A common mistake many e-commerce business owners make is that they heavily rely on pay-per-click or social media ads.
There’s nothing wrong with leveraging paid ads to generate traction for your e-commerce site. However, the strategy lacks long-term impact.
The moment you pull the plug on your ads, you instantly see a decline in your traffic. Plus, the success of the strategy heavily relies on your advertising budget, making it difficult for you to compete with the big sharks in the industry.
If you wish to see a lasting impact from your efforts, e-commerce SEO is the way to go. However, it requires patience.
It may take some time for your SEO efforts to pay off as your website steadily climbs the search engine rankings. But once you have made it to the top, you’ll be gaining conversions on autopilot without having to spend a ton of money on ads.
All you need is a little know-how and the SEO best practices, which will help you create a stellar e-commerce SEO strategy.
What is Ecommerce SEO?
Ecommerce SEO is a strategy that helps you establish a better search engine presence for your e-commerce store. It enables you to rank higher in search engine results displayed in response to the queries that your audience uses to search for products they wish to purchase online.
Ecommerce SEO is generally fueled by your content and the experience you offer your target audience through your website.
It helps you generate more traction for your store and ensures conversions without having to rely heavily on pay-per-click or social media ads.
Why does Ecommerce SEO matter?
E-commerce SEO matters because it gives you long-term results. Having a better search engine presence greatly amplifies your store’s online visibility and enables you to drive relevant traffic without breaking the bank.
Ecommerce SEO is all about optimizing your site as per the search engine guidelines, especially the ones laid out by Google, as Google has over 93% of the market share in the industry.
The goal here is to offer a better experience to your target audience and facilitate their access to useful information through your e-commerce platform. This enables you to cultivate trust and authority in your respective industry as you help your audience make informed buying decisions.
As a result, you get more traffic to your e-commerce store and generate more revenue by targeting the right search intent.
How to create an Ecommerce SEO strategy
Search engine optimization (SEO) is an intricate process. There are hundreds of e-commerce platforms in every niche, with each striving to get more eyeballs than the others.
So, standing out among other players in your respective industry is easier said than done, especially when you are a new entrant. Here are a few things that may help you create a high-performing e-commerce SEO strategy:
1. Keyword Research
Keyword research is of the utmost importance when creating an e-commerce SEO strategy. The online experiences of around 93% of people start with search engines.
But to get their attention, you need to be acquainted with their needs and preferences. This means identifying the queries they use to explore products they want to purchase.
There are three things to consider when looking for keywords: search volume, difficulty to rank, and the intent of the queries used by your target audience.
The goal here is to find the keywords that have high search volume, low ranking difficulty, and a high purchase intent.
To find the right keywords, you can use free or premium keyword planner solutions online. You can also take inspiration from your competitors by analyzing their website and seeing which keywords they target through their pages.
2. Website Architecture
Another thing you may want to consider when creating an e-commerce SEO strategy is your website’s architecture. It represents the way the pages of your e-commerce site are structured and linked to facilitate access to relevant information.
A good website architecture helps you boost your search engine rankings significantly. It helps you offer a seamless experience to your visitors. Plus, it allows search engine crawlers to easily explore your website and assess the content published.
Hence, it can fuel your search engine visibility and help you score better rankings than other players in the industry.
An ideal website architecture ensures that visitors to your website are able to access a particular page in four clicks or less. Plus, it encompasses a simple hierarchy, with the published content organized in relevant categories.
3. On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is about optimizing your website’s pages for better search engine visibility.
Here, you leverage your keyword research and stick to the search engine guidelines to create pages that make it easier for your visitors to access relevant information.
To improve your on-page SEO performance, you may have to come up with well-structured page URLs. Plus, you should optimize your page titles, descriptions, and copy using fitting keywords.
Not to mention, visuals play a key role in helping you drive traction to your e-commerce store. So, never forget optimizing your images, as they may help you get more traffic through Image Search.
On-page SEO can help you achieve higher search engine rankings and generate more organic traffic to fuel your conversions.
