For ecommerce sites, organic search is often the highest converting channel. Ranking well in search engines like Google can significantly boost website traffic, brand visibility, and sales.
But with ever-evolving algorithms and intensifying competition, what ecommerce SEO strategies should you focus on?
This guide covers the latest and most effective tactics to improve your ecommerce SEO in 2023 and drive more qualified traffic to your online store.
Optimize for Featured Snippets and Quick Answers
Snippets show up at the top of search results pages and offer a direct answer to queries. If your content appears in one, it means you likely rank #1 for that term.
Optimizing pages to trigger snippets is an impactful tactic:
- Use natural question formats and conversational tone to match user search intent.
- Include bullet points, lists, and paragraphs – not just long blocks of text.
- Make sure to provide a comprehensive answer within the content.
- Add relevant structured data like FAQ schema to boost ranking potential.
- Include your focus keyword naturally in titles, URLs, headings, and body.
Snippets help you gain prominence for valuable search terms while providing a great user experience.
Leverage Product Schema and Rich Results
Adding schema markup to product pages helps search engines understand your offerings. This unlocks ecommerce-specific features:
- Product schema – Provides core product attributes like price, inventory, images. Improves appearance of listings.
- Review snippets – Shows star ratings and pull quotes from customer reviews. Builds trust.
- How-to structured data – For product instruction pages to stand out in results.
- Breadcrumbs – Helps display site hierarchy and provides site-internal navigation.
- Q&A schema – To power featured snippets as covered above.
Ensure your product data feeds are consistent across channels and structured data is validating correctly. Rich results boost both clicks and conversions.
Produce Fresh, Link-Worthy Content
Creating blog, video, and other informational content regularly should be an ecommerce SEO staple. Valuable content drives organic growth in multiple ways:
- Increases keyword volume – More pages targeting different terms improves ranking potential.
- Attracts backlinks – Useful content earns links from other sites, improving domain authority.
- Improves dwell time – Posts keep visitors on-site longer, reducing bounce rate.
- Builds loyalty – Content showcases your expertise, solving consumers’ questions.
- Fuels small business SEO – Ecommerce content ranks well for product brand and model keywords.
Ideally publish long-form, evergreen content on your blog. Promote it through email, social media, and PR outreach. Links and engagement will grow over time.
Optimize for Voice Search Opportunities
Voice search usage is booming. Ensuring your content ranks well for voice queries provides a competitive edge.
- Use natural conversational language and wording in content.
- Craft titles that directly answer common consumer questions.
- Optimize pages for long-tail keyword phrases likely in voice search.
- Feature FAQs, lists, and “best of”/“top 10” content formats.
- Implement structured data like Q&A markup.
Ranking well for voice search provides more opportunities to convert searchers through your site or even voice apps.
Leverage Social Platforms Like Instagram and TikTok
Don’t silo ecommerce SEO to just your site. Expand reach through social platforms.
- Instagram Shopping: optimize your product tags and shoppable posts. Use influencer marketing.
- Pinterest Product Pins: create a Pinterest Shop profile and optimize your product pin promotions.
- YouTube: add your product catalog to promote through videos.
- TikTok: tap into viral TikTok commerce with shoppable product links.
Social platforms act as marketing amplifiers while also aiding SEO through backlinks, engagement, and brand authority building.
Provide Locally Relevant Content
Tailor your content for local intent and you can more effectively target geographic-based searches.
- Produce city-specific blog and video content around your stores.
- Add unique product offers or promotions by location.
- Incorporate local product inventory specifics like in-store pickup options.
- Make sure GMB profiles are consistent with local targeting.
- Use location schema markup where relevant.
Successful local SEO lifts online-to-offline conversions. Don’t just focus on wide keywords – go after searches unique to each market.
Master Mobile Ecommerce SEO
With Google’s mobile-first index and over 60% of shopping via smartphones, mobile optimization is mandatory:
- Adopt responsive web design for adapting desktop sites to mobile screens.
- Ensure fast load times as Google factors page speed into rankings.
- Build a frictionless checkout process and navigation on smaller screens.
- Implement click-to-call functionality to capitalize on voice search demand.
- Use platform-specific app features like Apple Wallet integration or push notifications to re-engage users.
A positive mobile experience means better conversions and lower bounce rates. Prioritize it in your SEO plans.
Measure, Analyze and Improve Results
The most effective ecommerce SEO strategy relies on data-driven insights and iteration:
- Set up analytics to monitor goal completions for key pages and product categories.
- Track clicks from organic listings to top landing pages using UTMs for optimization.
- Check Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster data on crawl stats, impressions, clicks.
- Use Rank Tracker to monitor keyword rankings and site visibility in SERPs.
- Analyze site speed and technical health with tools like Google PageSpeed Insights.
- A/B test content variations, on-site changes, and new tactics.
Analyze results frequently and expand on what moves the revenue needle. Testing and tweaking your SEO approach is key for sustained growth.
By leveraging the latest in ecommerce SEO – from optimizing for featured snippets to analytics-driven iteration – you can stay ahead of the curve and significantly expand organic traffic and sales.
Focus on providing a seamless search and shopping experience while promoting your brand and products through diverse content and platforms.
Measure results regularly to refine your strategy based on the data. Consistently improving your ecommerce SEO will directly impact your bottom line revenue
Frequently Asked Ecommerce SEO Questions
What are the most important on-page SEO factors for ecommerce sites?
Focus on page titles, URL structure, heading tags, image alt text, and use of target keywords naturally in content. Ensure products have rich structured data.
How often should I publish new blog content?
Aim for at least 2-3X per month. The more regularly you publish quality content, the faster you can expand organic reach.
What are the best link building strategies?
Create resource pages and earn high authority backlinks through relevant roundups, lists, and guest articles. Develop relationships with influencers and partners to get featured links.
How can I improve site speed for better SEO?
Compress images, enable caching, optimize code, use a CDN, upgrade hosting, defer nonessential JavaScript, and reduce redirect chains. Measure speed with PageSpeed Insights.
What are important technical SEO factors?
Some key technical elements are site architecture, quality web hosting, regularly updated sitemaps, effective robots.txt file, valid structured data, and great mobile UX (User Experience).
How often should I optimize my existing content?
Revisit older content every quarter to update any outdated details, refresh formatting, and incorporate better keywords and links as your site evolves.