12 ECommerce SEO Tips to Increase Your Website Traffic Organically

One of the most important things you can do for your ecommerce business is make sure your website is optimized for search engines. If you’re not sure where to start, don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. In this blog post, we’ll share twelve ecommerce seo tips that will help increase your website’s visibility and traffic. 

Although e-commerce has been a rapidly expanding sector of the global economy for decades, eCommerce adoption and spending have significantly increased in recent years. Due to the pandemic’s limitation on in-person shopping, eCommerce emerged as the modern global economy’s backbone. During this period, many eCommerce businesses saw an increase in profits from SEO and organic search. It will be to your advantage to use the ecommerce SEO services of a reputable agency but if you are a DIY person, here are top twelve ecommerce SEO tips for you.

Why is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) important?

Every day, millions of people use search engines to find answers to their questions or solutions to their problems. SEO can help you get free, targeted traffic from search engines to your website, blog, or online store. If your eCommerce marketing strategy does not include search, you risk alienating a significant number of customers who use search engines.

According to BusinessInsider, organic traffic, also known as “free search results,” accounts for nearly 24% of all eCommerce purchases. Organic sales account for a sizable portion of eCommerce sales, and these businesses benefit from lower advertising costs and increased brand recognition. SEO is a great way to build a lasting brand and increase organic visibility in your eCommerce marketing strategy.

The modern consumer is accustomed to seeing advertisements on nearly every platform: mobile, desktop, etc. This has resulted in what is known as “ad fatigue”. Although paid advertising works well for some niches, SEO opens up a new way for businesses to get organic traffic and sales for your business. Ecommerce SEO gives you another way to get interested customers to see your sales and content pages. Your business’s organic sales and conversions will improve as a result.

Also, Read Mobile eCommerce Statistics and Trends 2024

12 eCommerce SEO Tips to Increase Organic Traffic

1. Choose the Keywords With Buying Intent

Conducting in-depth keyword research is the first and most crucial step in enhancing your eCommerce SEO. Without keyword research, your other efforts will be less successful. Your website can target competitively ranked keywords with proper keyword research. You are only guessing if you do not conduct keyword research, and this will most likely result in little to no traffic for your website. Let’s look at the different types of keywords.

• Informational Keywords: Keywords that are looking for specific answers are referred to as informational keywords. For example, “How does an Electric Vehicle work?” is a keyword that provides information.
  
• Transactional Keywords: Keywords that indicate a desire to purchase are known as transactional keywords. “Best orthofoam bed” is an illustration of this kind of keyword. The goal of this search is to learn more about a product so that you can make an informed purchase decision.
  
• Navigational Keywords: Navigational keywords are keywords that can be used to locate a particular website or page. “Walmart near me” is an illustration of a keyword of this kind. The sole purpose of this search is to locate the nearest Walmart.
  
• Commercial Keywords: Keywords that indicate a searcher is learning more about a brand or product are known as commercial keywords. The keyword “Buy dog food” is one example of this.This search aims to learn more about dog food providers and the various associated products provided to its customers.

2. Website Speed Optimization

It should come as no surprise that when ranking your pages, search engines take speed into account because a fast-loading website is essential to a positive user experience. Here are some suggestions for making sure your website is fast:

• Update your theme, and your plugins on a regular basis
• Use a good host
• Incorporate lazy loading
• Use less plugins
• Perform image optimization
• Configure caching
• Opt for a CDN (Content Delivery Network)

3. Alt Text for Images

Your images are not actually visible to search engines. So, search engines use the Alt Text provided with the image to understand the image. Every image on your website’s alt text should include your target keyword and be as descriptive as possible. It is essentially a caption. Your objective ought to be to convey the meaning of your image to someone who cannot see it. Screen readers use alt text to “read” images to people who can’t see. It would be an added benefit if you can incorporate a target keyword in the Alt Text. A good Alt Text for the above image would be, “A laptop with a pen stand and a small diary sits on the table with an outside view”.

4. Link Building

Google uses links as a key ranking factor to help rank websites and product pages. You should aim for high-quality links with the best authority. One link from a reputable website is equivalent to dozens, if not more, from weaker websites. To locate lists of reputable websites, you can make use of apps like SEMrush or Ahrefs.

It’s much better to get links from sites in your industry or niche than from sites that don’t have anything to do with your eCommerce store. For instance, getting a link from a store that sells nutritional products such as protein powder is much preferable to getting one from a restaurant blog if you are in the fitness niche. Your site’s knowledge graph grows as a result of these links, which are more relevant to your audience and content.

