Ecommerce SEO: An Advanced Guide

The significance of an ecommerce SEO approach

Winning at ecommerce SEO is a difficult task. Amazon consumes 37.7% of all online ecommerce sales. Direct to consumer (D2C) disruptors continue to take market share. Furthermore, established players who recognised the importance of organic search early on have had years to refine their SEO execution.

The good news is...

Despite the fact that huge businesses are increasingly allocating more of their ecommerce marketing spend to SEO, the great majority of websites (including those in the Fortune 1000) continue to be woefully underinvested in search engine optimization. This means you may easily outperform them with a comprehensive company SEO approach.

To get unrivalled results, the ideal ecommerce SEO approach blends website structure, technical SEO, keyword research, content planning, on-page SEO, and link building with an exceptional user experience.

Our advanced ecommerce SEO book reveals the most effective ideas, tips, and approaches for substantially increasing organic search traffic and achieving outcomes like these:

• Website architecture is critical to ecommerce SEO success; it determines your site's hierarchy, which aids search engines in understanding your content.
• Website navigation, url structure, and breadcrumbs help to reinforce the hierarchy of your website.
• People search differently online than they do in a real store, so don't choose ecommerce categories with a brick and mortar attitude in mind.
• Correct redundant, overlapping, and overly broad categories that stymie ecommerce SEO performance.
• Consider developing compelling content that takes clients through every stage of the purchasing funnel, rather than just items and categories.

The Economic Impact of Ecommerce SEO

If you pay attention to quarterly earnings calls, you may have noticed that SEO performance is a regular topic of discussion (maybe even among your own competitors). Organic search has grown to be such an essential sales channel that it has piqued the interest of C-suite executives and investors.

Here are a few examples from this year:

• Analysts probed Groupon about SEO challenges that brought revenues down.
• Lands' End CEO Jerome Squire Griffith stated that the company is putting a strong emphasis on ecommerce SEO.
• SEO, according to Overstock's Chief Strategy Officer Seth Moore, "is the company's growth engine going forward." He also mentioned that higher organic ranks made their ad spend more effective.

When compared to paid advertising channels, Stridec delivers traffic to our customers at 25 cents on the dollar.

You may have heard of Chewy, another multibillion-dollar brand. Their outstanding organic search approach was a crucial factor in PetSmart's $3.35 billion acquisition.

If your company's leadership is focused on ecommerce, SEO is important. It has the potential to be a game changer for corporate organisations looking to scale more profitably, enhance margins, and boost revenue. In fact, when compared to paid advertising channels, Stridec provides traffic to our customers at 25 cents on the dollar.

Continue reading to find out what it takes to drive visitors to your website using more complex and successful ecommerce SEO.

Because it organises and prioritises your content for search engines, website architecture is an essential component of an efficient ecommerce SEO strategy. As a consequence, you'll rank higher for vital category keywords that direct customers to the products they're looking for.

Create a content hierarchy.

Your ranking potential is hampered by a disordered site layout. As a result, before you spend many hours improving category pages and generating links, you must first determine your site's hierarchy.

Ecommerce sites typically employ flat site structures such as this:

A flat website architecture ensures that the majority of your content is accessible within three clicks of the homepage. This layout makes it easier for users to find your product pages. It also guarantees that PageRank is distributed more effectively throughout your site.

To build your site's structure, do the following:

• Make a list of all the products on your website first.
• Sort the products into topics.
• Then, from broadest to narrowest, arrange each topic category.

Pro Tip: Online users search in a different way than they do in a physical store. So, when organising your merchandise, don't limit yourself to a brick and store attitude. For example, someone looking for bed sheets will not Google "bedding and bath," thus you may want to separate the overused "bedding and bath" category.

After you've established your site's content hierarchy, you'll need to express that structure to search engines. Let's take a look at the four aspects that work together to strengthen the framework of an ecommerce site.

URL structure

Because it establishes hierarchy and content relationships, URL structure is critical to excellent ecommerce SEO performance. Each folder and subfolder in your URL adds extra context to search engines about what's on the page and how the URL links to the broader website. Take a look at the URL below from Macy's:

https://www.macys.com/shop/mens-clothing/mens-dress-shirts?id=20635&edge=hybrid

Even if you've never heard of Macy's, the URL above can tell you a few things:

• Macy's is an online retailer.
• They specialise on men's apparel.
• Within their men's clothes area, they feature a selection of men's dress shirts.

