The Fundamentals of e-commerce SEO

This article is for anyone who is looking to understand e-commerce SEO and how it can help drive more traffic to their websites. We’ll start with the fundamentals of SEO, and then move on to how you can optimize your ecommerce product pages to increase conversion rates. Along the way, we’ll discuss important details like website maps and navigation features that will help customers find what they need quickly. By the end, you should have all the tools necessary to take your ecommerce site performance from good to great!

What is SEO?

SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization.

The purpose of SEO is to improve how ecommerce sites appear in search results pages by making sure that the keywords and phrases on the page are relevant to what people are searching for.

If you don’t carry out SEO, then you could get lost in the shuffle and never be found. It’s important to note that not everyone will find your ecommerce site just by scrolling through Google – people use different keywords all the time, so it’s crucial that your ecommerce site is optimized appropriately for them too.

SEO can be difficult because there are so many elements to take into consideration.

Keep in mind that what works for one website may not work for another, and even if you know what you’re doing sometimes it still takes a while before you see any kind of improvement.

search engine optimisation

SEO Strategy for E-Commerce Sites

It’s becoming more and more imperative for E-commerce stores to have a strategy in place for SEO.

With customers increasingly turning to the Internet to find products and compare prices as well as to search for information, it’s important that they will be able to easily find your site online.

It’s also vital that they will be able to find what they’re looking for on your site without too much effort on their part.

It is important to have an ecommerce SEO campaign for your site because it will help with the long-term success of your business.

Creating an SEO strategy is vital for any company that wants successful ecommerce websites.

Having a clear plan or road map will help you figure out a path to take that will be both successful and beneficial for your business.

An SEO strategy will ensure you have a great website that can rank well in search engines and give you peace of mind that you are making the right choices with your ecommerce site with the aim of increased search engine traffic.

What is Ecommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO is the process of optimizing your e-commerce website for improved performance, both now and in the future.

Ecommerce SEO is about more than just ranking high up on Google Search to increase organic traffic – it’s also about keeping customers on your site and more traffic.

You have to be visible, but you also have to give them an incentive to stick around.

This is why it’s important to optimize not just your product pages, but also the categories and other navigation features on your website so that customers know where they are at all times.

If you do this properly, then you’ll have more people converting into sales, and more people coming back to your site to continue buying.

The basics of ecommerce SEO

No matter what kind of e-commerce site you run, getting the fundamentals of ecommerce SEO right is crucial for good performance. These include:

  • Keyword research – this involves using tools to figure out which primary keyword/keywords are most relevant and with a high search volume as possible so that you know what to include on your product pages.
  • On-page SEO – this is about making sure that your website includes the primary keyword and phrases that you research during keyword research, but does so in a way that doesn’t look too spammy for users.
  • Off-page SEO – this involves getting links from other websites, either by submitting your site to directories or asking other sites to link back.
  • User experience – this includes making sure that you have a website map (where people can easily find what they’re looking for, including related categories), as well as having clear call-to-action like “Add to cart” and “Buy now”.

How does e-commerce SEO differ from other types of SEO?

When it comes to e-commerce, there are a few extra things you need to worry about. These include:

  • Making sure that your product pages include all the relevant details that customers will want to know – this includes not just photos, but also descriptions and proof of authenticity if appropriate.
  • Preventing duplicate content by making sure that the same products aren’t being listed in more than one category. If this is a problem, then you can use a 301 redirect to fix it – so if someone searches for a product on your site but there is a different page with the same product, they will be redirected to the page that they want.
  • Making sure that you’re using breadcrumbs so that people can easily find their way around your site, as well as making use of SEO plugins for WordPress to help improve your search traffic.
  • Optimizing your categories so that people can easily find what they’re looking for – this includes being sure to have keywords included in the name of each category, using appropriate search bars based on which pages are popular (like your home page), and making sure that you’re not forgetting any other areas like sidebars.

How hard is SEO for ecommerce stores?

The difficulty in ranking your ecommerce store depends on many factors, including the number of keywords targeted, competitive landscape, and how much effort you need to optimize each page for ranking.

How much does it cost to get on page one of the search engine results pages?

It’s not easy to put a price tag on SEO because it depends on how many resources you allocate and what you want to achieve. To help you budget, Search Engine Journal provides an SEO budget calculator 

How can you optimize your product pages?

You should focus on the content aspects of your product pages, such as including high-quality product images and descriptive copy.

You should also make sure that you provide other information like specifications, pricing, and other details.

You can add to its organic SEO by adding links to your other products and maintaining a site map with other navigation features.

The keywords and phrases that people search for will determine what you’ll need to include in the content of your product and category pages.

For example, if someone is searching for “pets,” then they’d want to know about how big the pet is, where it lives, and other particularities like its age.

Before listing any products on your site, you should do some keyword research to understand what people are searching for when looking for your type of product.

You can check out Google’s Keyword Tool or the Google Suggest feature to find good keywords and phrases with sufficient search volume.

Ecommerce sites should also provide other information like specifications, pricing, and other details about your products on your product and category pages in order to give consumers all the needed information.

URLs in the content of your product and category pages should include relevant keywords.

This will help Google understand what specific keywords relate to which URLs so they can better index them properly.

