There is little doubt that keyword research can be the foundation for solid e-commerce search engine optimization (SEO). According to Google research, 51 percent of shoppers said they use Google to research a purchase they were planning to make online.
The research strongly suggests that SEO can play a major role in increasing your organic visibility. You know that before you even create content for your website, you are going to have to keep in mind the specific terms your audience will be using to search for products or services like yours.
You cannot solve any problems if you do not know the keywords driving search intent. All content must be developed with both search engines and your ultimate users in mind.
When you know how SEO is constantly changing, and you know how to adapt your strategies, it can dramatically improve your return on investment (ROI) from e-commerce SEO. Learn more about utilizing SEO in your e-commerce strategy.
Why E-Commerce SEO Is Important
When you are trying to get new customers to have their eyes on your website, you will not be able to earn their attention when search engines cannot easily locate you. Your website will basically be a secret menu when you do not properly invest in keyword research.
Keyword research thus becomes the critical first step in any e-commerce SEO campaign. You will generally see two things happen when you do not get SEO for e-commerce right:
- You do not rank on the first page or near the top of it when your target keywords are too difficult.
- The keywords you chose do not drive the traffic you are aiming for or align with your customers’ search intent.
Getting the attention of your potential customers can be expensive, as Wordstream indicates the average cost per click for the apparel industry is $1.40. If you try to calculate the cost per action, meaning payments contingent on specific actions such as sales or submitted forms, then the cost increases to $10.
Cost per click can generate very fast, profitable sales, but you could also spend thousands of dollars reeling in new customers. When you use SEO for e-commerce, you will get free organic traffic by getting your website to show up high in the search engine result pages (SERPs).
Be aware of some common missteps people make that can impact success.
Common Kinds of E-commerce SEO Mistakes
Do you know what your specific user’s needs are? When this question is on the top of your mind, it will help generate a much more solid e-commerce SEO campaign.
There are a minimum of three common e-commerce SEO mistakes you should avoid making:
- Vague Product or Service Descriptions — Your product description represents a good chance to fit keywords that make sense for your product or service. You will want to craft a product description that allows your customer to know what they can expect. This is important even when you are naming a product or service because that alone can impact search queries. Optimizing a product or service page will give it the best chance of earning a top ranking. Product descriptions can provide clarity and answer important questions that encourage users to follow through with their carts.
- Poor Product or Service Reviews Display — Product or service reviews can be great since they are usually customer-generated, meaning they are basically on-screen user-generated content. Reviews will share a customer’s unique experience with your product or service, and the page can act like a living update that brings more people to your website. Take full advantage of the SEO benefits that reviews bring to your e-commerce website. Also, make sure to implement a product review schema so all of your reviews can be even more prominent in Google SERPs.
- Non-Interactive Title Tags — Titles are not simply a matter of SEO, as they should also line up with your users’ search intent. This means that you will want to focus on unique phrasing, with one common formula being Brand + Model + Item Type = Your Interactive Title Tag. When you want to see if your product or service titles are unique, use Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest to double-check.
There are several additional benefits to SEO for e-commerce, as well as many more mistakes you should avoid.
The Best E-commerce SEO Websites
While some people are becoming more skeptical about the value of SEO, there is little doubt of the profound impact it can have on e-commerce. Statista forecasts that retail e-commerce is projected to be $875.2 billion in 2022 and hit $1,329.7 billion by 2025.
When you do SEO for e-commerce right, you can drive free traffic to your website instead of having to rely on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. Even then, you still need to know how to convert all of your website visitors into paying customers.
Here are some solid examples of SEO for e-commerce that are large name brand stores, that are implementing technically sound SEO, using creative copy on their product pages, have schema mark-up on the pages which helps create a more enticing SERP result, and have built strong natural-looking backlink profiles. Every single one of these factors will be extremely important to help with boosting rankings.
When websites implement SEO strategy and optimized copy, they will see a larger keyword universe and higher domain authority. In combination, it produces higher organic traffic numbers.
Here are some examples of companies that are killing it:
Etsy — Etsy is a global online marketplace where different brands buy, sell, trade, and collect unique kinds of products. It is also a marketplace where people can find handcrafted items from independent artists and designers.
Etsy is a great environment for a brand to win at e-commerce SEO because the company is making great strides in SEO marketing right now. Etsy ranked for more than 14 million keywords in positions one through 10 in May 2022, including nearly 5.5 million in the top three positions.
