eCommerce SEO Complete Guide (2024)

This is the most comprehensive guide on eCommerce SEO online. In this expert-written guide, you’ll learn everything you need to know about optimizing your eCommerce site, from keyword research to technical SEO to link building. So if you’re looking to get more targeted traffic (and customers) from search, you’ll love this guide. Let’s dive right in. 

What is SEO?

SEO is an abbreviation for search engine optimization, which is a type of digital marketing that concentrates on your site’s presence in the search engine results on search engines such as Google. 

Benefits of SEO 

1. SEO is known for having a high conversion rate. 

SEO can assist you in gaining organic traffic, which is more often than not targeted traffic that will convert users at higher rates.

After many years of comparing PPC and SEO results,  a study comparing the conversion rates of the two digital marketing types was made.

Here are the average conversion rates across all industries according to the study: 

SEO: 2.4% 

PPC: 1.3%

2. SEO Leads To an Improved UX (User Experience) 

There are a wide variety of ways that you can boost your site’s UX. Adding relevant videos or photos, providing your audience with relevant information, adding easy-to-navigate pages, or making your website mobile-friendly will give your site an improved UX. 

3. SEO Improves the Credibility of a Brand 

Being in the first two or three positions might give your customers the impression that you are one of the best companies in your market or industry. 

4. SEO Can Turn Into a Long-Term Digital Marketing Strategy 

It takes a long time to gain rankings as well as lose rankings. This means that SEO can lead to a continuous and consistent stream of leads and sales.

Top Drawbacks of SEO

1. What is effective for SEO changes frequently. 

Google releases a major algorithm update almost every year. 

2. SEO is meticulous. 

There are over 200 ranking factors. 

3. SEO takes time. 

Google needs time to figure out how to rank a website and Google Business profile. Also, beating competitors is challenging.

4. SEO provides you with no full control.

Only Google has full control.

5. SEO has no guarantee for results.

SEO provides no immediate guarantee that you will land in the first pages of search results using the keywords you are targeting for.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines work through these three main functions:

1. Crawling (Scanning): Scanning the web for pages thoroughly. The content and code for each URL are scanned.
2. Indexing: Content is organized and stored during the crawling process. Once a page is in Google’s index, it is displayed on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant search queries.
3. Ranking: Pages that are relevant to a searcher’s query are ordered by most relevant to least relevant on the SERPs. Rankings are constantly changing as Google attempts to properly rank the best possible pages for search queries. There are over 200 ranking factors. Google algorithm updates can change the rankings significantly.

How Long Does SEO Take To Work?

While every search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is different, most businesses can expect to see SEO results within six months. 

A common SEO goal is to double the organic traffic of a website in 6 months or less. For highly competitive niches, it can take significantly longer to double organic traffic.

Traffic Types and Common SEO Metrics

Organic Traffic – visitors that land on your website as a result of unpaid (“organic”) search results. 

Referral Traffic – visits that came to your site from sources outside of its search engine. Ex. Facebook referral traffic 

Bounce Rate – the total number of bounces divided by the total number of visits on a page.

Click-Through Rate (CTR) – the ratio of users who click on a link divided by the number of total users that view an email, page, or ad.

Intro To eCommerce SEO

In the screenshot below, Techradar.com has the number one ranking on the search engine results page (SERP), which means they will get around a third of all of the organic traffic for the search query “best camera 2021”.

A study by Search Engine Watch shows that the number one position, or ranking, gets around a third of all organic traffic regardless of the search query.

eCommerce SEO Keyword Research

eCommerce SEO should begin with keyword research. Without this, you’ll be relying on your ‘gut feeling’ to run your campaign successfully.

You might be asking yourself: how can I do keyword research for an eCommerce website?

Everyone does keyword research differently. The steps that we take at EcomDynamiX are outlined below. 

1. Enter the client’s domain into SEMrush and go to Keyword Overview.

2. Copy and Paste the keywords on the Keyword Overview onto a spreadsheet after generating a .csv file.

3. Repeat steps 2 and 3 but with competitors’ domains and keep adding keywords to the spreadsheet.

4. Browse competitors’ websites to brainstorm more keyword ideas.

5. Enter keywords into Google and look at related keywords at the bottom of the page,

6. Search for keyword lists. An example of a Google search for that would be “fashion keyword list”. Take a look at the keywords on this page: https://www.mondovo.com/keywords/fashion-keywords.

7. Create a “Target Keyword” spreadsheet that lists primary and secondary keywords for every indexed page on a site. This will be a rough draft that will be finalized later. The primary keyword for the homepage should be your brand name. For products, it should be the name of the product. For blog posts, it should be the topic that will likely be a long-tail keyword. A long-tail keyword is a more specific and longer keyword phrase.

8. Go through the keywords on the spreadsheets and delete the least relevant keywords.

9. Enter all of the most relevant keywords into the Position Tracker tool and check to see what the current rankings are for the client.

10. Finalize your Target Keyword spreadsheet after reviewing the search volume and other factors on SEMrush. Consider how long it will take to rank for a keyword. 

