, XML sitemap (this is the index for Google), etc.

User experience

Google leverages user statistics to determine which sites will rank on their search engine and in which order. This includes time on page, bounce rate, conversion rate, load time, etc. Ultimately, they want to know: can users find what they are looking for? Are you a reliable source of information?

Proving so to Google can mean ranking on their first page of search results. And with 75% of people never looking past page 1 for their answer, this can add major value.

Link building

You need to think about which internal links (from within your website) and external links (from other sources) you link to and from. You also need to keep on top of other resources linking back to you for authority. Choosing the right sources or being the cited resource for another organization can help boost your credibility and brand reputation.

What are the benefits of e-commerce SEO?

There are countless benefits to setting up an e-commerce SEO strategy. Here are the top 3 benefits to e-commerce SEO:

Improving your user experience

One of Google’s key ranking factors is providing users with a good user experience. If your site is targeting the right keywords for your target audience and answering queries that website visitors might have, then Google sees that as a positive experience and your ranking will consequently go up.
But if users are clicking your site and immediately clicking away, Google will see that as a negative experience and it will hurt your ranking.

Expanding your reach

E-commerce SEO helps your web store receive more traffic, which consequently expands your brand’s reach. Once a user lands on your website organically, you can later reach out to that person again with paid retargeting campaigns. SEO remarketing is a highly effective practice.

Increasing brand awareness

You can optimize your e-commerce site with no marketing advertisement costs. If you’re optimizing your SEO rankings, why not try to aim to get your site on Google’s answer box. Being on Google’s answer box can bring in more clicks, higher website traffic and increased brand awareness.

What are the challenges of e-commerce SEO?

The challenges that many companies overlook when optimizing their e-commerce SEO are:

Lack of quality content

The biggest problem with optimizing e-commerce SEO is that some sites try doing so quickly and forget that it’s not just about the quantity of content. It’s about the quality of the content. Your product pages can’t just be a copy-paste of the manufacturers’ description, they need to be concise descriptions accompanied by pictures.

Forgetting about the technical setup

Although content is king, you can’t forget about your technical SEO setup. Things like HTTPS, mobile-friendliness, page speed, indexation, XML sitemap are often forgotten about.

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