eCommerce SEO

Let’s be honest, we all know that for an eCommerce website to survive it has to get lots of traffic in. There is no other way to put it, right. The success of your eCommerce business will depend on three variables:

Great Content, SEO and media advertising.

We will first pick SEO because in our opinion it is one of the best investments you can make. Here’s why:

When combining SEO with quality content it can actually position your pages on top of SERPs* when search intent is performed. As a result, your page has the ability to answer those queries and eventually appear in the top of organic search results for many other long term keyword variants.

One thing for sure – it will affect your sales results (in positive or negative way) quarter after quarter for a very long term.

This is what SEO can do, but there is so much more to it. 

Paul at CTH, has owned an eCommerce gift shop website since early 2009. While learning the difficult art of SEO he quickly discovered on the job that product page title, description and meta tags were (still are) essential to find, attract and convert prospects.

We have now helped dozens of ecommerce projects so we can actually talk about our practice. A successful ecommerce SEO strategy is built on business goals, research, content mapping, testing and/or learning from experience and a user data-driven analysis. Nothing else matters. 

The person in charge of content SEO should wear customer’s shoes and go for a behavioural tour. This is a good game to play, as you can actually perfect or build your daily checklists and get to know all of your visitors better than you would by just looking at Google ads results. 

A daily checklist should become a weekly one and so on. For example:

• Customer service section – how to address any problems / issues 
• User Experience (UX) – where can you update your content to be more readable and user friendly
• Collect Data (actively) continue to refine your eCommerce strategy so you can build up knowledge and draw conclusions for the next campaigns.
• …

Hint: The above are just a few examples, but in the UX section you have got many other elements that should be answered weekly. The checklist can reduce mistakes but also easier to prepare topic tactics and reporting to help you organise your business or teams.

eCommerce Content SEO Strategy

We do not copy, care about what others say or do as we have our very own SEO strategy for eCommerce companies of all sizes. 

It is good to understand that eCommerce SEO can be exciting and rewarding as long you play and follow the rules. To actually become good at it, you are required to wear several hats if you are a small business including creating great content that attratcs attention and clicks.

One for keyword research, another for user behaviour and/or data analysis and specialised SEO knowledge.  It takes three – six years to become good at it if you are curious.

Creating but also understanding the customer mapping process with its different stages and buying process is essential to document a good Content SEO plan. But also not neglect to target with intent throughout the entire cycle is crucial and no eCommerce company should ever overlook it.

How and What are Your Customers Searching For?

You’re trying to reach a particular customer, but where are they? What terms are they looking for? It is possible that they know exactly what they want and are using commercial intent words (Keyword + colour + size). Or, they might need a push to your landing page. These requires a good knowledge of keyword intent strategies.

Key stages to consider in eCommerce SEO would include:

1. Research/Discovery

The modern web user will perform 5-10 searches before buying a product. If they need something they will query the web. Some individuals will do it via mobile, then iPads/kindle, and eventually a desktop with bigger screen. 

2. Awareness/Comparing

At this moment in time many buyers will take up to 7 days with a short minority taking up to a week to compare features, capabilities etc.

3. Decision

When they find themselves on this stage, they’ll use very specific words as they are almost or quite sure how to search for it. In a nutshell, if the user is on the decision purchase stage then he or she will likely be Googling commercial intent questions such as:

 ‘How much it cost grey Sony 4K ultra HD 55′ + 3 Hdmi ports?’

4. Purchase

They may send you an email or call asking a quick question regarding delivery options.

5.Usage

Excitement is on the menu, simple as that. Here is a great opportunity to get their trust and advocate for your product.

6. Renew purchase

eCommerce SEO Services

Keyword Strategy

The buying cycle is linked with search intent. Example: If you’re targeting potential customers in your area, you can reduce the level of competition by investing in local SEO + city name + size + discounts in your pages.

Product Page Descriptions

Often eCommerce people partially copy the manufacturers’ text and image’ descriptions simply because it reduces workload. We don’t recommend doing it. We can relieve you of the burden of populating hundreds of page descriptions, but also make them more engaging to your audience target and search engine friendly.

Product page elements

These are also very important to master. Very often a body page lacks:

• Images Alt text
• Video
• Descriptive product names
• Design
• Layout spaces
• …

Out of Stock Product Pages

This can happen in many industries. The question to ask is should you keep them for SEO purposes or delete it all?

Duplicate and Canonicalisation

It can happen to stock up or create URLs for the same product. Identical products with slight variations but same names will affect rankings. Duplicate content can hurt the brand as well. We can help identify and fix it for you.

Customer Behaviour Data Analysis

Can you see where customers are spending time, where and when they are leaving? Being able to see your customers’ steps during their shopping journey is vital to gain intel about the website’s overall performance. This combined with other simple tactics can be adopted to engage, encourage them to stay and come back again.

Website & Data Security 

Do not neglect this part as it can cost you money and time to repair and regain client’s trust again. Trust me on that one. Owning a secure ecommerce site will reassure your prospects and customers. But also signals Google and others you’re trustworthy. 

Hint: G.D.P.R penalties and fines are now on for every business. The lower level of G.D.P.R penalties for example – Fines can go up to €10 million/ £8 million or 2% of annual global turnover can be issued. In the UK, if you are caught with regards to a Data breach you could be paying up to 20 million in some cases or 4% of your annual income whichever is higher.

This is like saying you are out of business or knock down for a very, very long time. We know how to instruct you or implement it for you.

Read GDPR penalities page for more detail.

(*) in online marketing terms it stands for: Search engine results pages – these are web pages scanned/gathered by search engines to serve online queries made by humans, aka users. Applies when they write or query in a search box for something or someone ( creating a specific query).

Page updated: 08/01/2021