Breadcrumbs 

Breadcrumbs perform three functions. They serve as a visual "you are here" indicator, assisting users in understanding their virtual location inside a huge ecommerce website. They also serve as a navigational feature, allowing users to quickly return to a parent category page. Breadcrumbs, more critically for SEO, offer search engines with more context about the hierarchy of your site.

It's critical that the breadcrumbs you use match the structure of your URLs. This is the breadcrumb path from Macy's men's dress shirts category page, for example:

Men's Dress Shirts at Macy's

Site navigation

Another technique to communicate your site structure to search engines is through website navigation. The navigation should be hierarchical and intuitive, and it should correspond to the URL structure and breadcrumb pathways. Begin with the biggest categories, such as "men" or "women." Then, narrow your search to more specific categories such as "handbags & wallets" or "button-down shirts."

Finally, you want to convey the variety of things you sell. However, you should also highlight your most popular categories and subcategories with as few middle-man pages as feasible. We'll go over navigation in greater detail later.

internal connecting percentage

Internal links are another critical component of any ecommerce SEO strategy. They highlight subject relevance between pages, which provides further context. They also assist search engines in determining which of your pages are the most popular or useful. These internal linking recommended practises will significantly improve the efficiency of your SEO.

An ecommerce website's anatomy

If your site structure is your organisational chart, then your pages are the employees who fit into the framework. The homepage is divided into category pages, which in turn are divided into product pages or other resources.

Let's take a closer look at the many kinds of pages that make up an ecommerce website.

Sitemap

Because it is the primary point of entry for both users and search engines, your homepage is the most crucial page in your ecommerce SEO plan. The purpose of your website is described on your homepage. Even if you sell a wide range of products, it's vital to demonstrate to Google why you're relevant to searchers.

It goes without saying that seasonal announcements, as well as specials and top deals, should be included. However, you should also include direct links to your most significant category pages on your homepage.

Ecommerce category pages make up % of the total.

Consider your category pages to be your website's grocery store aisles. Categories guide customers to main sections where they can find the things they want to buy. Furthermore, because consumers frequently search for general categories rather than specific products ("womens flannel shirts" vs "talbots long sleeve red plaid button down shirt"), category sites represent a tremendous potential to grab traffic from new visitors who may be unfamiliar with your business.

Ecommerce product pages

Product pages target more particular keywords, so there's a good chance you'll obtain traffic from conversion-ready visitors who know exactly what they want. Look for ways to differentiate your business from the competition while optimising for long-tail keywords on your product pages.

Keyword research for ecommerce SEO

The core of any SEO plan is keyword research. Before we get into how to undertake keyword research, let's go over some ecommerce SEO best practises for selecting search phrases.

Volume, search purpose, and user experience are all factors to consider.

Based on the product groups you selected, your core category keywords are likely to be obvious. When mapping each URL to a key word, it is critical to consider search intent and search volume.

Assume you are the SEO manager for a national office supply retailer. Perhaps you grouped some of your products into easy categories such as supplies, furniture, and copying. Those are good categories, but they aren't ideal for SEO.

Why?

Because they are too wide, the search intent will not match your offerings. Consider those terms from a purely search-related standpoint. Large furniture retailers dominate the search engine results for "furniture," and copying is highly defined.

Instead, filter down your keyword list so that it is still broad, but it represents questions that your buyers would actually search for while looking for your products. You could, for example, choose "office supplies," "office furniture," and "printers, scanners, and copiers."

These broad departmental categories would then be subdivided into more specific categories and subcategories, such as the following:

In general, for your categories, you'll want to select keywords with the highest search volume and the strongest alignment with search intent. They should, nevertheless, make sense as high-level categories for each product grouping.

Unless…

Rules Violations

You're going to come into a few instances where user experience takes precedence over SEO. That's perfectly great – as long as it's the exception rather than the rule.

The above-mentioned category of "printers, copiers, and scanners" is a prime illustration of this. There is no search volume for this phrase. However, the terms "electronics" and "technology" are considerably too broad and imprecise to adequately describe the goods in that category. Furthermore, buyers shopping for a new printer may not think to look in your website's technology area. While "copying" falls inside this category, we already ruled it out due to misaligned search intent.

Use keywords strategically throughout the conversion funnel.

Consider the full buyer's journey when selecting keywords for your ecommerce SEO campaign. A typical conversion funnel is divided into three stages:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Decision

Awareness is the research stage in which potential customers look for a solution to their problem. People tend to employ long-tail keywords in their search searches at this phase since they frequently ask questions.

