eCommerce SEO Services
What is ecommerce SEO? How to differentiate yourself and increase the visibility (traffic) of your store? You will get the answers in this article.
The ecommerce SEO is an essential digital marketing strategy to develop your business and get the best return on investment by constantly attracting traffic and qualified visitors to your online store via search engines like Google.
Many companies are getting into the online business with the creation of ecommerce websites. However, with the explosion of the internet, everyone’s brand is in the same place.
Consumers are comparing prices and offers more. To differentiate yourself and increase the visibility of your store, it is essential to create a successful SEO strategy (eCommerce SEO).
In this article, you will discover:
- The Advantages of eCommerce Seo;
- The Tips to succeed in SEO for your e-commerce site;
- Many E-commerce SEO mistakes;
- How to write product sheets? And more!!!!!
Keep reading to learn more.
What is eCcommerce SEO?
Before diving into the definition of e-commerce SEO, we think it will be great to share with you the basic definition:
- E-commerce,
- Seo,
- And eCcommerce SEO.
What is ecommerce?
We can say that ecommerce is simply the process of buying and selling products through electronic means such as the Internet or mobile applications. To simplify things for you, it is the tool that will allow the purchase and sale of products on the Internet.
However, it is important not to confuse eCommerce and e-business. These are two different concepts that people tend to confuse. Indeed, they have no common relationship.
As we have seen previously, eCommerce refers to the transaction of goods and services between a buyer and a seller. As for e-business, it refers to the whole process to be applied to manage an online business. Within e-business, we find inbound marketing, promotions, SEO, and email marketing.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of techniques designed to improve the position of your website in the search engine results. Because there are many search engines: if Google, Yahoo, Bing hold the top of the podium, engines such as DuckDuckgo or the eco-responsible Ecosia,
Lilo, and Ecogine, progress. Why is this so important? Let’s imagine you own an online store, or you manage an ecommerce platform: the success of your business will depend mainly on the web.
Managing your SEO intelligently can be the key to the success of your business. The volume of online purchases is growing exponentially, not only in the United States but all over the world.
The Internet is becoming the first place where people go to get information before buying in a store. For this reason, it is crucial to know how to stand out and communicate with your potential customers. A solid SEO strategy can help.
What is eCommerce SEO?
The term ecommerce SEO is generally used to designate the practices and techniques of search engine optimization that are specifically adapted to the challenges and constraints of e-commerce.
The ecommerce SEO is naturally based on the classic techniques and practices of SEO since e-commerce sites are subject like all others to the Google algorithm. However, there are many specificities related to the e-commerce activity inducing opportunities, constraints, or SEO “dangers” that often require specific actions and skills.
This is particularly true for eCommerce websites with a significant number of products.
The Advantages of eCommerce Seo?
Search engine optimization has many advantages to increase your visibility. Using it allows you to gain the trust of search engines and improve the ranking of your website in the SERPs.
Some key figures to keep in mind:
- 37,5 % of the traffic of e-tailers comes from search engines;
- 44% of peoples search on Google when they need a product;
- 23.6% of web stores sell as a result of a search on Google, Yahoo, or Bing.
If your site is in the first results, you gain traffic, notoriety and you increase clicks and sales.
To guarantee the long-term success of your business, work on the position of your website in search engines (Top 10 results). You will automatically gain the trust of your customers.
In the lines below, you will discover the key advantages of e-commerce SEO
Generate traffic in the long term
If your site is well visible on search engines, it will bring more visitors to your site. And if they are interested in what you offer, they will linger on your page and may even recommend it to others. You will thus gain little by little in notoriety.
Gaining the trust of Internet users
Positioning your site well so that it appears at the top of the results will create a feeling of trust in the Internet user.
Indeed, if Google shows your site on the first page, it is because it respects all its quality standards: it is judged as a reference in the matter and, thus, recommended to the user.
Increase your sales
When your page is well-positioned and you receive many visits from qualified traffic (hence the importance of the choice of keywords), if your products are good, you can be sure to quickly increase your turnover.
All you need to do is to improve the shopping process to provide a great customer experience.
Targeted purchases
By implementing an SEO strategy, you are investing in a profitable long-term operation. It takes time (money) to create content and rank it, but once the results are obtained, the benefits can last over time if you maintain them.
From then on, any sales you make as a result of this SEO work will have a very favorable return on investment.
Finally, SEO work gives your company the possibility to target more audiences and have higher conversions. The objective of SEO is to rank relevant keywords according to your field of activity.
By performing a specific search, the user will type in specific queries. By being present in the results, the prospect sees you as an expert in the field. People who like your industry will find you more easily. The likelihood of them liking your offer is higher.
Possible SEO mistakes in eCommerce
Web stores that are new to SEO often repeat the same mistakes in terms of e-commerce SEO.
