We're hiring - view latest roles

Top SEO tips for Ecommerce

Running and owning an eCommerce keeping content up to date is critical, but also having a Search Engine Optimised plan in place is also critical. Leaving your SEO down to chance on how your site appears and ranks in search engines. SEO doesn’t just come down to one individual task, it comes down to lots of little tasks and carrying them out routinely. Doing this will help your site to rank accordingly in online search engine results.

Let’s dive into these tasks and take a closer look at what you may need to do.

Research.

Research is key and at the middle of any SEO strategy is your keyword research process. Don’t just take a shot in the dark though, there are plenty of tools out there to help you plan and analyse keywords. Here is a list of just a few:

  • Moz Keyword Explorer
  • SEMRush
  • Google Keyword Planner
  • Keywordtool

Looking and researching your stores meaningful keywords that relate to your products and to your site in general is key to help you rank. Lets take a quick look at an example;

If your eCommerce store is selling ‘Power Tools’, you need to look at the search volumes for this primary keyword. You’ll also want to include different meanings for the same thing, or longer keyword variations of your current term so that you can target more of a demographic.

After completing this, you’ll need to then research your competitors. You can accomplish this by completing Google searches with your target keywords and viewing which stores show and what positions they show in. You can then look at page titles, meta information and on-site content for that page to see what other keywords they might be using.

Now you have all the information from these search terms you can put them into a tool like Google Keyword Planner to gather the search volumes. It is very important that you compare this list to your first list.

Are these keywords higher volumes than your keywords? Are they achievable?

Looking into competitors keywords helps you to decide if that keyword can be targeted on your site and within your content. But make sure you target one primary keyword for each page.

Your Site Optimisation

Optimising your site can be quick and easy to do. You should focus on this to help improve SEO position, here are a few features that can help:

Nice URL Structure

Most people don’t actually realise they need nice url structures, clean and friendly for customers and search engines. Examples here:

  • Non-user-friendly URL: www.websiteurl.co.uk/catalogue/brands/IronMaiden/Tankards?node=396&catalogue=brands&__jumpTo=1231234
  • User-friendly URL: www.websiteurl.co.uk/brand/IronMaiden/tankards/rocking-mug

When you can, make sure that your URL is where your customer currently is. Luckily the eCommerce stores that aware produce have rewrites on allowing friendly URLs.

Your sites META

What do you want your customers to see when they search for your site? The Metadata is the information displayed in the Search Engine Results Page, or SERP’s. It includes the title of the page and the description. Your title should always include your keyword. These Metadata attributes aren’t a ranking factor but they help towards click throughs.

Heading tags

Using heading tags on your page such as <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and <h4> you will be informing the search engine of the hierarchy of the content. Using hierarchy search engines can easily look and crawl through your content and identify what it is about.

The better your content is structured the better for Google, Bing, Yahoo or any other search engine you have. Making your content search engine friendly is great, but don’t forget your end goal. The user. The user needs to able to read and navigate the site better than a computer.

Image Alt Tags & Titles

Images need alt tags, they describe what the image is all about. This is used for accessibility reasons, people who have screen readers. Alt tags also help by using keywords to help rank your images within image searches.

HTML Structure

Having well structured and clean semantic code allows search engines to crawl and navigate your site easier and find content quicker.

UX ( User Experience )

Users visiting your website should always be offered a great user experience. Speed, design and accessibility. Providing the user with the right flow and answering any questions they may be looking for allows the customer to get through to checkout and purchase confidently.

Create Unique Web Content

It’s a time old saying. Content is King. Content shouldn’t be duplicated on your site. Each page should be unique and get the point across. However don’t believe that content is everything.

Don’t duplicate content. Why? Because the search engines crawling your site need to understand what the current page they are on is all about. Around 300 to 600 word count will help.

Your products information

Having correct product information is key to SEO for any eCommerce website. For most companies this usually causes an issue. There are a few reasons why:

  • Time to write content
  • Not enough information about your products
  • Engaging the customer
  • Product information isn’t rich in keywords

Making the content as engaging as possible is the key here. Include:

  • Product videos
  • Keyword targeting
  • High quality relevant images
  • Reviews

The sooner you focus on product information the sooner you’ll show in results.

Google is built on links.

High quality backlinks from other domains are the core of most search engine results. Gaining backlinks for your eCommerce website from various link building techniques such as outreach and influencers. There are lots of ways to gain backlinks to your eCommerce store.

Guest Posting – This is when you write a blog post for another website for a backlink to your site.

Web Directory Linking – Setting up listing in relevant web directories are beneficial, particularly if the directory is in your niche.

Broken Links – Browse industry blogs and scan the page for any broken links. Contact the site to let them know and start a discussion about how you have an article they could link to.

Conclusion

These are just a few tips that can help your eCommerce website to rank better and be found easier by Search engines. If you need help in implementing any of these or need any form of consultancy simply contact us to find out more.