Consider a dissatisfied office manager who constantly runs out of printer ink cartridges. This may prompt her to look for information about refillable ink cartridges:

• How much does it cost to replenish ink cartridges?
• Refillable ink cartridges are they effective?
• Is it simple to reload printer ink cartridges?

Perhaps this office manager learned from one of your blog posts that refillable cartridges are untrustworthy, so she decides she needs a laser printer. During the consideration stage, she will most likely look for reviews or brand comparison articles.

During the decision step of the buying funnel, your customer understands she wants an HP printer but is unsure about which model. At this point, she'll most likely examine specific product sites to compare cost and technical specifications.

People with varying needs, behaviours, and search intent are included in each phase of the funnel. As a result, your website should include pages that target keywords at each stage of the funnel, such as ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu.

After you've published your content, you'll need to increase conversions, so check out our 41-point checklist for ecommerce conversion rate optimization.

Tools for keyword research in ecommerce SEO

Now that you have a list of category and subcategory keyword suggestions, it's time to refine and expand that list with keyword research SEO tools:

• Keywords Explorer by Ahrefs
• Keyword Explorer by Moz
• SEMRush
• Soovle \sJaaxy
• KeywordTool.io
• KWFinder
• Respond to the Public
• Clearscope in Google Search Console
• Google AdWords Keyword Planner
• Google Trends

Use whatever tool you're most comfortable with. It is critical, however, that you have access to reliable search traffic data that reveals the market potential for each phrase.

In addition to search volume and search intent, you may compare Google Ads cost per click (CPC). This measure reflects the level of competition for a keyword. When comparing SEO versus PPC, it may also show your greatest opportunity. If certain keywords are too expensive to generate a reasonable ROI through PPC, consider ranking for those keywords organically.

If you're having trouble ranking for high-competition terms, read our piece on how to maximise traffic with long-tail keywords.

Competitive ecommerce SEO study

Most brands are intimately familiar with their direct competitors. However, in the area of organic search, you must conduct a different type of competition study.

Because a full-funnel content strategy targets a wide range of inquiries, your competitors' positions may vary dramatically from one area to the next. In fact, you might be competing with websites you've never heard of before.

To begin, identify your ecommerce website's competitors and take note of the terms they rank for. If they're on top of their SEO game, they've probably already done the tough lifting in terms of keyword research. Run their domains through your preferred SEO tool to identify any search terms you may have overlooked.

A thorough examination of their content and backlink profiles will disclose a great deal about their ecommerce SEO approach.

However, as previously stated, don't limit your scope to ecommerce business competitors. Extend your competitive research to include additional sites competing for your keywords in search engine results pages (SERPs). This could include news websites, online publications, blogs, consumer review websites, and so on.

Amazon research

Amazon's revenue surpassed $232 billion in 2018, cementing its position as a major player in the online retail industry. And, because Amazon now accounts for around half of all online product searches, it's also a rich source of keyword data.

Examine your Amazon keywords to see what's working — and what isn't. Then, use that data to guide your keyword research. Amazon keywords can be specifically analysed using tools such as Ahrefs and KeywordTool.io.

If Amazon is already a part of your omnichannel strategy, you have access to a lot of keyword information. Dive in and make a list of your top-converting keywords!

Don't miss our post on how Google and Amazon users search differently.

Analysis of YouTube

YouTube is a very popular vertical search engine with a plethora of potential ecommerce SEO keywords. This may not be the primary motivator for your keyword selection. It does, however, provide insight into your audience's interests as well as their search behavior—particularly for informational inquiries. You can use the following tools:

• YouTube Cockpit Suggestion
• TubeBuddy \svidIQ
• Ahrefs’ YouTube Keywords Finder
• KeywordTool.io 

SEO for technical ecommerce

Technical SEO is just as important to the success of your ecommerce SEO programme as keyword research and on-page optimization. Nobody wants to spend hundreds of hours on keyword research and content creation just to discover that half of their pages aren't indexed due to a simple technical error.

Let's go over the most crucial measures for identifying technical SEO concerns on an ecommerce website.

Perform a site crawl

The first step in performing a technical SEO audit is to crawl the site. ContentKing and Screaming Frog are two popular internet crawling programmes. These programmes crawl your site in the same manner as a search engine crawler - link by link and page by page.