Here are some common potential e-commerce problems that can impact your rankings:
- Your site contains too many poorly organized pages: it is too deep; 404 errors may exist.
- Duplicate content internally. The same content is used on several pages.
- A low number of published content and therefore low organic searches.
- The site is too slow.
- The content used is already present on other sites.
- Page titles are all the same.
- The product sheets have very short texts and without value.
Tips to succeed in SEO for your ecommerce site
Determination of the objectives to achieve
Defining your objectives will allow you to determine the budget that you will allocate to the design of the site.
If creating an online store does not always require a significant initial investment, the budget can increase depending on the customization of the site and the features you choose to include.
It is important to define your target audience because the design, ergonomics, and content of your site will depend on the profile of your customers.
- What are your short, medium, and long-term objectives (turnover, average margin, etc.)?
- Do you want to sell only on the national market, or do you have ambitions abroad?
You always have to ask yourself the right questions. And to answer them, you must first identify the needs of your customers and know how to go about it.
The best thing would be to set reasonable objectives with easily attainable levels. It is better to start modestly than to set the bar high from the start, at the risk of having to revise your objectives downwards.
Analyze competing sites and learn from the major eCommerce sites
Studying your competitors’ offer is an essential step. Design, Ergonomic, choice of products… Analyze your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
A simple keyword research (SEO analysis tools) will allow you to identify the most active e-commerce sites in terms of online communication, i.e., those who invest heavily in sponsored links and online advertising.
The big names in online commerce allow those who are starting out to learn the best practices of selling on the Internet.
Study their evolutions, note the attention they pay to their visitors, note their tricks such as the sharing buttons on social networks and the positioning of the different shopping cart buttons, for example.
These are all benchmarks that allow you to progress in your understanding of e-commerce.
Work on the User Experience (UX) and conversion
E-commerce is a very specific field, and merchant sites have their own characteristics. The main feature of an online store is that it has product (or service) pages, which can quickly number in the hundreds or even thousands.
Indeed, the size of the product catalog does not allow to work simultaneously on all the pages; that’s why the SEO actions will focus on strategic pages.
What are the elements to integrate into the web visibility strategy? Among the main issues, three are unavoidable:
- Facilitate navigation.
- Optimize the internal linkage.
- Transforming visitors into customers (i.e., working on increasing the conversion rate).
This will improve the UX (user experience) and the conversion rate. Because even if you are positioned at the top of Google on each of your keywords, if your pages do not convert, you will not trigger any sales.
- What are the levers of a pro site to maximize the conversion rate?
- Efficient ergonomics.
- Functionalities oriented on “call to action,” that is to say, on incentives to action (order, book, register…).
- Quality content.
- An efficient conversion tunnel with extensive payment solutions, simple and intuitive online transactions, an ultra-simplified and consistent shopping cart path, etc.
The technical aspect
First of all, we must focus on the technical and structural aspects of the site (errors, redirections, accessibility, etc.).
Let’s take the case of errors: a page with a 404 error code, thus being inaccessible, is of no interest to the user and can send a bad signal to search engines if it persists.
Too many 404 errors will have a definite negative impact on the ranking of your site. In many cases, this happens when we modify the URL of a page without determining a redirection to another page.
Example for my eCommerce: I choose to delete a product that I no longer sell, so I delete the page. The user is still looking for the old product; he gets the 404 error and leaves the site.
Automatic redirection to another page would have driven the visitor to another content.
The predominant idea is the following: is your site accessible and technically clean?
In one word: accessibility.
Your content (choice of keywords, the richness of content, etc.).
I will try to keep it simple by cutting this step into two parts:
- the page content;
- And the metadata.
You will find more information about this topic in one section below (how to write an effective product sheet).
The page content
In the page content, many questions will arise:
– Is the content unique (don’t duplicate existing content on your site, and don’t copy from the competition! you can get inspiration from other sites)?
– Is the content-rich (a minimum number of words, a well-structured content)?
– And more.
But the example I will take here is the analysis of keywords.
– What are the main keywords of the page you use, especially to describe your product?
– Do they make sense?
A keyword (e.g., shoe) or a set of keywords (e.g., men’s shoe) will represent your product and should be present in different parts of your product page (title, h1, meta-description, description, etc.).
If this word is never searched for, there is no point in using it.
The idea will be to find a set of keywords, the word or combination of words sought by Internet users (paying attention to the competition in the results).
The metadata of a page
These are, among others, the data that appear in search engines: the meta-description, the title tag, the keywords (which are no longer observed by Google), and the URL.
Let’s take the example of the title: from an SEO point of view, it is important that the general title of the page contains the most important keywords.
It is also one of the first elements that search engines observe when analyzing a web page, and it is what appears in the results of queries.
The title (URL) should be neither too short nor too long while representing the product correctly.
