How to Create an Ecommerce SEO Strategy

To create an ecommerce SEO strategy, you’ll need to understand shoppers’ intent, stand out from other stores, use real data, optimize link strategy, track and report on your results, and spend time optimizing every single product page. 

When getting started, you’ll find that what you really need is a strong SEO strategy that uses a more specific focus: sales. All the tenants of building a strong SEO strategy still apply. But you have to tailor those steps to the specific content, intent, and framework of an ecommerce site.

As we discussed in our post about creating an effective SEO strategy, you should be focusing on:

1. Prioritizing your audience
2. Standing out from the competition 
3. Using real data 
4. Having a strong link strategy
5. Tracking and reporting on results 

For an ecommerce website, we want to be more specific about these items:

1. Prioritizing your shoppers’ needs, intent, interests, habits, and behavior
2. Standing out from other stores that sell similar products to you
3. Using real data from previous purchases or industry trends
4. Having a strong link strategy that makes shopping easier and more comfortable
5. Tracking and reporting on results based on conversions and revenue
6. And, make sure that product pages are heavily optimized for SEO

All of this is accompanied by following SEO best practices – both on-page and off-page. So let’s create an ecommerce SEO strategy together. 

How do you do Keyword Research Focused on the Intent of Buyers? 

Keyword research focused on buyer intent is based on strong knowledge of your buyers and their habits. Before designing and building an ecommerce website, you should build a user persona. That persona should include purchase intent:

• Is this person looking for what you offer? 
• If not, how do you communicate the value of what you offer? 
• Why do they need what you offer? 
• What are their goals and frustrations and how does your product or service help?

The answers to these questions should motivate the decisions within your strategy.

One of the strongest ways to do this with SEO is with a strong keyword strategy. Focus on what your shoppers are really looking for when they push “search” on a query. Research what words they search for, or what problems they are trying to solve. Your products, as well as the rest of your content, should be answering your user persona’s questions.

For example, if you sell mechanical gaming keyboards, you could enter that search phrase into a tool like Semrush to see potential variations and questions. These phrases can help you understand what people who want gaming keyboards are using in their searches.

How do you Stand Out From Other Ecommerce Sites?

Your competitor research will inform a lot of how you aim to stand out. But four questions can help you make SEO decisions about your ecommerce store that set you apart:

• Is my product or service unique?
• What things do my competitors not offer? 
• Is my brand voice specific enough to stand out?
• Is my content diverse and not just focused on sales? 

The answer to these questions is how you can actually build an actionable strategy.

• If your product or service is unique, ensure that you’re leaning into those differentiators when writing content and link building. 
• If you can offer something someone else cannot, develop content around why someone would need that thing. 
• Develop content and a brand voice that speaks directly to your buyers and their questions. They should always feel supported and heard; no one wants to be pitched a product when they’re just trying to find an answer to a question.

How do you Leverage Real Data?

Do deep research with tools like Google Search Console and Semrush. Learn exactly what your audience is already looking for – don’t just guess based on what worked for you before. Using real data to back up your decisions is not only more effective, but can cut back on wasted time and money.

In some ways, creating an SEO strategy for an ecommerce site is easier than normal sites. Regardless of what additional content you provide, your primary goal on a shop site is to make sales and earn revenue. This can make it easier to build a user journey and research keywords. 

What Does a Strong Ecommerce Linking Strategy Look Like?

A strong ecommerce linking strategy uses a mix of internal and external links to streamline the shopping process and earn relevant authority from other sites. 

Most of the time, users are looking to purchase a product or service online because it solves a problem. We have become accustomed to searching, comparing, clicking around, and skimming sites in order to find the answers we need. Your job is to ensure that each click your user makes is valuable to them.

Here’s a checklist of links to make sure you’re included in your strategy:

Internal Links

Make sure that the links on your site are useful. Every product or service page should be findable within 3 clicks from anywhere on the site. And it should be easy for someone to find the exact item they want without needing to hunt.

• Use your homepage as the spoke of the wheel. For most sites, the homepage gets the most visits. So ensure that someone can begin their journey clearly from this page.
• Utilize category pages to build relationships between products and services. Someone may know what type of product or service they want, but they might need to see what options are available to them.
• Incorporate related links between product or service pages. Every product page should include links to related products to help narrow the search.
• Build content like video or blog posts that use links to the products or services you sell.
• Create a rich navigation system so that people can parse their search down from general to specific in just a few taps.

For example, here’s a look at the website for popular nail polish brand essie. When you go to a sales page for a colored polish, below you’ll find a few links to related products. They aren’t just other colors, but products that you’d use alongside any polish: a cuticle remover, base coat, and top coat. Not only is this a clever marketing strategy, but it creates a logical relationship between these products via links.

