If you sell products online, SEO is a make-or-break for your business. Ranking on that coveted first page of Google for keywords potential buyers are searching is how you get discovered, drive traffic, and make sales.
The problem? E-commerce SEO feels overwhelming to implement, right? Trust us, we’ve been there! This is exactly why we have put together this handy guide on the most effective tactics to move the needle.
Our Ecommerce SEO experts personally helped implement these for small shops to large brands. By focusing on just a few core areas, you set the table for organic growth month after month. Let’s dive in!
Craft Killer Product Page Content
Think about the last time you bought something online. Chances are you did a bunch of Googling around the product itself plus accessories or alternatives. Getting those high-intent informational queries to land right on your well-optimized product pages is the goal here.
That means using compelling, benefit-driven titles and creating lengthy, rich descriptions fully detailing the product. Don’t just list generic specs and features that every competitor is highlighting too. Go deeper on elements that really resonate with your audience and tie to the search queries that reveal intent – like ideal use cases, material benefits, and how people feel about owning your product.
Also include multiple high-quality images, videos, buyer testimonials…anything visual that brings the product to life. Minimize objections by pre-emptively answering every question about compatibility, recommended configurations, and maintenance tips – you name it. Feature-rich content builds incredible trust quickly with visitors. And the more questions you answer on the page itself, the fewer reasons they need to click away from a competitor.
Organize Your Site for Maximum Discoverability
Often e-commerce sites feel like endless mazes with products confusingly categorized. As an owner, I’m sure your inventory makes sense in your head. The key is applying that logic for the customer – creating intuitive navigation and segmentation for visitors browsing your selection.
Take a step back and think about how target customers would group similar products together when searching. Build out primary and secondary categories around those concepts, using naming conventions. Align your URL structure to match, incorporating those easily understandable category and subcategory names. Every page should focus around a central topic while still linking over to complementary products. If someone lands on a mountain bike, it’s seamless to navigate over to trail helmets or suspension seat posts, for example.
Essentially you want to the path of least resistance for visitors to explore products relevant to their search. Because if it’s effortless to browse and compare options tailored to their needs, you have a captive audience ready to purchase!
Leverage Data to Uncover Niche Opportunities
E-commerce SEO is a numbers game. The larger sites dominate the massively searched, super generic keywords around broadly popular products. Your power is getting granular with long-tail keywords very specific to niches, models, and customer search behavior trends.
Tap into free tools like Google Keyword Planner or paid services like Ahrefs to uncover hidden gems getting good search volume but little competition. Look for multiple permutations of product descriptors like function, season, use case, genre, and more.
Once you identify core targets, optimize priority pages around those laser-focused terms. Create cornerstone, epic content centered around the concept itself rather than just targeting a single vague keyword. That way you become the authority site search engines recommend for those very tailored customer queries. Over time you compound visibility wins through owning more and more of those long-tail keywords in organic results.
Technical Factors Matter Too!
While epic content does the heavy conversion lifting, technical site health elements are also vital SEO success markers. Two biggies in particular…
Site speed jumped way up as a ranking factor in recent years. Google wants to serve up sites with the best user experience – meaning crazy fast load times. Test yours with Google Pagespeed Insights and improve hosting performance, image compression, page caching, and more. Secondly, a flawless mobile experience is non-negotiable, considering over 70%+ of shopping activity now happens on smartphones. Use a responsive site design, ensure buttons and CTAs work for fat fingers, keep forms simple, and truly optimize for thumb reachability.
The Payoff
Top rankings, especially on page one, deliver startling growth. Reports show over 90% of searchers don’t click beyond the first page of Google. So owning that prime real estate pays dividends. You’ll convert more of the screaming hot, high-intent buyers actively looking for products just like yours.
Plus you reduce paid advertising costs, build sustainable organic revenue streams, and cement brand visibility in your niche. Ranking well pumps gas on the entire growth engine.
So tackle the tactics outlined above to steer your e-commerce SEO ship in the right direction. We are happy to chat more 1-on-1 about tailoring strategies to your specific business goals or addressing any other questions you have regarding our Ecommerce SEO services.
