Finally decided you want to build an eCommerce store for your company. So you’ve set up your eCommerce store, you’ve found excellent products, and now you’re sitting back and enjoying the profits.

The only problem now is that you are not making profit, because no one is visiting your site. Just like with brick and mortar stores, eCommerce stores need to attract new customers in order to make a profit and maintain growth.

Luckily, attracting new customers to your eCommerce store isn’t that hard, especially if you have mastered the act of eCommerce SEO.

• What is eCommerce SEO?
• Why do eCommerce Platforms Need SEO?
• 8 Tips to Increase Sale With eCommerce SEO
• How eCommerce SEO Boost Market Share

What is eCommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO refers to the process of optimizing a website according to the guidelines of major search engines (like Google, Bing, and Yahoo) so that it appears more frequently, and ranks higher, in search results.

Although that sounds difficult, SEO really isn’t all that challenging as long as you know what you’re doing. In fact, many webmasters and store owners have been utilizing SEO best practices for eCommerce for years without even realizing it.

Read Also: The Best SEO Tips And Advice For 2021

But competition online is fierce, and the number of eCommerce stores online grows every day. So it’s now more important than ever to get your site up to par.

Why do eCommerce Platforms Need SEO?

It doesn’t matter if your company is big or small, a bootstrapped startup or a Fortune 500 firm — you need SEO to maximize your e-commerce website’s profitability.

SEO Is Critical For Helping Customers Find You

Having an e-commerce website without SEO is leaving cash on the table — and plenty of it.

But don’t take my word for it. Log on to your analytics tool. Look at where most of your traffic, conversions and sales come from. I’m positive that, in most cases, organic search will rank as one of your top sources of revenue. For many businesses, Google drives the lion’s share of profit-producing traffic. (And if it doesn’t for yours, then you’re making some big mistakes somewhere.)

The way technology has evolved over the years has transformed the way consumers purchase products. Search is now an integral part of the decision-making process, with 89 percent of consumers using search engines to inform their purchase decisions.

Thus, ignoring SEO means you’re taking the risk of not being visible during your customers’ buying journey. When you aren’t visible on search results, fewer customers know about you, you sell less, and your growth slows down. At the same time, your competitors will increase sales and profits — and you’re letting them grow stronger.

Look at it from another perspective. Your potential for growth is tremendous. Too often, I find clients satisfied with average rankings on Google’s organic search results. They don’t understand that they could expand sales and revenue massively by improving further.

If your revenue were to drop by 50 percent, alarm bells would go off instantly — yet that doesn’t happen when you miss a chance to grow by 50 percent. That opportunity is just waiting there for you to grab with a superior SEO strategy.

SEO Is A Cost-Effective Way To Grow Your Bottom Line

My more successful clients allocate most of their time and resources to activities that are essential for meeting their goals — and cut down on areas with lesser potential or impact.

When the fundamentals of your sales and marketing strategy involve correct analysis of your situation, market and competition, and your plan is tailored to your resources and strengths, your efforts will be more cost-effective.

In highly competitive industries and niches, paying for website traffic can run to many dollars per click. Or maybe you’re forced to buy costly banner ads. With effective SEO, you are less dependent on this traffic. Of course, you can still buy ads. But if finances are tight, SEO can be a lifesaver that keeps sales and profit flowing.

Unlike paid search traffic, the traffic from organic search is “free” — no cost per click, no cost per conversion, no cost per impression. No wonder SEO has always been so popular. You can attract quality traffic in large volumes without paying for it directly. (Of course, there are costs associated with hiring and retaining an SEO professional, though this is true for any online marketing discipline.)

Successful e-commerce companies have prioritized SEO efforts to optimize their websites for Google (and other search engines). We have seen small Norwegian local e-commerce websites dominate niches with stiff competition from leading international brands.

Remarkably, they do this even with relatively small budgets and limited resources. Some have done it just by following simple SEO best practices.

These successful companies have a unique mindset. Their approach, preparation and planning is different. They integrate SEO with an overall marketing strategy, tying it in with activities like content marketing and social media marketing, guided by an experienced SEO consultant.

