Apr. 03, 2019

Ecommerce SEO Specialist

Latest, actionable Ecommerce SEO techniques & Ecommerce SEO Best Practices.
For both website traffic and lead generation, a strong SEO campaign is essential.

This is the most comprehensive guide to Ecommerce SEO online.

In this expert-written guide you’ll learn everything you need to know about optimizing your ecommerce site, from keyword research to technical SEO to link building.

So if you’re looking to get more targeted traffic (and customers) from search, you’ll love this guide.

Let’s dive right in.

SEO Overview

Even the best products go unsold if customers don’t know where to find them. Give your business the attention it deserves with promotional tools that attract visitors and keep them coming back.

Whether you’re launching a new product, building a web presence for your retail location, or starting a drop-shipping business, when you’re trying to sell online you have an important problem to solve:

how do you get customers to find your store? People who find your online store in a search engine are probably looking for products like yours, so they are more likely to buy something.

You can use search engine optimization (SEO) to improve the search engine ranking for your store and help customers find your products.

Search Engine Optimization

Expanding your company’s visibility in the search results. We help businesses rank web pages higher in search engine result pages. And in turn, our SEO campaigns drive more visitors to your website, increasing chances for more exposure and conversions.

SEO Search Engine Optimization helps people find products and information on search engines like Google and Bing. An Ecommerce SEO specialist, then, researches and analyses the trends and best practices online to develop and implement strategies that improve search results.

The overall goal is to increase the level of traffic to a Ecommerce website by using keywords and keyword topics to improve the user experience and meet search engine guidelines.

Search engines, however, are always changing. And SEO specialists have to keep up. Let’s think about what exactly we mean by this.

Why SEO Matters for Ecommerce Websites

Let’s quickly look at some interesting stats…

44% of people start their online shopping journey with a Google search, 37.5% of all traffic to ecommerce sites comes from search engines & 23.6% of ecommerce orders are directly tied to organic traffic.

Ecommerce Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of every ecommerce SEO campaign.

Why?

Because keyword research informs every other SEO-related task you do on your website.

(For example, without keywords, it’s impossible to optimise your product and category pages).

Believe it or not, but your list of keywords influence your technical SEO too. That’s because your site architecture and URLs need to take keywords into account.

As you can see, keyword research is a VERY big deal for your ecommerce site.

And here’s exactly how to find untapped terms that your customers search for… and how to choose the best keywords for your site.

How To Find Keywords For Ecommerce Product and Category Pages

Most keyword research tutorials focus on “informational keywords”.

These are keywords that people type into search engines to discover helpful “how-to” content.

(Like “How to make pour over coffee”)

While informational keywords have their place in ecommerce, the majority of your site’s keywords will be tailored around product searches.

(Like “Chemex coffee filters”)

That means that you need to tackle keyword research with product-focused keywords in mind.

Ecommerce Website Architecture

Site architecture — or how the pages on your site are organized and arranged — is an important SEO consideration for ANY site.

But it’s doubly important for ecommerce sites. That’s because your average ecommerce site tends to have significantly more pages than your average blog or local pizza shop website.

With that many pages, it’s critical that your site architecture makes it easy for users and search engines to find all of your pages.

The Two “Golden Rules” of ecommerce Site Architecture

There are two important rules to keep in mind when it comes to setting up your ecommerce site’s structure:

Golden Rule #1: Keep things simple and scalable
Golden Rule #2: Keep every page three (or fewer) clicks from your homepage

On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Sites

Now that you have your site architecture all set up, it’s time to optimize your category and product pages. For most ecommerce sites these two types of pages generate the lion’s share of traffic and sales.

This makes sense if you think about it: someone searching for “red Nike running shoes size 10” is much closer to making a purchase than someone searching for “buy shoes online”.

With that, here’s how to keyword-optimize your product and category pages.

Title Tag: Add Modifiers Like “Buy”, “Cheap” and “Deals” to Get More Long Tail Traffic

You (obviously) want to use your target keyword in your page’s title tag.

But don’t stop there. Adding “modifiers” to your title tag can help you show up for more long tail searches.

For example, let’s say your target keyword is: “noise canceling headphones”.

Instead of making your title tag: “Noise Canceling Headphones at Headphones R’ Us”, you want to add a word or two that people might use when searching for “noise canceling headphones”

Here are some common terms people use when searching for products in Google:

Cheap
Deals
Review
Best
Online
Free shipping

Title Tag: Use Click Magnet Words like “X% Off” and “Lowest Price” to Boost CTR

Google likely uses organic click-through-rate as a ranking signal. And even if they didn’t, it still makes sense to optimize your title tag for CTR.

That’s because: Higher CTR=more clicks=more sales.

Fortunately, there are a handful of words and phrases that magnetically move a person’s cursor to your result. I call them “Click Magnet Words”.

Here are some of the best Click Magnet Words for ecommerce product and category pages:

X% off (“25% Off”)
Guarantee
Lowest Price
Free Shipping
Overnight Shipping
Sale

Description Tag: Include Phrases Like “Great Selection”, “FREE Shipping” and “All Our Items are On Sale” To Maximize Your Page’s CTR

Your site’s description tag used to be an important part of on-page SEO.

Even though that’s not the case anymore, your description tag is VERY important for CTR.

And the title tag Click Magnet Words that I listed above also work for description tags.

The only difference is that, with a description tag, you have more room to include longer phrases.

Here are a few examples of phrases you can use in your description tag to get more clicks:

Get the best prices on ____ today.
Save X% off on ____.
All of our ____ are on sale right now.
Get FREE shipping on all ____ today.
Click here to see all of our exclusive deals on _____.
Great selection of ____ at the guaranteed lowest price.