A search engine crawler, on the other hand, will not notify you when it encounters a 404 page or a redirect chain. Crawling tools, on the other hand, are used for diagnostic purposes.

They'll notify you of any critical or non-critical crawling errors they encounter as they navigate your site. Server errors, URL errors, duplicate content concerns, redirect chains, and errors with canonical or indexing tags are some examples.

A site crawl will reveal dead ends if your website's crawlability is more like a maze than a map. Furthermore, a tool like DeepCrawl consumes log file data. This means you'll know exactly which files are accessed by search engine bots. What's more, you'll know which ones they don't.

Carry out a content audit

Thin content can have a significant negative influence on ecommerce SEO performance. And the only way to find it is to do a thorough content audit.

Stridec deleted 85 percent of the site's URLs while enhancing the rest for one client who was experiencing site-wide thin content difficulties. As a result, The site's organic traffic rose by 425 percent in just eight months.

Create a spreadsheet of the pages that need to be removed, improved, combined, or split during the audit. Is it possible to delete and redirect the page? Should it be kept, but the material elaborated out? Fill up your content audit template with enough information to take action, including SEO metrics to think about.

Remove duplicate content

Duplicate content is extremely detrimental to ecommerce SEO. Nonetheless, duplicate content issues in one form or another are frequent in online retailers. You might have nearly identical product pages that differ just in colour. Perhaps you have many sites for different languages, as well as a mobile site. Filters, facets, and navigation that are not correctly integrated are to blame in some circumstances.

These flaws mislead search engines, dilute PageRank, and drain organic traffic away from you.

If you find duplicate content, collaborate with your web infrastructure team to eliminate or consolidate pages as much as feasible. Otherwise, make sure to include canonical tags to help Google recognise the primary source URL.

Filters and faceted navigation

To help clients locate what they're looking for, all ecommerce sites employ some form of filtering or faceted navigation. As they limit their search, shoppers use faceted navigation to dive down into more particular products.

Each facet is a subset of the one before it. A user seeking for smart TVs, for example, might use faceted navigation like this:

• Categories > Electronics > Televisions > Smart Televisions
• This is distinct from filtering, which rejects items that do not meet the set criteria. Furthermore, you can apply filters worldwide and toggle them on and off selectively. Here are a few examples of filters commonly used by ecommerce sites:
• Price Size Available for Pickup 

Ecommerce sites frequently blend filters and aspects to provide a unified user experience. Assume a potential customer wants a 75-inch Vizio smart TV for less than $2,000. To get to the Smart TVs category page, the client could use faceted navigation. They could then use size and price filters to narrow down the results.

Facets and filters offer users a simple and user-friendly navigation system for sorting through a large number of products. Just be careful not to harm your SEO by include several similar category pages in your faceted navigation.

Improve the internal connection structure

Internal links and SEO are two topics that require a great deal of knowledge. However, getting it properly is critical for ecommerce SEO success. It assists users in discovering your products and allows search engines to determine which pages are the most significant to your business. It's also tough to create external links to product pages. As a result, internal links from your homepage and content pages to your product pages can convey PageRank.

Relevance is the guiding principle for internal linkages. In other words, does the internal link assist your customer in finding what they are seeking for or discovering useful related content?

Create internal link funnels that direct readers to your product and service sites. It's also a good idea to include connections to relevant products and services. You will improve your ecommerce SEO while maybe improving your average order value (AOV).

Don't go overboard with internal links. Simply concentrate on where it makes sense to the reader and perhaps improves their experience. If you include too many links on your pages, you may appear spammy.

Consider the following ecommerce SEO strategies as your golden principles for internal linking:

• Include the categories that are most essential to you in your navigation.
• From supporting blog material, link to relevant items and categories.
• Don't stuff your text with too many links.
• In your anchor text, use exact match and long-tail keywords (for internal links).
• Repair any broken links.

chubby footer

Website footers frequently include connections to your most important pages as well as a few links to simply informative pages such as Privacy Policy, Shipping Policy, and FAQ.

A fat footer, on the other hand, serves as an additional navigational assistance by displaying a map of your website's most important pages. This is in contrast to your menu, which may only feature the largest categories and subcategories due to its narrow focus on purchasing behaviour.

By offering simple access to other pages your consumer may require, fat footers can improve both usability and crawlability. Deep links to your best-selling product pages, for example, are unlikely to make the cut for your main menu.