Integrating SEO with other marketing activities has a twofold benefit: it increases the effectiveness of these marketing activities while also improving your organic search visibility. This saves you time and money and brings down your cost per conversion. You’ll achieve more by spending less.

SEO’s Effects Are Long-Lasting, Making It A Great Investment

Search engine optimization delivers results that are targeted, cost-effective and measurable — and long-lasting.

SEO doesn’t have a shelf life of weeks or months. No one “pulls the plug” on SEO. With paid advertising, the minute you stop paying, the traffic drops. SEO just keeps going and going, working night and day.

The long-term effects of a solid SEO program are clear. Unlike most forms of marketing, where you start with a clean slate every year, SEO builds upon itself to grow stronger over time. You can layer upon what you did last year and keep growing, until you own your niche and dominate your market.

In some cases, you can even take a break or focus on other things for a few weeks or months and return to find your SEO just as effective as before (or close to it).

Unlike paid advertising, the stream of customers and sales won’t stop the moment you put the brakes on. If you run short of cash, you could pause your other ads and still be visible to your audience through organic search results.

8 Tips to Increase Sale With eCommerce SEO

1. Design with shoppers in mind

Your website and product page design should add, not detract, from the shopping experience. Even if you sell the coolest, most desirable products in your industry at the best prices available, a shopper will probably get frustrated and leave your website if they find it hard to navigate or impossible to search.

Design is an important part of SEO, too. If a search engine detects that your website has a very high bounce rate – that is, visitors leaving very quickly after they first access a page – you may see your rankings start to slip.

A well-designed website can help cut back on bounce rates, and can at least encourage visitors to browse a few more pages, even if they don’t find what they want right away.

Your eCommerce website should be easy to navigate, with sensible menus or navigation options that clearly tell visitors what they will see when they click a link.

You should also use images sparingly, since a long load time could lead to more impatient shoppers hitting the back button. And load time is – you guessed it – a ranking factor as well. So it’s in your best interest to keep your pages loading as fast as possible.

If you’re designing a new website and you’re not sure where to start, browse a few of your favorite (or least favorite!) websites and take notes. What do you like about their design and navigation? What don’t you like? From this, you can probably get a good idea of what your shoppers might prefer to see on your store.

2. Use important keywords

To make your product information friendly to both shoppers and search engines, make sure your sizes, measurements, colors, prices, and other details are easy to find, read, and understand.

If you have website visitors from multiple regions, think about whether or not you should include measurements in standard, metric, or both. Check product images or photography against physical items to ensure they’re accurate to color and size.

Some retailers keep their product prices from displaying until a user adds it to their cart. This can be due to a special sale, or because the retail is attempting to get around a manufacturer’s minimum advertised pricing policy.

Although hiding prices may not have a direct impact on SEO, if a shopper does not see the pricing information on a product page, they are likely to leave right away. This can result in a higher bounce rate, which we’ll talk about in the next section.

Finally, try to keep your product information as up to date as possible. If a manufacturer makes new information available to you, you should do your best to include it! It’s not only valuable for shoppers, but it can help get more keywords on your page and improve your rankings.

3. Use alt text in images

If you’ve ever added an image to a website, whether through a CMS or by hand in HTML, you probably know about alt text. Alt text is a line of “alternate” text that is used in a variety of ways. It can be displayed in lieu of an image (if the link is broken, for example), or in some browsers, might be displayed when the user’s cursor hovers over the image.

Alt text is another way to get your important keywords on your site. When a search engine crawls a website, it has no way of knowing what your images are, or why they are on a specific page. However, the alt text can tell search engines that your image is of a lawnmower.

This helps give further context to the page, as well – that is, a page with the image of a lawnmower on it probably contains some content about lawnmowers.

Avoid instances where alt text may not be displayed, such as displaying a product image in Flash. Even if you already have important keywords on your product or category page, alt text helps give search engines context to the images on the page, and can help get them included in image searches for those keywords.

Alt text is also very important for users who are legally blind or have a hard time seeing webpages. Section 508 of the United States Rehabilitation Act requires websites to be equally accessible to those with disabilities.

