Is SEO important for e-commerce sites? This FAQ dominates the entire online queries; an average of 1 million searches every month! With the corona pandemic, b2c models are pulling in sales via websites and apps. Focus on your SEO strategy – it’s your trump card to ace your e-commerce.

What is SEO?

 

 Search Engine Optimisation is essentially, to rank on top of the search results by optimising your website for search engines & users. With 44% of visitors using SERP to make purchases, this is the best tool to improve your CTR rates and conversion rates. From designing a website to getting potential customers, effective SEO can turn up the bottom line for your online business. 

 

How does SEO benefit your e-commerce?

 

Enormously! Organic traffic is the soul of an e-commerce site. While most sites opt for PPCs, Seo is an efficient strategy in the long run. You pay absolutely nothing; but boost your conversion rates exponentially. Studies suggest the value of impression shares improves 2 times; by ranking #1. Precisely, SEO can bring you:

• • High ROI, with almost zero recurring expense.
  • More conversion rates; highly effective at narrowing down your market funnel at every single stage.
  • Best CTRs over paid and referral tools. 

 

As the whole world moves to online purchases, fitting in the first page of SERP is not the deal anymore. Very often, most e-commerce sites lack the ‘optimisation’ and end up in an extra budget for PPC. But, why lower your profit margins when you can have an effective SEO check?

 

Check out below the step-by-step guide to master your e-commerce SEO; with the whole range of best SEO tools. Few amazing SEO tips & tricks following. Watch out for bonus tips too!

 

• Keyword Research

How to preach your e-commerce site? What is the best way to reach out to the SERPs? Keywords are your trusted guides. Every SEO plan begins with a thorough keyword research. 

To put it simply, keywords show you the needs of the visitors. These are the search terms on search engines; used by them to find any product or service. If you want them to buy your product, then you must serve them right through your keyword research. 

 

Keyword Research tools

Identifying useful and popular keywords is your foundation step. But, where do you find the best keywords? To begin with, find out the search queries about your product under the ‘autosuggest’ of the search engine.  Discover the ‘related searches’ section as well. This forms your basic list of keywords.

 

To elaborate the keyword research, there are numerous keyword research tools available for free and at paid services. Your first choice is definitely, Google. You can easily access the free service of keyword planner from Google AdWords (Google Ads). For a blog, Google Trends is your saviour. 

 

Take a look at these helpful and easy-to-use keyword planners:

• • • • • Ubersuggest
        • Google Search Console
        • Keywordtool.io
        • Amazon autosuggest
        • Kwfinder

Now, you have a good keyword planner. Is that enough? Absolutely not! Listing out the most effective keywords out of 1000 words is the real game-changer.

 

While picking the most suitable keywords, let’s look into the following 3 wider aspects. 

Prioritise the list

Using a keyword planner, you can generate many keywords. However, it is important to list the specific words useful for site optimisation. You can build 2 lists – blog content type and purchase intent type. These are helpful to track through the funnel; amplifying the user experience.

           

             

 

Competitor keywords

What is the best way to rank above your competitors? Just spy over them! After a self-research on your keywords, try sorting a list of keywords of your competitors. Look up the keyword tool for the ones with high search volume. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush give you the detailed report on keywords and backlinks for competitor e-commerce sites.

 

Long-tail keywords

Do you think long-tail keywords are irrelevant for e-commerce SEO? Then, take a look at these numbers. These unique keywords make up 40% of google searches; adding in 4% extra conversion rates. 

Try mixing in multiple short-tail keywords from different lists and bring in new long-tail keywords. They are especially used in blogs; where the user seeks info and you serve brand awareness.

 

#Bonus tip-1 : Always choose the keywords with high search volume and less competition!

 

• Site Architecture

 

Ready to engineer your e-commerce website? Navigation and UX should be your focus now. Your visitors are impatient humans!

 

Unlike other websites, e-commerce has a lot of product pages, descriptions and a long list of categories. Planning a complex site design can evidently lower your CTRs and conversions. Imagine how irritating it is to find out your favourite book from an unorganised library;  you leave, without finding the one you need and never come back!

