A Guide To E-Commerce SEO In 2021

A Guide To E-Commerce SEO In 2021. For any e-commerce company or website, getting on top of Google is the top priority. Although paid ads land your website on the first page, what if budget is your constraint?

 

This is where e-commerce SEO comes into play.

 

When talking about e-commerce SEO, most of the experts try to mix it up with enterprise or normal SEO. But this is not the case. E-commerce SEO is slightly different from enterprise and other SEO. 

 

It requires a new approach, different strategies, and some advanced techniques. 

 

With that in mind, we have created this e-commerce SEO guide for those who are struggling to increase the organic traffic of their online store.

 

If you run an e-commerce site or online store, make sure that you read this blog post till the end.

 

Why is SEO important for your e-commerce website?

 

E-commerce SEO is extremely important for every e-commerce website to rank its product on top of Google.

 

When your products are displayed on the SERP, your customers can find them easily and may click on the result and land on your website. 

 

When you do e-commerce SEO the right way, it can help you improve your sales and conversion as well. And you already know the importance of sales in the e-commerce business.

 

 

15 tips for e-commerce SEO that nobody tells you

 

Now that you might have an overview of what SEO is and why it is important for you. Let us now understand 15 e-commerce SEO tips that will take your online store to the next level.

 

1. Keyword research

 

Everything starts with keyword research. Now, no matter which type of website you run and manage, keywords are the backbone of every SEO strategy. So, you need to make sure that you are targeting the right keywords for your e-commerce SEO.

 

Targeting wrong keywords can negatively impact your SEO rankings and may also lower your conversion rate. 

 

Ideally, we recommend you target more long-tail keywords as they are easy to rank and highly conversational in nature. These are the keywords that consist of 4-5 words with decent search traffic.

 

Of course, you can also go with short-tail keywords, but the competition would be high. 

 

If you just started with your e-commerce website then long-tail keywords should be your go-to choice.

 

2. Website architecture

 

Next to keyword research, website architecture is another important aspect of e-commerce SEO. Having a great website architecture is good for users and searches for better crawling and indexing your web pages.

 

That’s why you must pay utmost attention to your website architecture. But how?

 

You need to focus on organizing your website in such a way that users make a limited number of clicks for buying your products. By doing this, you’ll improve your user experience, sales, and conversion.

 

From the SEO point of view, this will also help search engine bots to better crawl and index your site. In short, it will improve the crawl budget of your site and will result in better rankings. 

 

Check out Amazon’s website to get an idea on how you should create the site structure.

 

3. Optimize URLs

 

Next to website architecture, you should focus on optimizing your URLs for better rankings and organic traffic. Most of the e-commerce site owners ignore this factor and regret it later.

 

We don’t want you to fall into this trap. So, it is better to optimize your site’s URLs to take your e-commerce SEO to the next level. 

 

You should focus on creating SEO-friendly URLs by including your keywords in them. Also, avoid using long URLs as Google finds it harder to crawl and index. 

 

Choose a short, clear, and concise URL that is up to the mark.

 

Here’s an example of a Good URL structure:

 

www.doaminname.com/black-t-shirts-men

 

Here’s an example of a poorly created URL:

 

www.domainname.com/black12-tshirs2-for-men* 

 

Avoid using special characters and numbers in your URLs.

 

4. Optimize important tags

 

After URLs, you must optimize all the important tags such as title tags, metatags, image alt tags, and heading tags.

 

• Title tag

 

Title tags are the tags that appear on top of Google in blue. They help search engines and users to better understand the context of your content. A well-crafted title tag can improve your CTRs and eventually result in better organic traffic. 

 

To create amazing title tags, you need to keep the following things in mind:

 

• Include primary keywords in your title tags.
• Keep the limit to 60 characters.
• Use words like best, updated, and unique in your title tags.
• Include the year in your title tags (For example 2021)

 

• Meta tag

 

Next to the title tag, the meta tag is another important element that you need to focus on. Meta tags appear below the title tag and they help users and search engines to better understand the content of your web page. 

 

It summarizes your content on the SERP.

 

In order to create the best meta tags follow these techniques:

 

• Keep all the descriptions unique.
• Keep the limit up to 120-130 characters.
• Include primary as well as secondary keywords in meta tags.

 

• Image tag

  

 

The last important thing you need to focus on is image alt tags.

 

You need to include an image alt tag so that Google and visually impaired people can understand what that image is about. Apart from this, the image alt tag will also help you get better rankings and organic traffic from image searches.

 

Make sure that you also compress all your images so that the speed of your website can be optimized.

 

5. Add unique content

 

Now here comes the heart and soul of the entire e-commerce SEO strategy: content. Content can either make or break your e-commerce SEO. So, make sure to pay attention to it. 

 

You need to add unique content to each product page. 

 

If you have thousands of products, you don’t have any option but to add unique content on all the pages.

 

In e-commerce SEO, your content could be product description, product image, video, product title, features, and benefits. Everything that describes your product is your content. 

