Step-by-Step Guide to Ecommerce SEO: The Easy Way

When it comes to boosting traffic, most ecommerce businesses focus on paid ads or influencer marketing, two methods that are expensive to run with little room for organic growth.

But what if there was a strategy that could drive organic traffic to your site seemingly on autopilot, without spending a dime on Google ads or TikTok?

Here enters ecommerce SEO, one of the most overlooked yet highest long-term ROI marketing strategies that can put an ecommerce business on a fast track to success.

In this full step-by-step guide we’ll cover:

• What is SEO for ecommerce
• 6 Step Ecommerce SEO Strategy That’s Guaranteed to Drive Traffic
• 6 Best Ecommerce SEO Tools to Help You Rank
• How to Measure Ecommerce SEO Success

And a lot more. Let’s dive in!

SEO for Ecommerce: What is it?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for ecommerce is all about optimizing your site and getting your brand to be the most visible on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), i.e. the first page of results.

Why is that important, you may ask? Over 70% of organic clicks happen on the first five results of page 1 alone, with the remaining going to primarily Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads and less than 6% of clicks occurring on page 2.

When it comes to ecommerce, almost 50% of shoppers use Google to discover or find a new product, and SEO is how businesses can use that traffic to boost their brand’s visibility and increase sales.

From in-depth keyword research to guest blogging to re-structuring whole websites, there’s a lot that goes into ecommerce SEO for it to succeed.

How Does SEO for Ecommerce differ from Typical SEO?

In addition to standard SEO, ecommerce SEO includes:

Commercial keyword research

Since ecommerce sites are built to sell, the keywords they target include commercial keywords, rather than just informational keywords often used in typical SEO.

For example, “raw dog food brands” is a commercial keyword with buying intent.

Informational keywords are something like “should I feed my dog raw food?” and usually result in blog posts or videos that satisfy user intent (i.e. inform the user).

Optimizing for mobile

Mobile purchases make up a whopping 80% of all ecommerce sales.

Not only that, but how well your site is optimized for mobile devices can make or break its chances of ranking well on search engines.

Optimizing product images

While a great product image is crucial for humans, alas, when it comes to search engine crawlers, they can only see the metadata.

You can let crawlers notice images by adding keywords when naming them or having helpful ALT text with keywords included. With hundreds or thousands of product images, that’s a lot of extra keywords that can be detected.

6 Step Ecommerce SEO Strategy That’s Guaranteed to Drive Traffic

1. Ecommerce Keyword Research

Doing in-depth keyword research is at the heart of a successful SEO strategy, but what does it mean?

Keyword research is all about knowing what your target customers search for, and using those terms (keywords) to help drive traffic to your site.

Before we go over how to use keywords to drive traffic, we need to know how to do some proper keyword research.

Short-tail and Long-tail Keywords

Short-tail keywords are 1 to 2 words long, like “backpack” and usually have a high search volume.

A long-tail keyword typically contains 3 or more words, like “light hiking backpack,” and while they normally have a lower search volume compared to short-tail keywords, they are more specific and often show more buyer’s intent.

You’ll need both short and long-tail keywords to build a valuable keyword list.

To begin, start by entering a main short-tail keyword into the Google Search bar and see what Google auto-suggests.

It’s also important to include in your list of keywords the monthly search volume.

There are plenty of free and paid tools for keyword research, such as:

• Keywords Everywhere (free & paid)
• Google Keyword Planner (free)
• Keywordtool.io (free)

2. Website Structure Organization

Having a well-structured ecommerce site is crucial for two main reasons:

1. It helps users navigate your site easily, thereby improving user experience which boosts rankings.
2. Good site architecture means Google’s crawler can navigate the site easily and determine the importance of pages in Google Search.

Here is an example of good site architecture:

And here’s an example of what bad site architecture looks like:

With sometimes thousands of products, it’s easy for some pages to get lost between categories and sub-categories.

When structuring your ecommerce site, following a pyramid structure helps Google’s crawler classify the importance of pages based on their depth from the homepage to final destination.

Another great way to improve a site’s structure is adding breadcrumbs navigation:

Breadcrumbs are like mini sub-menus that show the site structure to both users and search engines, while also improving internal linking.

3. Product Page On-Page SEO Optimization

Here is where our keyword research pays off, and where your products can shine not only to customers but to search engines as well.