4. Technical SEO
Technical SEO ensures that your e-commerce site performs exceptionally well and meets the technical requirements set by the respective search engines for higher rankings.
It’s all about offering a seamless experience to your visitors and ensuring that they can access the required information with ease. There are a few things you may want to consider here, like your website performance.
A 1-second delay in the load time of your pages may lead to around 11% loss in page views and leave you grappling with higher bounce rate issues.
Plus, you need to make sure that your website doesn’t have poor navigation and offers easy access to the required information.
Broken images or links can also cause problems for you, along with issues with your website’s code.
So, getting the basics right for your website is the key and ensures that your e-commerce store is on par with the technical requirements laid out by search engines.
5. Content Marketing
Creating relevant content is the key to increasing your online presence and scoring better rankings than your competitors.
The goal here is to identify what interests your target audience and create content around relevant topics.
You have core pages that target the transactional intent of your visitors and showcase your products to people who are ready to make a buying decision. But what about the people representing informational or navigational intent?
This is where content marketing comes in and allows you to generate more awareness about your brand. Creating and sharing relevant content also improves your SEO, as it complements topical depth and freshness factors in search engine ranking algorithms.
6. Link Building
Having a strong backlink profile also complements the SEO of your e-commerce site. Around 91% of websites are unable to attract any organic traffic due to the absence of backlinks.
So, scoring quality backlinks for your e-commerce site is a viable strategy for a better search engine presence.
The best way to do it is by creating link-worthy content, which helps you score quality backlinks on autopilot. Plus, you can participate in online communities and leverage third-party platforms by posting content there to get more backlinks.
Just be sure that you don’t accumulate subpar backlinks over time. Links from irrelevant websites, PBNs, online directories, and link farms should always be avoided. Also, you should avoid spamming, as it may lead to link-based penalties from search engines.
How to find an Ecommerce SEO agency
When it comes to increasing the search engine presence of an e-commerce store, some prefer hiring a dedicated team, whereas others may want to use the services of an e-commerce SEO agency.
Hiring an agency may be a viable choice if you lack the time, resources, or expertise to improve your SEO and boost your organic traffic. However, finding the one best suited for you may be difficult.
You may want to consider different things here, such as the capabilities of the agency, past achievements, availability, amount charged for services, ease of coordination, and so on.
You can Google SEO agencies in your area or look for capable ones online. Just make sure you look for reviews from previous clients and reach out to them to inquire about their experience.
Final words
Search engine optimization is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your e-commerce store without spending much of your marketing budget on ads. It helps you attract a relevant audience and build an authoritative brand in your industry over time.
SEO may require you to be more patient, as your efforts may take some time to pay off. However, it’s a sure-shot way to engage the right audience and ensure long-term impact from your efforts.
If you’ve been striving to create a high-performing e-commerce SEO strategy, the recommendations in this article may come in handy.
FAQs
What is the difference between SEO and e-commerce SEO?
SEO is a generic term for optimizing a standard website as per the search engine guidelines. E-commerce SEO encompasses the optimization of e-commerce platforms for better search engine visibility.
Does an e-commerce website need SEO?
Yes! An e-commerce website needs SEO to score higher search engine rankings compared to other competing websites, which may lead to more traffic and increased conversions.
Which e-commerce platform has the best SEO?
There are a variety of e-commerce platforms with the great SEO capabilities; like BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, and Shopify.
What are the benefits of e-commerce SEO?
E-commerce SEO allows you to leverage search engines and drive organic traffic to your website. The key benefits include better search engine visibility, more traffic, a high conversion rate, improved brand authority, greater brand awareness, and increased audience engagement.
Is SEO worth it for e-commerce?
SEO is a budget-friendly strategy that makes it possible for e-commerce websites to attract a relevant audience without having to rely on just pay-per-click and social media ads. So, yes, it’s totally worth it.
Guest Author: Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.
The post How to Create a Killer Ecommerce SEO Strategy in 2024 appeared first on jeffbullas.com.
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