eCommerce SEO for Visibility and Sales

Search engine optimization (SEO) for eCommerce is unique. You want to drive traffic to your website, but your goals are more specific than that. Product discoverability and subsequent sales are what make your company tick. SEO is key and must be applied to all product pages and listings. Learn how to optimize your eCommerce products to stand out on search engines like Google using the following tips.

Audit Your Current SEO

First, take stock of how your eCommerce site and all of its product pages are stacking up. An eCommerce SEO audit can help you identify areas of weakness, as well as what pages are performing well and why. You’ll want to look at:

• The robots.txt and XML sitemap that are used by search engines to index your site;
• Internal linking structure and external links, checking for broken and low-quality links;
• Resource-consuming images, videos, and plugins;
• The speed at which each page loads;
• Calls-to-action (CTAs);
• The URL, checking for keywords and “https” to ensure security;
• Backlinks that lead to your product pages;
• Existing keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, and content like product descriptions and even reviews.

You can use an SEO crawler and audit tool like Woorank to handle the bulk of this audit. You want to have a comprehensive picture of how search engines are viewing your site. This isn’t always straightforward, as the specific criteria for site rankings are kept close to the vest by search engines like Google. However, SEO specialists have cracked the code on just about every aspect that can influence rankings, and tools like Woorank are created to assess those exact aspects. Optimizing all of them is instrumental in appeasing search engines, but eCommerce sites have to go about this in a specific way.

Tailor Your Strategy

Traditional SEO for websites like blogs focuses on holistic optimization. While this is still important in eCommerce SEO, the focus is more on product page optimization.

Plus, you must adapt your SEO strategy to fit different sites where you may list or crosslist your products, like eBay, Amazon, and Etsy. These highly competitive platforms can actually provide valuable insight into making your products searchable. For example, starting an Etsy business can show you how to tweak your product listings to show up in search results for your intended audience on the platform. Check how other similar sellers optimize their product listings to show up highly. See what photos, pricing, reviews, and keywords are prominent. Then, you can get a sense of how your target customers search for and interact with the products you are offering and apply that to your overall SEO strategy.

Conduct Keyword Research

Once you have an idea of what keywords do well for similar product offerings, you can conduct thorough keyword research. Make a bank of keywords to draw from. Then, you can input them into a keyword analysis tool. This will tell you several important factors about each keyword, including:

• Monthly search volume (MSV);
• Current ranking of your product pages for certain keywords;
• Rankings of competitors;
• Localization;
• Suggestions for longtail or related, better-performing keywords.

This can help you narrow down what keywords to focus on when optimizing product pages. You can even test some against each other or use variations of the same keyword for more natural integration.

Integrate Keywords Into Product Pages

Product detail pages (PDPs) should all have unique keywords for which you are trying to rank. The product listing page (PLP) is a category page with multiple listings and should be optimized as such. Both can increase organic traffic, boost conversions, and grow your bottom line. Focus on the following when applying your keyword research.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

The title tag and meta description will show up to searchers using relevant keywords. They should include your target keyword(s), but make sure that they are still engaging and descriptive. Highlight the benefits of each product in these places, including relevant features and how they can help solve key problems for potential customers. This is your chance to not only signal to Google that your page is relevant but also to draw people in from search results. Include a CTA in the meta description if possible.

Structured Data Markup

Structured data includes snippets of code that search engines crawl to learn more about your pages. Product pages have product and review schema that help users and search engines interact with your website. These product snippets provide information such as price, dimensions, availability, sizes, and other specs. Review snippets tell Google how your product is being received through common words, phrases, and ratings. Rich data like this is valuable in helping your product pages become credible and searchable.

Create Helpful Product Descriptions

Just like Google will assess your page credibility through structured data, it will also crawl your on-page SEO. Content on your product pages should provide value to site visitors. For example, include FAQs to lower bounce rates. Testimonials can be used to add strategically placed keywords and phrases. Just make sure not to keyword stuff.

Optimize for Mobile

To keep users on your PDPs and PLPs, minimize load time on all devices, especially mobile devices, as most users today use their mobile or smartphone for search. Further, customers should be able to easily navigate your product pages on their mobile devices. Check out how the font for CTAs is translating and whether or not images need to be resized for faster loading.

Moving Forward With Optimized Product Pages

Don’t set it and forget it with product page SEO. Check regularly for broken links and pages. Keep updating your keyword research. The better your product pages perform, the more people will discover and value your products. This leads to greater social proof — further increasing your credibility with search engines like Google. Track key performance indicators like MSV, bounce rates, and rankings to constantly tweak and optimize your eCommerce SEO strategy.