Why SEO is critical for E-Commerce success

Ecommerce SEO is a difficult process to go through. But it has a huge impact on how successful your ecommerce site is going to be.

SEO affects whether or not people will find you when they’re looking to buy what you have to offer.

For online retailers, search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential component.

Your products must rank higher than your rivals in google searches and display appropriately so potential consumers can locate the items they’re seeking in the SERPs and choose your site to purchase.

SEO is a method of improving the visibility of a website or e-commerce store by increasing its rank in the search engine rankings.

You can increase your product and category pages visibility and get more visitors to it by doing things correctly.

By optimizing eCommerce sites, you may generate free, high-converting organic traffic to your site on an ongoing basis.

This implies that you’ll have to spend less on advertising, which is beneficial for any online company.

Does your site have clear navigation?

It may sound obvious but clear navigation is often overlooked.

A good site map and clear navigation features will assist both new and existing customers with finding what they need on your website.

Is your site mobile responsive?

A mobile-responsive website is a must for any online store. Make sure that your ecommerce site works on all devices and is easy to use on touchscreen devices.

Mobile optimization will not only attract more customers, but it will also increase conversion rates, as more than half of users browse for products and services using their mobile devices.

Are your product pages clutter-free?

The more complicated your product and category pages are, the more difficult it will be for people to buy from you even if they find your page in a search engine.

Make it clear to users how to add products to the cart.  

Keep things simple!

Does your site have unique content?

If you’re not providing unique content on your website, chances are that you’re just duplicating what others have already published elsewhere.

This isn’t very useful to anybody – especially Google.

Unique content is one of the most important SEO factors that Google monitors.

It allows you to rank higher in search results, which will lead to increased organic traffic.

Avoid duplicate content

One of the most important SEO factors that Google monitors is unique content. Conversely, duplicate content will harm your search engine rankings.

To avoid this, make sure that nobody else publishes the same content on their site as you do on yours.

If they have, consider adding more value to users so you can rank higher than them!

This means that you should always try to write your own content and avoid duplicate content.

If your site has products that all have the same descriptions and images, it will be difficult for Google to figure out which product is the best one and rank it higher than others.

Schema markup

To help Google decide which page to rank you can use the schema markup, which helps communicate to Google how your pages are unique and relevant.

1. What is Schema markup?

Schema is a type of code that can be added to your site in order to help Google and Bing more easily crawl it. This process is known as microdata, and the markup will specify things like which product types are available on your site (clothing, appliances, etc.), how products work (model number, dimensions, etc.), prices, ratings and reviews, shipping options, availability of products (in stock or not in stock), images, contact information, etc.

2. Why is Schema important?

Markup is important because it allows Google to better understand your site when they are crawling around it. If you don’t have proper markup for your site, then your descriptions may not accurately reflect what the product is, and it can make things confusing for web crawlers.

3. How do I add Schema properly?

Schema is added in a few different ways: by adding it directly to the source code of your website (which requires access to your web editor), using a plugin for your CMS (such as WordPress), or using a tool like Rich Snippets.

Schema can be added through the source code of your site in a few different ways: via the meta tags, the microformats, and RDFa. In order to add Schema markup correctly, you need to know that there are three main tags that slide into your source code: < meta >, < span > and < div >. The first tag we’ll look at is the one you use for products:

<meta itemprop=”name” content=”Name of Item” />

This tag contains the name of the product and will be displayed as such on Google. You can include other details about the product in this tag, such as:

<meta itemprop=”brand” content=”Name of Brand” />

This will tell Google what brand your product is and will be displayed like so: “Brand Name’s Product”.

The next tag we’ll look at is for identifying a price:

<meta itemprop=”priceCurrency” content=”USD” />

This code will tell the web crawlers what currency your price is in, which will allow it to be displayed with the correct format for that country.

The third tag we’ll look at is used when you have more than one product available on a page:

<div itemprop=”associatedMedia” itemscope=”” itemtype=”http://schema.org/ImageObject”>

This tag is for multiple images, and it tells web crawlers what type of image the pictures are, as well as how many there are. When you have more than one product available on a page:

<div itemprop=”itemListElement” itemscope=”” itemtype=”http://schema.org/Product”>

This tag will tell web crawlers what type of page it is, which can help to increase your rankings for this specific page type.

After you have added the markup to your source code correctly, test it out by plugging your URL into the Google Rich Snippets testing tool. This will allow you to check and see if any of your product data isn’t displaying correctly.

4. How will Schema markup benefit you and your customers?

When you use Schema markup, search engines will be able to easily crawl your site and display the products in an accurate way. This helps consumers find exactly what they are looking for when they search for it. It can improve your rankings on Google results pages (SERPs) as well as increase traffic to your website, which will result in more conversions.

5. Should you use Schema markup on your product pages?

Yes – it is absolutely vital if you want to give consumers all of the information they need about your products and help search engines better understand what your site is about.

6. The importance of using schema markup in e-commerce stores for better search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, increased click-through rates, and improved conversion rates.

Schema is important for SEO because it allows search engines to more accurately understand the information of your site and display it on SERPs. The schema will help you rank higher on Google, as well as give consumers a better understanding of your product. It is also important because it helps with user click-through rates and conversion rates: if consumers can easily find your products when they search for them, they are more likely to buy them. Schema increases the number of people who click on your site, which can translate to increased revenue.