Sitemap in XML

The XML sitemap is the "cheat sheet" that you provide to Google for indexing. It contains a list of all the pages on your website that you want search engines to index. There are various techniques to optimise your sitemap.

• Set your highest-quality pages first (though Google might not follow your guidelines).
• Divide the sitemap into sub-sitemaps, such as posts, pages, and authors, and so on.
• Keep "junk" out of your sitemap, such as 404s, duplicate pages, or gated pages.

Meta tags for robots (or meta directives)

On September 1, 2019, Google discontinued support for the noindex directive in the robots.txt file. So, if you wish to keep your pages out of the index, use Robots meta tags instead. Read understand more, go to Google's post on it here.

Page-level instructions for web crawlers such as Googlebot are provided through robots meta directives. You can use them to specify whether Googlebot should follow the links on a website or display the URL in the SERPs. You may also use robots meta tags to gain more control over snippets and image previews.

Optimization for mobile

Run a mobile-friendly test to identify methods to improve the performance of your ecommerce site. Examine your site analytics data to learn about the percentage of mobile visitors you receive, as well as their bounce and conversion rates. Furthermore, Google has implemented mobile-first indexing, so don't overlook mobile optimization.

Learn more about the advantages of m-commerce and how to provide a more seamless digital customer experience.

Boost site speed and page load time

The speed of your website is also an important element in how well it ranks. This is due to the fact that page speed has a significant impact on usability and user happiness. A slow site combined with a bad signal brings back memories of dial-up internet.

Learn everything you need to know about increasing page load speed right here.

Ecommerce website on-page SEO

To optimise your content, conduct a content audit and map each URL to the appropriate keywords. Each and every URL.

That sounds like a big endeavour, and it is. However, it is also critical to the success of your SEO operation. Term-to-page mapping guarantees that each URL targets the best keyword, which has the best combination of high search traffic and relevant search intent. It also ensures that no two URLs are targeting the same phrase.

We'll go over some of the fundamentals below. If you're looking for more advanced information, read our post about on-page SEO elements. Alternatively, you can use our checklist below to jump right into optimization.

Consider term cannibalization.

When numerous pages on your site target the same term, this is known as keyword cannibalization. Keyword cannibalization, in its most basic form, is a missed opportunity to target more search queries, because Google often does not rank both pages for the same keyword. Worse, any backlinks gained will most certainly be distributed amongst comparable pages, diluting PageRank. In addition, Google may display the less qualified page in the SERP.

The two most typical causes of keyword cannibalization are faceted navigation that is not used correctly and bloated content tactics that do not consider SEO.

Optimize the titles of ecommerce pages.

After you've given keywords to your pages, you can go on to the fun part: optimising each one. We'll start with the title tag and meta description because those are the first things potential consumers will notice in search results.

Page titles are one of the most important on-page SEO ranking elements, therefore include your priority keywords. However, titles must also stand out in the SERPs in order to attract clicks, so keep them relevant, informative, and detailed.

Don't just slap the product name and your brand on there and call it a day. Improve your ecommerce title tags to boost your click-through rate (CTR). Make use of attractive phrases or highlight client pain issues that your content addresses.

PRO TIP: Look for commonalities in the title tags of the top 10 results for each query. Is there a pattern to their organisation? Do they always put the keyword at the beginning or in the middle of the title? Do your competitors use synonyms or alternative phrasing?

Create clickable meta descriptions

To be clear, the meta description is not a ranking factor. Instead, its primary goal is to entice searchers to click through to the page. Consider it "ad copy" for your organic listings in this sense. However, because such terms will be bolded in the search results, you should still include your target keywords in the meta description.

During an SMX presentation, Paul Haahr, a Google software engineer, gave a slide on live experiments. According to the data, the click-through rate (CTR) of your organic listings can affect your standing in the SERPs. A higher CTR for a given query indicates greater relevance to Google, whereas a lower CTR indicates the reverse. Additionally, studies have shown that an increase in CTR results in a higher ranking on average.

So, when optimising your title tag and meta description, put just as much emphasis on enticing clicks as you do on keyword inclusion.

Improve H1 tags

H1 tags are one of the most important Google ranking criteria, so make sure they incorporate your keywords. They are, however, the heading that your user will read before proceeding to the body of your material.

As a result, it is vital to construct the H1 text in a way that both defines the page content and entices site users to continue scrolling. Your H1 should be comparable to your title tag as well, so users know they're on the same page. However, it can be beneficial to alter your phrase or incorporate synonyms.