 

So, make sure to use it properly.

 

6. Use Schema

 

Implementing Schema can make your result look more appealing and eye-captivating on the search engine result page. It also helps search engine bots and users to better understand the context of your content.

 

If you are new to the term Schema, then let us take a minute and explain it to you.

 

Schemas are nothing but structure code that can be added to the website’s HTML to make a web page look more attractive. This will help search engines to show better results on SERP for users.

 

Another benefit of having Schemas on your web page is that they also help improve your CTRs.

 

Following are the different types of Schema:

 

1. JSON-LD
2. Microdata
3. RDFa

 

In our opinion, each of your product web pages must have schema tags.

 

7. Internal links

 

If you want to see a quick improvement in your rankings, start using internal links. Although internal links are quite popular in the SEO community, it is still overlooked. 

 

An internal link is any link that points out from one web page to another within the same website. It helps in passing on the link juice from one authority page to another web page that may be less authoritative.

 

Another reason for having internal links on your site is that it helps Google in understanding, indexing, and analyzing the web pages of your site. It also improves users’ experience, navigation and reduces the bounce rate of your site.

 

Here’s the best practice to leverage internal links:

 

1. Use keywords in your internal links.
2. Keep all your internal links do-follow.
3. Link from the high DA web page to the low DA web page.
4. Add internal links only to the relevant content.
5. Identify and fix broken links.
6. Link to orphan pages.

 

Follow this technique, and you’ll surely see a spike in your rankings. 

 

8. Backlinks

 

In SEO content may be king, but backlinks are kingmakers. No matter how many changes Google makes in the algorithm, backlinks will always be the top-ranking factor on SERP.

 

In the year 2019, Sparkto did research and found that referring domain to a website is the topmost ranking factor on Google.

 

That’s why you should focus on link-building efforts from day one. 

 

Generally, there are two different kinds of links from an SEO perspective:

 

• Do-follow

 

Do-follow links are those links that pass on the link juice or link equity from one website to another. 

 

• No-follow 

 

No-follow links are the opposite of do-follow links. They don’t help in passing on the link juice or equity. 

 

80% of your links should be do-follow and 20% should be no-follow.

 

9. Use CTAs

 

Incorporate an eye-catchy and eye-captivating call to action on your website that motivates the visitors to take action.

 

Include the CTA button on each of your product pages. This will surely help you improve your conversion rate and sales. 

 

Go with the right colour combination.

 

Your CTA should match the website colour and the product page. Include words like Free, discount, offer, deal, OFF, and grab now in your CTA button. Such words compel the users to take action.

 

10. Improve your website speed

 

Now here comes the most important part of e-commerce SEO which is website speed. Amazon did research and found that a 1-second delay in website speed would cost them  $1.6 billion. 

 

Numbers are too scary, right?

 

So, if you don’t want to lose a big chunk of your revenue, you must optimize the speed of your website. 

 

A fast website speed will not only help you improve your conversion rate but also get a better ranking on Google. In 2014, Google made it clear that website speed is a ranking factor. 

 

Ideally, a website should load in under 3 seconds. 

 

Following are the steps that you can take to improve the website speed:

 

1. Use a cloud hosting service.
2. Get lazy loading images.
3. Compress all your images.
4. Reduce the file size.
5. Remove used CSS and Java files.
6. Minify CSS.
7. Use CDN.

 

11. Use an SSL certificate

 

Is your website secure? 

 

If yes, then it’s good to work. If not, then you need to have a secure website and enable an SSL certificate on your site.

 

In order to win over the trust of your customers, you need to ensure them that your site is secure, and they can easily pay through it. 

 

Additionally, website security is a ranking factor on Google. 

 

Since 2014, Google has started giving more preference to websites that are more secure.

 

12. Be active on social media

 

Although being active on social media won’t help you in e-commerce SEO, but it can surely help scale your brand. Today, most brands and companies are using social media for marketing and promotion.

 

So, why don’t you use it to promote your e-commerce store?

 

You can easily create a social media page and start promoting your products and offers. If budget is not your constraint, then you can also think of running paid ads on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Both platforms work exceptionally well for e-commerce companies.

 

13. Use video content

 

The last on this list of e-commerce SEO tips is video content. 

 

Video content is booming, and we don’t need to say much about it. 61% of marketers are planning to increase their spending on video content marketing in 2021. Moreover, 86% of marketers use video marketing as a tool.

 

Therefore, it makes sense to use video content marketing for e-commerce SEO as well.

 

You can include videos in product web pages to get the best results. Also, start a YouTube channel and showcase the benefits and features of your product.

 

Conclusion: 

 

E-commerce SEO is slightly different from normal enterprise SEO. You need to follow a different strategy and approach for the same. With this guide on e-commerce SEO, you can surely take your online store to the next level. 

 

All the tips and strategies mentioned in this guide are well-researched, tried, and tested as well. 

 

These techniques have helped several others scale their store to the next levels, and it will surely help you as well.