7. Adding Schema markup to a WordPress website with Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper plugin.

It is very simple to add to a WordPress website. You can either use Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper plugin or edit your source code directly in the HTML. Although it is recommended that you use Google’s plugin so you don’t accidentally break anything, both ways will work equally well once the schema has been added correctly.

Does your site have an SSL Certificate?

An SSL certificate is a collection of data that is digitally signed by an authorized Certificate Authority (CA). SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, which provides three things: encryption, access control, and data integrity.

An SSL website has an encrypted connection between your customer’s browser and the website’s server. This protection ensures that no one can read the information while it is being transmitted back and forth.

It is necessary for any online store to have an SSL certificate because it lets users know that they’re on a secure website when they see the HTTPS prefix in the URL.

This can also help with SEO, as Google now gives preferential treatment to websites that have an SSL certificate while providing peace of mind to users that your online store is safe and secure.

SSL certificate

Do you have a blog?

Blogs can be a great way of providing fresh and unique content for your site, which will improve rankings and help attract more traffic to ecommerce sites.

Posting regularly about topics related to your products can also help you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.

Backlinks are an important factor for SEO success. Writing high-quality blog posts around your target keywords is also a great way to help with your link building as more people are likely to link back to quality blog posts and web pages.

Does your site have a clean design?

A clean design makes it easier for both users and search engines to reach the information they need.

If your website has too many ads or links cluttering up the main product and category pages, you might be confusing people and making it difficult for them to navigate around the site.

Do you have high-quality images?

High-quality images improve your website’s image and Google will reward you for that.

Make sure that every image on your site is optimized and relevant to what is being discussed. If you don’t have the images yourself, you can purchase them from an image library.

Are there any usability issues?

If your site has usability issues, people’s experience with it will be poor and they won’t want to spend time on your website.

Poor usability often results in low conversion rates – so review your website for anything that could be improved!

So how can you improve this?

You can fix usability issues on your website by:

  • Ensuring that all product and category pages on your website have a specific purpose.
  • Looking into your web design and how it influences user behaviour.
  • Checking whether or not people are getting what they need from visiting your site, and if not, why is this happening?

All in all, ecommerce SEO is a difficult process to go through. But it has a huge impact on how successful your ecommerce website turns out to be.

It affects whether or not people would find you when they are looking for what you have to offer.

Remember, you should keep an eye out for your competition as well!

There are always people who are coming up with different ways to do things – so it’s important that you stay on top of things!

SEO Audit for your E-Commerce Store: A Step by Step Guide

You are looking to get the most out of your ecommerce site, so you need to audit it.

By following these five steps you can improve your ecommerce SEO and increase the overall conversion rate for your site.

The first step is to identify the site’s goals and find out what issues are happening with it.

To do this use the data available in Google Search Console or Google Analytics to see how the website is ranking on search results pages.

The second step is to carry out the site audit.

I recommend starting with the home page and working your way down through specific categories or pages like this:

1. Home page

2. Product description pages (do these pages provide enough information?)

3. Category pages (do these pages provide enough information? Are all the important pages linked to?)

4. Blog (do new blog posts get indexed quickly? What is the main topic of your blog?)

5. Social media profile links are these links accessible and do they work properly? Are you making use of them on all relevant social media platforms?

The third step is to carry out keyword research.

What keywords are people using to search for your products? What is the competition like on these keywords?

These are very important questions that need answers.

You need to know what you should be targeting, so you can rank higher than your competitors and beat them out.

The fourth step is to do a local SEO audit.

Are you targeting the right geographic locations with your SEO efforts? Do your local ranking pages have location extensions?

The fifth step is to ensure that you are getting the most out of your e-commerce site.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes – do they easily know how to navigate through your website?

Is it easy for them to make a sale on the first page they see? The answers to these kinds of questions will tell you whether or not your site is converting well.

Ecommerce SEO tools

There are a number of ecommerce SEO tools that can be used to find keywords and phrases for your site and work out the keyword difficulty as well as perform a site audit.

Keyword difficulty

Keyword difficulty refers to how hard it would be to rank your pages for certain keywords usually based on a range from 1-100.

A score of 100 means that this is a very difficult keyword to rank for and a score of 1 means it’s going to be much easier.

One example is the Keyword Difficulty Checker Tool provided by Ahrefs and SEMrush.

These SEO tools can be used to determine how difficult it will be to rank for a target keyword or phrase based on the competition you currently face, as well as the difficulty of competing for that keyword over time.

Ahrefs provide keyword difficulty scores via a score of 1-100, 100 being very competitive. Choose your keywords wisely!

Site audit

A site audit can also give the keyword difficulty and also an indication of whether or not some details need to be tweaked, such as the title tags and meta descriptions on your pages.

A site audit can also show you what backlinks your competitors have which will help you understand what links you need to outrank the competition, vital in your own link building.

SEO Tools can help you perform a site audit on all types of ecommerce sites and are a vital tool for any looking to increase the SEO performance of ecommerce websites.

Tools for finding related keywords

There are a lot of tools that can help you find related, high search volume keywords to use for your e-commerce site. These include the Google Keyword Planner, Moz, Ahrefs and Ubersuggest.

The Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword tool that lets you find keywords for your products and content by typing in a few words or phrases, along with other variables.

You can also look at the related keyword ideas on the right side of the page to discover different phrases that may be closely related to what you typed in.

Simply type in a keyword related to your product and note down the results.

Moz Keyword Explorer uses data from Google Autocomplete results as well as Google Suggest to give you the most accurate keyword data possible.

This tool can be very advantageous because it shows exactly what people are looking for and how competitive the traffic is on these particular keywords.

It also shows what percentage of clicks each of your competitors gets, which will help you prioritize your SEO efforts more effectively.

Ahrefs uses its existing database to show you the most popular keywords and phrases that your competitors are ranking for.

Tools like Ahref will help you find related keywords to target

You can also use these kinds of tools to determine which phrases you should focus on as well as whether or not a phrase has room for growth.

Tools have a lot of advantages for an ecommerce store SEO strategy, so make sure you use them properly.

If you’re already using tools, make sure to use them daily and set aside some time to go through the results thoroughly.

Tools can help with your SEO strategy but they won’t do all the work for you – even if a tool says it provides a recommended keyword or phrase suggestion, keep in mind that this is just a suggestion and that you should do your own research to find the keywords and phrases that will work best for your e-commerce site.

Google analytics

In order to find out how many visitors are coming to your website, you will need to know how Google Analytics works.

Like the Google Keyword Planner tool, Google Analytics is a free, yet crucial tool in an ecommerce store SEO success.

This information can be sorted by different segments in order to get a more in-depth understanding of your audience.

In order to find which product pages are being visited the most, you should create a goal so that you can filter out all of the data.

For example, if a customer comes from an organic search and visits your homepage, then another page on your website, they have completed their goal – but they have not converted into a sale.

When you are trying to measure the success of your e-commerce site, it is important that you keep track of all of this information.

This way, you can see which products are being seen and in turn purchased more often than others – and adjust accordingly.

Google Analytics has a tonne of information and statistics to help grow your e-commerce business

Ecommerce site architecture

A good ecommerce site architecture should be simple, usability-friendly and SEO-conscious.

A well-designed site architecture has many advantages such as high conversion rates, high rankings on search engines and improved traffic.

The design of your site not only affects its usability and ease of use but also affects the chances of people coming back to purchase from you again.

By using a clean, well organized and user-friendly website and site architecture, your ecommerce site will be able to provide all the information visitors need and make it easy for them to proceed with their purchases.

There are several factors that can help improve your ecommerce site’s usability and design and site architecture:

Site Map / Navigation Structure: While making a website, it is important to make sure there are easy ways for users to navigate through the site. This is the first step to simple site architecture.

If you want them to stay around long enough on your site, they also need to be able to easily find what they are looking for.

A site map or a navigation structure is one of the most important architectural features of an ecommerce site because it provides visitors with various ways to come back to your website and complete their transactions.

Content Organization: Content organization involves text, graphics, related products or items that are displayed in an organized manner so that visitors can find what they are looking for within a matter of seconds.

All the content on the site should be informative but at the same time, it should also be clear and concise.

Images & Video: Images and videos related to your product or service will help you communicate with your customers more effectively.

For example, an image of a person using the product or service can provide visitors with an insight into what to expect when they buy it.

Product Details: Product and category pages are among the most important pages on your ecommerce website. A product or category page is where people will make their final decision whether or not they want to purchase from you.

Each product page should be filled with details related to your product or service so that people can make an informed decision.

Customer Accounts: In most cases, ecommerce sites should have a customer account function. Customer accounts help customers stay in contact with your ecommerce website and access their personal information whenever they want to.

An account also allows them to complete orders on your site without having to register every time.

The best way of doing this is by giving your customers the option of becoming registered members where they can save their personal information, buy products online and track the status of their orders.

Conversion Rate Optimization: This is one of the most important aspects of ecommerce SEO because it affects how many people would actually purchase from you.

If your conversion rate is low, then it means that there are problems with your website design or the product pages, so it is important that you look at these two areas first.

Ecommerce stores can benefit from user-generated content. Here are some ways to inject more UGC into your site:

Customer reviews can help increase product exposure, which leads to higher ecommerce revenue. Many customers like the idea of hearing feedback from other consumers since this helps them make informed purchasing decisions or enables them to compare competing products before they commit to buying one online.

Use a simple URL structure for Ecommerce SEO

A simple URL structure for Ecommerce SEO is better because it helps the search engines to understand what your website pages are about.

The URLs should be short, descriptive and keyword-focused. For example, “shop-women.html” would work better than “kids-shoes.html”.

It’s also a good idea to include keywords in the page title itself so that it will show up in the search rankings.

The URL is also important because it helps customers find what they are looking for faster, which is key for conversion rates!

A common mistake that owners of WordPress e-commerce websites make is to not switch the URL structure to the post/product name from the default numerical URL.

This can be done by going to the WordPress admin panel, then Settings > Permalinks, and then you will see the option for “Post name” or “Custom structure”. Be sure to select that option!

Note: don’t go overboard with keywords in your URL structure though—three words are often enough!

Make sure your site is user friendly

Do you have a good website map to help customers find what they are looking for?