Improve URLs

An intelligent url structure, as I discussed previously when discussing site structure, functions as a file system to manage your material. What is Google's most significant tip? Maintain consistency. However, when it comes to ecommerce SEO, there is a lot more you can do to make a difference.

Here are three basic concepts to consider while optimising your URLs:

• Consistent
• Concise
• Coherent

Make your URLs brief but descriptive. This keeps them focused on your target keyword phrase, which boosts the performance of your ecommerce SEO.

Do you use a content management system (CMS) that generates cryptic URLs? Work with your web infrastructure staff to make them more adaptable. For example, here are some real URLs from Fortune 500 companies:

• https://subdomain.domainexample.com/browse/product.do?pid=405181142&cid=46752&pcid=46752&grid=pds 1 83 1#pdp-page-content
• https://www2.domainexample.com/en us/productpage.0780156001.html

It may include product-specific information, such as product IDs and style numbers, but it's simply not user-friendly. Instead, URLs should be simple to grasp for both search engines and people, such as the following:

• https://www.costco.com/pet-supplies.html
• https://www.costco.com/dog-food.html
• https://www.costco.com/dog-food/Kirkland-Signature-Natures-Domain-Salmon-Meal-Sweet-Potato-35-lb.html

Optimization of ecommerce category pages

Category page for ecommerce Because these are some of your most significant landing pages, SEO is critical. Too many ecommerce sites employ themes that restrict custom text fields in favour of product thumbnails and image carousels. This makes ranking the page for competing search searches challenging.

Even among worldwide shops, it is typical to come across category sites that are:

• Misaligned with how customers think
• There is no keyword optimization.
• I was concentrating on the incorrect terms (or too many keywords)
• There are no direct external backlinks.

Duplicate content as a result of poorly implemented navigation, and much more...

What is the solution? Work with your web infrastructure team to make room for descriptive copy.

Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs by incorporating keywords naturally into your ecommerce category pages' language and subheadings. Create innovative, marketing-friendly, and engaging content that improves user experience. You'll boost your site's search rankings while also distinguishing your brand from the competition.

Product page optimization for ecommerce

Your product pages are valuable because they draw bottom-of-the-funnel traffic. They're so important, in fact, that we built an entire SEO guide for ecommerce product pages. If you're short on time, here's a fast rundown:

Create copy that is both distinctly compelling from a branding standpoint and keyword optimised for search.

Unfortunately, most product page themes limit the amount of space available for crucial product details.

Such material is frequently supplied by the brand itself for huge retail websites that sell several products. This means that a substantial portion of your material could appear on thousands of other websites!

The product page is far too important to leave to chance. Collaborate with your web infrastructure team to bring great content to the page on a regular basis. Create a terrific customer experience that isn't even in the same league as your competition, whether it's through copy, photos, or video.

For reviews, use schema markup.

Schema markup is website code that enables search engines to display rich information snippets right in the SERP. To persuade readers to go on to your site, snippets can provide detailed product information and retail locations, as well as ratings and reviews.

Review markup is one of the most valuable types of schema for ecommerce SEO. By displaying online reviews, this code makes product pages stand out in search results. If your products routinely receive five-star ratings, review markup is an excellent approach to highlight this and drive click-throughs.

Google has unique criteria for different forms of structured data, so be sure you understand the regulations before implementing the code on your site. If you get stuck and need assistance creating structured data, you can utilise Google's Structured Data Markup Helper.

When you've completed your rich snippets, use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool to ensure that they're properly formatted.

Add image alt text

Adding meaningful, keyword-rich alt text to your photos is beneficial for more than simply ecommerce SEO. It's also very convenient in terms of accessibility. The alt text on an image is a tag that describes the image to vision-impaired users who use screen readers.

Because search engines cannot see images, they rely on the alt text to learn important information about the image and your page. Including a keyword or two in your alt text description is a good method to enhance the page's relevancy for a certain query. It also increases the chances that the image will appear in a Google Image search for the phrase.

Create subheadings that are keyword-focused.

Subheads are a reasonable spot for your keywords because they assist Google in understanding the architecture of your page. Hierarchically, this works as expected, with the H1 tag carrying more weight than the H2, and so on. Subheads are also an excellent area to incorporate long-tail keywords.

Make room for voice searches.

The popularity of voice search is skyrocketing. According to Comscore, by 2020, voice search will account for half of all web searches. According to OC&C Strategy Consultants, voice-based shopping will account for $40 billion in retail sales in the United States by 2022.

