Ecommerce SEO – A Simple Guide to On-Page Optimization

You’ve got your eCommerce website up and running, and everything in place to start selling your unique products. Now all you need is a way to attract new customers through eCommerce SEO techniques.

Ecommerce SEO is a powerful way to draw traffic through organic searches to your website and product pages. According to Fleishman Hillard, about 89 percent of consumers make purchasing decisions through the internet. By incorporating keywords and SEO practices into your marketing strategy, you capitalize on that traffic and rank higher in Google pages. 

Your eCommerce SEO strategy needs to focus on two things:

• Off-page optimization – includes backlinks to your website, domain authority and more
• On-page optimization – includes product descriptions, product images, and site structure

In this article, you'll learn about on-page eCommerce SEO, including some action steps you can take to optimize your eCommerce website and product pages.

Why Organic Search Results are Critical to Successful Ecommerce SEO

Organic search results are simply the results that search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, provide when a consumer enters a term into the search bar. 

Powerful search engine algorithms comb through every website and content page to deliver the most useful information related to that term. 

These search algorithms look for keywords relevant to that user’s search terms. They search through such places as:

• Page and product titles 
• Page content
• Link descriptions

Search engines algorithms take into account things like:

• Number of times a link is linked to other trustworthy websites
• Quality of the eCommerce company’s reputation
• Amount of fresh, quality content

These results aren’t bought but earned through a carefully crafted SEO system. By providing relevant content and all the elements search engine algorithms are looking for, you’re sure to rank higher in their listing and draw critical foot traffic to your website

Strong Keywords Make a Difference

Keywords are one to two-word phrases that perfectly capture what your product is about. This is the information search engine algorithms look for when combing through every bit of your website. 

There are two types of keywords:

1. Head terms, which are between 0-26 characters in length
   • organic shirt
   • gold necklace
   • vegan snack
2. Longtail Keywords, which consist of 3 or more words.
   • organic shirt for men
   • rose gold necklace
   • handmade vegan snack

Your SEO strategy hinges on having just the right keywords for your products. 

SEO Helps You Rank High in Organic Search Results

Having a robust SEO strategy helps you rank higher in organic search results. Because the higher you rank, the better your chances of directing that user to your website. 

Over fifty percent of the traffic that eCommerce websites receive is direct traffic. This is because of:

• Good brand awareness
• Long term brand familiarity
• Repeat customers

But the second greatest source of traffic is garnered from organic search results, accounting for about 32 percent of all monthly traffic. 

Do your own research and check your website’s traffic analytics to see where most of your traffic comes from. Chances are it’s from organic searches. 

Action Steps to Optimize On-Page SEO

Every successful SEO program relies on a few quality strategies to draw traffic to their website. Fortunately, you can tap into these strategies and optimize your eCommerce website easily and without a huge budget. 

1. Do Keyword Research

Choosing just the right keywords for your eCommerce website and product pages can be the difference between a sale and being completely missed. 

Google outranks other search engines for generating search traffic by 97 percent. So, if you tailor your strategy toward the way Google searches, you can’t go wrong. Start by utilizing Google’s autocomplete feature to begin your keyword research. 

Not only is this a free method, but it can generate some powerful keywords because they are:

• Suggestions based on real searches by actual people
• Based on what’s most popular for that search term, also called the freshness layer
• Varied depending on where the user is located and what language they speak 

Google Autocomplete works by anticipating what a user is searching for with each keystroke. 

• Enter your search term and see what phrases populate the drop-down menu
• Scan through the suggested links and see what words they have in common
• Explore those links and see what kind of content is offered
• Scroll to the bottom of the first page and look through the suggested related searches 

Type in your search term and see what results come up. If you have a Google account, make sure to log out first so you don’t skew the results. Pay attention to good long-tail keyword phrases that fit your product perfectly. 

Use this same method with Amazon, Etsy and Google’s Ad keyword planner and see what keywords they use. 

You can also use tools like UberSuggest or Ahrefs to do your keyword research.

2. Optimize Product Pages with Your Keywords

Once you have a good list of keywords, the next step is to include them on every page of your eCommerce website, including your Home and About pages, as well as your individual product pages.

You don’t want to stuff your content with so many keywords that it makes it unreadable. Let it flow naturally in your:

• Product title
• Product description
• Image name 
• Collection name
• URL

Tailor each product page with specific targeted keywords and content. If you are unsure about how to write quality content, there are plenty of resources to help you, including our very own Your Ultimate Online Store course.

Below is an example of a product description page optimized for the keyword “temporary tattoos.”

As you can see, the keyword appears in the URL, in the collection name, the product name and twice in the product description. In addition, the image name and the image ALT is “temporary tattoo.”

You may want to take some time right now to go through your website and optimize each product page with a unique keyword, making sure that the keyword appears in the places suggested above.

You can also check out our complete guide to writing effective product descriptions.

Other Action Steps to Take

Some other action steps you can take is to pay attention to your eCommerce website layout. A good rule of thumb is that it should take users three clicks, at the most, to get back to your homepage. 

For website optimization, you can use different SEO tools. For example, one such tool is free SEO Checker by Sitechecker.

By optimizing your eCommerce website and product pages with quality SEO strategies, you can be sure to rank high in organic searches and draw the traffic you need.