Ecommerce SEO is the practice of improving organic rankings for online stores. Common tasks associated with ecommerce SEO include optimizing product and category pages, fixing website architecture issues, and link building.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s simple: ranking at the top of Google for product keywords your customers search for can lead to more sales.<\/p>\n
For example, Nikon is ranking #1 for \u201cDSLR cameras.”<\/p>\n
Which means people searching for that product will see\u00a0(and probably click on) Nikon’s product page first.<\/p>\n
And Nikon isn\u2019t alone. According to Wolfgang Digital,\u00a033% of overall ecommerce traffic<\/a>\u00a0comes from organic search.<\/p>\n So if you want to get more traffic to your product and category pages, SEO is one of the best ways to do it.<\/p>\n With that, it\u2019s time to cover the exact steps you need to rank your ecommerce site higher in the SERPs (search engine results pages).<\/p>\n The first step of any ecommerce SEO campaign is to find a number of product keywords that describe what your ecommerce business sells.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s how to do it:<\/p>\n Search suggestions are the suggested terms that search engines show you as you type a keyword.<\/p>\n As you might expect, these suggestions are based on what people are actively searching for. Which means they\u2019re often trending terms that aren\u2019t yet super competitive.<\/p>\n You can use search suggest to find product keywords on Amazon:<\/p>\n Google:<\/p>\n eBay:<\/p>\n Etsy:<\/p>\n Or any ecommerce site that you\u2019re competing with.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you run an ecommerce site in the pet niche.<\/p>\n Chewy is probably one of your major competitors. What you want to do is type in a product that you sell into the search bar. And see what suggestions you get.<\/p>\n Rinse and repeat for any ecommerce sites in your space that sell similar products.<\/p>\n Social media can be a goldmine of product keywords.<\/p>\n First, head over to a social media profile or subreddit where your target audience hangs out.<\/p>\n If you sell pet products, for instance, you can check out\u00a0r\/DogCare<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then, read through the\u00a0comments that people are leaving<\/a>\u00a0on posts.<\/p>\n For example, this type of comment cropped up a few times in r\/DogCare to answer a question about dog weight.<\/p>\n Which tells us that a product or category page focused on \u201cdog health and weight\u201d could work really well.<\/p>\n This is an ecommerce keyword strategy that isn\u2019t talked about very much.<\/p>\n All you need to do is enter a product or product category into\u00a0Google Images<\/a>.<\/p>\n When you do, you should see a number of tags above the image results.<\/p>\n These are all tags that are closely related to the keyword that you just typed in.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you do a search for \u201ccat toy.\u201d<\/p>\n When you combine some of the tags with that term, you end up with a handful of interesting product-focused keyword ideas, like:<\/p>\n If you want to find ecommerce keywords, there\u2019s a helpful tool in the\u00a0App Center<\/a>\u00a0to check out.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Ecommerce Keyword Analytics<\/a>\u00a0app collects data from the top global retail websites and can help you find high-converting ecommerce keywords.<\/p>\n For example, want to see which laptop-related keywords convert the best on sites like walmart.com, amazon.com, and bestbuy.com?<\/p>\n Just search this app and it will be able to show you tons of metrics about a keyword, including:<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to note that these keyword metrics are about searches happening on retail websites, not on Google or other search engines. This tells you more about the language of customers while they\u2019re on their buying journey.<\/p>\n If you have the budget, a\u00a0professional keyword research tool<\/a>\u00a0can help you find dozens of product-based keywords in minutes.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say that your ecommerce site sells tennis rackets. All you need to do is type \u201ctennis racket\u201d into a keyword tool like Semrush\u2019s Keyword Magic Tool.<\/p>\n And the tool will generate literally thousands of potential keyword ideas.