#3. On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Sites

Ecommerce SEOs face unique challenges when optimizing for on-page SEO. 

When working with a typical online retail website, you face a different, more complex site architecture or the type of information included.

Ecommerce sites include far more templates to cover different page types, making the process more complex as well. 

Overall, however, the most critical on-page SEO elements to focus on ecommerce site include:

• Meta titles,
• Meta descriptions,
• Heading tags,
• Including keywords in the copy, and
• If possible, multimedia to increase the dwell time.

But here’s where things are different: by their nature, ecommerce sites include thousands of pages – if not more. Some of those URLs are static, others, as we’ve discussed when talking about faceted navigation, the site creates dynamically.

Recommended Reading: 17 Tips for Ecommerce SEO: Optimizing Product and Category Pages

One of the common challenges we see with ecommerce sites are duplicate page titles and meta descriptions for many pages. 

The sheer amount of them makes it almost impossible to optimize them all by hand. 

That’s why we recommend SEOs develop formulas for the most common on-page SEO elements like page titles and meta descriptions. 

This way, they can create fully-optimized pages at a scale without having to worry about optimizing each one of them individually. 

#4. Technical SEO Setup for Ecommerce

Technical SEO encompasses all the processes to ensure that search engine crawlers can access, render, index, and rank the website and its pages. 

Issues involve slow page speed, complex website technology, content rendering issues, poor keyword targeting, and more. 

This should no longer have to be mentioned, but we still come across this with ecommerce sites from time to time. If your site hasn’t moved to HTTPS, stop reading this guide and figure out how to get that prioritized right away. 

Unfortunately, ecommerce sites are vulnerable to certain technical SEO problems. We recommend reviewing this advanced SEO audit checklist for a full list. We will cover the main issues here:

Duplicate Content

As you’ve seen from sections above, online retail sites tend to generate many URLs dynamically. These could come as a result of having faceted navigation, or they happen because the site uses technology like the GET method in forms. 

All in all, those pages contain similar content but they differ in the URL. To the search engine, therefore, they can look like duplicates. 

Site Taxonomy

Deep site taxonomy is another issue. Many pages on ecommerce sites get buried deep in the architecture, making them almost inaccessible within the site’s available crawl budget. 

Broken links, both internal and external, can prevent crawlers from accessing all pages on your site. Not to mention that they provide a poor user experience, and that, in turn, could affect your rankings, organic traffic and the conversion rate.

Page Speed

Page speed directly affects conversions on a page. Kissmetrics load time research notes that if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load, more than a quarter of users will click away. In the same study, Walmart.com reports that with every second of increased page speed, they saw a two-percent increase in conversion. 

Page speed is a complex factor, and to overcome any issues relating to it, page speed is measured in a number of ways - load time, page size, time to first byte (TTFB), and round trip time (RTT). 

• Heave image on a page
• Large files that must download first in order for the html to load
• Unused code or other scripts
• Rendering scripts to early or too late

Read our full guide to page speed, ways to remedy page speed, and how to measure and monitor it at scale. 

URL Redirects

Many ecommerce websites I encounter suffer from unnecessary URL redirects or too many redirect chains. There are a few best practices to improve this issue if this plagues your ecommerce site:

• Implement redirects for out of stock or discontinued products redirect to nearest alternative product page.
• Use temporary redirects for seasonal pages that you only want available during certain times of the year.
• Avoid redirect chains, as this leads to a poor experience for your user and the search engines crawl of your site.
• Go back and clean-up redirects that are no longer needed.

Focusing on technical SEO helps to identify and then eliminate those issues. Naturally, the process of elimination may involve rewriting parts of the code or optimizing the server setup. However, doing so will be critical to the site’s success in organic search.    

To find technical SEO issues, run a crawl on your website. Many site audit and crawler tools exist, but at seoClarity, our site audit and crawler tool have no limits in the number of pages you can crawl or audits you can execute – even if your site is millions of pages.

Plus, it checks your site for more than 100+ technical health checks and provides you with clear actionable reports so you can resolve the issues quickly so you can create a better search experience for your users.

Recommended Reading: A Guide to Crawling Enterprise Sites Successfully

#5. Implement Schema Markup

Within the realm of technical SEO is the schema markup. Schema allows search engines to have a better understanding of your webpages’ content, and increases your search visibility on the SERP. 

Examples of schema include the FAQ schema markup and company contact information in the Knowledge Panel, but for ecommerce sites specifically, Product, Star Rating, and Review schema can be quite beneficial in driving visibility (and increasing pixel real estate on the SERP).

Recommended Reading: A Look at Product & Review Schema for Ecommerce SEO

The image below shows two search engine results for the query “best running shoes.” Even though one listing is higher on the SERP than the other, which one would you be more likely to click?

(Search listing that features the Star Schema.)

You probably answered with: the second. Its Star Schema attracts the eye and proves a social validation that other people find this listing useful. Incorporating the schema markup can mean improvement in CTR and in conversion rates.

#6. Link Building for Ecommerce

Link building may be the most difficult element of the six on this list.

Why, because building links to ecommerce sites is not as simple as when you do it for B2B content. 