How can you modify your ecommerce SEO approach to take advantage of this search engine optimization trend?

Google likes brief, straightforward answers to voice search requests, according to their "Evaluation Of Search Speech Guidelines." Long-tail keywords complement voice searches, which frequently take the form of sentences.

How can you find out what questions your clients usually ask? Here are a few ways for identifying the most frequently asked questions on forums, Amazon, Reddit, Quora, and Q&A websites:

• QuestionDB BuzzSumo Question Analyzer
• Keyword Explorer Questions Report from Ahrefs

Link-building tactics for ecommerce

Although ecommerce solutions such as Shopify and BigCommerce are excellent for on-site SEO, they are just half the battle. The remainder of the effort is done off-site, in the form of obtaining backlinks from relevant, trustworthy websites.

While link building takes a long time without the correct technology, it's still necessary to move the needle on search engine rankings, traffic, and, ultimately, money.

wers Off-page SEO for ecommerce sites is one of our specialties.

Off-page SEO is another important component of ecommerce search engine optimization. Finally, to maximise ranking potential and maintain a natural link profile, you'll want to collect the following types of backlinks:

• Logoed homepage links
• Deep links to supplementary content, such as blog posts
• Links to specific category pages

A varied backlink profile lowers risk by reducing the footprint of your link building effort. However, it also contributes to your entire SEO strategy by providing three distinct forms of link signals to search engines.

The importance of homepage links is passed down through your site design. Deep links to blog entries aid in ranking for long-tail keywords. Internal links from such posts also convey PageRank and contextual significance to your category pages. Finally, while direct category page links give the strongest signals to search engines, they are often more difficult to obtain naturally.

Let's look at some tactics for gaining better backlinks for large ecommerce SEO returns.

Using rival backlinks as a springboard

Backlinks from your competitors are a garden of low-hanging fruit. Moz Link Explorer, Ahrefs, Majestic, and SEMRush are all tools that can help you find and harvest your competition's top backlinks.

Scavenging competitors' links might help you find websites that are prepared to link to similar companies or items to yours. Furthermore, your competitors' backlink profile may reveal a category of link sources that you were not aware of.

Reclaiming shattered competitor links

When inventory changes, it's usual for ecommerce websites to remove products and categories. As a result, unless redirects are in place, any links going to those pages will produce a 4XX error.

To locate possibilities fast, use tools like Ahrefs Broken Link Checker or BrokenLinkCheck.com. Then, contact and request that they link to a similar page on your site instead. Because broken links ruin the experience of blog readers, most website owners will appreciate the warning.

Using strategic partners to establish ecommerce links.

As an ecommerce company, you most likely have significant relationships with strategic partners and providers that you may use to earn immediate SEO gains. In fact, this is one of the simplest ways to obtain high-quality, industry-relevant links.

Your association, however, does not entitle you to free advertising on their website. Instead, provide a compelling cause for people to link to you. You could, for example, offer to add professional content to your partner's blog. Alternatively, you could provide a testimonial with a link back to your homepage.

Become a well-known author.

Because your ecommerce company has extensive market knowledge, it makes perfect sense for you to write content for other websites. You may utilise a plethora of unique knowledge to offer genuinely beneficial content by transforming yourself or someone at your firm into a voice of authority within your industry.

When you write for an industry publication, the byline usually includes a link to your website. If those sites have a high domain rank, you'll amass a trove of useful backlinks while also increasing brand awareness.

If it's a newspaper that performs well in search engines, you'll be able to benefit from their domain's SEO equity when your content ranks on their site.

This type of thought leadership is useful for more than just links. It's also an important approach to establish your organisation as a leader in your sector. Furthermore, you may broaden your reach by reaching out to readers on these third-party sites who were previously unaware of your brand or just did not have it at the forefront of their minds.

Collaborate with influential people.

When it comes to link building, ecommerce websites are frequently a good choice for micro influencers.

However, in order to be effective with influencers, you must go beyond the basics. Get imaginative and come up with unique content ideas that will truly excite their viewers.

Influencer marketing has progressed well beyond the Kardashians. In fact, smaller influencers in your niche are significantly more likely to have a deeply engaged following that will convert on your site. Pay particular attention to the blog's engagement, posting frequency, relevancy, and general quality as you examine possible bloggers.