<\/p>\n Obviously, most of these may not be a good fit for one reason or another.<\/p>\n (For example, your store doesn\u2019t sell that particular product. Or the keyword is too competitive).<\/p>\n But with a little bit of digging, you should have no problem identifying at least a few product keywords that are good fits.<\/p>\n You can also use the\u00a0E-commerce Keywords Analytics tool<\/a>\u00a0to find top-performing keywords specific to your niche.<\/p>\n Get Keyword Suggestions<\/p>\n with the Keyword Magic Tool, the biggest keyword database on the market<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At this stage, you should have a few product-focused keywords that you\u2019ll optimize product and category pages around.<\/p>\n But product-focused keywords are only one \u201cpillar\u201d of ecommerce SEO keyword research.<\/p>\n The other pillar (that can be just as important) is \u201cinformational keywords.\u201d<\/p>\n Informational keywords are pretty much what you\u2019d expect: keywords that people use when they\u2019re searching for helpful content.<\/p>\n (I.e., not shopping for products or services).<\/p>\n So if your ecommerce site sells cat toys, informational keywords would be things like:<\/p>\n As you can see, these keywords aren\u2019t directly related to what your site sells (cat toys in this example). But the same person searching for these informational keywords is probably in the market for a new cat toy.<\/p>\n In other words:<\/p>\n These informational keywords may not convert super well. But they tend to bring in a large amount of traffic. And some of those visitors will convert.<\/p>\n Plus, informational keywords tend not to be super competitive.<\/p>\n For example, according to Semrush, the product-focused keyword \u201ccat litter\u201d gets 49,500 searches per month. But it has a keyword competition level of 80%. Which means it’s very difficult to rank for.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the informational keyword \u201cwhy is my cat peeing outside the litter box\u201d\u00a0gets 1,300 searches per month. But is a lot less competitive at 38%\u2014meaning it’s easier to rank for.<\/p>\n In short, your ecommerce SEO strategy should include optimizing product and category pages around product-focused keywords. And creating helpful blog content on informational keywords.<\/p>\n This one-two punch will help drive quality and a solid quantity of visitors to your site.<\/p>\n Now let\u2019s cover a few different ways of finding informational keywords:<\/p>\n Amazon reviews are a goldmine for customer research. Including blog post ideas.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because many people will describe the problem they were trying to solve with the product that they bought.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example:<\/p>\n In this case, the customer\u2019s problem was basically wrist pain.<\/p>\n In the review, they mentioned, \u201cMy wrist has been bothering me, and it seemed to be made worse with mouse use.\u201d<\/p>\n Sure enough, 210 people search for \u201cbest mouse for wrist pain\u201d each month.<\/p>\n That\u2019s 210 opportunities for you to get in front of people looking for your solution each and every month.<\/p>\n Sometimes the best keywords are those that your competitors already rank for.<\/p>\n All you need to do is copy and paste a competitor\u2019s homepage into Semrush\u2019s\u00a0Organic Research<\/a>\u00a0tool.<\/p>\n If you own a pet store, for example, you\u2019d want to check out\u00a0Stella & Chewy\u2019s<\/a>.<\/p>\n And the tool will show you the exact keywords that they rank for.<\/p>\n If you want to drill down to keywords ideal for blog posts, you can enter their blog homepage URL into the tool instead (usually website.com\/blog).<\/p>\n And this will show keywords that their blog posts currently rank for.<\/p>\n Get Insights into Competitors & Customers<\/p>\n with the Domain Overview Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Answer Socrates<\/a>\u00a0is a free tool that generates lots of question keywords.<\/p>\n By definition, question keywords are almost always informational (after all, they\u2019re people looking for answers to questions).<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you run an ecommerce site that sells gardening supplies.<\/p>\n Just pop in \u201cgardening\u201d into the tool, and it will generate questions and related terms that people tend to search for in Google.