Etsy’s main navigation is intuitive and easy to use, with a banner that has season-specific, popular items and popular gifts people are purchasing. Businesses gain brand visibility thanks to how content is laid out on the website.
Etsy places emphasis on discovery. It leans into “keywords by intent,”, especially through blog mentions.
Their most trafficked blog article features the best Etsy shops and nets 1,061 visitors and $462 in revenue. The statistics show 61.1 percent of Etsy’s keywords are informational, and 29.9 percent are transactional.
Astonishingly, 87.4 percent of Etsy’s keywords owned are non-branded. Such figures demonstrate what users want to know about the brands within Etsy and the way they are educated as an audience matters during their journey as buyers.
A significant amount of Etsy’s success comes from its Core Web Vitals, which is a huge ranking factor in what has become a mobile-first index ranking world. The faster people can see their shopping interests during their user experience, the better.
Etsy gets all of this right while supporting the shops that rely on them for a degree of brand visibility.
Overstock — Overstock is an online retailer selling home goods at low prices. Like Etsy, Overstock also has great Core Web Vitals, meaning user experience with their online database is sharp.
Depending on what users are looking for, Overstock wins a lot of traffic for non-branded keywords (83.2 percent) vs. branded keywords (16.8 percent). Overstock proves to be good at capturing users searching for queries not associated with their brand, which means they are gaining a lot of users who are looking for a solution their website can solve.
A lot of Overstock’s keyword intent funnels in through informational search queries (47 percent in May 2022), and the data shows customers want to be informed before they make their purchases, although transactional searches are just as high (42 percent in May 2022). When you think of a popular search title, the products Overstock offers will essentially be what the users are searching for.
SEO for e-commerce works well for Overstock because it is targeting keywords users are looking for, even when they are not branded. They know how to align keywords with their users’ search intent so that they can see results with strong-performing non-branded terms.
Lulus — Lulus is a fashion brand that has an affordable luxury feel. It only recently improved its Core Web Vitals, but it now ranks higher and is garnering more organic on-page sessions.
When it comes to Lulus, the copy really stands out. The website is adept at using high-priority keywords. This means that when a person is seeking an extravagant costume for Halloween, Lulus knows how to point these people in the right direction to their website. When you have the keywords and directions for your users, they will be bound to trust you and follow through with their cart.
Backlinks are another major selling point of Lulus. The backlinks profile has more than 19 million referring domains.
Because follow links account for 80 percent of Lulus’ backlinks, search engines are inclined to believe that the website is trustworthy. Selling stellar products is only one aspect, as having outside sources vouch for your brand online will make you look even more credible.
SERPs serve as a sort of popularity contest, so having other people vouch for you can be a big bonus. Your traffic will come as potential leads to convert.
Visitors will make secure purchases knowing you have what they need, and they will come back to shop for other items they need in the future. When your backlinks come from reputable sources, the backlinks will be e-commerce SEO gold.
Learning Lessons From E-commerce SEO Done Right
Getting SEO for e-commerce right can be a real game changer, so you should invest considerable time in it. Playing the game right not only means appearing high on the first page of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo for terms your potential consumers use but also knowing how your audience will make its decisions so you can create content that will guide them through their purchasing journey.
High-quality content and copy will matter, but it does not convert to users when your keywords do not have high-quality search intent. Strategic internal linking, meaning linking to other URLs on the same website, and optimizing product and category pages will be some of the hardest parts of e-commerce SEO.
Google heavily focuses on providing its users with a valuable experience. Your website, in turn, needs to make its usability a top priority.
When your user experience is convenient and intuitive, your customers will respect and trust you. Know that what is good for your users will also be good for Google.
If users spend more time on your website and do not navigate back to previous search results, Google will give you points. Links can be what propel you to the top of a SERP, so people who like your website and what it offers are far more likely to link to it.
Find SEO Help in Houston, TX | SERP Matrix
SERP Matrix is heavily invested in SEO. We are experts when it comes to local SEO.
Better yet, we back all of our work with an SEO services guarantee. This means that we not only meet or beat any guarantee offered by a comparable SEO firm, but we also refund you for a portion of fees for which service was not performed if we fail to complete services per our written agreement.
SERP Matrix has an entire team of SEO experts, so we are eager to help you succeed at SEO for e-commerce needs. You can call us at (713) 287-1134 or contact us online to take advantage of a free consultation.
