E-Commerce SEO: The Definitive Guide

1. First, your users should be able to find your eCommerce website in the search results. To reach your users you will have to identify your target keywords. This is the first step in developing an SEO strategy. There are short-tail and long-tail keywords.

• Short-tail keywords are the short terms the users type in while searching. These keywords can drive a large amount of traffic but not necessarily the ones that convert.


• Long-tail keywords are more specific versions of the main keyword. These keywords drive lower traffic volumes but bring in more clicks and conversions.

You need these keywords to optimise your product and category pages. The list of keywords is important for technical SEO too as they are used in the URLs and the site architecture. Keyword research is one of the most important steps of SEO.

2. Once you have identified your keywords you will have to decide which keyword to use. You can find the best keywords as follows:

• Find the search volume of a given keyword in your industry. There are high-volume and low-volume keywords. You can use the KWFinder tool to get the monthly search volume information.


• A keyword may have tons of searches but it will not be the right one for you if it does not fit well with what you sell. If the keyword is not right then people searching for the term will not convert. You should double-check that the keyword fits your website well.


• Before deciding on a keyword check if the people using those keywords are ballers or broke. You can use the tool Google Keyword Planner. Its feature ‘Competition’ shows the number of people that bid on a keyword in Google Ads. If many people are bidding on the keyword then it is the right one to choose. For eCommerce websites, it is best to choose the ‘High’ and ‘Medium’ competition keywords.


• Find out how competitive a keyword is to rank for. You can use the SEMrush tool for this and check its feature ‘Keyword Difficulty’. The higher the score the more difficult to rank for that keyword.

You can check the websites that rank in the top 10 for the keyword you are using. If the keywords are semi-related then you can outrank them with highly targeted content.

Follow this process before building your navigation and site structure:

• Ask yourself questions like ‘What searches do the customers use before arriving on your website?’, ‘What pages get the most traffic?’, ‘What are the top exit pages?’ and more.


• Decide if you want to incorporate drop-down menus in your navigation. Make sure you use HTML for this as the search engines cannot find navigation unless written in HTML.


• Use short-term keywords to decide what you want to name your category pages.


• If you are using filters you will have to pay attention to your URL parameters as they can cause duplicate content. You can choose to index your filtered products and if you do not want to index your filters then you can add hashtags before them.


• Add Breadcrumbs to your product pages as sometimes Google can show them instead of the URL. Using Breadcrumbs also gives the users and the search engines another opportunity to see where your products fit in on the website.

• One of the most common SEO issues with eCommerce websites is duplicate content. This issue occurs due to the following reasons:


• This issue occurs if you use unique URLs for every version of a product and a category page and if you index them then it leads to duplicate content issues.


• It can also occur if you have a snippet of text that appears on multiple pages. If this content goes to 100+ words then it can cause duplicate content issues.


• This issue occurs if you copy descriptions and many of your products and categories pages may have the same content.


• To solve duplicate content issues you should create unique content for every page of your website. You can use canonical tags to tell the search engine that this page is a variation of the original page.

• Use keywords in your titles and also modifiers so that your website shows up for long-tail searches. For example, If your keyword is ‘Noiseless headphones’ then you can use search terms that people use like ‘Cheap’, ‘Best’, ‘Free shipping’ and more.


• You should also optimise your titles for CTR (Click-Through-Rate). Because a higher CTR leads to more clicks and thus more sales. You can use ‘Click Magnet Words’ in your titles like ‘X% (25%) off’, ‘Lower price’ ‘Guarantee’, ‘Sale’ and more.


• You should optimise your website’s description tags. In description tags, you can use longer phrases. For example, ‘Best price on a product today’, ‘All of our products are on sale for now’ and more.

• The URLs of eCommerce websites tend to be longer because you have to add the categories and sub-categories in them. This does not mean that your URLs can go beyond 50+ characters. You should create SEO-friendly URLs and use your keyword in them. Use 1 - 2 to describe your categories, 1 - 2 words for subcategories and the keyword for the products page.
  
  For example, http://example.com/kitcheapplicnces/slowcookers/5-quart-crockpot


• In eCommerce websites, the internal linking is almost done automatically. This is because the site navigation already creates a lot of natural internal links. You should build internal links from authoritative pages to your high-priority category and product pages.

• If any of the products are not available anymore then delete that page to avoid giving your customers a 404 error. You should regularly clean and redirect your dead pages. You can redirect the users using the 303 redirects or a permanent redirect.


• If you are implementing Pagination on your website then make sure you add the
  { meta name=”robots” content=noindex, follow” }tag to all the pages in the series except page one to make sure that only the first page of your series is indexed.


• Infinite scrolling can delay the users from reaching the website footer and if you have more products then you can use the “Load More” button.


• Create an XML sitemap as it contains the list of all the URLs on your website. It creates a readable format of the website for search engines. You can make several sections in your sitemaps like Products, Categories, Boilerplate pages, Editorial pages and Blogs.


• You should optimise your website for mobile as mobile traffic is on the rise. You can use a mobile-friendly design for your website, use mobile-friendly images and more.

• Find out where your customer hangs out online this will give you insights into their thoughts and desires. You can go to places where they hang out online.
  
  For example, if you are selling coffee then you can check out Reddit’s coffee community, forums about coffee and more.


• Find the words and phrases your audience uses to describe their problems and issues. These are the keywords they do not use while shopping. But you can create blog content around these keywords.


• Create content that is the best and for this, you can use the Skyscraper technique. When you regularly publish content on your website your category and the product pages will rank better.


• Once you have created content you should build backlinks on your eCommerce website. You can use link-building strategies to boost your organic traffic.