Nothing beats SEO when it comes to establishing your brand as a trusted resource in your niche. And nothing has a more lasting, evergreen, positive effect on your website traffic than. While we do offer agency SEO services for ecom brands, the primary focus of this article is to provide a good understanding for what SEO can do for your ecommerce business, and some strategies you could implement today.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Organic SEO is the most effective way to drive traffic to your ecommerce website. This can be done through using search engine friendly, high quality content and backlinks on relevant websites. If you are looking for a trusted ecommerce SEO agency that can help you increase organic traffic to your online store, then look no further than Shopping Signals.
What is ecommerce SEO?
Ecommerce SEO is just, well, SEO.
We do ecommerce SEO the right way, and we do that by following the fundamentals of good Search Engine Optimization. Are there some nuances with SEO for ecommerce websites, yeah. But fundamentally, we’re focusing on: a foundation of keyword and competitor research; creating high quality, search optimized content; and a structured linking strategy.
If you talk to an ecommerce SEO agency, and they’re focusing primarily on product and category pages, with little focus on supporting content… you might want to look elsewhere.
Product and category pages are important, but they shouldn’t be at the core of an online store’s SEO plan. However, they SHOULD be the primary beneficiaries of that plan.
And that’s how we approach it.
Why is SEO important for your business?
If you’re serious about getting more traffic to your ecommerce website, then it’s important that you understand how search engine optimization (SEO) will help you accomplish this feat.
The good news is that when done right, SEO is an effective way to boost your website traffic and get more people to your online store. And not just any people. Traffic from search tends to be very targeted.
After all, we know they’re interested in what you have to offer because they’re literally searching for it!
How to optimize a website for ecommerce search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization should be an integral strategy for any ecommerce store. When you’re selling products online, your success goes hand in hand with how much traffic your website receives. It’s a well-known fact that organic search traffic is the most valuable type of traffic and it converts extremely well.
As much as SEO’s like to complicate things, optimizing your ecommerce site for SEO comes down to a few key things:
Speed and usability – Your web pages should load as fast as possible, and your website should be very easy to use.
According to Google, page load speed is an important factor in their ranking algorithm.
Optimizing page load speed can get somewhat technical, but focusing on things like… optimizing images, reducing add-on apps and plugins, and using a host or platform with a history of good performance …will get you the biggest bang for the least effort.
Making your website easy to use can be similarly easy if you focus on the core fundamentals, like: making text easy to read with larger fonts, short paragraphs, and a conversational tone without a lot of ‘big words’; ensuring your website is mobile responsive (looks good and functions properly on all screen sizes).
Keyword research – You need to understand what people are searching for, as it relates to your niche.
There is a process involved with good keyword research, but it begins with understanding your niche and your customers, your most important product categories, and what related topics would support your ideal customers.
Meaning, if you understand your niche, your customers and the products you sell, you should also be able to determine what niche-relevant topics your ideal customers would find useful.
From there, you you can use a fancy tool like Semrush, or just Google itself, and generate a list of target keywords.
You then prioritize those keywords and create content that’s optimized for each of those target keywords, or, optimize existing pages around those keywords.
On-page optimization – Steps to follow for all existing and new pages to make sure they’re fully optimized
There are LOTS of different on-page tactics you can deploy to optimize your pages out the wazoo. However, there are 5 core tactics that you should always include, because they’ll get you the most impact for your time.
- Site speed: Your site should load as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- Target keyword at the beginning of your title and heading tags: Your target keyword should be in page titles and your headlines, preferably towards the start.
- Mobile Responsive: Ensure that your site looks good and functions properly on all screen sizes.
- Content length: The content on each page should be as long and as in-depth as possible. Just a little longer than the top 3 competing pages is generally long enough.
- Internal linking: Links between related pages within your website are very important.
How to do keyword research for ecommerce SEO?
