5 Tips to Boost Your eCommerce SEO

ecommerce seo

When it comes to succeeding in eCommerce, traffic is everything. But getting that traffic can be a challenge.

You could rely on ads like pay-per-click. But those results are temporary at best and ineffective at worse. Many web surfers scroll right past anything that isn’t organic. If you stop paying, anything you have will disappear.

Luckily, SEO strategies offer a way to boost traffic naturally. If you’re ready to start improving your eCommerce SEO strategies, keep reading for five easy tips.

1. Use Your Keywords in the Correct Places

One big mistake that many new store owners make when it comes to eCommerce SEO is misusing keywords.

If you think that just choosing the right keywords and adding them to your site’s content is enough, think again. Where you use your keywords, and how often, are also very important.

One great place to use your keywords is in your business’ name. If you already have an established business, don’t change it or you’ll risk hurting your reputation and losing clients.

But if you’re launching a new eCommerce store, keep this in mind when choosing your name.

Another essential spot to utilize keywords is in your page titles, including the pages that separate different types of products.

If you want to improve your eCommerce SEO further, add your keywords to the meta descriptions and tags on your site.

Finally, make sure that you aren’t overusing keywords in the body of your content.

You’ll want to sprinkle four or five keyword usages for every 500 words or so of content. But avoid using more than one or two keywords in a paragraph, and never use them more than once in a sentence or back-to-back.

2. Add a Blog

Many eCommerce stores don’t have a lot of content.

Your product descriptions are likely only a few sentences, or at most, a paragraph or two. Your “About” pages or other informational pages may have more content. But they still don’t offer much room for utilizing your keywords and other SEO tactics.

Luckily, there’s a simple solution. You can add a blog to your eCommerce site.

A blog is a great spot to utilize eCommerce SEO tactics like keywords and links. With regular posts, you’ll have plenty of room to spread out these tactics. You won’t have to worry about sounding spammy by packing in too many keywords or links in a small body of content.

Blogs allow you to rank your site for different keywords and categories. If you were to rely on your product descriptions alone, you might only rank for a few keywords.

For example, if you were running an eCommerce store that sold jewelry, using only product descriptions, you might rank for words like “silver necklaces” or “costume jewelry.” But by adding a blog, you could aim to rank for keyword phrases like “how to style silver jewelry” or “accessorizing fall outfits.”

3. Cut Down on Cookie-Cutter Content

If you have any prior experience with SEO, you know that Google’s algorithms search for keywords usage and punishes sites for practices like bad backlinks.

But one element of Google’s algorithms that you may not know is that it will also punish you for duplicate content.

If you think that your eCommerce site couldn’t possibly have duplicate content, think again. If you sell several different versions of the same type of products, you could be unwittingly duplicating your content.

To avoid this, start by rewriting your product descriptions. Use fresh, unique ones, and do your best to highlight the strengths of each product, even if its similar to ten other items on your site.

4. Make Sure Your Site is Mobile

Another reason that many websites get flagged by Google’s algorithms is by not optimizing the site for mobile use.

Optimizing your eCommerce site for mobile use isn’t just a smart SEO strategy. Experts estimate that this year, the average time spent on mobile devices for tasks other than making phone calls will reach 3 hours and 23 minutes per day.

Just consider this Euronics catalog. It’s packed with mobile devices that make it easy to shop online. But only if the sites you’re shopping on are optimized for it.

If mobile device users struggle to navigate your site from a small smartphone, they won’t be likely to stick around long enough to make a purchase.

Once you’ve initially optimized your site for mobile use, don’t just assume that it will be good to go for the life of your eCommerce site. Software updates, changes to your site’s layout, and even the addition of new products can affect your mobile site.

Check back regularly to make sure that changes don’t affect your site’s layout or function.

5. Encourage Reviews

Like optimizing your site for mobile use, encouraging reviews on your website is good for more than just SEO.

Reviews will naturally include your keywords in various forms. Reviews of your business on Google also help to boost your site’s ranking directly. But they can also be great, free marketing for your products and your store as a whole.

Reviews are reportedly as popular as personalized recommendations. Buyers will be more likely to trust a company that they’ve never bought from before if it has good reviews.

Start by encouraging reviews from your buyers. You can do this by adding a line to your thank you emails or receipts. Or add an option directly on your website that gives them a link to review your website on Google or other sites.

Then, be sure to show those reviews on your website for new visitors to see.

Boosting Your eCommerce SEO

If you’re ready to improve your eCommerce site’s SEO, these five tips are a great start.

But SEO is an ongoing process, and won’t boost your site to a top rank overnight. If you’re looking for other, faster ways to increase traffic to your site, check out this article for a few great tips.