Product and Category Page Content: Include 1000+ Words of Content and Use Your Keyword 3-5x

Optimising product and category pages is one of the hardest parts of ecommerce SEO. Yes, you want to write high-quality content. But unlike a blog post, you also need to keep conversions in mind.

Here are the three most important on-page SEO tactics that I recommend for ecommerce pages

Write 1000+ Word Descriptions

Industry studies have found that longer content tends to rank best in Google.

(And yes, those findings apply to ecommerce sites).

The fact is this: Google wants to understand what your page is all about. And the more content you provide, the better Google can do its job. Plus, in-depth product page content helps customers understand what they’re about to buy.

To be clear:

It might be impossible for you to write 1000 words for EVERY page on your site. If that’s the case, I recommend writing long, in-depth product descriptions for top 10-50 most important product and category pages.

Sprinkle Your Keywords (3-5x)

Once you’ve written your in-depth product description, it’s time to make sure that you’ve used your target keyword 3-5 times in your content.

This has nothing to do with keyword density or keyword stuffing. You’re just including your keyword a handful of times to help Google understand what your page is all about.

For example, if your target keyword was “6 quart crockpot” you’d want to make sure you have that exact phrase in your product description at least 3 times.

URLs: Use Short, Keyword-Rich URLs

Our analysis of 1 million Google search results found a clear correlation between URL length and rankings.

Specifically, we found that short URLs tend to rank higher on Google’s first page than long URLs.

Because you run an ecommerce site, your URLs are probably going to be longer than other sites.

That’s because your URL will include category and subcategories in your URL. For example: https://example.com/category/subcategory/product.html

However, that doesn’t mean you want your URLs to stretch out to 50+ characters. That’s because long URLs confuse Google and dilute the impact of the keywords in your URL.

(Not only is this URL a mile long, but it contains unnecessary junk like, “productID.300190600”).

Speaking of using SEO-friendly terms in your URL, you also want to make your URLs keyword-rich.

For category pages, include a 1-2 word description of that category:

https://example.com/kitchenappliances

Follow the same process for subcategories. Only this time, the subcategory will come after the category in the URL:

https://example.com/kitchenappliances/slowcookers

Then, for product pages, include just your target keyword for that product, separated by dashes (“-”).

https://example.com/kitchenappliances/slowcookers/6-quart-crockpot

Internal Links: Liberally Link to High-Priority Pages

One of the nice things about ecommerce SEO is that internal linking is done almost automatically. That’s because your site’s navigation usually creates a lot of natural internal links

That said, strategic internal linking is definitely an ecommerce SEO best practice. So you should spend some time on it.

Specifically, you want to internally link FROM authoritative pages TO high-priority product and category pages.

Technical SEO for Ecommerce

Technical SEO is one of those things that’s important for ALL sites… but doubly so for ecommerce. That’s because ecommerce sites tend to have LOTS of pages. And all of those pages increase the changes that technical SEO issues will crop up.

Not only that, but most ecommerce pages don’t have that many backlinks pointing to them. Which means that technical SEO is often the “tiebreaker” on Google’s first page. For example, if you and your competitor are neck-and-neck, a technical SEO issue can be the difference between the 4th spot and a coveted #1 ranking.

That’s why regular technical SEO site audits are key

How to Run a Technical SEO Audit on an Ecommerce Website

In this example we’re going to use Raven Tools. In my opinion it has the most thorough and easy-to-understand site audit feature out there.

In addition to Raven Tools, here are other SEO tools you can use for ecommerce site audits:

Content Marketing for Ecommerce Sites

Content marketing can help you get LOTS of targeted traffic… and sales.

The question is:

How do you use content to get higher rankings and more traffic to your ecommerce website?

Here’s a step-by-step guide…

Find Where Your Target Customers Hang Out Online

Hanging out with your customers gives you incredible insight into their thoughts, dreams, fears, and desires. Because it’s not always possible to hang out with customers in real life, I recommend going to places that they tend to hang out online.

Learn What Words and Phrases Customers Use

Now that you’ve found your target audience, it’s time to stalk them. Don’t worry, this isn’t as creepy as it sounds 🙂

You just want to keep an eye out for words and phrases that they use to describe their problems and issues:

These phrases represent keywords that your audience uses when they’re NOT shopping for products. These make great keywords for you to create blog content around.

Create An Outstanding Piece of Content Around That Keyword

Next, it’s time to create a piece of content that’s the bar-none absolute best on the planet.

The easiest way to do that?

The Skyscraper Technique

Start Writing the Articles around your Keywords currently available in the internet and add more content to become #1 Content for that Keyword

Ecommerce Link Building

In this chapter I’ve got not one but TWO in-depth ecommerce link building case studies for you.

In the first case study you’ll see how Chris built links directly to his ecommerce site’s product pages… Without ANY content.

Then you’ll read how Mike increased used two creative link building strategies to boost his ecommerce site’s organic traffic by 2272%

Infinity Webpro are E-Commerce Specialist

All Infinity Webpro Plans Includes with Free advanced ecommerce CMS & shopping cart that offer built in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) features. These SEO features ensure that your ecommerce website gets a lot of traffic and sales from Google, Bing, and Yahoo

Hire Infinity Webpro SEO Experts helps your Business to Rank in Google Faster.

Think of Infinity Webpro as your very own IT department, with free, unlimited hosting, top-of-the-line security, an enterprise-grade infrastructure, and around-the-clock support. Get personalised support from our Customer Care Team via Email or live chat, or join a live webinar. Reach out any time — we’re here for you.