What layout do you have on your website – is it easy to navigate through, or does it seem cluttered and hard to find what you are looking for?

If your website is too cluttered with ads, links, or other bits of information that are not related to the topic at hand, this causes people to shy away.

Eliminate any clutter that may be present on your page to create a cleaner look that will improve your conversion rates.

Your website should be easy to use and navigate, so make sure that each page has a specific purpose.

Is your content actually relevant?

Make sure that the products you are selling are highly relevant to what people are searching for.

Relevant content will help with conversion rates by increasing the chances of potential customers finding what they need on your site!

Each page should be dedicated to one topic and contain useful information that answers questions your potential customers may have.

That way, when they search for the term you are using to describe a product, they will find it!

In addition, make sure to include keywords throughout each of these pages.

You can use these keywords in your title tags, headers, and meta descriptions.

As an example, if you are selling women’s shoes, it would be a good idea to include the terms “women’s” and “shoes” in your title tags throughout your website so that when people search for these topics, they will find your website more easily!

Ecommerce Keyword Research

Keyword targeting is important for your e-commerce website – it’s one of the fundamentals of SEO. Keyword phrases are words or phrases that people are using to find products on the internet.

When buying things online, people often search with different keywords to find what they are looking for, so paying attention to what they are typing into the search engines will help you reach more potential customers.

Selecting relevant keywords can be tricky because there are a lot of factors to consider – what is the search volume for your target keywords?

What’s the purchasing intent behind this keyword phrase?

Your focus should be on choosing transactional keywords over informational keywords.

Why? Because your main priority is ranking for keywords that lead people to purchase, and transactional keywords typically lead to high conversions rates.

How do you find them?

Consider buyer intent. Buyer intent refers to the intent beyond the consumer’s keywords when searching online, which

Is a keyword too competitive?

Trying to rank for highly competitive keywords is very difficult for e-commerce as most of the pages that already rank for these terms have extremely high domain authority and links.

Picking the right keywords will have a big effect on your business and SEO so it’s important to discover which ones work best. When starting out, pick a few keywords that you think people would search for and monitor their monthly searches and also their competition level

A word of caution – when using a third-party tool or online search volume estimation site to determine keyword search volume, be very careful as the data can be wrong and lead to choosing the wrong keywords

Tools like the Google Keyword Planner can help you determine the monthly search volume for certain keywords. The more searches, the better!

It’s important to choose keywords that are high in demand but low in competition.

This means they have a lot of monthly searches, but not too many other companies are competing for them. These are the golden nuggets.

Don’t forget long-tail keywords

You should focus on long-tail keywords in SEO because they are less competitive and will be easier to rank for as opposed to shorter keywords.

A long-tail keyword is a keyword phrase that contains more than one word, often more than 3.

For example, if you sell t-shirts, your long-tail keyword might be “white t-shirt with a pumpkin on the front.”

Because of the extra words, there are likely to be less search volume but has much more intent to buy as it’s less generic than just “white t-shirt”.

Long-tail keywords are a great way to get a leg up on your competitors and gain traffic.

How do I find long-tail keywords?

There are many ways to find long-tail keywords to help with your ecommerce SEO strategy.

If your e-commerce website is already established and connected to Google Search Console, you can find keywords by going to Search Traffic > Search Queries.

You can sort the keywords by impressions.

Impressions are how many times a search with your long-tail keyword phrase is displayed. This can give you insight into the keywords that people are using to find your website.

Start by choosing the keywords with the higher number of impressions and work your way down until you find a good handful that isn’t too competitive and easy to rank for.

This is a great place to start when building a list of keyword phrases related to your e-commerce products and product pages.

If you don’t have Google Search Console set up, there are other tools that will allow you to do the same thing. For example, Google’s

You can also carry our keyword research by going through comments or questions on Facebook groups or sites like Quora.

Look at the topics that people are talking about and search these long-tail keywords in Google – you might get some inspiration for new content ideas!

Another way to find keyword ideas for your ecommerce site is the alphabet soup method.

This means taking your main keyword and start to type it into Google, followed by the letter ‘a’.

Google will then attempt to auto-fill what you might search next and will display suggestions below.

For example: “white t-shirts a” will give you the below searches.

alphabet soup method for collecting long tail keywords

Simply note down all of these keyword ideas in a master keyword research document.

You can keep going through the alphabet to find even more long-tail keywords!

This is a great way to get dozens of long-tail keyword ideas for searches that Google knows have gone before or are likely to be searched for.

How do I choose keywords for E-Commerce product and category pages?

Keyword research is an important part of your optimization plan. Your website’s search traffic will depend heavily on the choices you make when selecting keywords and topics or content to create.

For e-commerce businesses, your product keywords are your most important keyword decisions.

Each of your products should have its own page with a unique focus on the primary keywords or keyphrases that customers are using to find you.

This is not only true due to the nature of Google’s ranking algorithm, but also because it makes sense for your customer.

Your website’s product pages are the most important part of getting new traffic from search engines.

Your products represent your business and they also bring in new customers, so it’s important that you’re not using generic keywords and phrases for each item.

Think about it: if a customer searched for “White Tea Kettle” and the product they landed on was called “Tea Pot,” they would probably leave quickly.