<\/p>\n Search intent<\/a>\u00a0is the underlying reason why someone opens up Google and types in a search term.<\/p>\n The main types of search intent are navigational, informational, commercial, and transactional.<\/p>\n Search intent is an important concept for ecommerce SEO. That\u2019s because you want to ensure that you\u2019re matching each keyword\u2019s search intent with the right pages on your site.<\/p>\n For example, a keyword like \u201cbuy dog food\u201d has a strong commercial search intent. So you\u2019d want to optimize your product or category pages around that type of product-focused term.<\/p>\n The SERP for \u201cbuy dog food\u201d has lots of dog food ads from online pet shops.<\/p>\n On the other hand, \u201chow much food to feed my dog\u201d is more informational. This is a keyword that would be a good fit for an article.<\/p>\n In many cases, the search intent for a given keyword is clear. But not always.<\/p>\n Plus, it\u2019s hard to identify search intent for a huge set of keywords at scale.<\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s search for \u201ccat toys\u201d in the\u00a0Semrush Keyword Magic Tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n You now have 34,200 different keyword ideas to work with.<\/p>\n That\u2019s (obviously) great. But it doesn\u2019t really make sense to go one by one through each keyword\u2019s search intent.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Keyword Intent Filter<\/a>\u00a0makes the task of determining the search intent behind keywords much faster.<\/p>\n Similar to the cat toy example, you can enter \u201cshoes\u201d into the Keyword Magic Tool, and it will give you a series of semantically related keywords.<\/p>\n And you\u2019ll also get search intent for each term: Navigation (N), Informational (I), Commercial (C), and Transactional (T).<\/p>\n You can filter keywords by intent, as well.<\/p>\n That way, you can drill down specifically into keywords that would be good fits for product pages (commercial and transactional). And keywords that are ideal for blog content (informational).<\/p>\n In general, most ecommerce sites should focus on\u00a0long-tail keywords<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is especially true for newer websites. Or sites that don\u2019t have a lot of backlinks.<\/p>\n Long-tail keywords are basically low-volume, low-competition terms. This means they won\u2019t bring in a boatload of traffic.<\/p>\n But long-tail keywords also won\u2019t have ecommerce giants like Amazon clogging up the search results. Which means your site has a good chance of ranking.<\/p>\n In other words, you want to avoid highly competitive keywords that are almost impossible to rank for.<\/p>\n Even if that keyword gets a ton of searches each month.<\/p>\n Take a product keyword like \u201cfair trade chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n 1,600 people search for this keyword every month. On the flip side, this keyword has an SEO competition level of 57%.<\/p>\n So unless your site has quite a bit of link authority already, it\u2019s going to be next to impossible to rank for that term.<\/p>\n On the other hand, a long-tail version of that same keyword gets fewer searches. But is also fairly accessible in terms of the first page competition in Google.<\/p>\n Those are the types of keywords you want to focus on.<\/p>\n Site architecture is an important\u00a0technical SEO<\/a>\u00a0consideration for any ecommerce site.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because an optimized architecture:<\/p>\n But how do you optimize your ecommerce website architecture?<\/p>\n You want to organize your site in a way that enables visitors to need only three or fewer clicks to reach any product from your homepage.<\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s look at the ecommerce giant Chewy.<\/p>\n Thanks to a well-organized dropdown menu, you can get from their homepage to a product page in only three clicks.<\/p>\n So not only is this \u201cthree clicks rule\u201d ideal for UX\u2014it\u2019s great for SEO too.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because making all pages three or fewer clicks from your homepage makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site (important for ranking) and preserve link authority.