Last modified on November 10, 2023
Getting more traffic is a priority for any e-commerce site manager and natural referencing is undoubtedly one of the most effective levers. In this article, I offer you everything there is to know about SEO to bring your online store to the top of Google results.
Carry out an SEO audit of your e-commerce site
Many managers want to implement an SEO strategy without questioning what already exists. However, this is a serious mistake, because if the foundations are not good, all the actions that will be implemented will have very little results.
The SEO audit is therefore an essential step for an e-commerce site already online. Several points must be checked:
- What are the positioned pages and the invisible pages?
- Is the content sufficiently optimized?
- Is the structure of the site coherent?
- Is the site popular enough (backlinks)?
- Are there any technical obstacles?
To help you carry out an e-commerce SEO audit, you can of course call on a consultant or use SEO tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs and Screaming Frog.
Define a keyword strategy
It’s no surprise that one of the first steps is to identify the search engine queries your potential customers are making. Keyword research can be done in a variety of ways, but it can be helpful to combine several techniques for greater efficiency.
There are also many tools to facilitate keyword research. I personally recommend using Ubersuggest, Yooda Insight and especially SEMrush which will allow you to analyze the competition.
Once you have made a fairly comprehensive list, you need to focus on the keywords that matter most, taking into account several criteria:
- The search volume: The higher the search volume, the more potential traffic to your site. However, this also means more competition. It may be worth targeting the long tail first.
- The competition: The lower the competition, the easier it will be for you to rank well. There are indicators on tools like SEMRush. The CPC given by Google Keywords Planner is also a good indicator of the competition.
- Relevance : How relevant is your product page or category page to the search term? This is a very important ranking factor that is often overlooked due to poor content.
- The intention : Obviously, you have an e-commerce site so you primarily target keywords with a commercial intention. However, depending on your sector, it may be interesting to set up an editorial strategy with keywords with an informational or inspirational intention.
Create an optimal structure
The way your site’s pages are organized and structured affects your search engine rankings, but also your user experience (UX). That’s why it’s important to make navigation easy for both visitors and search engines.
As you add and remove products and categories, the site structure quickly becomes complicated. If you can get it right from the beginning, you’ll save a lot of time later.
Here are the points you need to keep in mind when building your e-commerce website architecture:
- Every page on your site should be accessible in just a few clicks from your home page.
- Ensure your site structure is simple yet scalable as your online store grows.
- Define categories, subcategories and correctly classify the different products according to your current offers but also according to your future products.
- Organize URLs logically with subfolders (example: sitename.fr/men/jacket/blazzers)
- If product listings are very similar, include a canonical tag to avoid duplicate content issues
How to write your product sheets well for SEO
Now that you’ve done your keyword research and your site structure is ready to go, let’s talk about how you can optimize your product pages.
A first error that we unfortunately find almost everywhere on e-commerce sites is the stupid copy/pasting of descriptions given by suppliers.
However, it is important to personalize the content of your listings, whether or not you manufacture the product. Similarly, if you have several similar items, you will need to make sure to write a unique description for each product to avoid duplicate content.
The ideal way to rank better compared to your competitors who offer the same product is ultimately to integrate a perfectly optimized file by including as much information as possible:
- Product description: Write sufficiently long, unique and detailed descriptions of your products so that Google can promote you more easily.
- Technical characteristics: The more information you provide, the less hesitant your potential buyers will be.
- Directions for use: This is the little added value that you can bring to your product sheets compared to your competitors. Your users will appreciate it and you will increase your relevance to search engines.
- The opinions : Your customers need to be reassured by checking other users’ reviews. In addition, the rating will allow you to include Rich snippets in the form of stars in Google’s results pages.
The blog for an e-commerce site
Content marketing is a great way to increase traffic to an e-commerce site, especially through a blog.
Blogging actually helps you improve your SEO in several ways. In particular, you can use your blog to answer your potential customers’ questions and thus be visible from the information search phase of the purchasing cycle. The best strategy is then to exploit long tail keywords and questions such as “How to do…”, “How to use”, “How to choose”, etc.
A second advantage of a blog for the SEO of your e-commerce site is to improve internal linking. Through your articles, you can directly link your product pages and thus bring them more “juice”.
Set up netlinking campaigns
While link building is one of the most difficult aspects of SEO, it is also the key to success in ranking for competitive queries. The goal of netlinking is to create quality links and increase the visibility of your landing pages and your site as a whole.
Here are some of the best examples of link building tactics for an e-commerce site:
- Link exchange: This is one of the most common methods in SEO but it is very time-consuming and laborious. Concretely, it consists of contacting other sites in similar or related themes to yours in order to propose link exchanges.
- Use sponsored article platforms: There are no secrets, you will quickly realize that link exchange has its limits. To obtain good quality links, you often have to take out your credit card and go through platforms in order to order articles on sites that meet certain criteria.
- Partnering with influential bloggers: Offering free product samples to bloggers in your niche can be a great way to gain exposure, generate engagement, and build links to your site.
- Create linkbaiting campaigns: The idea behind this method is to make your content attractive, unique and original enough to be picked up by other sites in exchange for a link back. The best example I found is Will It Blend who had the idea of testing the resistance of various objects in the blenders that the brand sells.
There you have it! You now have some ideas to improve the SEO of your e-commerce site. If you have any questions, feel free to post it in a comment or contact me directly!
Passionate about the web and entrepreneurship, I founded Digitiz in 2016. My goal is to share my experience with you and save you time in choosing your tools.
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