If you have a very image-heavy site and don’t use alt text, a visually impaired person’s browser won’t be able “read” anything for them. In the past, some websites have found themselves in hot water for not abiding by this best practice. So ensure that all images on your site – even the smallest buttons or thumbnails – have alt text assigned to them.

4. Create unique content

If your ecommerce website doesn’t have a lot of original content, or doesn’t have many products to speak of, you may find it very difficult to rank for your selected keywords or phrases. One way to combat this – and to give your shoppers a reason to buy from you – is to create some unique, interesting content.

Many retailers have a company blog where they talk about news, trends, or new developments in their industry. This is a great way to add more content to your website and give search engines something new to look through for ranking criteria.

If you repeatedly blog about one subject, a search engine is pretty likely to consider you a leader in knowledge about that subject. And your readers will love it, too, as long as the posts are detailed and accurate.

There are a ton of content marketing strategies out there that can be used to help boost your rankings and improve your SEO. From guides to whitepapers to long-form blog posts or articles, there are many ways that you can draw in readers and optimize your website with “meaty” content that search engines will love.

5. Allow customer reviews

Reviews can help boost conversions on your product pages. It’s actually proven: somewhere around 90% of consumers say they are more likely to buy products that have reviews, even if they’re not completely positive. So it’s in your best interest to let customers speak their mind after they buy something!

Surprisingly, allowing reviews may also help with SEO, which makes review management a common ecommerce SEO tip. Customers are very likely to naturally use important keywords in their reviews.

Although duplicating the same keywords that already appear on your page isn’t likely to have any impact, they might use synonyms or long-tail keywords that can help with your ranking (or at least send the right kind of signal to search engines).

6. Avoid duplicate content

If you are a retailer instead of a manufacturer, and you sell products produced by other companies online, you probably received product descriptions directly from the manufacturer.

While it’s a best practice to include as much information about your products as possible, you should do what you can to avoid duplicating any product descriptions or product copy that has been provided to you.

Duplicate content that is spread out between a few pages probably will not hurt anyone. However, due to changes in search engine algorithms, more and more websites are being penalized for duplicating their product copy.

To avoid hurting your rankings, your goal should be to create new, unique descriptions for each item you carry. Although this can be difficult and time-consuming – especially if you carry a lot of items – it can help set you apart from the competition.

Readers like clear, interesting, and easy-to-understand product descriptions. But humor helps, too, and anything else that you can do to put a new “spin” on your subject will probably be appreciated. Aim for 3-5 concise sentences describing your product, being sure to use the appropriate keywords or phrases that you think the item in question should rank for.

Also, avoid copying blog posts or other original content from manufacturers. Not only is this a bad idea when it comes to duplicate content, it’s also probably frowned upon by the company.

Many distributors and manufacturers have content marketing plans just like you! If you see something on a manufacturer’s website that you’d like to use, send them an email and ask permission first.

7. Write for humans – not for search engines

Although we’ve stressed optimizing your ecommerce store for search engines, everything you do to your online store should ultimately be for the benefit of your shoppers. Your customers are not robots, after all! A paragraph of keyword-stuffed, nonsensical content might help your ranking a little, but it certainly won’t help your conversion rate.

Your best bet is to hire an experienced copywriter who can walk the fine line between content that humans like to read and content that search engines want to rank. If you can’t afford a copywriter, you can try to learn the practice yourself through online webinars or guides.

8. Avoid cluttered, complicated URLs

The address by which a website visitor accesses a page on your ecommerce store is called a URL. URLs can contain a fairly big amount of information in a small space. They can contain categories names, product names, file types, or even actions (like “_blank” to open a new link in a new window).

SEO standards suggest that URLs should be as clear as possible, and that they should contain keywords relevant to what appears on the resulting page.

Avoid URLs like this:

http://www.websiteurl.com/cat?=328/product?=237828/main.html

A search engine isn’t going to be able to pick up any kind of information from that URL! Instead, lean toward URLs like this:

http://www.websiteurl.com/lawnmowers/green-gas-powered-lawnmower.html

Not only can a search engine glean several pieces of information from that URL – you sell lawnmowers, you offer a green gas-powered variety, etc. – but a person can also tell at a glance what that URL leads to. If they send the link to someone else, the recipient is probably going to say “oh, a lawnmower!” and click to see the product. The first example URL, well… that could lead to just about anything, couldn’t it?