Take a look at the keyword difficulty score on SEMrush. We primarily make our time estimates for keywords based on the current AS (authority score) of a domain as well as a competitor’s A.S. Also, we look at the AS of individual pages as well. 

A.S. is based on a domain or page’s backlink profile. There are many different factors that can also impact the time estimate, such as content quality, content length, aspects of on-page SEO, aspects of technical SEO, and more. 

It is very hard to accurately estimate how long it will take to rank in some cases, so just try your best. We break down the time estimates into four groups on our Target Keyword spreadsheet: 1-3 months to rank, 3-6 months to rank, 6+ months to rank, and 1 or more years to rank.

Tips: Speaking to the client to understand their target audience is a good idea as well. For more competitive keywords, I would analyze the backlink profiles of the top 3 ranked websites to gain a better understanding of how difficult it will be to rank.

Scroll down to see how we choose what blog topics to cover at EcomDynamiX.

Keyword Cannibalization For Online Stores

Keyword cannibalization is when a website’s many pages compete for the same keyword. This can be detrimental to SEO efforts, as it causes confusion with search engines like Google and frustrates visitors looking for information about one particular subject matter.

Make sure that none of your pages compete with the same keywords by viewing your keyword map spreadsheet. Also, SEMrush and other SEO software can scan the web for keyword cannibalization problems.

Technical SEO For Online Stores

The search engines like Google are always adapting and evolving to new technologies. As these changes happen, SEO professionals must keep up with the latest developments.

One of these changes is the increased focus on technical SEO for websites, which includes improving their speed, readability, crawl-ability, and other aspects that affect how a website ranks on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

I will list technical SEO components and tasks that must be completed for online stores below.

Sitemap Creation and Optimization

A sitemap is like a blueprint of your site that will help search engines find all of the pages and content on your site. Google’s algorithm will crawl and index pages that are in sitemaps so that they can be ranked for the right keywords.

To check to see if you have a sitemap, go to: yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml .

WordPress (WooCommerce) Sitemap Creation and Submission

Download the Yoast SEO plug-in and then follow the 

Below is what a typical Yoast SEO XML sitemap looks like:

Shopify Sitemap Creation and Submission

Download the SEO HTML and XML Sitemap plug-in and then follow the steps listed.

Robots.txt File Optimization and Validation

One of the very first things you need to check and optimize when working on your technical SEO is the robots.txt file. It can cause critical SEO issues that can negatively impact your rankings and traffic if a part in it isn’t configured correctly.

When Google comes crawling, it’s going to want permission from this Robots.txt file before moving onto anything else on your site so make sure you’re calling them up with what they need or they might be denied entry, meaning you’ll miss out on those rankings and that coveted traffic!

Best Ways To Get Pages on Online Stores Indexed Faster

Before I explain how to increase crawl speed for WooCommerce and Shopify stores, I will explain why Google takes a long time to index pages.

Google crawls, or scans, billions of websites and if it does not find enough decent backlinks going to your site, then it does not think your site is bringing value to others or is important.

Also, Google might not index all of your pages if your website has too much to crawl on your site, or maybe your site loads too slowly. It could also be the case that your site has too many sites or URL errors.

Examples of site errors would be DNS errors, server errors, or Robot.txt file errors.

Examples of URL errors would be 404 errors, mobile-specific URL errors, and malware errors.

Remember, it is important to understand that Google only wants to index pages that bring value to other people.

Below is a list of different ways to get pages indexed faster:

• Use internal links on your website
• Get more backlinks
• De-index low-quality pages
• Submit a sitemap
• Share pages on social media
• Submit a Video Sitemap
• Embed YouTube Videos on Your Pages
• Use the index request indexing feature on Google Search Console.
• Use an indexing software like Index Inject
• “Ping” your website with Ping-O-Matic
• Share pages on high-traffic websites

Many people wonder if the request indexing on Google Search Console actually works. It has been shown to work in some cases but not all cases. Read this post on asking Google to recrawl your website and see the circled text in the screenshot below.

As for the video sitemap, if you have published YouTube videos, then you benefit from a video sitemap.

Also, if you want to check to see if your pages have been indexed, then go to Google Search Console (GSC) and click on the coverage tab.

The Importance of SSL Certificates and HTTPS For Online Stores

The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a security protocol that ensures your information remains private and it impacts search engine rankings. It encrypts all of the data that is transmitted between the user and the server using an encryption key.

SSL certificates won’t significantly improve your online store’s rankings. However, it is certainly worth getting one.

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) is the secure version of HTTP. HTTP is used to communicate between your internet browser and the website that a visitor uses. When your online store has an SSL certificate, “https://” will show up in the URL instead of  “http://”. For example: https://www.packingpigeon.com/ has an SSL certificate

Page Speed Optimization For Online Stores

A sudden traffic surge or rush of transactions can be lethal to your eCommerce site. They not only affect performance and page speed, but they also negatively impact your brand image.

You can prepare for these surges by knowing what to expect beforehand. The longer you wait to optimize your online store for speed, the more customers you’ll lose to a competitor’s faster website. 

This mobile page speed case study shows that a website’s bounce rate gets worse for every second it takes a website’s page to load. We use web.dev and GTmetics to test page speed. Both use a wide variety of factors to determine page speed scores.

