Search engine optimization is one of the most important things to focus on when managing your eCommerce websites. With an effective SEO strategy, you can rank among the top sites on Google, boosting traffic to your website, building brand awareness, and eventually increasing conversions. The first things you should do to build a strong base for search engine optimization are to make a plan and learn the basics of SEO.
Table of Contents
We’ve put together a full eCommerce SEO guide in this post to help you make your store better. You’ll be able to proceed through this list, crossing off each task as you go. After reading this post, you should have an eCommerce website that is well optimized. This will help you get more organic traffic to your website and free up time to work on other areas that need improvement.
Let’s begin by discussing the immediate steps you can take to improve your rankings! Here’s our eCommerce SEO checklist:
Ecommerce SEO Checklist: 10 Steps for Your Ecommerce Website Optimization
This comprehensive e-commerce SEO checklist can serve as the cornerstone of your e-commerce SEO strategy, helping you to grow your business by increasing traffic, conversions, and e-commerce revenue!
1. Perform keyword research
Keyword study is the most important part of search engine optimization. Search engines use buzzwords to figure out if a search result talks about a certain subject. When you use Google to ask a question, for example, the search machine looks for the best answers. The search engine runs through well-known stories or pages to find ones that already have what you’re looking for. Keywords’ major job is to help Google give honest search results.
But what exactly is a keyword? Keywords are words or phrases that describe the content of a page. You can determine which keyword or keywords a page is targeting on well-optimized pages because the keyword will appear in the title. Here are a few examples of eCommerce keywords:
- White Sneakers
- Noise-canceling headphones
- Pearl Droplets
- Wholesome dog treats
- Cheap leather cardholder
- Fitness Tracker
The volume of searches for the keywords you want to target may not exist, depending on your niche and the nature of your product. People might not know where to look for your highly innovative product—like a pair of flying boots—when you first introduce it.
Doing keyword study is very important because of this. Using this information to help you choose if search engine optimization is worth your time and effort or if you should try a different promotion method instead.
How do you conduct keyword research for your ecommerce store?
Google Keyword Planner is a dependable free alternative for keyword research, even though there are many paid tools available. On this website, you can find all the information you need to determine which keywords are popular and have little competition. There are some excellent long-tail keywords to incorporate into your website’s content.
Search engines like KWfinder, Ubersuggest, Semrush, and Ahrefs can help you find similar topics. You can also look at the websites of your competitors or type in your main keyword for ideas.
Once you’ve done your study, choose only business-related keywords that are relevant. Pay special attention to keywords that will bring you more organic traffic and potential customers.
Clarify your keywords
You don’t want to use all of the keywords you find in your research. Not all keywords are excellent. To narrow down your list, there are a few things to consider:
Volume
The first thing you should do is find out if customers are searching online for your goods or services. Even if you rank highly for that keyword, if there is no search volume for your product.
The difference between local and global search traffic is something else to think about. Let’s say you did some study on keywords for “product X” and found that 10,000 people search for it every month around the world and 10 people search locally.
Your eCommerce shop might not be as interested in that keyword if it only ships items within the United States. If you ship internationally, you should try that keyword!
Keyword complexity
This is an additional important consideration, but as a non-expert in SEO, I may find it difficult to evaluate. The difficulty number for a keyword shows how hard it is to rank for that term. Some keywords are harder to rank for, usually because there is already a lot of information on the subject or because the subject is very broad.
This means that only very reliable websites, also known as “authority websites,” can rank for them. Although the scales of each keyword research tool vary, the easiest keywords to rank for are typically those that are closest to zero.
Broader keywords are typically more difficult to rank for. For this reason, searching for long-tail keywords is crucial, particularly if your website is new and not yet regarded as an authority in your industry.
Long-tail keywords
Selecting long-tail keywords is the simplest course of action. Unless you have a very strong website, it’s unlikely that you will rank for the term “silver earrings” if you sell silver jewelry. You’ll be up against Amazon, Target, Kohls, Nordstrom, and other strong, well-known brands for the top spots because the keyword is too broad.
Long-tail words are one example. More detailed keywords usually get fewer hits and less competition.
Do you need some examples? For sterling silver earrings, you could substitute these easier-to-rank long-tail keywords:
- solid silver stud earrings
- plain silver stud earrings
- ethnic silver earrings
- chunky sterling silver hoops
- gold-plated silver earrings
- nickel-free silver earrings
- sterling silver hypoallergenic
- 925 sterling silver hypoallergenic
User intent
When conducting keyword research, you should also filter your keywords based on intent. Our favorite research tool revealed terms like “allergic to sterling silver” and “pandora silver hoops” when we searched for “silver jewelry.”
This keyword isn’t going to be helpful for you unless you’re Pandora, since you most likely won’t rank for “Pandora Silver Hoops.” The second person, who says they are “allergic to sterling silver,” is not looking for a product. Instead, they want to know more about their allergy or find ways to deal with it.
