eCommerce SEO

What is Ecommerce SEO and What Are the Benefits?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important internet marketing strategies utilized to generate leads and sales for almost every business industry. Ecommerce SEO has become even more of a specialty as a majority of product sales are being made online these days. With Amazon being one of the largest eCommerce-based search engines, as an independent website trying to sell your products separate from large online retailers is proving to be a tough fight for many. When you team up with an eCommerce SEO company, your chances of holding your own against these seller giants improve by leaps and bounds.

Ecommerce is Growing and Competition is Fierce:

closeup of an ecommerce online purchase

  • Amazon is the leading online retailer with a net revenue of $232.88 billion in 2018. (Statista)
  • Amazon has over 100 million Amazon Prime members. (Jeff Bezos in a letter to shareholders)
  • The average amount of time between a Google product search and a purchase is 20 days (it’s 26 days on Amazon). (Jumpshot)
  • 35% of Google product searches turn into transactions within 5 days. (Jumpshot)
  • 54% of US consumers under the age of 25 said that same-day shipping is their number one purchase driver. (Walker Sands)
  • Only 15% of US consumers said that online retailers always offer shipping options that meet their expectations for speed of delivery, compared to 30% that report the same for Amazon. (Walker Sands)

Is SEO Important for Ecommerce?

SEO is an exceptionally helpful marketing strategy for a variety of industries that have an online presence. For eCommerce, having proper optimizations in play is what can make or break your success as an online retailer. One of the most important features of eCommerce SEO is that it will help your website and your products to appear in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). What good is selling something online if no one can find it?

Letters S E O in different patterns

What most people don’t realize that while your web designer may have created and delivered to you a beautiful eCommerce website to sell your goodies on, web designers often do not consider SEO in their site structure and implementation of integral pieces. If web designers don’t add content, arguably the most important feature of SEO for eCommerce websites, why would they take the time to alt tag your images or add metadata to your pages? While, yes, your site may be beautiful and provide an excellent user experience to your customers, but if it lacks the very much needed “eCommerce SEO recipe” you’re going to end serving a big designer dinner to an empty table.

Is SEO important for eCommerce websites? It is, quite literally, the difference between life and death of an online retailer.

Why Do I Need an Ecommerce SEO Company?

SEO has been an applied practice for nearly as long as search engines have been providing results for curious searchers. Ecommerce SEO, as many are led to believe, shouldn’t be that different than normal optimization strategies, right? Surprisingly, there are a lot of additional factors that need to be considered in combination with typical SEO tactics when searching for a company to provide you with eCommerce SEO services.

Since SEO services are a highly sought-after marketing initiative, finding the right eCommerce SEO company is imperative. Traditional SEO and eCommerce SEO are vastly different, finding a company that is capable of making your projected profit dreams a reality and optimizing your site to it’s best potential can be a difficult (and sometimes frustrating) process. While many companies boast on their expertise in Traditional SEO capabilities, many companies may not realize the nuances and complexity that eCommerce SEO demands for it to be a successful marketing campaign. Essentially, being knowledgeable of SEO strategies is only the foundation for eCommerce SEO tactics. Partnering with an eCommerce SEO company ensures not only do we understand the ins and outs of SEO but how to properly rank an eCommerce website.

How Do You Perform SEO for Ecommerce Websites?

As aforementioned, general SEO tactics and eCommerce SEO have some strategies that overlap but with eCommerce SEO there are some additional factors to consider.  To help with your search, here are some key items to look for when hiring an eCommerce SEO company:

magnifying glass and pen on book

  • Keyword Research: Every eCommerce SEO campaign needs to start with extensive research to help target your best keyword options. Evaluation of your products, current competitor standings, and analyzation of current rankings help your SEO consultant determine what keywords would be best suited for you to pursue right away, “low hanging fruit”, keywords that are more competitive which will take more time and effort to obtain rankings for, and a variety of keywords that fall in the middle.
  • Site Architecture: Your SEO consultant will deep dive into your site and see how the site map and linking structure work. The structure of how your links are built can very critical for eCommerce SEO success rates. When your site is clearly broken into categories and sub-categories which show the breakdown of the user’s click path, search engines deem this as a solid search structure and reward accordingly. Essentially, it’s like looking into a shoe closet and seeing whether each shelf is properly organized with relevant shoes grouped together or if it’s just a pile of shoes with no clear organization to help the searcher find their desired “shoe”.
  • On-Page SEO: As the name implies, this strategy applies to the content on your website that is showing to your end users and their relevant metadata, image attributions, linking structure, etc. For eCommerce SEO is it is exceptionally critical that your category pages, product pages, and blog content follow proper SEO rules. With eCommerce sites, you don’t have as much room to work with content in particular, so it is imperative that the content that is on your site is not only relevant but is hitting every SEO step efficiently.
  • Technical SEO: With search engines, you can’t “fool” them with excellent keyword driven content and properly tagged images if there are “broken” things on your website. There is an entire world behind what shows to the customer that search engines consider when ranking your website. Some backend or technical SEO aspects to consider are working links, site speed, mobile-friendliness, and overall user experience. These items can be discovered by your eCommerce SEO consultant running a site audit, which crawls every page of your site to find these, mostly unnoticed by the naked eye, errors.
  • Local SEO: For eCommerce sites that also have a brick and mortar location, a big factor for eCommerce SEO is to not only drive more traffic to your website but through the actual front door as well. During your search for an eCommerce SEO company, make sure they take into account the many factors that can bolster your local SERPs in your area: your Google My Business profile and having local backlink strategy. Links from other local sites can influence your rankings in local SEO.
  • Content Marketing: If your eCommerce website does not have an active running blog section, we highly recommend that you make that a reality. Having new content consistently posted to your site grabs attention from search engines, as your site is still active with new information on a regular basis. Not only is this rewarded by search engines with improved rankings but it is also another area where you can work keyword driven content onto your site since space for long-form content can be limited on the category and product pages. And if that weren’t enough reasons for your eCommerce website to have a blog… studies show that people are more likely to make a purchase from a website when there is supportive information not just about the products but the company as a whole. People like to know not just what they’re buying but who they are buying it from and supporting. three rows of chain links
  • Link Building: One of the most effective eCommerce SEO tactics is to have internal links within your site, leading your searcher from one place to next on your website so there is never the opportunity for them to “dead end”. Having a good internal linking structure in place can lead searchers from your highest ranking pages deeper into your lower ranked pages. These lower ranked pages could be highly competitive terms so if you have numerous spots on your site that lead to it, search engines deem that your site has more authority on the matter/product and can grant rankings in return. Also having external links that authoritative, strong sites can help build your credibility on what you are selling as you reference details or further information from sites that specialize in that.
  • Link Acquisition: Backlinks, links from other sites that point to yours, also give search engines a good idea that your website is one that other people deem as an authoritative source for certain products or information. When searching for someone to handle your eCommerce SEO services, a backlinking strategy is important. While this may not be one of the early on goals (it might not even be something you begin to do in the first year), it is something to consider as your eCommerce SEO strategy continues.
  • Measuring SEO Success: Lastly, your eCommerce SEO company needs to be held accountable for their efforts and report efficiently on their progression with your campaign. Reporting tools and accurate tracking is crucial to knowing your eCommerce SEO company is not only doing what they are saying they are but are also proving an ROI (return on investment) because of their efforts.

What Ecommerce Platforms Do You Support?

close up of colorful codeWhen it comes to eCommerce SEO, having a site platform that is SEO friendly is exceptionally helpful with furthering your marketing goals. When selling products online, the platform that you use to display your goodies to the world needs to fit your business and selling needs, so not every platform is the right fit for every company.

With that being said, we support numerous eCommerce SEO friendly platforms such as Magento, Woocommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, 3DCart, Volusion, and TrueCommerce. We are highly confident that our knowledge of these platforms is exceeded by very few. When searching for an eCommerce SEO specialist, having a team that is not only familiar with your platform but is also knowledgeable on how to manipulate factors to your best benefit is crucial. Knowing how to SEO a site is only as powerful of a skill as your teams’ knowledge of a platform they have to work within.

How Do I Get Started on my Ecommerce SEO Campaign?

Are you ready to get more visitors to your site by ranking higher on search engines? Do you want more leads to turn into conversions because your site is targeted to the right audience? Do you want to outsell your competitors and leave them in the dust? Then you do not need to look any further because we are your online marketing solution for eCommerce SEO.

Getting started is a smooth and painless process with That Company. If you would like to fill out a form at the bottom of this page or you can give us a call at 1-800-724-0252 and one of our sales team members will contact you shortly with more information. From there, you will have a meeting with a sales team member and they will break down the technicalities of our agreement with you and your company.

We also suggest to do an initial analysis before signing up for a committed time frame. The reason we suggest this is that sometimes a site’s best option is not a longer marketing plan but a plan that has quick results (for a price). Depending on what you sell, the competitiveness of your market, and the condition of your current site all influence the success rate of your eCommerce SEO campaign. You can read more about what composes our Initial Analysis Report here.

Once the Analysis is complete, you will review the presented data and make a decision if you would like to move forward with your eCommerce SEO efforts. If that is the case, you will sign a retainer for a set amount of hours of work for a set amount of months. This is flexible based on your budget and ROI goals. From there, you will be assigned an eCommerce SEO consultant from our team and then the real work begins!

As they say, knowledge is power but without action it is nothing. Today is the time to act if you are wanting to get serious about your eCommerce SEO marketing. Give us a call 1-800-724-0252 to get started on the path to success. Not an eCommerce business? Check out some other industries that profit from SEO.