Ways To Improve Page Speed For Online Stores

Below, we will go through ways to improve your online store’s page speed.

• Use a reliable and fast hosting provider
• Use a CDN (content delivery network)
• Unblock browsers from scripts that are parser-blocking
• Don’t use too many pop-ups
• Compress all image sizes including thumbnail images
• Consider minification (also minimisation or minimization) for your code
• Remove broken links and reduce redirects 
• Avoid using excessive plug-in/apps 
• Use lite embeds for videos
• Avoid using excessive liquid loops
• Don’t use too many homepage hero slides

Hosting For Online Stores

Your hosting service and infrastructure can influence your eCommerce site performance (especially during high-traffic and high-transaction days). The list of name-brand retailers experiencing e-commerce site crashes during key sales periods like Black Friday—like Lululemon, J.Crew, and Lowe’s—continues to grow.

According to ITIC’s survey, “81% of respondents said 60 minutes of downtime costs their business over $300,000.” When researching hosting platform requirements, look out for: Memory or bandwidth limits for scaling during and seasonal promotions Projected traffic and peak user load to avoid crashes from a sudden spike in visitors

Use a CDN

A Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network (CDN) is a group of servers dispersed around the world. It distributes the content delivery load through the server closest to your visitor’s location, making local user experiences faster.

Since more eCommerce sites are going global, a CDN—or in the case of Shopify, dual CDNs—is a non-negotiable ingredient for platform performance.

Unblock browsers from scripts that are parser-blocking

Before a browser can display a page to your customer it has to go through a process called parsing the HTML. But parser-blocking scripts interrupt this process: When a browser encounters a parser-blocking script, it has to stop everything and focus only on running that script before it can continue doing anything else.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix and all it takes is the “async” or “defer” attribute. Parser blocking: <script src=”jquery.js”></script> Not parser blocking: <script src=”jquery.js” defer></script>

Don’t use too many pop-ups 

Providing a pop-up quick view window might seem like common sense. Pop-ups display a product—directly from a product listings page—rather than making you visit a product detail page. In theory, it should save your customers time to decide if they’re interested. 

Quickview popup of the small fins half zip, but they can actually impede a customer’s experience on your eCommerce site. It adds an extra step to the customer’s journey.

It can be clicked on by accident, which is frustrating to the user. It can be mistaken for a product page More importantly, it can significantly slow down your page loading time.

Compress all image sizes including thumbnail images

Using a carousel feature for “Best selling products” on your homepage can present speed issues, as information is being pulled from your product pages and displayed as thumbnails. Problems happen when a product image is pulled from a product page in a larger size than needed. The larger image causes the user’s browser to scale it down for the thumbnail, which impacts your page load time. 

The best page speed plug-ins for WordPress are: 

• W3 Total Cache
• WP Fastest Cache
• Autoptimize
• WP-Optimize

The best page speed plug-ins for Shopify are: 

• PageSpeed Monitor
• Page Speed Booster
• Page Speed Optimizer Pro
• Instant Pages – Speed Plugin

Importance of Optimizing Your Online Store For Mobile Devices

In 2015, Google officially announced that mobile searches dominate desktop. In 2014, a comScore report proved that mobile traffic has become more common than traffic from desktops.

However, traffic is just the beginning stage of your eCommerce funnel. Conversions hardly happen on a small phone screen because of high physical and mental friction. However, more than fifty percent of all email opens currently occur on a mobile device.

According to a study by Google, many people are using multiple screens while shopping online. Visitors might browse on their smartphone and later complete the purchase with a desktop computer or tablet at home in front of their TV.

According to research from Google, more than half of shoppers use two screens when making purchases online: one screen for browsing around on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets; another for completing transactions at home like a desktop.

When To De-Index Pages on Online Stores

It’s true that indexing and publishing a large number of pages with keywords can help you rank for those particular words, but it’s also important to keep some out. This way, your site is more user-friendly, and people are directed to the pages that they need or want to go to when using Google.

There are many occasions where you may want to exclude a web page from the search engine indexing and crawling. One of these is when there is duplicate content. Duplicate content can prevent increasing your site’s rankings because when two or more pages cover the same topic, search engines become confused about how to rank the pages.

We recommend using Siteliner.com to scan a website for duplicate content. Take a look at the screenshots below to see the duplicate content in www.roguefitness.com.

Many pages have “Match Words” or duplicate content. Some of the “Match Words” are in the menus of a page and do not need to be paraphrased (and the page likely does not need to be de-indexed).

It is important to de-index tag pages and category pages if they lead to keyword cannibalization or if you believe they will lead to keyword cannibalization in the future.

So what is keyword cannibalization? Keyword cannibalization happens when you have pages competing for the same rankings due to having similar content on those pages. Google can not figure out which page to rank higher when keyword cannibalization happens.

What Are Noindex and Nofollow Tags?

When a no-index tag is added to a page, it will prevent Google from including the page in its index. This means that even if Google’s Googlebot, which is Google’s web crawler, crawls and copies all of the information on your web page, nothing will be seen by searchers when looking for results based on the keywords searched.

