The Ultimate Guide to Using SEO for Ecommerce Sales Growth
Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for ecommerce businesses looking to drive more traffic, leads, and sales online. With well over half of all web searches coming from Google, having an effective SEO strategy can help your ecommerce store connect with more potential customers and significantly boost revenue. In this ultimate guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about ecommerce seo services, including:
Choosing the Right Keywords to Target
Keyword research lays the foundation of any effective SEO campaign. You want to identify high-value keywords and phrases that potential customers are searching for so you can optimize your pages around those terms.
Some key tips for choosing the right ecommerce keywords include:
- Use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs to find keywords with high search volume and low competition. Look for more long-tail variations like “women’s black leather jackets.”
- Analyze your competitors and see what keywords they rank for. You can target some of the same terms.
- Look at your website analytics to identify terms people are already using to find your site organically. Focus on the ones driving conversions.
- Focus on informational, investigative keywords like “best electric skateboards under $300” instead of just broad terms like “skateboards.”
- Make sure to include variations like plural vs singular, location-based keywords, and more.
Targeting the right mix of keywords will make your SEO efforts pay off in the form of increased organic traffic and sales.
Optimizing Your Ecommerce Site for SEO
Once you’ve picked your target keywords, it’s time to optimize your ecommerce site to rank for those terms. Here are some key areas to focus your on-page SEO efforts:
Use Keywords in Page Titles and Headers
Your page titles and H1/H2 headers are critical for both search engines and users. Include your target keywords here, like “Black Leather Motorcycle Jackets” for a product page. Have a unique title tag for each page.
Optimize Product Pages
Beyond titles and headers, fill out detailed product descriptions, specifications, images, and structured data for each product. This gives search engines more context about the page.
Create Useful Content and Product Guides
Add blog posts, guides, videos, and other content that targets your keywords and answers shoppers’ questions. Link these to your product pages for greater relevancy.
Improve Site Speed and Mobile Optimization
Faster sites rank better in 2021. Compress images, minify code, use caching plugins, and optimize for mobile to improve speed.
Enhance Navigation and Site Architecture
Make it easy for search engines to crawl and index your site. Have a user-friendly IA, XML sitemaps, well-tagged categories, and intuitive navigation.
Focusing on these areas will help search engines understand your ecommerce store and products better, leading to improved rankings.
Building High-Quality Backlinks to Your Site
Backlinks remain one of Google’s top three ranking factors. Earning backlinks to your ecommerce site from other relevant, authoritative sources helps improve your domain authority and SEO.
Some effective ways to build quality backlinks include:
- Guest Post Outreach — Identify websites that accept contributor posts in your industry and pitch them unique, valuable content around your keywords.
- Influencer Marketing — Partner with relevant bloggers, vloggers, and influencers to drive links and mentions back to your products.
- PR Outreach — Pitch your products to journalists at trade publications for potential earned media coverage and backlinks.
- Business Listings — Complete your NAP citations on directories like Google My Business, Yelp, and industry-specific sites.
- Affiliate Marketing — Recruit influencers to join your affiliate program and earn commissions driving product sales.
The key is earning backlinks from domains with higher authority scores and relevant content. This lends credibility to your site and helps with rankings. Monitor backlinks regularly for quality and disavow spam.
Optimizing Your Ecommerce SEO for Local Search
Optimizing for local SEO is also important for retailers with physical locations. More than half of all mobile searches have local intent.
Some tips for improving local SEO include:
- Google My Business — Make sure you complete your GMB listing with photos, business info, services, etc. This is foundational.
- NAP Citations — List your store’s name, address, and phone number consistently across key local directories like Yelp, Facebook, Yellow Pages, Yahoo Local, and others.
- Local Content — Publish location-specific content, such as “Best Bike Shops in Miami” or “Guide to Shopping at Our LA Pop-Up Store,” to target customers in those areas.
- Local Keywords — When relevant, Include geo-modifiers like city names, zip codes, or your neighborhood in keywords. e.g., “Used Road Bikes Austin.”
- Schema Markup — Use LocalBusiness schema markup so Google understands your physical stores better.
Appearing for location-based searches helps drive foot traffic and sales from nearby customers.
Tracking Your SEO Results and Progress
To refine your SEO strategy over time, you need to monitor your progress and results actively. Some key metrics to track include:
- Organic Traffic — Measure monthly visits from search engines to gauge whether your efforts are increasing traffic. Break this down by keyword, too.
- Rankings — Use tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Sistrix to track your top keyword rankings in Google. Are you moving up or down for your targets?
- Conversions — Beyond traffic, monitor goal completions from organic (signup, purchases, etc). This shows real SEO ROI.
- Crawl Errors — Monitor indexation issues or errors Google encounters when crawling your site via Search Console.
- Page Speed — Page load times and speed metrics should improve over time, not regress. Monitor them in Google PageSpeed Insights.
Regularly analyzing these metrics enables you to identify issues early and refine your approach. This is how you continually improve organic results.
Final Thoughts
Implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy is essential for ecommerce businesses aiming to boost traffic, leads, and sales. This guide, developed in collaboration with IoVista Inc., emphasizes the importance of choosing the right keywords through detailed research, optimizing various elements of your site, and creating valuable content to attract and retain customers. Building high-quality backlinks from authoritative sources strengthens your site’s credibility and search rankings, while local SEO tactics enhance visibility for physical store locations.
Name: IoVista Inc.
Address: 5220 Spring Valley Rd Suite 568, Dallas, TX, 75254
Phone No: 214–239–0143