Work on your links (Internal links, backlinks, and outbound links)
Next, we will talk about your site’s links. I can divide it into 3 parts: internal, external incoming, external outgoing.
The internal linking.
We also talk about “internal mesh”. These are hyperlinks on which you can click in order to go to another internal page of your site.
This part is of crucial importance since it allows both users and Google’s robot to better navigate on your site.
Example for your e-commerce: a suggestion of products similar or complementary to the current page.
Outbound links
Outgoing link is a link that comes from your site and points to a site different from yours.
These links can provide the user with additional information. But in the eyes of Google, when it is a do-follow link, it means that you trust the site. Be careful not to point to poor-quality sites. Example for your eCommerce: talk about a partner.
The backlinks
We speak of inbound links, or “backlinks,” for links from another website. It is the opposite way of the previous point: this time, it is an external link that points to your own site.
Example for your e-commerce: an online magazine that talks about you and add a link to your online store.
The reasoning behind this step is the following: does my site facilitate the user’s internal navigation? Are the links from my site to an external site relevant? Are the links pointing to my site of quality?
Work on the Performance and the ergonomic of your online store.
Then, and this is a part that is developing more and more: the ergonomics and general performance of your e-commerce site. This is closely linked to the technical side of the eCommerce site.
Indeed, 1 purchase out of 4 will be made from a smartphone during this year. In addition, Google is expanding its algorithm with different factors in this direction, which leads some SEO consultants to dissociate this step, which is usually part of the technical analysis of a site.
It is not for nothing that the search engine unveiled the Google AMP format a few months ago!
- The performance: The performance or display speed of a website is a very important factor in SEO. A slow site is a site that pushes the user to leave prematurely, which search engines will notice.
All the elements of your web page require a certain amount of time to display, and from experience, I can say that images are the ones that weigh the most and have the biggest optimization margins.
In this case, it can be due to an image whose resolution is unnecessarily too high or whose format is not optimal (e.g., PNG instead of JPEG). Example for your e-commerce: the image of your product, whose weight can be reduced for a faster display of your page. - The ergonomics of a site concerns all platforms, and more particularly tablets and mobiles. The idea is to know if your site is displayed correctly, whatever the size of the support used by the user.
Do all graphical (images), and tactile (buttons) elements display correctly, without clutter, and with a size/font adapted to the screen?
If your site is not configured for such use, the device’s browser will automatically resize the screen in its own way, often with poor and inadequate results.
Conduct technical audit
There are many issues that prevent eCommerce sites from getting good visibility on search results pages.
Based on my experience, I’ve seen common problems, including:
- Duplication of content.
- Not having the right redirect strategy.
- Load times are bad.
- XML sitemaps that do not automatically update to add new pages or product categories.
- Poor URL structure with tons of parameters and extra folders that are most likely caused by your CMS.
A technical audit is imperative to help detect errors that can harm your site.
Beware of regulatory and security issues.
Beware of mass emailing.
You can’t send a mailing for a direct marketing action to any address. You must have a valid customer file (i.e., people have registered of their own free will, this is called “the opt-in”) and also give the possibility to unsubscribe easily.
Beware of payment methods.
Be careful with the payment methods you make available to your customers. If you don’t assure the customer about the reliability of your system, you risk not having any orders. Several methods exist PayPal, credit card, etc…
Also, be careful with the duplicate content of your site, the images, and copyrights, as well as the hosting you choose. Let your web agency guide you.
eCommerce Seo: how to write an effective product sheet?
The product sheet is the essential element for the sale of products and for the ranking of an e-commerce site. To write your product sheet well, you must:
Use long-tail keywords.
This is a great way to attract traffic to your site. The choice of precise keywords is essential to develop the SEO of a site. Such a word consists of at least 4 words.
This gives a precise request and a well-defined need of the prospect. Paying attention to your keywords will bring qualified traffic.
Use a tone adapted to your target.
When writing your product sheets, you must also use a tone adapted to your target (general public or professional). We recommend that you choose an informative tone while proposing a precise text.
To propose your ideas, you can choose the inverted pyramid technique. This method consists of starting with the conclusion and ending with the main ideas.
It is a technique that allows you to offer the user the essential information from the first lines.
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
Know that a good product sheet is the one that allows you to satisfy the customer’s expectations. Indeed, you must imperatively and constantly put yourself in the shoes of the consumer in order to better understand his needs.
Even if your content must correspond to the search engines, it is also important to put your customers at the center of your process.
Be creative and add useful tips.
Since the e-commerce market is very competitive, it is important to stand out. To do this, be creative to convince the user to make a purchase on your site. Thus, offer him a tailored-made content.
Optimize your visuals to attract the customer’s attention.
In addition to the quality of your product description, you must also take care of your visual displays. They must be captivating and illustrate the article well.
Indeed, you should know that more than 40% of Internet users are attracted by visual information rather than text content.