Also, snippets of code called nofollow tags can be used to prevent the passing of so-called “link juice” from backlinks as well as PageRank.

So what is PageRank? PageRank counts the number and perceived quality of links to a page to determine how valuable a page might be according to the standards of Google.

When it comes to SEO, one of the most important factors is PageRank, according to Google.

When To Use Canonical URLs on Online Stores

A canonical URL helps you with proper SEO and will keep your client’s website from being penalized by search engines. You can also use a canonical URL to tell the difference between two identical or highly similar URLs (which have all of the duplicate content), and inform which one is best for ranking purposes.

3 Most Common Reasons To Use Canonical URLs

1. Canonical URLs help to specify the URL that you want people to see in Google’s search engine results page (SERPs).

Ex. We want https://www.example.com/category/product to show up in the SERPs. The two URLs below are canonical URLs

https://www.example.com/category/product.color=green

https://www.example.com/category/product.color=green&Size=M

2. They consolidate link signals for similar or duplicate pages and manage syndicated content

SEO experts can make sure that duplicate-content pages are virtually invisible for search engines and raise the value of the main page.

Being able to consolidate all your content into one URL will help you rank higher in search engines. When multiple sites have the exact same or similar information, they can end up competing with each other for traffic and rankings.

Competing against your own website in the SERPs is called keyword cannibalization.

3. Tracking Metrics for a Single Product

When there are a variety of URLs for a product, it’s difficult to get consolidated metrics for a single URL for a product. Canonical URLs simplify and organize things so you can report performance to your client more easily.

When To Use a Canonical URL Instead of a 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect places both human users and search engine crawlers on a completely different page. That means users do not ever see the duplicate page since they get redirected to the main page.

Here are some examples of pages that you should 301 redirect to another page:

• Out-of-date, or obsolete, pages that you do not want to update
• Product pages that include products that you no longer sell.
• Pages that have been completely removed from your website.
• Pages that have moved to a different URL (or the URL was changed).

Canonical URLs offer a best of both worlds solution when it comes to SEO. They allow the user to explore all possible versions of that page while telling search engines which URL is worth indexing.

Here are some additional examples of pages that you should turn into canonical pages:

• Pages with unwanted parameters. Maybe the pages are from a paid search campaign or something else.
• Pages that include sorting or facets of other pages. For example, a URL that shows the same products but filtered by price low to high.
• A page that is a so-called “print version” .

Pages with products that live in multiple categories. If you can get to a product into multiple categories on an online store, then you might want to canonicalize all of them to a single version of the product page. This is especially true if the product page is the same for every single category that it shows up in.

Finding and Fixing 404 Errors

A 404 error (also known as a 404 code or HTTP 404) is the worst way to end up on a website. It means that you can’t find what you’re looking for, and are left with no other option than clicking around aimlessly in hopes of finding something else or giving up altogether.

They are bad for user experience but are also bad for Google rankings. 404 errors are not a ranking factor per se, but they can harm your SEO.

The more broken links you have on the site, the harder it will be for Google and other search engines to crawl your site efficiently. Link equity won’t be passed around well either in this case.

How To Find 404 Errors on an Online Store

There are multiple free and premium tools that you can use to scan your website for 404 errors. Below is a list of those tools:

• SEMrush – Paid
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider – Free Up To 500 Pages
• MOZ – Paid
• AHrefs – Paid
• Broken Links Checker by AtomSEO – Free Up To 2000 Pages Per Day
• Dead Link Checker – Free

How To Fix Orphaned Page Issues For Online Stores

Orphan pages are strays on the web. They’re seen by no one and found by nobody because they don’t have any links to them. Even if a website visitor or site crawler tried looking for it, their search would lead to nowhere.

SEMrush can be used to scan for these pages. Either link to the pages or de-index them depending on what content is present. If the pages are left alone, then the orphaned pages will be a waste of your “crawl budget” and will not rank as highly as they should.

On-Page SEO for eCommerce Sites

On-page SEO means optimizing the HTML source code of pages to rank higher in search engines. Changing the text, H tags, and more can impact rankings.

Off-page SEO refers to backlinks and other external signals like social media shares, etc.

Meta Titles For Online Stores

A meta title is a critical part of SEO, and it’s distinct from the headline on a page. It acts as a name tag for web pages on Google’s SERPs. They can increase the click-through rate (CTR) for a page in the SERPs.

So what is CTR? CTR is the ratio of people who click on a link divided by the number of total users that viewed a link. 

Click-through rate (CTR) is commonly discussed in the world of digital marketing. CTR is often used as an indicator for advertising campaigns and email marketing efforts.

It can also be applied in evaluating website content. The links near the top of a blog post tend to have the highest CTR.

Below is an example of our homepage’s meta title.

Meta Title Tips for Online Stores

• Make them all unique. This means no duplicate meta titles.
• Add target keywords to all meta titles.
• Make them between 40-60 characters long. Sometimes Google will reject your meta title if it is too long or does not generate a decent CTR.
• Add your brand to the beginning or end of a meta title.