Below are tactics to include for product page SEO optimization:

1. Keywords in the URL

Having the primary keyword in the product page URL is a crucial step in getting the page noticed by search engines. Moreover, the cleaner, more readable a URL, the better.

1. The product title

Include the keyword early in the page title or H1 tag to help the page rank organically.

1. The product description

Detailed product descriptions with a natural keyword frequency help search engines make sense of what they will potentially be listing.

What’s a natural keyword frequency?

It’s the opposite of keyword stuffing, where keywords are put in every sentence, nook, and cranny on the page, which can get a site flagged and harm rankings.

Other than keywords, it helps to ask what else can we include to improve a buyer’s experience?

Adding tabs that highlight features, specifications, and a product Q&A are ways to add more value to a page that make it easier for buyers to make an informed decision.

Which leads us to…

1. Adding customer reviews & FAQs

Authentic customer reviews and an FAQ page build trust and improve the overall user experience. They are also metrics Google features when you show up in search results.

1. Adding product videos (if available)

Although informational, high-quality product videos take time and often put a heavy dent on budgets, they can certainly be worth it.

Over 80% of marketers say product videos helped them directly increase sales, while on the consumer side, 88% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video.

4. Technical SEO Optimization

Think of technical SEO as entering the boiler room of your site to fix the piping. How can we get a site to be crawled and indexed as smoothly as possible?

Here are some steps to take that will help:

1. Use SEO-friendly URLs

We mentioned using keywords in the URL, but that’s not all. Ideally, you want your URLs to look something simple and neat like:

https://www.ecommerce123.com/dog-food/

Rather than…

https://www.ecommerce123.com/81725-*&@!)&)&50&_)7_)*&%875_)&507807&*^!%&q@^%&)!568&_%&!_%&!_%&!_)^&!+_^)&!_%&@#()^*&@)#&^!*&#+_&#^+_!&#_!*#&^!&^_@!#^&!_#^&!

1. Use HTTPS instead of HTTP

The S in HTTPS stands for “Secure” and you can tell if your site is using it by checking for the little padlock in the browser URL bar. A secured site looks like this:

As opposed to:

These days SSL certificates (which add the “S” in HTTPS) are often purchased with the domain or can be added through hosting services.

1. Add Schema Markup

Although schema markup may sound complicated, it is essentially code that helps search engines understand what a site’s content is all about.

By having properly structured data, search engines can know what and how a page should be featured.

The “rich snippets” highlighted below are an example of how Google, due to schema markup, can understand a site’s content and, therefore feature it as a rich result.

Google’s free Rich Results Test, Schema Markup Validator, and Structured Data Markup Helper are all great tools to learn more about your site’s schema makeup.

It is argued that schema markup does not directly affect rankings. However, the extra visuals improve visibility, which ultimately increases click rate and traffic, thereby making it an important part of any SEO strategy.

5. Authority Blog

SEO blog content is the bread and butter of SEO. With an authority blog, we can hit all the right marks with on-page and technical SEO techniques that satisfy user intent and boost rankings.

A blog allows an ecommerce store to:

• Build credibility
• Rank for all kinds of short and long-tail keywords
• Increase a site’s authority
• Provide more content for indexing
• Add inbound and outbound links to content
• Help build backlinks

…and a lot more.

Recall how commercial keywords express buyer’s intent? Often before a customer reaches that stage, they need convincing.

That’s where a good, high-quality blog post comes in.

If a customer looks up “should I feed my dog raw food?” an ecommerce store in that niche can come to the rescue with a value-packed blog post full of research, linked references, inbound and outbound links, and finally a call to action.

The opportunities for blog content are endless, and when coupled with SEO, can make it 13x more likely to see a positive ROI.

6. Link Building

Despite everything we’ve seen so far, link building is one of the top 3 factors for ranking on Google.

With relevant, authoritative sites linking to your site (backlinks), you are almost guaranteed to rank well.

Now that may look and sound intimidating, but there are a number of white-hat ways to build backlinks, such as:

• Earning backlinks with top content: This means creating content so good that other sites and social media users can’t help but share it or link back to.
• Guest blogging: writing a guest blog post on another site that links back to your domain.
• The Skyscraper Technique: find a top article with lots of backlinks, create an even better article, then reach out to those linking and ask them to link to your better article instead.
• Reverse Outreach: Instead of reaching out, create highly in-demand informational content that journalists discover when researching and link back to through their high-authority publications.

There are plenty of techniques that can increase your site's authority, with a number of tools to help research backlink sources and authority.