 

To convert visitors to customers, you must structure each and every page with an ease of usability. That’s where site architecture becomes the big shot. E-commerce SEO largely depends on moving from your homepage/landing page to major link pages. Choose a flat structure than setting it deep; you don’t want a coiled telephone wire of your webpages.

 

Not chronology, but hierarchy is the focal point ( pun intended ). Look at this simple and standard format in organising your e-commerce site.

 

Credits:  https://ux.iu.edu/img/hierarchy.png 

 

Such patterns assist your visitors in getting what they look for. Serve them with improved navigation techniques and ease-to-access. This makes sure they are happy with your website and always comes back; more remarketing chances!

 

#Bonus tip-2 : Reduce the number of clicks for better lead generation and to build your brand’s trust. 

 

• Onsite SEO

 

With keyword research & site architecture, you have accomplished 50% through your e-commerce SEO. Your website is almost usable by your visitors. And now, it’s time to concentrate on more techniques such as Onsite SEO and Technical SEO; on your way to be #1.

 

Onsite SEO includes certain additional metrics that can help you with better ranking and conversion rates. Keywords make your e-commerce site visible for the users. But, stuffing them too much can harm your funnel. So, you need to do smart moves to optimise your site.

 

Take an example. 

Being an e-commerce site, you have a lot of product images. But, how exactly can you use these images for e-commerce SEO? Simple! You can add relevant keywords as the ALT tags for your images. This way, you inform the search engines and the users about what you have in store for them. 

 

By employing suitable ALT tags, you are in track with the onsite SEO for your e-commerce site. Not just for images, look into optimising your meta titles and URLs.

 

Golden rule of thumb – Always, design your e-commerce site for the visitors, not for robots; gibberish numbers & characters can fetch you only high bounce rates.

 

#Bonus tips are full-fledging in here! Read further to grab them and master your e-commerce SEO.

 

• Technical SEO

 

This part of your e-commerce SEO is inevitable to get the best results for our website. Technical SEO, is better known as Offsite SEO. It specifically handles all types of website optimisation on the site structure, design & visibility to your audience.

 

Just designing your website based on keywords is not sufficient for e-commerce sites to boost their conversion rates. This happens often due to the large audience available to most e-commerce sites. Duplication of content & broken links can occur which makes your website not-fit-in on SERPs compared to your competitors. 

 

These are the frequent shortcomings of most e-commerce websites:

• • • Data encryption issues
    • Redirecting page error
    • Content duplication
    • Schema- markups
    • Loading speed of the pages

Such issues can be avoided/ reduced to a great extent by giving due importance to strategies under Technical SEO for e-commerce sites. 

 

In search of specific quick-fix for all these backend issues?  Here is an amazing surprise for you. Check out our blog on “How to Master SEO for E-commerce”.

 

This is a virtual guide-in-detail to excel in Onpage & Offsite SEO with a whole lot of examples and strategies!

 

• Local listing 

 

Now, you are almost 70% ahead in your e-commerce SEO strategy. Let’s see what else should end up in your SEO checklist.

 

E-commerce businesses will have an upperhand in particular localities. Besides B2B, e-commerce solely moves forward with expansion across geographic places. Hence, local SEO really matters.

 

Google mainly tracks the location of users and tries to improve the search results based on their interests & convenience. So, it’s necessary to build a strong profile for your e-commerce site on Google+; the best start for local listings.

 

Social media pages and guest blogging are the other great options to enhance your local visibility. Do you know that local business citations can accelerate your SEO manifold? Local SEO goes hand-in-hand with Onpage & Offsite SEO. Take the call; you could easily focus on lead generations with local audiences.

 

With all these key tactics, you can try managing an SEO checklist. Aiming your sales might seem tedious using SEO strategy. But, with a little research and a team of devoted people, SEO can buy you a celebrity status on SERPs; literally at no cost at all!

 

Never forget that SEO is a long process. Tracking and auditing becomes the last 20% of your e-commerce SEO. Making adequate and timely changes stands as important as your keyword research. All those keyword research tools are handy here. There are many paid ones as well, which give detailed reports.

If you have got your basics right for e-commerce SEO, then check out our new blog on “How to Master e-commerce SEO”.