How eCommerce SEO Boost Market Share

eCommerce businesses live and die by their ability to attract new customers. In the race to increase revenue, traffic from organic search can be essential. And that is where SEO comes in. Here is how SEO increases your eCommerce market share.

1. Driving brand awareness. Most ecommerce sites need search engine optimization for low-cost brand awareness. An appearance on the first page of search results or in Google’s Answer Box could be the first time a shopper has stumbled across your brand or could trigger her to remember that she once visited your site.

Moreover, some searchers view ranking well as an endorsement, which improves their likelihood to click on a top result.

2. Filling the marketing funnel. The traditional marketing funnel — awareness, interest, desire, action — relies on a steady stream of new shoppers. SEO plays a critical role in driving lower-cost top-of-funnel traffic at the awareness stage.

But SEO plays a role in the other stages, as well. As shoppers continue their journey from awareness to interest (research) to action (purchase), the intent revealed in their keyword choices moves from informational to transactional.

Targeting the correct intent at the ideal points in your site influences shopper movement to the next phase, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

3. Elevating content. It makes sense to advertise for keywords with high transaction intent. But the value of other content — such as blog posts, buyers’ guides, and how-to articles — is not immediate.

For those content types, SEO is helpful. Content optimization efforts can yield substantial increases in traffic at little cost. It requires only an understanding of what people search for (based on keyword research), an ability to optimize content, access to your content management system, and time.

4. Expanding remarketing audiences. Once shoppers land on your site through organic search (or other channels), your paid search team can place cookies for remarketing campaigns.

You can then expose display ads to those shoppers when they leave your site and continue their journeys. The more people you drive to your site, the larger your remarketing audiences will be.

SEO remarketing makes even more sense when you consider visits to the content at the top of the funnel. As shoppers traverse the web, they’re passively reminded that your brand provided them something of value.

5. Capturing the long tail. Fifteen percent of search queries are new — Google has never seen them before. These obscure one-time phrases make up part of the long tail, which comprises queries that individually drive few searches but in the aggregate represent nearly 40 percent of the total. And long-tail phrases tend to convert at a higher rate than other keywords.

Ecommerce sites are typically well structured to target those long-tail searches because they’re built hierarchically on increasing levels of detail. For example, a common click path for an apparel site might be Clothing > Men’s Clothing > Accessories > Ties > Blue Ties > Blue Silk Ties.

Those pages are deeper in the click path and match well to long-tail keywords (“mens blue silk ties”). But there are too many of them to target separately. Scalable SEO is the key.

6. Improving the user experience. A strong user experience drives conversions. SEO helps understand shoppers and thus optimize your site’s usability. That, in turn, can improve rankings.

Keyword data provides a window into shoppers’ desires. They want something; that’s why they’re searching. Sites that fill that desire quickly are more likely to make the sale. That same data helps understand how shoppers think or speak about their desires.

Using their keywords on your site can improve the experience. For example, if most searchers seek “affordable blue silk ties,” emphasizing low-cost options could improve usability.

Also, providing a quality user experience is a key ranking factor, especially for Google. If searchers click to your site in large numbers but then immediately return to search results, Google assumes your site isn’t relevant for that query or is otherwise undesirable. And that behavior can hurt rankings.

7. Lowering paid search costs. The content you optimize for SEO should also benefit Google Ads campaigns, presuming you collaborate on the phrases that drive value for organic and paid search. Google’s Quality Score measures the relevance of ads to landing pages, to determine the cost per click.

Optimized landing pages mean better Quality Scores, lower click costs, and higher performance in organic search.

8. Creating lasting value. SEO is an investment in long-term performance. Unlike advertising, its value does not stop when the campaign ends.

But SEO is not a one-and-done endeavor. It’s a never-ending cycle of optimization projects, each focusing on the content, design, or technology that makes up your site. Each project will likely have long-term value, elevating organic search performance for months or years.

How to Attract More Customers to Your ecommerce Website

1. Use High-Quality Images and Product Descriptions

Images and product descriptions are the crux of an eCommerce store. The better a product looks, the more likely a new customer is to purchase it, correct?