5 Best Ecommerce SEO Tools to Help You Rank

Ahrefs

Without a doubt, Ahrefs is one of the best tools out there when it comes to SEO research. Things they offer include:

• High-level dashboard to monitor SEO progress
• Site Explorer for competitor backlinks and keyword rankings
• Keyword Explorer with access to leading databases
• Site Audit to scan for SEO issues
• Rank Tracker to monitor rank progress on both desktop and mobile
• Content Explorer to find content ideas and link building opportunities

Packages typically start from $99 all the way to $999/month, depending on your needs.

Think of Ahrefs as the Apple of the SEO world. Their leading software and world-class data make them a top choice for any serious SEO strategy.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog offers a comprehensive range of SEO tools and services, with their full package starting at just above $200 per year, rather than per month. They also offer a limited free version of their product.

Most notable is their SEO Spider Tool, which is an efficient website crawler that covers entire sites rather than only individual pages. The crawler can:

• Find broken links
• Analyze site metadata
• Optimize technical SEO
• Produce actionable SEO data

And plenty of other insightful features. Screaming Frog is an excellent service to consider, especially for large ecommerce sites looking to optimize their technical SEO.

Google Analytics

What makes Google Analytics special is that it gives data insights that only Google has because, well, Google owns over 90% of the search engine market.

With Google Analytics, you can learn more about your site with:

• Traffic stats by page
• User demographics
• Referral sources
• Session duration
• User devices of visitors

And plenty of other useful insights. The best part is it’s completely free! Unless you opt for Google Analytics 360, in which case be ready to fork out $150K a year for that one.

SEMRush

SEMRush is another shining star in the SEO space, and similar to Screaming Frog offers a variety of marketing services with SEO tools included.

Packages range from $119 to $449/month, with a number of key features such as:

• Domain & keyword analytics
• Keyword, domain and backlink data
• Scheduled PDF reports
• Content Marketing Platform for premium packages

SEMRush also has the founder of Backlinko Brian Dean on their team, so they definitely know what they’re doing.

Ubersuggest

Created by Niel Patel, one of the greatest SEO authorities of our time, Ubersuggest is a powerful keyword and competition analysis tool.

Monthly pricing packages range between just $12 to $40/month, along with a free version available and heavily discounted lifetime offers.

The kind of metrics Ubersuggest offers are:

• Site audits for overall SEO health
• Keywords you rank for
• Competitor keyword research
• Traffic & backlink sources

Plus a new AI Writer to boot (pretty cool, but not recommended).

For the price and quality of data, it’s hard to find a better tool to start with than Ubersuggest, making it a top choice for small to medium-sized businesses.

How to Measure Ecommerce SEO Success

If you’re taking all the right steps, you’ll see the fruits of your SEO labors as clear as day. But measuring your progress along the way is crucial to know if you’re on the right track or not.

When looking at SEO metrics, it’s best to keep an eye on:

1. Sources of organic traffic
2. Where you rank with your niche keywords
3. SERP visibility over time
4. Click-through rate to your site
5. Average time spent on page
6. Bounce rate (how fast people leave your site)
7. Backlinks, including to which pages on your site

By properly applying on-page and technical SEO, tracking the above metrics will give you an idea of what you are doing right, what you are doing not so right, and what could use some tweaking.

Getting Started on Your Ecommerce SEO with Apollo Digital

You’d like to boost your rankings and drive organic traffic, you say?

What if we could increase your traffic by 1247%, your revenue growth by 530%, and get you ranking in the top 3 results for over 1000 keywords in your ecommerce niche?

That’s exactly what we did for this ecommerce business, all in less than a year. And although we can’t guarantee those exact numbers, we guarantee top results.

At Apollo Digital, we live, breath, and eat everything SEO, with our fully managed SEO service, world-class content creation, and link building strategies that launch your site through the rankings.

Interested to learn more? So are we!

Take a minute and tell us about your ecommerce business!

Key Takeaways

There’s a lot that goes into an ecommerce SEO campaign, but the main factors of a successful one are:

• Doing effective keyword research with free & paid tools
• Inserting keywords naturally in product pages, URLs, and blog posts
• Focusing on enhancing user experience through technical SEO, page speed, and being mobile-friendly
• Creating an informative blog that makes you an authority in your niche
• Building high-quality backlinks to your site

So get out there and start boosting your ecommerce SEO with these steps!

FAQ on Ecommerce SEO