Six SEO Tips for E-Commerce Websites

E-commerce websites are not exempt from SEO. The customer journey usually starts with a search engine, and without a well optimised website, your target market is unlikely to find your business through organic search. Here are our six top tips to improve search rankings for e-commerce retailers.

Focus on both Technical SEO and Off-Page SEO

Although links are a very important factor when it comes to e-commerce SEO, do not forget about the technical aspects. It is paramount to insure your meta titles, H1 tags, meta descriptions and URLs are properly optimised first, then focus on link building. If you don’t have any links coming back to your site, you are unlikely to rank on page 1 of the search results, and will therefore miss out on crucial sales. A combination of building high quality links and getting the technical aspects of SEO right will help improve your organic search rankings.

Optimise Category Pages Around Specific Keywords

Product category pages are a great opportunity to rank for category-specific keyword searches. People will be searching for products by categories, such as ‘running shoes’, so it is important to optimise your category pages using relevant keywords. Following the above example of ‘running shoes’, a sportswear retailer should have a category page called ‘running shoes’ rather than just ‘trainers’ to improve search rankings.

Duplicate Content Might Not Damage Your Rankings

Although it is not recommended to duplicate content across several of your own pages, duplicating content from external sites is unlikely to impact your rankings. If your site is selling the exact same product as another retailer, it is perfectly acceptable to use the same product description. Many e-commerce retailers still choose to write fresh product descriptions, but it might be a better use of time to focus on customer experience and link building efforts.

Always Include Customer Reviews

Customer reviews can have a positive impact on your rankings. Google’s algorithms value websites with more content, and customer reviews count as content which can be indexed by Google. Having customer reviews on your site also means that customers are more likely to trust your business, make a purchase and stay on the page longer, all of which can help your SEO.

Optimise Pages According to Searcher Intent

There are two main types of search intent for e-commerce websites: researching and buying. If someone is looking to understand more about a product, they should be able to find all the information they are looking for in your blog posts. Likewise, your product and category pages should be optimised for those who are ready to buy. So try not to overload your product pages with informative content, and use your blog for this instead.

SEO Can’t Fix Everything SEO isn’t a quick fix for e-commerce retailers, and it might not fix anything at all. If your engagement metrics aren’t looking good, such as high bounce rate, low time on page and low or declining conversion rate, you will struggle to rank in organic search and you might need to look at other reasons why your site is performing poorly. Investigate what your competitors are doing well and consider whether you might need to adjust your prices, your product ranges or your site’s usability.

Without a well optimised e-commerce website, your business will struggle in the organic search rankings and miss out on all important sales. As a full service digital agency based in South Manchester, we can help your business become successful online. Our skilled e-commerce web designers and SEO experts can guide you through the process of building an online presence. Find out more about our e-commerce services here.

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