External Links

Earn authority and trustworthiness by finding ways to get your site cited and mentioned in other places on the web. Not only does this bring more clicks to you, but it tells search engines you’re a good candidate for ranking results.

• Do thorough backlink research. See what sites link to your competitors and get yourself listed on those sites.
• Reach out to blogs, article writers, social media influencers, etc. to request they share relevant links to you with their audience.
• Encourage reviews. Not just on your site, but in other places like Yelp, Google My Business, etc.
• Find relevant directories and listings for the kind of product or service you offer and apply to be added.
• Utilize social media to meet people where they spend their time. Draw traffic back to your site with fun and engaging content, not just sales posts.

How do you Track and Report for Ecommerce SEO? 

With ecommerce sites, you’ll want to track all the things you’d want for any other SEO strategy. (You can follow our guide on SEO campaign tracking and reporting here to get started.) But there should be a heavier emphasis on product/service pages. The metrics you want to track and highlight for an ecommerce site might be:

• Actions taken on a page
• Where people are coming from when they land on a sales page
• Where people go after leaving a sales page 
• How often people are converting
• Where conversions happen most often
• Keyword ranking, including clicks and impressions

When you track these metrics as a part of your strategy, you can see trends and patterns. And then you can use that information to plan for improvements or changes to your site.

How do you Optimize Sales Pages for SEO?

An SEO optimized sales page implements a strong keyword strategy, high-quality useful images, relevant and helpful links, a mobile friendly design, and technical optimizations like schema markup.

Your product and service pages might be the most important parts of your ecommerce website. Without them, users simply can’t buy. They can’t find your product, learn about it, or purchase it. So as a part of your strategy, you want to dedicate a large portion of time to optimizing sales pages for SEO.

You might notice that most of these steps are simply on-page and off-page SEO best practices. Let’s highlight how these steps can be applied specifically to ecommerce. 

Keyword Implementation

Each sales page should be optimized for the keyword that someone would use to find this item or service. The product title, URL, description, ALT tags, meta details should all feature the keyword in a way that makes sense. If possible make sure that categories also complement your keyword goals.

Meta Titles and Descriptions

Because the meta title and description is what someone sees on the SERP, they must be perfect. Don’t keyword stuff, but ensure that your meta information is as descriptive and accurate as possible. 

I searched for “flavored coffee” on Google. One of the top results is from Bones Coffee Company. Notice how many key ideas are reflected in the title and meta description alone. I can learn a lot about their products from these few lines.

I now know that:

1. Their coffee is flavored
2. They have 30 flavors
3. The coffee is hand-roasted
4. They use small batches
5. They sell both whole beans and ground coffee 

Images

Especially for physical products, images may be the most important element of an ecommerce website. More than half of consumers say image quality is more important than descriptions or price. Optimize the images you use by:

• Using image photos that are detailed, crisp, colorful, and high quality
• Zooming in or offering different angles to show off important and unique elements of a product
• Naming images and alt tags in ways that are descriptive and contain your target keywords 
• Compressing images for size, avoiding slowing down page load times
• Converting to webp image format to optimize performance 

For example, if you’re shopping for boots on drmartens.com, you’ll find that each shoe is displayed in multiple ways via large, high-contrast photos. They’re shown individually, as a pair, worn by a model, and in extreme close ups. These photos make it easier for you to imagine holding, touching, or wearing the boots yourself. 

Linking 

As aforementioned, your linking strategy plays a huge role in the success of your SEO. Ensure that products are not only linked to from other pages, but link outward to the rest of the site. Incorporate these links via “related product” sections, category pages, links to guides or reviews, etc.

Mobile Friendliness 

Research tells us that over 75% of consumers use mobile devices to shop in an effort to save time. The grand majority of search – including shopping – occurs on mobile. So your ecommerce pages need to be optimized too. 

This means making sure pages load extremely quickly, using a “thumb-friendly” design layout, and making sure CTA buttons are large and easily reached by a thumb. 

Shoppers on the go may also want a streamlined checkout experience. Reduce the number of form fields needed to check out. And consider offering quicker checkouts like Apple Pay or Google Pay to eliminate the need to pull out a credit card.

Schema 

One of the most effective “secret weapons” in SEO right now is schema. Take the time in your strategy to include structured schema data into your product and service pages. 

If your ecommerce site is attached to a real physical location, utilize local SEO schema for “near me” searches. When people search “[keyword] near me” Google shows an optimized list and map of those kinds of businesses near the searcher. 

For example, I searched “mechanic near me” to show me mechanics based in Austin, Texas. Incorporating schema makes it easier to be listed in results like this.