<\/p>\n Why? The further a page is from your homepage (which is typically the most authoritative page for ecommerce sites), the more your authority gets diluted.<\/p>\n Need an example? Below is the kind of site architecture you should avoid:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what you should be doing instead: a flat architecture that links to the top category pages. Which is easy for visitors to browse and for search engines to crawl.<\/p>\n Title tags<\/a>\u00a0are probably the most important part of on-page optimization (not just for ecommerce sites. But for basically any type of website.)<\/p>\n In general, your title tag\u2019s job is to\u00a0accurately describe what that page is about<\/a>. In fact, Google uses your title tag (along with the rest of the content on your page) to classify the topic of your page.<\/p>\n Your page\u2019s title is the blue link that appears in the search results.<\/p>\n Overall, your title tag should be:<\/p>\n And for ecommerce sites, here are a few extra things you can do to get more results from your title tags:<\/p>\n Here\u2019s an example of a really well-written ecommerce title tag:<\/p>\n Meta descriptions<\/a>\u00a0appear directly below the title tag in the SERPs.<\/p>\n Important note: Google doesn\u2019t consider your meta description for ranking purposes.<\/p>\n However, like with your title tag, users consider your meta description when deciding which search result to click on.<\/p>\n But how do you actually write them?<\/p>\n We have a\u00a0full guide on the Semrush blog<\/a>, but here are some quick tips:<\/p>\n Although perhaps not as important as other Google ranking signals,\u00a0page speed is used by Google<\/a>\u00a0as part of their algorithm.<\/p>\n Large images on product pages are a common reason for slow-loading pages for ecommerce sites.<\/p>\n Using next-gen image formats (like PNG and especially WebP) can keep your image file sizes relatively small without sacrificing quality too much.<\/p>\n But optimizing images doesn\u2019t stop there.<\/p>\n You should use filenames that accurately describe your image. This makes it easier for search engines to understand what the image is.<\/p>\n So instead of adding an image to your product page \u201cIMG125403.png\u201d, use the product name and a relevant keyword (if possible). Like sweater-red-polka-dot.png<\/p>\n Another element of image optimization is image\u00a0alt text<\/a>. This alt text, like with your filename, helps Google understand what your image is.<\/p>\n Again, you only need to describe what\u2019s in the image. There\u2019s no need to stuff your keyword into an image\u2019s alt text.<\/p>\n Use\u00a0Ecommerce Booster<\/a>\u00a0to audit your images, generate alt texts, improve image quality, and remove image backgrounds in seconds using the built-in AI tools. You can also focus specifically on the “Increase Page Speed” collection to boost your store’s loading speed, traffic, and conversion.<\/p>\n Each page on your site should have essentially 100% unique content.<\/p>\n If your site has thousands of products, writing unique content for each of them won\u2019t be easy. But there\u2019s unfortunately no way around it.<\/p>\n For a page to have a chance of ranking in Google, it needs unique and valuable content.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re stuck, here\u2019s a template that you can use to create SEO-friendly product page content that also pushes people to convert.<\/p>\n Schema<\/a>\u00a0is a markup language that can help your site stand out in the search results.<\/p>\n This is an example of what FAQ Schema markup looks like in the SERPs.<\/p>\n Some of the most common schema types that ecommerce sites can take advantage of include:<\/p>\n To learn how to add markup to your site, read our\u00a0guide to schema<\/a>.<\/p>\n Internal linking<\/a>\u00a0involves linking directly to other pages on your site.<\/p>\n When done correctly, internal linking can boost your SEO. That\u2019s because, unlike natural external links, you can choose your own\u00a0anchor text<\/a>\u00a0when creating internal links.<\/p>\n Internal links also funnel authority directly to pages that you want to rank.<\/p>\n This is an especially powerful strategy for ecommerce sites as getting links directly to product and category pages can be tricky.<\/p>\n For example,\u00a0this blog post<\/a>\u00a0on Stella & Chewy\u2019s has 63 internal links pointing to it:<\/p>\n As you can see, they link from that post to a high-priority product page\u2014FreshMade Gently-Cooked Dog Food<\/a>.