One of the most difficult challenges you will face as an SEO manager is the capacity to conduct strategic outreach at scale.

Stridec offers a database of over 9 million internet authors and influencers called Chorus. Because of the database's depth, we can precisely target niches in almost any vertical.

Promotions

Promotions aren't simply a terrific method to get your consumers talking; they're also an excellent addition to your link-building plan. With a little imagination, you can get people talking about the promotion even if they aren't taking part.

You don't have to be a Taco Bell fan to be intrigued by The Bell, a new resort Taco Bell opened as an out-of-the-box promotional campaign. The more fascinating, intriguing, outrageous, or entertaining your promotion? The greater the probability that the industry press will catch up on it and link to you.

There are other buzz-worthy possibilities that do not necessitate the construction of a five-star resort.

Content marketing for ecommerce

Not all aspects of ecommerce SEO are immediately transactional. In fact, there are numerous content marketing examples available to help you keep clients engaged throughout the conversion funnel, not just when they are ready to buy. More crucially, ecommerce content marketing overcomes a significant barrier: customers rarely link to product category pages on their own.

It is, on the other hand, much easier to create connections to content pages such as blog posts, articles, resources, stories, lookbooks, and useful tools. Even more, they frequently receive natural mentions!

Assume you're the creative director for a beauty company like Clinique, MAC, Bobbi Brown, or Smashbox. How might you create a blog strategy centred on content?

Your ideal customer is interested in far more than just buying makeup. They are also interested in learning new techniques and finding new ways to look beautiful. In fact, according to Stridec's examination of the beauty and makeup industries, publications who give more top-of-funnel content dominate organic search. As a result, your content marketing efforts could contain the following:

• A blog entry about "best products for dry skin."
• Videos with skin care advice
• Graphics for product comparison
• Photos of the before and after
• And so much more...

One of the numerous advantages of content marketing is that it showcases your brand's knowledge on the issues that are important to your target audience. This is beneficial not just to prospective clients, but also to SEO. As a result, organic search is one of the most effective ecommerce marketing tactics you can do.

Additional Materials

What exactly is content marketing? Executives' Definitive Guide

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Effective Ecommerce Content Marketing Strategies for 2022 

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Best Content Marketing Examples to Inspire You in 2022

The 17 Best Ecommerce Marketing Strategies for 2022

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10 OUTSTANDING BENEFITS OF CONTENT MARKETING

User-Generated Content (UGC) (UGC)

UGC pages serve as a repository for content provided by your customers. You can use such content in a variety of ways, including compiling customer reviews and soliciting customer stories, as well as delivering a dynamically updated social media feed. You can also organise content-driven contests on a regular basis and display the results.

Through their #targetstyle Instagram campaign, Target brand skillfully exploits UGC. Customers must just share photos of themselves wearing Target clothing and tag Target in order to be featured. This method has a plethora of advantages:

• Influencers contribute in order to extend their own audience, which increases Target's brand reach.
• These influencers may discuss and link to Target on their blogs, which boosts SEO.
• Potential clients can view how that stunning red dress might look in real life.

UGC is also more organically sociable, which leads to more online sharing.

Are you still not convinced? Users that interact with UGC are 161 percent more likely to convert, according to a research of 200,000 ecommerce stores!

Communicate the effectiveness of ecommerce SEO.

As SEO managers, we are obsessed with rankings and traffic. However, we must also be able to explain our findings in a way that is understandable to the VP of Digital Marketing or the CMO. They do not track the same KPIs and objectives that we do as SEOs.

The C-suite is concerned with high-level corporate goals such as boosting profitability, enhancing customer lifetime value, maximising market share, and lowering risk. If you can show that SEO converts visitors at a 25% cheaper cost-per-acquisition than paid advertising, they'll ask how they can quadruple your budget.

Let's collaborate to create a compelling case for increasing your SEO budget. To get started, please contact our staff.

FAQs

What exactly is ecommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO is the use of keyword research, content planning, on-page and off-page optimization, technical SEO, and UX enhancements to increase search market share and sales.

Is ecommerce SEO more effective than sponsored advertising?

Stridec, in brief, delivers new clients at 25 cents on the dollar when compared to paid advertising channels. More about SEO ROI.

How long does it take for ecommerce SEO to work?

Ecommerce SEO is a long-term relationship, not a finite list of fixes and upgrades. The time it takes to achieve measurable outcomes is primarily determined by how quickly technical recommendations and content enhancements are adopted.