This term most likely won’t work for your product page, though. You could make your blog more interesting by writing about what to do if you are allergic to pure silver. If you don’t get the intent right, you’ll waste time and money on non-ranking pages and articles.
No matter how fantastic your content is, you will never rank well if the user’s goal is to purchase silver jewelry, even if you write a fantastic and in-depth piece about the history of silver jewelry. After applying this filter, you’ll have a promising list of keywords that will improve and expedite your ranking.
2. On-page SEO Optimization
Make your pages simple for people to use. You should make it easy for people to read quickly on your site since more than 80% of people do it. You should make all the on-page improvements you can, from the appearance of your website to the caliber of the content you upload.
The first thing you should do is put your selected keyword in the page’s H1 heading. This is what Google will crawl first, and it will serve as the page’s title. However, optimize your page SEO for only one keyword and use original page titles. After that, add headings to the page. This will help guide the reader’s attention and allow you to add another keyword that Google will find.
Additionally, keep paragraphs brief and engaging. You don’t want people distracted or overwhelmed. Last, don’t write on photos. Avoid bright colors and use 16px or larger font. To put it simply, make sure that the text on your website can be read. Including calls to action, buttons, and info boxes will encourage visitors to stay on the page longer.
Aside from that, don’t spend too much time considering the meta description for your page. In the search results these days, Google typically extracts the text’s most pertinent portion to use as a meta description. When using your SEO tool, the title is the most crucial element and should include your primary keyword, preferably at the start of the title.
3. Watch for duplicate content
You will not rank well with duplicate content. This holds true for both duplicate content that you copy from other websites and your own. There should never be two pages with exactly the same content. Even if your product descriptions are extremely similar, you must ensure that they are written differently and with different text.
If someone else wrote your blog’s copy or material, use a plagiarism checker to uncover duplicate content. If your website has too many pages, search for repeated text. If so, update immediately.
4. Ensure to set relevant redirects
Have you changed your URLs or pages? There may be broken links on your page (404). Thus, Google may have scanned some of your older pages, but they won’t be on your website.
A “Not Found” page hurts SEO and ranks. Google removes unavailable pages from search results instead of updating them. Setting up redirects so users may use the old URL to reach the new page is critical.
RankMath SEO is a useful SEO tool that can help you if your online store is built on WordPress.
5. Increase page loading speed
Search engine optimization now prioritizes website loading speed. It should load rapidly on your website, especially on mobile. Nobody likes to wait, and Google doesn’t want to penalize a website that takes an eternity to load because it upsets its users. You should aim for a loading speed of 1-2 seconds.
6. Make sure Google can crawl and index your site
Unless Google can crawl and scan your e-commerce site first, it won’t rank for the keywords you want it to rank for. Always check your e-commerce site’s content, speed, schema-markup, value, crawlability, and indexability to make sure it’s fully optimized!
To allow search engines to crawl your e-commerce site, you need technical and on-page SEO, notably on the product page. For example, Google Search Console lets you see if a page on your e-commerce site is indexed or mentioned.
7. Send your sitemap to search engines
One easy way to improve your website’s readability for Google is to create a sitemap. With its assistance, they can more effectively crawl your pages, much like a guide. Since you don’t need to know every little detail about a sitemap to submit it, we won’t go into all the technical details here.
To submit it, you simply create a sitemap for your website using a sitemap tool, then submit it using that tool. This can be done using Yahoo and Bing.
8. Include Canonical Tags in Duplicate Pages
Canonical tags help search engines distinguish duplicate pages. A few examples:
- http://example.com
- http://www.example.com
- https://www.example.com/
- http://www.example.com/index.html
- http://www.example.com/
- http://example.com/
All of these pages look different to search engine bots. But these are only one-page documents. The search engine needs to know that the information is only on one page, so you need to use Canonical tags that point to that page.
The most suitable example is: https://www.example.com/
The final “/” symbol tells the search engine that the URL path is ending.
The majority of users are perplexed about how to use Canonical Tags and 301 Redirects. Canonical tags are not for users; they are for search engines. Both users and search engines can benefit from redirects. Employ the appropriate Canonical tags to prevent Google SEO penalties.
Verdict
With the comprehensive e-commerce website SEO checklist at your disposal, you can now work on every crucial element of your e-commerce SEO strategy with ease and efficiency.
To ensure that your e-commerce website pages appear in Google’s top 10 search results when potential customers look for your e-commerce store and the products you sell, make sure every single item on your e-commerce optimization checklist is in line with one another!
Supriti is a seasoned Content Writer at SwiftPropel, boasting over 8 years of experience in SEO content writing. Her expertise lies in crafting compelling, search-engine-optimized content that not only engages readers but also ranks highly in search results. At SwiftPropel, Supriti combines her passion for storytelling with a deep understanding of SEO strategies to deliver content that drives traffic and converts leads.