<\/p>\n Which is one of the reasons that the page ranks on the first page of Google for that product name.<\/p>\n The Internal Linking report, found within the\u00a0Semrush Site Audit<\/a>\u00a0tool, can be useful for identifying potential problems with your internal link structure.<\/p>\n Find and Fix Sitemap Errors<\/p>\n with the Site Audit Tool<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Technical SEO<\/a>\u00a0is an important factor for any website. But especially so for ecommerce websites as they tend to have lots and lots of pages.<\/p>\n For example, the ecommerce site Stella & Chewy\u2019s has 1,270 pages indexed in Google.<\/p>\n For context, a typical blog or service website may have around 100-1000 pages total.<\/p>\n Here are two ways to get a feel for how your ecommerce site\u2019s technical SEO stacks up.<\/p>\n First, check out the \u201cIndex\u201d report in\u00a0Google Search Console<\/a>.<\/p>\n This report shows you if Google has found any technical SEO problems that may be impacting your Google rankings.<\/p>\n You want to pay special attention to the \u201cWhy pages aren\u2019t indexed\u201d report.<\/p>\n It\u2019s obviously important to get all of the pages you want indexed. Otherwise, they have zero chance of ranking.<\/p>\n And this report tells you why Google may not be indexing certain pages on your site.<\/p>\n If you want to dig deeper,\u00a0Semrush\u2019s\u00a0Site Audit<\/a>\u00a0tool\u00a0is a website crawler that can help ecommerce owners uncover technical issues their website is facing.<\/p>\n For ecommerce sites, Site Audit can help you find:<\/p>\n A successful ecommerce site is more than a collection of product and category pages.<\/p>\n In fact, creating high-quality blog content can help your ecommerce site\u2019s SEO by:<\/p>\n Take online store\u00a0Rover<\/a>\u00a0as an example. They consistently create engaging, visual content through\u00a0blog posts<\/a>\u00a0and buyer guides:<\/p>\n These blog posts are optimized around keywords that their target audience searches for\u2026 when they\u2019re not searching for a specific product.<\/p>\n For example, this post is optimized around the informational keyword \u201cnew puppy checklist.\u201d<\/p>\n As you can see, the content provides value. But also promotes some of their products.<\/p>\n The person searching for this term is probably more in the browsing stage. But a certain percentage of folks that land on this page will make a purchase.<\/p>\n Including videos in your content marketing strategy is an absolute must.<\/p>\n 90% of consumers<\/a>\u00a0say that video content helps them with their purchasing decisions. In the graph below, it\u2019s clear that order values increase in accordance with the number of products viewed.<\/p>\n Source:\u00a0Quicksprout<\/a><\/p>\n What\u2019s more, these videos can be repurposed across multiple channels (including TikTok and Instagram).<\/p>\n Links remain one of the\u00a0top three ranking factors<\/a>\u00a0for Google, which is why link building needs to be part of any ecommerce SEO strategy.<\/p>\n In a recent survey we carried out involving 850 SEO professionals on the\u00a0most effective link building strategies<\/a>, guest posting still remained the most popular tactic (recommended by over 53% of those that answered).<\/p>\n That said, guest posting really shouldn\u2019t be a cornerstone of your link building strategy.<\/p>\n In fact, Google\u00a0warns against<\/a>\u00a0\u201clarge-scale article campaigns.\u201d (Or campaigns where the main purpose of content is to build tons of links that point to the author\u2019s site).<\/p>\n When guest posting, make sure that the content you create is actually useful to your audience. And not just to farm links.<\/p>\n So as long as guest posting is more of a strategy for getting your link building off the ground, and you follow\u00a0these guidelines<\/a>, you\u2019re good to go.<\/p>\n Product PR can have a huge impact on SEO if done correctly. Take a look at the Missguided PR campaign created by\u00a0Rise at Seven<\/a>\u00a0PR.<\/p>\n Spotting the opportunity to create an engaging story on dog jumpers that the ecommerce site sold (which at the time wasn\u2019t ranking well), the PR firm found an identical women\u2019s jumper.