Meta Descriptions For Online Stores

A meta description (sometimes called a page description) is an HTML element that summarizes the content of a page for users and search engines. This brief summary allows people to quickly grasp what they will find when visiting your site.

Meta descriptions can potentially increase the CTR of a page. Sometimes Google will reject your meta description and generate their own. This is true if it is too long or does not generate a decent CTR.

Meta Description Tips for Online Stores

• Make them all unique. This means no duplicate meta descriptions.
• Add target keywords to all meta descriptions.
• Make them between 140-160 characters long.
• Add call to actions (CTAs) to the end of a meta description.

H Tags For Online Stores

HTML header tags are utilized to differentiate the main header (H1) and subheaders (H2-H6) of a page from the rest of the content. These headers are also known as H tags, meta tags, or heading tags.

The H1, or header 1, tag is the most critical for SEO. Duane Forrester of Bing went on record stating that they only look at the H1 and first two H2s in terms of assigning additional weight, and Google has indicated a similar strategy.

H Tag Tips for Online Stores

• Make them all unique. This means no duplicate meta descriptions.
• Add target keywords to all H1, H2, and H3. Not every single H2, H3, H4, H5, or H6 needs a target keyword, however.
• Make them between 20-70 characters long.
• Use only one H1 per page.

Alt Tags For Online Stores

Applying alt tags to images such as product photos can increase the relevance of your site in Google’s eyes. This is especially true in the images section of Google. The alt tag is also known as alternative text and is a snippet of HTML code.

Alt Tag Tips for Online Stores

• Make them all unique. This means no duplicate alt tags.
• Add target keyword(s) but no keyword stuffing.
• Make them between 5-70 characters long.
• Never start them with “Picture of …” or “Image of …”

Schema Mark-Up For Online Stores

A decent way to improve the visibility of your online store is by utilizing Schema.org tags (microdata) that can be added to HTML and improve what search engines represent when they show a website’s page in SERPs (search engine results pages).

Schema also ​​assists search engines in understanding a site’s content better.

Adding Schema markup (structured data) to your pages indirectly helps them rank higher by improving the rich snippets that are shown below the page title. Check out this list of rich snippets.

Rich results are not supposed to answer a user’s specific query. However, featured snippets do. Rich results usually have enhanced features and details that are meant to get users to click on them. 

They usually come into play for particular products and other commercial searches. Rich Snippets are Google’s way of conveying additional information to searchers in SERPs.

Many rich result types are more likely to raise the click-through rate of pages than featured snippets. There is no schema markup for featured snippets. Read this post on optimizing content for featured snippets.

Below are examples of featured snippets that are products of rich snippets (which is in the schema markup) for products:

Schema Tips for Online Stores

• Use Google’s structured data testing tool to check for errors.
• Use WordPress (WooCommerce) schema plug-ins or Shopify schema plug-ins to save time.
• Know what type of schema should be used for each page. We recommend JSON over Microdata. Homepages should have organizational schema, while product pages should have product schema, for example.

URL Optimization For Online Stores

You should make sure your URLs contain keywords to help you rank higher in the SERPs. Descriptive URLs will also ensure that people who visit your page have a better understanding of what they are clicking on.

URL Optimization Tips for Online Stores

• Add keywords.
• Make them as concise as possible. Ex. Ex. Choose this: https://EcomDynamiX.com/ecommerce-seo-guide/ instead of: https://EcomDynamiX.com/complete-ecommerce-seo-guide/
• Eliminate unnecessary categories. Ex. Choose this: https://EcomDynamiX.com/ecommerce-seo-guide/ instead of: https://EcomDynamiX.com/ecom-seo/ecommerce-seo-guide/
• Don’t include special characters like !, ? and #.
• Avoid using numeric labels. These are usually automatically generated by a CMS. not easily understood by readers. Instead use words that the reader will understand more clearly. Ex. Choose this: https://EcomDynamiX.com/ecommerce-seo-guide/ instead of: https://EcomDynamiX.com/ecommerce-seo-guide/322342342323524

Internal and External Links For Online Stores

Internal links are hyperlinks on one page of your website that sends the user to a different page on your site.

An external link is a hyperlink that sends the user to a page on a different website.

Anchor text for internal and external links should be 1 to 9 words or less than 60 characters.

Internal Linking Tips For Online Stores

• Use mostly partial match anchor text for internal links.
• Each page should receive two incoming internal links and contain one internal link to another page. The high traffic pages or pages with target keywords should be focused on the most.
• The home page, blog posts, service pages, location pages, and product pages should receive extra links. It is not ideal to have naked URLs serve as anchor text. 
• The bottom line is that you want to target page relevance in your anchor text.
• The homepage should link to the top service and location pages. It should also link to the /blog page or /news page. Linking to the most important product and blog post pages on the homepage is a great idea.
• Including too much exact match anchor text can lead to a Google penalty.

External Linking Tips For Online Stores

• Blog posts, service pages, location pages, and product pages should have at least one external link.
• Too many external links can potentially annoy website visitors. The external links need to be helpful and relevant for your readers.
• Anchor text should be partial match and relevant. Including too much exact match anchor text can lead to a Google penalty.
• The target page, source page, and the domain in an external link should provide helpful hints to Google about the relevancy of a page. 