They searched for information on a specific item, so finding the right one is important!

The same goes for the category pages on your website.

You might have a section of products related to “tea kettles” but you want to make sure that the keywords are relevant and powerful, so use keywords like “electric tea kettle” or “glass tea kettle.”

Think about what a customer might search to find a specific type of product and use those keywords for your category page.

Keywords & Phrases to Use on Your Ecommerce Product Pages

The choice of keywords that you will want to target varies based on the type of e-commerce store you own as well as what products you are selling.

However, there are some key phrases that you should focus on for every single product.

The title is one of the most important parts of your ecommerce product page, so make sure it includes targeted keywords.

Product titles will show up in Google’s search results as well as Pinterest and other social media platforms.

It’s a great place to include your brand name, the product type and colour, and any features of it.

Include keywords in headlines whenever possible – this is where Google looks for the most pertinent information about a website’s content.

Product descriptions are a great way to get a large amount of text related to your ecommerce product onto your website.

Keyword research is important here, so find the main keywords you hope to rank for and use them throughout your description.

The first 200-300 words of your descriptions are the most important, so getting some good long-tail keyword phrases in there will help you with SEO tremendously!

Don’t forget that there is only room for one H1 tag. Having 20 H1 tags on one page is a great way to get yourself penalized by Google!

Your product’s Meta descriptions won’t show up in Google search results, but meta descriptions do display on the search results page.

This is a great place to use some of your main keywords and phrases.

Make sure that you’re not repeating the same words too often!

Optimizing your product pages with keywords will help you rank higher in search results through Google.

It will also help you increase your conversion rates due to relevancy.

So, if people are using keywords and phrases to search for your product, they’ll be more likely to buy it when they find it!

Another benefit of optimizing your ecommerce site with the right keywords is that you will have a better chance at getting sales through other platforms.

Many social media sites use Google’s RankBrain to give you suggestions for other items and keywords that they think you (and your customer) might be interested in.

Like it or not, there is a lot of crossover between SEO and social media marketing!

A great example of this is Pinterest’s “People are Pinning” search results.

Pinterest will show you products that are related to the ones you already pinned, based on their keyword optimization!

Perform Ecommerce Keyword Research the Right Way

Keyword stuffing is an old SEO tactic that many webmasters used to use to try and trick Google.

Traditionally, ecommerce site owners would stuff as many keywords on each page as possible in the hope that Google would rank their pages higher in the SERPs.

As you can imagine, this approach does not work anymore because Google and other search engines are smart enough to tell when ecommerce websites are trying to use black hat SEO techniques to improve search rankings.

Google will penalize ecommerce websites that are keyword stuffing so it doesn’t really achieve anything positive for your site besides lowering the conversion rate.

Keyword stuffing is a technique whereby people artificially infuse an ecommerce websites metadata and content with keyword phrases in an effort to rank higher in the SERPs.

There are several problems associated with this technique:

  • AIt looks lazy and unprofessional.
  • Sites that overstuff keywords often have good keywords mixed together with irrelevant words, which dilutes the effectiveness of their SEO strategy as well as the value of their ecommerce websites.
  • Stuffing too many keywords into any given page can trigger penalizing actions by Google such as Panda or Penguin updates which reduce search visibility and organic traffic.
  • It’s a quick fix that doesn’t actually help you rank in the long term because it does nothing to establish your site as an expert or authority.

The alternative to keyword stuffing is ecommerce keyword research the right way which involves focusing on keywords and phrases that will be beneficial for your organic search rankings AND give you results on the SERPs.

The reason we’re talking about keywords and phrases is that they are the building blocks of your on-page optimization strategy for search engines.

They will help you figure out where to place your keywords in order to get the best results possible. When thinking about what keywords and phrases to go after, consider the following:

Type of product or service you are selling

The commercial intent of keywords is an important one to consider because it has a direct bearing on the search behaviour of people using Google and other search engines.

It’s described as follows by Moz:

“Commercial Intent indicates the commercial interest, i.e buying intent, of the user searching for this keyword. It is one of the factors used by Google in determining how to rank your site when someone searches for your exact match keyword phrase.”

Your product page titles

There are some suggestions about what you should include on your product pages, particularly the use of appropriate keywords and phrases that people would use to search for items like yours.

A great way to do this is to include your keywords within the page title.

Your product descriptions

You can also include some of your target keywords in your product descriptions because these are some of the most important areas that Google uses for indexing and ranking purposes.

Just make sure that you don’t stuff your product pages with keywords or push your descriptions so far that it makes them look unnatural.

And finally, make sure you have a keyword-rich product page URL that can help influence Google if they’re using this factor for indexing purposes.

For example, you could have a product page on your website with the following URL:

http://www.mysite.com/shoes/product-name

This is a great page to have because it includes the keywords ” shoes” and ” product name” at the beginning of the URL.

Having these “head terms” as part of your URLs can be quite beneficial for influencing Google and other search engines as to what your content is all about.

It’s also good to include your best keywords and phrases within the first 100 words or so of your product pages because this is what Google uses to rank pages.

On-page SEO

The first step of on-page SEO is to optimise your product pages.

For ecommerce sites, this means you should have a succinct, descriptive product title and bullet points that list all the features and specifications for each product.

