Ecommerce SEO is the process of optimising your online store so that it appears higher in search results than your competitors. Particular focus is placed on your product pages and addressing the purchase intent of your customers.

This is a step-by-step process that typically includes identifying your target audience and their search intent, creating pages that are optimised for the keywords of these audiences and improving your product descriptions, including adding relevant text and photos.

Ecommerce SEO is becoming more and more important as online shopping continues to explode across the world.

eCommerce SEO is a powerful way to help your business grow. Here are some of the benefits to implementing a well-structured eCommerce SEO strategy:

1. Increased traffic. An eCommerce SEO strategy will increase traffic to the pages that matter the most: your product pages where users can find exactly what they intend to purchase.

2. Higher conversion rates (increased sales). Because your eCommerce strategy will focus on driving more qualified traffic to your site, your conversion rates should improve, especially when combined with persuasive copy and an intuitive path-to-purchase.

3. Better customer experience. When customers don’t have to click through multiple pages to find what they’re looking for, when they can see all the product information and reviews at a glance, and when they don’t have to wait for images to load—they’ll have a better experience overall and will be more likely to return.

4. Increased brand awareness. When you add eCommerce SEO to your marketing mix, it sends a strong signal about the quality of your business and product offerings—and boosts brand awareness in general.

Do you own a business that sells goods or services online? If so, then the answer is yes.

Ecommerce SEO is a critical part of the process of getting your products into the hands of your customers. It’s not enough to simply have a website: if people can’t find it, they can’t buy from you.

Sure, there are other ways to send people to your site, for example through search engine marketing or social media marketing, but these tactics can cost a lot of money and they aren’t long-term solutions.

When you implement an ecommerce SEO strategy, you’re setting a foundation that establishes you as a trusted business in the eyes of both Google and your customers. And you can then build upon your efforts with strategic and targeted advertising campaigns when you need it.

eCommerce SEO isn’t just about getting your site to rank in Google, it’s about getting the right product pages to rank at the right time for the right people – so that you can turn potential customers into paying customers.

You can make this happen in a number of ways:

1. Target high-intent keywords. If you sell vegan protein powder, you’ll not only want to rank for ‘vegan protein powder’ (a top-of-the-funnel keyword), but you’ll also want to rank for ‘buy vegan protein powder’ (a bottom-of the funnel keyword). Targeting high-intent keywords will help you convert customers who are already primed to make a purchase.
2. Create persuasive content. SEO-optimised content is a great way to get users to your site, but the magic happens when the content is also persuasive. It might be a call-to-action (CTA), an opt-in form, or some other type of conversion element. If you can create persuasive content that also ranks for high-intent keywords, you’ll get more traffic and conversions with less effort!
3. Create a better user experience. Many of the same user experience factors that impact where you rank in search are also the same that impact whether a user stays on your site (to make a purchase) or leaves for greener pastures. How fast the site loads, how useful the content is, how easy the site is to navigate, how easy it is to make a purchase… when all of these are optimised, the more likely it is people will follow through on their purchase intent.

Ecommerce SEO can be slightly trickier than standard SEO because of the way the content is structured on your site. An ecommerce SEO will usually have a mix of informational content and product-related content, both at the category level and individual product level. 

So not only do you have to implement standard SEO best practices to get your page to rank, but you also have to get your individual product pages to rank in a way that ensures people land exactly where they need to when they need to land there. 

For example, let’s say you sell both vegan and animal-based protein powders and that these come in a variety of flavours. You’ll likely have one high-level page dedicated to protein, then separate sub-pages for vegan protein and animal-based protein. From there, you may even have separate sub-sub-pages for all of your different flavours. 

Your ecommerce SEO strategy will need to ensure that these are all interconnected in a way that makes it easy for users to navigate (and for Google to understand).

You’ll also need to optimise each page separately, so that users don’t inadvertently land on your animal-based protein options if they were looking for vegan options. 

You also don’t want them to land on your high-level protein page when they search for ‘where to buy vanilla-flavoured vegan protein’, because then they’ll be one or two steps removed from the action they want to complete, which is to buy some vanilla-flavoured vegan protein right now.

Conversely, you don’t want them landing on your page for vanilla-flavoured vegan protein if they were searching for ‘protein powder options’.

With potentially dozens of pages dedicated to various protein powders, you can see how it can be quite the balancing act.

It can be a lot to keep up with, which is why we suggest you talk to an expert who can help you get in front of the right people, at the right time with the right message. 

All types of search engine optimisation, including eCommerce SEO, can take anywhere from one to six months to begin ranking. The length of time depends on a number of factors, including:

1. How new your site is. If you already have an established site that is relatively well structured, you should start to see results more quickly than if you’re building your site from scratch.
2. Your level of competition. eCommerce is becoming a big business, so if there are already a lot of high-ranking competitors in your industry, it could take longer to rank. This is where a specialist agency like Choose Digital can really help. Even in highly competitive industries, SEO specialists can help identify gaps or niches where you can gain ground quickly.
3. Who is helping you. Hiring an in-house SEO expert or a specialist agency (or better yet, a combination of both) can help you start ranking more quickly than if you attempted it on your own. That’s simply because SEO is a specialised field that requires someone who is up-to-date on developments in the field and dedicated to growth in this particular facet of your business.
4. How much time you dedicate to it. eCommerce SEO requires diligence and consistency. To stay on Google’s good side, you need to stay active by keeping your pages updated, publishing regular content and collecting reviews.
5. Your budget. A larger SEO budget allows you to be more consistent, and it allows you to test more strategies so that you can lean into what’s working best for your particular business.

We don’t make promises we can’t keep, so we’ll always give you an honest assessment of how much effort and budget are needed to achieve your goals.