In summary, linking out to relevant and high-quality content helps Google understand a website’s niche, and it can increase trust in the eyes of Google.

Also, when a user links out to credible sources on the internet, there will be a better chance that they will link back to your site. 

Home Page SEO For Online Stores

Ideally, the H1 tag is the name of the brand because the homepage is supposed to be optimized for the brand name and maybe another target keyword. 

Product Page SEO For Online Stores

Ideally, the H1 tag is the title of the product because the product page is supposed to be optimized for the title of the product.

Check out our video below on product page optimization:

Category Page SEO For Online Stores

Ideally, the H1 tag is the type of product on the page because the category page is supposed to be optimized for the type of products on the page. So if the category page lists men’s shoes, then the target keyword should be “Men’s Shoes”.

How To Write Content for eCommerce Sites That Ranks on Google

If you want to drive traffic and conversions from search engines, then it’s important that your content is optimized for keywords. 

What are some common phrases and keywords that your target audience will type into Google in order to find sites like yours? Check your keyword research, but make sure you do it the way we recommended in this post.

Many SEO tools can tell you roughly how many users are searching for different phrases each month, but adding some conversion data to your research will assist you in selecting topics that will bring high-paying customers to your site.

At EcomDynamiX, we focus on creating top-notch product descriptions and engaging blog content that has the right target keywords.

Keyword research must be done before adding content to a website to ensure success.

SEO For Product Descriptions

A product description is the marketing copy found on an online store that describes a company’s products in order to entice customers. A compelling product description provides details about its features and lists the problems than it solves.

Nowadays, a product description can either make or break a sale. With so many websites competing for the attention of consumers, it is essential to give shoppers all the information they need in order to decide if they want that item and where best to buy it from.

It’s no surprise that products exist to enhance or improve the purchaser’s quality of life. Every product is a potential extension of your personality and self-expression, whether it be for functions like photography or for personal purposes such as fashion.

As customers browse through online stores, they imagine having or using each item. They might imagine enjoying them while appreciating the design on every object before they make purchase decisions.

SEO Tips For Product Descriptions

Below, I will list some of my top SEO tips for product descriptions.

Include Primary and Secondary Keywords

Product descriptions must include your selected primary and secondary keywords. This will help Google understand and properly index your pages, which will lead to more users finding the products that you are selling.

No Keyword Stuffing

It is very important that you do not keyword stuff. Keyword stuffing means adding excessive keywords to a page.

Keyword stuffing was once an SEO strategy that worked, but it has proven to be ineffective, and pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords can be penalized by search engines like Google.

As a rule of thumb, add your primary target keyword to a page no more than five times. Add it to your meta title, meta description, product description, H1 tag, and URL.

Add LSI Keywords

Add secondary keywords as well as variations of your primary and secondary keywords.

These variations can be described as LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords. LSI keywords help to add more context to a page to make it easier for both search engines and users to know what your product page, blog post, or other page is about.

Scroll up to the top of this post to read about how we do in-depth eCommerce keyword research at EcomDynamiX.

Featured Snippet Optimization For Online Stores

Featured snippets are short excerpts from a page. They show up at the top of Google’s search engine results page in an area known as “Position Zero.”

Rich Snippet Optimization For Online Stores

List the Top Features and Benefits of a Product

This should be common sense, but it is not, unfortunately. Create a bolded list of features and thoroughly explain a product’s benefits in the first few sentences of the description.

Remember, a benefit is a positive impact that a product has on your customer, and a feature is a characteristic of your product.

Make Sure the Product Descriptions Are Long Enough (Or Not Too Short)

If a product description is too short, then you will likely not have an adequate number of keywords. Also, you probably won’t list all of the features and benefits of a product.

If a product description is too long, then you will likely bore the reader and they will be frustrated since they can not quickly identify the features and benefits of a product.

Every Description Must Be Unique

This means that the descriptions can’t be plagiarized from another website, and they can’t be too similar to the descriptions on your online store. Scroll down to read the paragraphs in this post about duplicate and plagiarized content to learn more.

Blog Post Topic Research For Online Stores

Content marketing is an increasingly valuable way to get users to your online store. Some people are worried that they do not have the skillset necessary to create engaging content.

We can assist you in content creation. EcomDynamiX has top-notch writers that can allow you to bring in massive amounts of traffic to your website.

SEO for the post is super important too. Blogging is all about picking topics and turning them into posts that readers find helpful, entertaining, and engaging.

Below, I will thoroughly explain how we choose what blog topics to write about at EcomDynamiX.

Conduct keyword research. Scroll up to see how we do that at EcomDynamiX.

Types of Blog Posts

Response Posts

These types of posts answer questions. For example, check out our post entitled: SEO vs. PPC: Which is Better for Online Stores?

They are normally shorter in word length compared to list posts and pillar posts.

These posts typically target keywords that are easier to rank for.

List Posts

These types of posts include a list. For example, check out our post entitled: 10 Reasons SEO is Critical for Online Stores

These posts typically target keywords that are harder to rank for.