In addition to the title and bullet points, good on-page SEO includes ensuring that you have unique H1 headings for each page as well as adding your keyword to the URL of the page.

Remember to use one H1 heading for every page on your site.

Once you’ve covered your product pages, the next step in on-page SEO is to focus on your category and landing page URLs.

For category URLs, it’s important to have one main keyword in mind for each category.

This helps with relevance when customers search for specific products.

A good practice would be to also include secondary keywords or phrases whenever possible.

As for your landing page URLs, try to make the URL as descriptive and relevant to the product as possible.

For example, if you sell shoes, don’t just use a URL like yoursite.com/shoes.

Instead, use something such as yoursite.com/hiking-boots-for-men.

In the same vein, it’s also a good idea to have your product pages contain links to similar or complementary products.

This way, your customers can find more items that they might be interested in purchasing.

Meta tags and keywords are an integral part of SEO.

For ecommerce sites, this means using different headings to distinguish between product pages, category pages, landing pages and so forth.

Make sure that you’re consistent in including your keywords in the title tag too.

Different tags include;

  • Title tag
  • Meta description

A title tag is one of the most important parts of your on-page SEO. A title tag is essentially a headline for your web content. This can be seen as both a ranking and usability factor for Google.

The length of your titles should be between 55-60 characters.

Your meta description, on the other hand, describes what a customer can expect to find on your product pages and how it will benefit them.

The meta description is written in writing that essentially sells and persuades customers into clicking through to your page and can have a big impact on your conversion rates.

Google places a lot of weight on keywords and phrases that appear within the first 100 words or so of your product descriptions (or sometimes within the first 300 characters if there are less than 300).  So make sure you sprinkle these throughout.

When it comes to copy, remember that you’re writing for humans first, search engines second (although it’s still important to hit your target keyword or phrase).  So make sure that your content is engaging and easy to read.

Internal Links

Internal links are a good idea for all websites, including ecommerce sites.

Internal links not only help with the obvious, like linking to similar products, up-selling or quick links to the shopping cart, but they also have a crucial role to play in your ecommerce SEO strategy.

Internal links tell Google more about what your pages are about, so they can better understand what customers will find on each page of your website.

Internal links are said to pass the link juice or “credit” from one page on your site to another.

This way, you’re giving more power and authority to some of the more important pages on your website while also making it easier for Google and other search engines to understand what each of your pages is about.

Breadcrumbs are a great tool that helps customers navigate more seamlessly.

They basically show your customer which category they’re currently on and what the next step in getting to a more specific or relevant product page would be.

The last thing you want is for customers to get lost when they’ve finally found what they’re looking for, so having breadcrumbs can really help with that.

For example:

Hiking Boots For Men

>>Hiking Boots >>Men’s Hiking Boots >>Waterproof Hiking Boot Brands This is an example of how breadcrumbs could look on one of your product pages.  

Breadcrumbs allow customers to navigate more easily and they help search engine crawlers understand what page a particular section or category page of your site is on.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of ensuring that a website meets the technical conditions of search engines with the goal of enhanced organic rankings.

Essential elements of Technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and site architecture.

Technical SEO might sound boring, and often it can be tedious work, but Google takes it very seriously. If you have an ecommerce website, where conversions can be impacted by such things as page load speed and site structure then technical SEO should be high on your list.

A slow page load speed can impact your SEO. Imagine a user browsing your ecommerce website, clicking between a category page and products, each click takes an age.

It won’t take long before they get frustrated and leave your site in favour of a quicker loading page.

All that preparation, finding a target keyword, link building, writing a blog post getting the search traffic, all for it to be undone by not taking technical SEO seriously.

Imagine a user visits your site after visiting a blog post only to find the page takes an age to load. They instantly go back and choose the next result in line.

Google doesn’t like this, nor does the end-user.

A website’s crawler should be able to crawl all of your pages in order to index them.

When rendering, search engines must be able to read and interpret the content on your page for proper indexing.

The website’s architecture or its navigational and site structure is important for customer usage and SEO – both of these factors depend on how intuitively customers can navigate your site to find what they’re looking for.

Site structure is simply ensuring all your product and category pages are easily accessible and not buried several layers deep where users can’t find the information they are looking for.

Simple site architecture is crucial for effective ecommerce sites, the easier you can make it for people to buy from you the better your ecommerce sites conversion rate will be.

Website speed is also a significant factor – Google has released studies showing that website load time affects rankings of all websites, not just ecommerce sites.

If your site loads too slowly, it will be penalized by search engines and customers alike.

To ensure fast loading times, you should implement the use of caching, minimize redirects, and reduce server response time.

A site audit will help you understand what errors need fixing and provide an overall health score for your website

Off-page SEO

A key to a successful SEO strategy is a focus on the off-page factors which impact the site’s rankings. These off-page factors include link building, reputation management, and social media marketing.

Link building

Link building is a key offsite SEO tactic with regards to improving rankings and product visibility with search engines.

This is done by acquiring links from relevant, high-quality websites that are placed on pages related to the website’s products or services. Link building helps to increase the site’s visibility and credibility with search engines.

A website’s value can be measured by the number of sites linking back to the page, so the more links a website has, the better it looks in SERPs which will lead to overall increased conversions.

