Ecommerce SEO is the practice of increasing the visibility of your online store on search engine results pages (SERPs). When consumers search for your items, you want to rank as high as possible in order to generate more visitors.

Paid search can bring you traffic, but SEO is considerably less expensive. Furthermore, ad blockers and ad blindness can diminish the efficiency of sponsored search, so you should optimize for search nonetheless.

Optimizing your headlines, product descriptions, meta data, internal link structure, and navigational structure for search and user experience is typical of ecommerce SEO. Each product you sell should have its own page tailored to attract search engine traffic.

However, you don’t want to forget about static, non-product-oriented pages on your site, such as the following:

• Homepage
• About page
• F.A.Q. page
• Blog articles
• Help center answers
• Contact page

Create a list of keywords for those pages as well as related keywords. Tools like Ubersuggest make it easy to search for one long-tail keyword and find semantic keywords that go well with it.

Let’s take a look at some of the top SEO suggestions for ecommerce sites that are lacking. You need an ecommerce SEO plan if you want customers to find your products more easily, and crossing each thing off your list will make your strategy more effective.

1. Perform Keyword Research That Considers Buyer Intent

When performing keyword research, don’t focus exclusively on the most popular keywords in your industry. It’s essential to factor buyer intent into the mix. Buyer intent relates to the intention behind a search query. To identify it, look at the specific phrases and terms that people type into search engines when they’re searching online.

There are two main types of keyword intent:

• Informational keyword intent: These searches contain questions like “how do I?” or factual queries. In these cases, the searcher is looking for more details about a subject.
• Commercial keyword intent: These searches take place when a searcher knows what they want, but don’t know where to find it. They may type in search phrases like “buy smartphone” or “find London hotel deals”. Users of commercial keywords usually have more intent to purchase.

There are various ways to determine keyword intent. You could use a keyword tool like Google’s keyword planner. You could also use a tool like Ubersuggest. This tool is useful for content writers, bloggers and copywriters who want to generate new content ideas or investigate user search queries. You could also consider using Answer the Public. With this tool, you simply enter your keyword on the home page to discover exactly what people are asking about.

2. Don’t Forget Long-Tail Keywords

On SERPs, long-tail keywords usually appear on the right side of the page. A long-tail keyword is a term that typically has low search volume but is still relevant to your business. It usually converts well because it’s a better match for what the searcher is looking for. It also tends to generate higher traffic volumes.

Long-tail keywords can reveal what your customer is looking for and what their intentions are. For example, “shoes” is a short-tail keyword but “best walking shoes for summer” is a long-tail keyword and it provides more information about the customer’s likely next steps and intentions.

Read Also: Where Can I Sell my E-commerce Business?

Try to rank for long-tail keywords because they’re a valuable source of traffic. They’re particularly useful for:

• Competitive niches
• Increased conversion rates
• Ranking new sites more easily
• Quick wins with a limited budget

You can find long-tail keywords by using Google’s “People also ask” feature or by using a free keyword tool like Ubersuggest or Wordtracker.

3. Optimize Product Pages to Improve Ranking

You can use on-page optimization techniques to attract and acquire new customers and gain more conversions. It’s a good idea to focus your efforts on the areas of your e-commerce site that matter most. These are your:

• Product descriptions
• Images
• Reviews

Product descriptions

Before you start optimizing your product descriptions, ask yourself three questions:

1. What are the most important elements on the page?
2. How can you maximize the visibility and impact of these elements?
3. How can you use this information to improve the effectiveness of your product descriptions?

To optimize product descriptions, you can consider:

• Adding high-quality unique images
• Including keywords
• Including keyword-rich descriptions
• Adding CTAs
• Including testimonials

Images

Images and photos can make a page look more interesting and engaging but they can also be distracting. So, avoid using too many of them in descriptions.

By optimizing your images for SEO, you should get higher search engine rankings and more traffic from potential customers. You may also gain traffic from social media channels.

To optimize your images:

• Choose suitable images in appropriate sizes
• Include captions with ALT tags
• Use the correct keywords in file names

Reviews

Reviews are vital for your success in e-commerce. They help consumers decide whether to buy a particular product or do business with an online store. Reviews also help you build trust with consumers and improve conversion rates.

Encourage customers to leave reviews by sending automated messages whenever they purchase something from your site.

4. Make Sure Your Site Is User Friendly

In e-commerce, it’s crucial to pay attention to the UX – or user experience – of your site. Good design makes your site more visually appealing and enhances its UX.

As well as looking good, it’s important that your site works well. Make sure that ads don’t interfere with the user’s view of the content. Ensure people can navigate easily through your site and that it’s intuitive to use.

It’s important that shoppers can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, that they remain engaged while on your site, and that they generally have a wonderful experience. If Google thinks your website offers visitors a poor experience, it may rank it lower.

To improve UX, ensure your site:

• Loads quickly
• Is mobile-friendly
• Is clutter-free
• Is easy to navigate
• Includes CTAs
• Uses consistent styling
• Is accessible

5. Use a Simple URL Structure

When your e-commerce site has a simple URL structure, it enhances the UX of your site. It improves your SEO e-commerce efforts, as it provides more relevant data for search engines. It also makes it easier to share products on social media and other websites.

URLs should be easy to read and understand and as short as possible.

POOR EXAMPLE: https://www.example.com/article-about-baking/

GOOD EXAMPLE: https://www.example.com/baking-articles/

It’s important to include keywords in your URLs. These are called “meta tags”. They tell search engines what the content of your page is about. Search engines scan the URL and use the keywords in the URL to decide where the page should rank in SERPs. You can also use a navigational tool like breadcrumbs to help website visitors retrace their previous steps and return to where they started. You can add them using markup tags or via JavaScript to boost SEO.

Also, avoid using stop words in URLs. Stop words include “the”, “and”, “of”, and “a”. These can decrease your content’s readability and may lower your SEO rankings.

6. Avoid Duplicate Pages and Duplicate Content

Many online retailers fall into the trap of including duplicate product descriptions and images on their websites. You can reduce the amount of duplicate content on your site by:

• Using a CMS with site-wide 301 redirects or adding canonical tags on every page that you know might have duplicates; for example, pages with similar titles or that share an identical URL
• Adding a suffix to the URL
• Using different product images
• Adding unique keywords on other pages