How-To Posts

These types of posts are guides, such as this post that you are currently reading.

Pillar Posts

Pillar posts broadly cover a topic. They can be guides like this one or, in other words, posts that go over everything that you need to know about a particular topic.

These posts typically target keywords that are harder to rank for.

News Posts

These posts cover a news topic such as Google Product Reviews Update Goes Live in Search Results.

These posts typically target keywords that are easier to rank for.

How To Remove Duplicate Content Issues on Online Stores

Duplicate content is content that exists on your website that is exactly the same (word for word) on one or more pages on your website.

There are two main ways to do this. You could paraphrase, or reword, the content. Also, you can de-index one of the pages that have duplicate content (there will be at least two).

Use siteliner.com to scan for duplicate content and more.

How To Remove Plagiarized Content on Online Stores

Plagiarized content is content that exists on your website that is exactly the same (word for word) on one or more pages on another website.

If you find plagiarized content on your website, then you can de-index one of the pages that have plagiarized content. You can also paraphrase, or reword, the content.

Also, if someone plagiarizes your content, you can pursue legal action. Use Grammarly Premium to scan for plagiarized content, fix grammar, fix spelling and more.

How To Refresh Old Content For a Rankings Boost

The illustration below from Moz shows how your original content slowly but surely becomes less and less “fresh,” which is one of the many factors that Google’s algorithm uses to decide the quality of your site (which impacts rankings).

Simply updating your old content will lead to an improved freshness score. You could, for example, add 500 more words or better images and there’s a decent chance that you’ll get a spike in traffic to your page.

To improve your freshness score, you can:

• Add better content/increase word length
• Add better images
• Improve metadata
• Improve schema
• Target different keywords
• Fix grammar and spelling errors
• Link to better resources
• Remove broken links

Content and Natural Backlinks

There are other benefits that publishing great content brings besides generating traffic. When a great piece of content is written that is especially helpful or entertaining, it will naturally lead to a website gaining links. 

This is because it will get shared on social media, get linked to in other people’s blogs, get shared on forums, and more. The natural accumulation of backlinks leads to a better backlink profile which can increase the rankings of all pages on a website. 

Great Content -> More Backlinks -> Higher Rankings For Target Keywords -> More Traffic -> More Leads

Blog Post Structure and More

H Tags must be in the correct order and contain keywords. Skipping lines every 2-3 sentences increases the scannability of a post. Keyword placement is still important. But frequency is not.

As previously stated, keyword stuffing does not work anymore. And as any skilled writer will tell you, keyword stuffing usually lowers the content quality and makes the writing less enjoyable.

As far as snippets go, bulleted lists and answers to questions that are less than 50 words can lead to getting a featured snippet. See these featured snippet tips. 

Adding a relevant Q&A section can lead to featured snippets and increase session time on pages. Featured snippets are more eye-catching and because it offers a direct answer, people are more tempted to click on that rather than scroll down to other search results.

Check out the content outline below to understand more about our content formats.

What is the Best Way to Use User-Generated Content (UGC) on Your eCommerce Site?

User-generated content (UGC) is any free content created by contributors (usually your customers). UGC takes a wide variety of forms. UGC can be videos, images, simple text (reviews and testimonials), forum posts, and blog posts.

Reviews are the most popular type of UGC for online stores. The best way to use UGC for an online store is in the form of reviews.

BrightLocal’s 2016 Consumer Survey shows that 84% of users trust online reviews as much as they trust a person’s recommendation (from someone that they trust). Plus, 74% of users claim that positive reviews significantly impact their level of trust in a business.

However, SEO and UGC have a relationship that is complicated. UGC can give search engines more information to work with and that can potentially improve your rankings as well as incentivize community activity that generates off-site signals such as social shares.

UGC can also be redundant, low-quality, and spammy. Sometimes, it can even earn you a manual penalty from Google if your reviews are fake or have very similar wording.

Link Building (Off-Page SEO) for Online Stores

Importance of backlinks: Backlinks signal that other websites find your content valuable and worth ranking well on SERPs. 

Sending backlinks to your product page, homepage, and category pages can be difficult for many. However, this is not always a bad thing because it also means that if you’re having a hard time building these links for yourself, then so are your competitors.

This reduces the number of backlinks needed to rank number one on Google SERPs (search engine results page). But don’t think you can get away with not building any links at all!

You need some links in order to attract traffic by ranking in the top 10 or 20 positions on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

Importance of anchor text: 

The words contained in the anchor text help determine the ranking that the page will receive.

Recommended Anchor Text Ratios:

Homepage Profile: 80%-95% of your links should fall in the Brand, Natural, and URL Anchor categories. Up to 10% of your links should fall in the Partial Match Anchor category. Up to 5% of your links should fall in the Exact Match Anchor category. 

Inner Page Profile: 35%-45% of your links should fall in the Brand, Natural. and URL Anchor category. 50%-60% of your links should fall in the Partial Match Anchor category. Up to 10% of your links should fall in the Exact Match Anchor category.

No-follow Vs. Do-follow Links

It is important to try to acquire do-follow links. Do-follow links are links that are an HTML attribute that allows search engine bots to follow the links.