The ability to see a product in detail and understand what exactly is being sold gives buyers a power previously reserved exclusively for brick and mortar shoppers. 

More than 70% of potential customers place the ability to zoom on images as one of the highest priority factors when deciding whether to make a purchase.

If you’re a smaller store with limited available funds, we recommend investing in a cheap lightbox and learning some basic lighting skills.

The ability to take photos that demonstrate your product in a positive light can do wonders for a store’s sales and ability to attract new customers

Not only do high-quality images help you to attract new customers, but they also allow you to foster trust. According to research, customers believe that eCommerce stores that invest in better images and content are more trustworthy, and therefore are more likely to make a purchase from them.

2. Increase Your Search Visibility

Increasing search visibility means optimizing your site’s SEO for long tail search traffic. This means optimizing content to match long tail keywords and phrases that new customers are interested in.

For example, if you’re a clothing store, you would create content that matches and answers questions asked by those interested in clothing. You would likely tailor that content to specific audiences (e.g., men’s shoes, women’s coats, etc.).

If we take bed linens as an example and perform a Google search for “How to care for your linens”, multiple vendors appear in the search results.

These vendors have taken the time to increase their search visibility by appealing to long tail keywords and phrases.

Increasing search visibility does not happen overnight. As almost any respectable SEO strategist will tell you, building authority on the web is a time-consuming process; one that you’ll also likely have to invest money into.

This being said, there are some simple methods for improving your site’s authority and search ranking quickly. This includes improving your site’s speed and reliability

3. Run a Sales Promotion

Emails with coupon codes receive 2.5x higher transaction rates than those without. If this isn’t a reason for giving promotions a go, we don’t know what is. Yet a truly effective sale is about more than just creating and sending coupons.

When running a sales promotion, introducing limits can help to generate an air of exclusivity. If you decide to integrate social media and promotions, Facebook has a great tool that allows you to attach coupon codes and discounts to an ad, while also introducing limits.

Implementing Coupon codes on Facebook will let you set the discount amount, any details, where people can redeem the discount, and how many discounts are available.

It will also let users save your coupon code and use it in the future – in case they’re still undecided on whether to make a purchase or not.

4. Take Advantage of Social Media

Social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and other online social platforms. It’s a great way to connect with customers both through organic and paid strategies.

In the last two years, content consumption on Facebook has increased by 57%, with it estimated that roughly 75% of online users are either on Facebook or Twitter.

With such a huge user base, social media provides eCommerce stores with a perfect way to reach out to new customers and make themselves known. This can either be done through social media paid ads, or through organic posting that engages.

5. Personalize Your Home page

For many new customers, your home page will be one of the first places they visit after they “enter” your store. Because of this, it’s vital that it leaves a good first impression. The best impression can be made by appealing directly to a customer’s needs.

A great example of this is Amazon, whose home page displays products based on a customer’s shopping history and relevant holidays or events. Something similar can be done on your site by implementing a machine learning extension that displays dynamic content.

Read Also: SEO Services As A Way To Earn Extra Income

Unfortunately, this requires access to information about a customer. For first-time visitors to your site, you probably won’t have information on what products they’ve looked at previously. However, this doesn’t mean you have no data.

Customers can end up on your home page through a number of different avenues. It’s possible a customer has navigated to your home page by clicking on a personalized email you sent.

They could also have been directed through a specific social campaign. All of these methods provide you with data that allows you to implement a personalized shopping experience.

Conclusion

Optimizing an ecommerce store with SEO is important. However, if you lack the expertise, you can always outsource a professional. Throughout the year, you must prepare your online store for special days like Valentine’s Day or Black Friday.

The holiday season – last quarter of any year – is a great opportunity to scaling the revenue of your online business.

Don’t let go of opportunities. Optimize your online store with thematic visuals to attract potential customers. Without the right marketing strategy and planning, you won’t be able to engage with your audience, and will surely lose a good chunk of sales.

Do remember that SEO for ecommerce sites demands a lot of time and effort. Therefore, optimize and start promoting your ecommerce store today.