5. Use Analytics Tools

You will be able to effectively monitor users, potential clients, and anyone else who visits your website if you make use of tracking tools. You will be able to see exactly what your visitors do when they arrive at a particular page, including where they click on it and how long they spend on each section. This information adds a lot of value to the process of making the user’s experience much more efficient and optimized. Because search engines are placing a greater emphasis that users have the best possible experience, this is so crucial to your search engine rankings. Google Analytics is one of the most important and useful tools you can use on your website to get more information and make better business decisions.

6. Optimize URLs

By giving site visitors a preview of what the page is about, good URLs provide an equally excellent user experience. They additionally do precisely the same thing for web search tools. Try to keep your URLs brief and descriptive. You should steer clear of product URLs like “appliances.com/store/naowhj838743hbdsg9pwuqe7itibqjegis” if you sell refrigerators. You can change it to something like “appliances.com/products/fridge”. You should also include keywords wherever they are relevant.

7. Keyword Rich Meta Descriptions for Category & Product Pages

A HTML meta tag used to describe the content of a page is called a meta description. It appears under a page’s title and URL in every search engine result. A meta description promotes a page’s value proposition and encourages users to click on it, acting like a miniature advertisement. Although meta descriptions don’t directly affect your SEO, they can boost your organic CTR (Click Through Rate), which is the percentage of people who click on a search engine result page after seeing it. CTR is a metric that marketers use to determine whether an advertisement, search result, or page element is relevant. Even if you don’t rank first for a keyword, you can expect more traffic if your CTR is higher!

8. User Focused Quality Content

Create content that responds to search queries from your users. Think about the user’s goal when coming up with content ideas—their specific desires and needs as well as their intent. For instance, if a user searches for one of your products and you provide them with the page for the corresponding product, you will satisfy their desire, which we can assume is to either buy your product or learn more about it. Always post content that is original, relevant, engaging, and of high quality. Ensure to post relevant high quality videos and images. Check to see that each of these pages has the appropriate keyword(s), internal and external links, keyword count, and structure.

Provide your readers with solutions that they were unaware of. It doesn’t matter if your product is a part of that solution, prior to making a sale, concentrate on assisting the reader. Analyze your rivals and produce content that is ten times superior to theirs for each targeted keyword. Write for humans rather than for algorithms. Google needs content that satisfies individuals, not to fulfill its algorithm.

9. Add Reviews

To provide potential customers with a sufficient amount of social proof, you should ensure that you include product reviews for each product that you list on your eCommerce store. Because they provide social proof for your online store, reviews are great for eCommerce SEO. In the search results, Google lists the average rating and the number of reviews for a product. Google will reward you with featured snippets if you implement them correctly. These snippets will help your pages stand out and bring more quality clicks to your website. A product’s positive reviews from hundreds of like-minded individuals can be one of the strongest signals that convert a visitor into a customer.

10. Anchor Text Optimization

The highlighted text that leads to the linked page is called the anchor text. When optimizing internal linking, one best practice is to use descriptive anchor texts. Google sees internal links as a sign that two pages are connected, which helps them rank higher for related terms. The internal link will be more effective for both users and search engines if the anchor text is more precise and descriptive. In addition to improving on-page SEO, this makes it easier for users to identify the page they are being directed to.

Also, Read: Shopify SEO Guide: How to do Shopify SEO 

11. Adopt a Proper Website Structure

A well-organized website can change your search engine ranking and increase the likelihood of a sale. There are numerous ways to improve the structure of your website. Breadcrumb navigation is used to show users which part of the website page they are in right now. Breadcrumb navigation, in conjunction with site mapping and the structure organization of your website, can improve shoppers’ click-through rates. The next important thing would be to have clean URLs. Clean URL means a visitor-friendly URL. Clean URLs are designed to make information searching and navigation simpler for users.

12. Avoid Duplicate Content

Text that appears on multiple websites, whether your own or someone else’s, is considered duplicate content. Duplicate content is detested by search engines like Google because it’s confusing. They are unsure which version should be ranked because they do not know which one is correct. Don’t just copy and paste descriptions from the manufacturer. Instead, be original and use your own descriptions for the products. After all, it’s likely that everyone else selling the same products is doing the same thing.

Also, Read: Best way to handle duplicate content in ecommerce site 

Write different product descriptions for similar products. It might be tempting to repeatedly copy and paste the same description if you sell similar products. However, this may lower both product pages’ rankings. 

Wrapping Up

Increasing your company’s organic traffic, conversions, and sales can be achieved by implementing the aforementioned eCommerce SEO strategies. The SEO industry is ever evolving. To continue expanding over time, your e-commerce store will need to adjust to the changes. Each of the above strategies is a well-established standard that has been demonstrated to withstand modifications to Google’s algorithm. You should ensure that you develop an e-commerce SEO strategy that can keep up with these algorithmic changes and ensure the expansion of your company.

FAQs