7 Top SEO Practices for E-commerce

In today’s world, diverting more traffic to your online store is essential to connect with new customers and generate sales. However, growing your e-commerce traffic is not as easy as it may seem. You can take the advertisement route and use a free advertising maker or use paid digital ads. Still, with Product Listing Ads (PLAs) becoming increasingly expensive every day, it's harder to compete with larger e-commerce brands in keyword bidding wars. That's where you need SEO.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most effective ways to become less reliant on paid channels, get more organic traffic to your site and rank higher in Google search engine rankings. But why is SEO so important to e-commerce? Let's discuss.

 

1. Why Does SEO Matter for Ecommerce?

Let’s have a look at some key facts about SEO:

According to nChannel, 44% of people begin their online shopping journey with a Google search.

SEMrush’s market analysis reports that around 37.5% of all e-commerce sites’ traffic generates from search engines.

If you’ve just started your e-commerce journey and are looking for some helpful tips to drive organic traffic to your store, this article offers everything you need. To help you out, we’ve shortlisted the seven best SEO practices for your e-commerce store. Take a look:

 

2. Use Appropriate Keywords

If you want to make your product listing information-friendly to both search engines and buyers, ensure your product’s colors, sizes, prices, and measurements are easy to find, read, and understand. If you are selling products in more than one regional market, you need to decide whether to include measurements in metric, standard, or both. Check product images by comparing them to physical items to see if they look accurate or not.

Some sellers do not display their product’s price until a buyer adds it to their cart. They might do this for special sale purposes.

 

3. Have a User-Friendly Interface for Your Site

It is one of the top SEO practices to grow your website’s traffic. UX refers to user experience. You can boost your store’s user experience by making it more visually appealing. However, it’s not just about the appearance of your website; it’s about how it works as well. UX covers everything, from the ease of use and navigation to the overall performance of your website.

UX also ensures people can find what they are searching for and keep them engaged by giving them an outstanding user experience.

Many things can impact UX, but here are some vital factors you need to keep in mind:

  • Ads should not interfere with customer’s content view
  • Your site should be responsive and fast
  • Your website should be easy to navigate
  • You should use call to action (CTA) buttons to drive conversions.

 

4. Create Unique Content

If your e-commerce site fails to offer unique, original content, it will be arduous for you to rank for your chosen keywords. However, keyword stuffing won’t work. With the Google algorithm now prioritizing rankings based on content quality, you have to ensure you provide information that helps potential buyers and visitors.

Many online sellers utilize a blog section to talk about new trends or developments in the e-commerce space or simply write content relevant to the products they’re selling. This is a perfect approach to give search engines something different for their ranking criteria.

 

5. Avoid Complicated URL Structures

The next thing you’d want to avoid is using complicated URLs for your website. You should use simpler URL structures that people are more likely to remember. They can significantly improve your e-commerce efforts, as well as enhance your site’s user experience.

In addition to that, having a simple URL structure makes it easier to share products on other websites and social media. As a result, it can provide relevant data and improve overall SEO for e-commerce. Your website's URL structure should be easy to read and understand for optimum results.

For instance, never use www.example.com/blog-about-cryptocurrency.

It will be a lot better if you use: www.example.com/cryptocurrency-blogs.

 

6. Never Use Duplicate Content

If you are a retailer instead of a manufacturer and sell other brands’ products on your website, chances are the manufacturer directly gives you product descriptions. Though it's absolutely fine to include maximum information about your products, you must avoid using duplicate product copies the manufacturer has provided you.

Content theft is a major no-no as plagiarism hurts SEO instead of helping improve rankings. Numerous websites are getting penalized for content duplication after this change in search engine algorithms. So, you must focus on creating unique content for your products in order to avoid any penalty.

 

7. Use Better Images for Your Site

One area of SEO that often gets neglected for e-commerce is images. This is especially important for e-commerce businesses as they rely on high-quality product images to make sales.

Though using quality images is crucial to generating sales, you need to optimize images for SEO. This will help you get more traffic from potential visitors and higher search engine rankings.

Here are some tips to optimize your images:

Choose images that suit your website. Your site hose usually provides image guidelines and optimal image sizes;

Provide captions with alt-text for your images, ensuring to include primary keyword to boost ranking;

 

8. Try to Write For Humans Instead of Search Engines

Though we aim to optimize your online store for search engines, every change you make ultimately benefits your buyers. Your shoppers are not robots. A well-researched, more technical content with the appropriate keyword will help you rank higher, but it surely won't increase your e-commerce store's conversion rate.

The best way to avoid it is to hire an expert copywriter who can produce content search engines approve and humans find helpful.

 

In Summary

SEO plays a pivotal role in boosting your e-commerce store's visibility, attracting organic traffic, and helping you build a loyal customer base. It may look like a difficult task. However, by focusing on the top SEO practices and optimizing the critical aspects of your site, you can achieve it.

The most important thing to keep in mind is it can’t happen overnight. Instead, you need to be consistent with your efforts and follow the abovementioned SEO practices to get optimum results. Good Luck!

 

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

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