Link building is a time-consuming process and the goal is to focus on good quality links rather than mass quantity.

The best way to approach link building is to take a targeted approach, focusing on high-quality websites that are related to your product or service.

It’s important not just about getting as many links as possible, but it’s also a matter of getting links from the most relevant sites.

In order to get links from authoritative websites, businesses should aim for a good mix of link types including blog posts from high-quality blogs, industry directories, and other similar linking options.

Broken links

Links are the driving force of any SEO campaign, but all too often websites have broken links.

Broken links are an indication of an error in the website’s architecture or navigation.

The problem with broken links is that they can be misleading to users and search crawlers, like Google that is indexing ecommerce websites like your own.

When a user clicks on a link on your page, they will either get a 404 message or be redirected to another page entirely.

404 messages are simply messages telling the user that the information they’re looking for is not found and encouraging them to continue looking for it.

Broken links will leak PageRank and harm a website’s credibility, so it’s important to avoid them.

If a link points to a 404 page, the best practice is to redirect the link to another relevant webpage on your site. This can be done by using 301 (Permanent Redirect) or 302 (Temporary Redirect) HTTP response codes, which tell Google to update the links that point to the site.

This will help maintain a high-quality score with Google and ensure that users can find what they’re looking for easily, leading them to convert more.

Reputation management

Reputation management is an increasing concern for businesses in the digital age. In the internet age, it has become way more difficult to protect your company from online negativity.

But there are steps that can be taken to fix a negative reputation and improve trust in a company.

Here are some tips on how to do so:

  • Monitor your company’s reputation in all major social media channels and review feedback made by customers and stakeholders
  • Survey customers on what they think about your company
  • Respond quickly when a customer has a complaint or a positive response related to your business, in order to manage public perception effectively

Online reviews play a huge role in the reputation of a company, so consider how you can garner positive reviews from customers.

Places like your Google My Business listing, Yelp, and social media sites are all viable options for review solicitation.

Create a simple yet repeatable system for collecting and responding to reviews to make it more effective.

Keep tabs on what is being said about your business online, including social media channels and review sites to better understand public perception

Remember that anything that is put online can be seen by others – never post anything inappropriate or negative online!

Lastly, creating a system for learning from the mistakes made by your company will improve customer perception and ensure that these issues get addressed before they get worse.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is a powerful tool that small businesses can utilize to gain an advantage in the digital age and is a crucial part of off-page SEO.

While social media channels don’t directly affect SEO, it is a great way to connect with customers and potential clients.

It’s important for businesses to approach social media channels as conversation opportunities- not places where they simply talk about their products and services all day long.

Instead, focus on creating valuable content that will appeal beyond just your customer base and build your business’ community of followers.

Here are some tips on how to improve your social media marketing strategy:

  • Make sure that you’re using the right networks for your business.
  • Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Snapchat and Tik Tok are the most popular social media networks for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
  • Create profiles with accurate profiles including links to your website and other places where people can find more information about you
  • Use hashtags to increase the visibility of posts, but don’t over-tag if it won’t be helpful.
  • Post content that is consistent with what your company does, while also staying relevant to current events and trends.
  • Posting too many photos may decrease the quality of the posts – post quality content regularly so followers know what they’ll get each time they check in.

Directory listings and citations

Directory listings and citations can be a good way for local businesses to show their credibility and rank higher in the SERPs.

The best directories to use depend on what kind of company you have.

Local business listings are important for companies with an area-specific target audience, whereas sites like Yelp and Angie’s List are better options if your clientele knows your business by name.

It’s also a good idea to have unique pieces of content associated with your business to build more authoritative citations.

Here are some tips on how to improve your directory listings and citations:

  • Create a Google My Business page for your business
  • Make sure that the information listed is correct, particularly if you serve customers in multiple locations.
  • Write unique pieces of content for each directory listing; this will improve its connection with your business and make your listings more credible in the eyes of search engines.
  • Make sure that you’re consistent with all of your NAP across sites. Use the same NAP (name, address and phone number) across directories and update regularly to make sure phone numbers stay the same. If they’re not correct, search engines may think that there are multiple versions of your company.
  • You should also update your information regularly to avoid seeming illegitimate or out-of-date.

Paid ads

The Google Ads platform provides ample opportunities for ecommerce sites to drive traffic and grow their customer base.

The cost per click maybe a little higher than other PPC networks, but if your conversion rate is high enough, the return on investment can still be worth it!

Using paid ads to drive traffic to ecommerce category pages is a great way to get targeted traffic to your website quickly.

Paid ads can be set up very quickly using Google Adwords and the conversion tracking metrics allow you to quickly see which ads are converting best ensuring the best possible ROI.

Summary

If you’re not using SEO to drive traffic and convert visitors, then it’s time to get started! We hope this post will outline the steps that you need to take in order to optimize your site for a better conversion rate. From making sure that your product pages are optimized with keywords and phrases people search for, as well as having a website map or other navigation features available on every page of the site. If anyone reading this is interested in getting more information about how we can help make these changes happen seamlessly or has any questions at all – don’t hesitate to reach out! Our team would be happy to work one-on-one with you so that we can provide our expertise and experience in helping companies grow their ecommerce business by leveraging internet marketing strategies.

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