They pass on link juice, and they can increase your website’s rankings tremendously, while no-follow links will not have the same effect. Studies have shown that no-follow links can still pass a small amount of “link juice”.

Whitehat Vs Greyhat Vs Blackhat Backlinks

Common Types of eCommerce SEO Backlinks

There are a wide variety of links that can be acquired, and it is important to know the difference between them.

We listed many ways that you can build those coveted backlinks below:

Guest Post Links For Online Stores

Press Release Links For Online Stores

Links From “Where to Buy” Pages on Manufacturers’ Websites

Directory Links For Online Stores

Social Profile Links For Online Stores

Forum Links For Online Stores

Guest Post Links For Online Stores

Guest posting, A.K.A. guest blogging, means contributing a blog post to another person’s blog to acquire backlinks, create relationships, gain exposure, and gain authority.

Guest posting can be free, or publishers might request that you pay for a post. Paying for posts is increasingly common nowadays.

At EcomDynamiX, we use a guest post marketplace called NO BS marketplace. It is a premium Link building platform with over 10,000 verified publishers. It is one of the safest ways to build links and domain authority.

Guest posts on the platform come with a 6-month refund guarantee and a do-follow link guarantee. Below is a screenshot of the platform. Notice how the prices and SEO metrics are listed. Ahref’s D.R. is domain rating, and it is similar to SEMrush’s A.S.

Press Release Links For Online Stores

One of the primary reasons press releases are considered to be a benefit for SEO is that having a significant amount of information about a brand, a company, or online store cited in respectable media and news publications is of course, good for brand visibility.

Make sure you get a do-follow link from the publisher(s) for press releases. Some publishers might not give you any backlinks at all, depending on how much you pay them (assuming the press release is not free).

The main difference between press releases and guest posts are that press releases are done by the press, whereas guest posts are not. Guest posts are done on blogs.

Links From “Where to Buy” Pages on Manufacturers’ Websites

Many manufacturers will have pages where they list their distribution partners. Pages like these can provide you with a decent backlink.

Ask your manufacturers to provide a backlink if they currently do not. Take a look at the screenshot below to see an example of one of these pages.

Directory Links For Online Stores

Niche-based directories can provide decent backlinks. Some will be free, and some will not.

Niche-relevant links are an important part of creating a diversified backlink profile, even if they are no-follow links. Take a look at the screenshot below to see examples of subscription box directories.

Social Profile Links For Online Stores

Social profile links are a critical part of creating a diversified backlink profile, even if they are no-follow links (which they usually are). Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Linkedin are the top social media platforms currently.

Make sure to at the very least create social media profiles on those platforms for your online store. There are hundreds of other social media platforms, and many agencies outsource social media profile creation.

Below is a vendor for social media profile creation. The vendor creates a proton email address account so that users do not have to use their own email address account when creating social media profiles. When the order is complete, the vendor sends over the proton email account login information.

Forum Links For Online Stores

Joining niche-relevant forums and posting helpful or entertaining comments can lead to decent backlinks and referral traffic. Join the top forums in your niche and participate in multiple discussions without spamming or violating a forum’s terms of service. Below is a screenshot of the top bodybuilding forums.

Another option is to go on Reddit or Quora and join the discussions on those websites that are relevant to your niche since those are two of the top platforms that will likely have a community of people in your niche.

Drop a link to your online store without being spammy like a user did in the screenshot below. Make sure to focus on providing helpful or entertaining content.

Why Creating Helpful or Entertaining Content Allows a Site To Gain Backlinks Naturally

One of the best ways to get decent, natural backlinks is by creating high-quality content. Creating a really helpful or entertaining blog post or YouTube video will lead to natural backlinks through social shares, mentions in other blog posts, and more.

Conducting data-driven studies or creating infographics are two alternative ways to get natural backlinks. Some brands do not need to buy links at all because they can create great content, which leads to a wide variety of natural links. 

However, some businesses do need to buy links in order to stay competitive. Local businesses will likely need to buy links as they tend to be more limited in terms of topics for blog posts, for example.

YouTube SEO For Online Stores

Recommended Video Description Format: 

Website URL 

Phone Number 

2-4+ sentence description 

Call To Action (CTA) and link to a relevant page 

Brand Name 

Address 

Phone Number 

Website URL 

Add your brand’s name to the title of the video at the end. 

Titles should be within 70 characters (including spaces). YouTube includes a 100-character maximum limit for titles. Typically, titles longer than 70 characters will be truncated depending on what device is used.

Add relevant tags and embed videos on relevant pages.

Write a well-written description on the about page for the channel. 

Add social media links, website links, and Google Business profile links to the contact page too.

Final Words On What It Takes To Run a Successful eCommerce SEO Campaign

eCommerce SEO is tough. It takes an incredible amount of time as well as knowledge to get decent results.

You must have a great user experience, content, and backlinks to succeed in the world of SEO. EcomDynamiX can simplify the process for you and allow you to benefit from SEO just like some of your competitors might be. 

Conclusion to the eCommerce SEO Complete Guide (2024)