<\/p>\n It was an immediate success. After launching online on social media, it landed over 30k engagement in just under an hour before becoming a full-blown campaign and gaining over 60 links from US, UK, and EU publications.<\/p>\n As a result, Missguided went from position 30 for their target keyword to the number 1 ranking position in the SERPs in just a few months.<\/p>\n Semrush\u2019s\u00a0Backlink Gap<\/a>\u00a0tool can help you compare your backlink profile with up to four of your competitors’ websites.<\/p>\n The tool auto-suggests a list of your competitors to get you started.<\/p>\n It then analyzes your competitors\u2019 backlink profiles. And generates a list of sites that link to your competitors\u2014but not to you.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s pretend you\u2019re Chewy, an online pet shop. The first line in the chart above shows you that\u00a0Time<\/a>\u00a0links out to your competitors.<\/p>\n Clicking on the arrow beside the numbers will show you the specific articles that link to your competitors.<\/p>\n From there, you can gauge whether or not you could benefit from a backlink from that same site.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a reseller or retail ecommerce seller, contact the supplier or distributor that curates lists informing people where they can purchase the products.<\/p>\n Then, ask for yours to be included too.<\/p>\n This is an easy way to get an authoritative backlink.<\/p>\n This example of\u00a0Greenies<\/a>\u00a0vendors is the type of list you want your site to be on:<\/p>\n Looking for more link-building tips and tricks? Take a look at our\u00a0link building for SEO guide<\/a>\u00a0to find out more about SEO techniques for ecommerce websites.<\/p>\n As our research shows,\u00a0mobile traffic now dominates ecommerce globally<\/a>.<\/p>\n Which is why creating a mobile-optimized ecommerce site is key.<\/p>\n A mobile-friendly site not only helps with conversions but can also boost your site\u2019s rankings.<\/p>\n You can test how your site behaves for mobile visitors using Google\u2019s\u00a0Mobile-Friendly Test tool<\/a>.<\/p>\n For ecommerce sites, pagination typically comes in the form of \u201cload more\u201d buttons or\u00a0numbers of product pages<\/a>\u00a0at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n If not optimized properly, pagination can often result in deep site structures, which affect crawlability and should be avoided.<\/p>\n Want to find out how to optimize pagination? Take a look at our advice for\u00a0SEO-Friendly Pagination Strategies for Ecommerce<\/a>\u00a0here.<\/p>\nHow to Perform Ecommerce Keyword Research<\/h2>\n
Find Product-Focused Keywords<\/h3>\n
Use Search Suggest<\/h4>\n
Use Social Media & Reddit<\/h4>\n
Use Google Image Tags<\/h4>\n
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Use an Ecommerce Keyword Research Tool<\/h4>\n
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Use a Keyword Tool<\/h4>\n
Find Informational Keywords<\/h3>\n
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Read Amazon Reviews<\/h4>\n
Analyze Competitors<\/h4>\n
Use Answer Socrates<\/h4>\n
Determine Search Intent<\/h4>\n
Finalize Your Ecommerce Keyword List<\/h3>\n
Site Architecture for Ecommerce Websites<\/h2>\n
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On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Websites<\/h2>\n
Optimize Your Title Tags<\/h3>\n
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Optimize Your Meta Descriptions<\/h3>\n
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Optimize Your Images<\/h3>\n
Add Unique Content to Each Page<\/h3>\n
Add Schema.org Markup<\/h3>\n
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Focus on Internal Linking<\/h3>\n
Technical SEO for Ecommerce Websites<\/h2>\n
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Content Marketing for Ecommerce Sites<\/h2>\n
Create Content Your Audience Wants to Share and Link To<\/h3>\n
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Use Video Content<\/h3>\n
Link Building for Ecommerce Sites<\/h2>\n
Participate in Guest Posting<\/h3>\n
Organize a Creative Campaign to Promote a Product<\/h3>\n
Find Sites Linking to Your Competitors But Not You<\/h3>\n
Get Links from Your Suppliers or Distributors<\/h3>\n
Ecommerce SEO: Some Final Best Practice Tips<\/h2>\n
Optimize for Mobile Devices<\/h3>\n
Optimize Pagination<\/h3>\n
Encourage Your Customers to Review Your Products and Services<\/h3>\n