Keyword research is the most critical part of any SEO strategy. The right keywords will help you rank higher in search engines, which can lead to more traffic and more sales.
Keyword research also helps you to understand the language people use in relation to your products and your niche. The keyword research process gives you direct access to the exact searches people are performing in Google.
Doing keyword research for ecommerce is a fairly straightforward process. In our ecommerce SEO agency, we have our own tried and true process that breaks up ecommerce keyword research in to two categories.
- Product related keywords – Obviously, these would be keywords related the products you sell on your website. Keywords like: best xyz widget, or, how to do abc with xyz widget
- Supporting content related keywords – These would be keywords related to things your target audience is interested in, that are also related to your products and your niche. For example, lets say you sell fishing widgets. Supporting content keywords would be things like: bass fishing in the winter, or, pike fishing techniques.
From those two keyword categories you’ll generate an extensive list of potential target keywords. Then it is a matter of prioritizing that list, and determining which keywords relate to each other and how they will link between one another.
How to write product descriptions that convert?
Product descriptions are one of the most important content assets on an ecommerce website. Not only do they give a detailed description of the product, but they also help you convert website visitors into customers.
So how can you write descriptions that convert? Here are some tips:
- Write product descriptions that are concise, yet detailed.
- Focus on emotional benefits first, before listing features and specs.
- Add a video to your product page. Vídeos have been shown to increase conversion.
- Include lots of high quality, large product photos
- Address any common questions or objections customers may have
How to create an awesome category page?
Category pages are important to improve your website’s overall ranking and usability, but they don’t just have to be boring lists of products. And if you’re focused on SEO, they should be just that.
Here are some ways to create an awesome category page that will help improve search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, as well as provide a visually pleasing experience for visitors.
- Create a unique, keyword optimized title for each category page.
- Include an image with the category name
- Include a short, keyword optimized category description above the product listings.
- Below the product listings, include several more paragraphs of keyword optimized, and legitimately useful content about this category
Writing high-quality content that gets shared!
Content creation in the context of SEO, is generally writing blog posts or articles.
To greatly over simplify things, content creation comes down to researching the top search results for your target keyword, and writing a page of content that is better than the top three results.
Good content has a few things in common. It is logically organized, includes a table of contents, answers every question the reader may have about the topic, is helpful ang/or entertaining, is broken up with supporting photos and graphics, and links to other helpful, related content where applicable.
Adding social signals and links!
Social signals refers to posts on social media that link back to your content. When those posts are shared, retweeted, liked and commented on, those social signals are recognized by Google as a sign that your content is relevant and appealing.
Links, both internal (from one page on your website to another) and external (from some other website to your website), are a strong signal to Google of a page’s relevance and quality. The logic being that if other pages link to a given page, that given page must be relevant and and interesting to readers, related to the the keywords it’s optimized for.
Creating and generating these links is known as link building. And it’s a foundational step in any good SEO strategy.
In conclusion
One of the main reasons we offer ecommerce SEO agency services is because we believe in the power of content. No amount of ads can position you as a known and trusted resource in your niche like content can. But just creating the content isn’t enough. You’ve got to get it to rank in Google so people can find it. And that just happens to come with the wonderful side benefit of lots of evergreen, targeted traffic coming to your ecommerce website!
In order to achieve higher search engine rankings, you first have to understand and implement the basics of SEO. There are many different factors that influence how your ecommerce website ranks in search results.
If you’re not seeing desired results from your current efforts, it may be time for a change in strategy.
Learn more about our ecommerce SEO agency services now!
Credits:
Feature image – Business vector created by upklyak – www.freepik.com
Related Reads…
While SEO is largely the same across ecommerce platforms, rest assured that we do have Shopify experience and can help you grow your Shopify business.
Having run our own dropshipping stores, and those for clients, we fully ‘get’ and support ecom stores using the dropshipping model.
SEO for ecommerce stores is and has always been our primary focus. We have the expertise you need to help you succeed.