For one, most content you build links to in ecommerce are money pages. These could be product pages, category pages, holiday landing pages and so on.

Unfortunately, not many people want to link out to assets like that. 

Recommended Reading: How to Build Backlinks Without Creating Content Chaos

However, the same people wouldn’t have a problem with referencing a blog post or any other informational content. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t build links to money pages. You just need specialist knowledge and experience to do so.

All in all, though, we thought we’d share some strategies that can help you acquire links to an ecommerce site organically. 

#1. Targeting Competitors' Links

This is by far the most effective strategy, although a bit time consuming. 

Research your top competitors’ link profiles to identify links you could recreate with ease. These would include guest posts you could place as well, ecommerce site listing, business directories or product reviews. 

Backlinks in our Research Grid, for example, allows you to evaluate links for any domain.

(Backlinks report within the Research Grid.)

#2. Sending Products for Reviews

Another great way to acquire links naturally is by sending your products out for reviews. Many bloggers, magazines and other online outlets are open to reviewing products.

Sometimes, however, they do charge for the review so be prepared to have a budget or even free products for those submissions.

#3. CSS Galleries

Admittedly, this isn’t the strongest link type. That said, if you’re only looking to start building links, then, submitting your site to CSS galleries can provide you with some easy do-follow backlinks fast.

#4. Reclaiming Brand Mentions

Not every media outlet will link to a company when referencing their brand. Often, they’ll mention the company’s name and the product but fail to link back to their site. This is a great opportunity to acquire some initial backlinks as well. 

Use a brand monitoring tool to find all your company’s mentions online. Review those, looking for references without a link. Then, contact the site’s editor, asking for the inclusion of the link. 

Granted, not everyone will respond to the request positively. But some people will, sending you nice backlinks in the process.

#5. Forums

Join any online forum that focuses on products like yours. The chances are the forum allows you to create a profile with a link (although it can have a no-follow attribute).

Plus, if you become active, you might get a chance to include a link to some of your product pages or other content.

But what about ecommerce blogs? 

In this case, the situation is quite different. Since your articles are, most likely, informational in nature, you have more opportunities to build links to them. 

Some of the strategies you could use include:

The skyscraper technique: this is a complex strategy that, in a nutshell, works like this: you research the top-ranking content for your target keyword, then you create a much better asset on the same topic. Finally, you reach out to all the people who’ve linked to the original top-ranking page, suggesting your content as a much better resource. 

Outreach for influencers or guest posts: pitch a topic to a site you’d like a link from. If they agree, you get to publish your content on their site, including links back to your blog posts and your homepage. 

Guesting on podcasts: you can also suggest to be a guest on podcasts that are centered around your target industry. Most shows feature notes that include links to any resources mentioned during the show, as well as the guest’s website (i.e. your store). 

#7. SEO Copywriting

We’ve been mentioning content a lot throughout this guide. And this final element deals with the process of creating such content to drive rankings, conversions, and engagement. 

But when it comes to ecommerce, SEO content writing focuses on two distinct areas:

• The website, which in practice means writing copy for product descriptions and category pages.
• The blog, so informational, top of the funnel content that aims to attract buyers early in the buying process.

Writing Copy for the Website

Although there are many other page types on a typical ecommerce site, for SEO purposes, the two primary drivers of relevant traffic are product listing pages and category pages. 

Both of them offer an opportunity to add informational content to groupings of products that will satisfy both the users’ and the search engine’s needs. 

However, there are certain things to remember when writing this copy:

• Avoid keyword stuffing on either of those pages. Instead, ensure that your content is relevant and reads naturally.
• Ensure that all content can be crawled by search engines. Avoid hiding it behind scripts or embedding copy in images.
• Write unique product descriptions that include reviews from your users. This enriches the experience on the product page for your user and also builds authority on your pages.
• Also ensure that your content does not distract users from their primary objective on the page: purchasing the product. We recommend that you add any large blocks of content at the bottom of a category page, for example. This way, it’s there and serves its purpose for users and Google, but it does not distract a visitor from products listed on the page. 
• Always add internal links to relevant sub-categories, guides, blog posts and other content types. TIP: Do not over-link within the content block. Keep it relevant and consider what would guide users naturally throughout the site. 
• Keep content relevant, unique, and concise.
• Have responsive content, which means it adapts to fit on varying screen sizes. 
• Test your content and configurations and decide which type works best for your users and improves rankings and conversions.

Writing Long-Form Content for an Ecommerce Blog

A typical blog on an ecommerce website plays a number of roles. This means that your content, be it blog posts, guides or anything else that you intend to publish, must meet at least one of those objectives. 

• It must attract relevant top of the funnel customers to your brand to attract buyers at every stage of their research. Buying guides that guide the research process are helpful.
• Get you more links, in a case of link-worthy content
• Consider seasonality trends that may make the content rank faster and drive sales

As an example of the latter, having content that presents top Valentine’s Day gifts to buy for the significant other around the holiday can attract shoppers looking for inspiration and products to buy.

Single Source of Truth in Your SEO Data

The elimination of the use of multiple tools and the consolidation into a single SEO platform allows you to streamline your SEO and content marketing efforts because everyone works from a single, centralized source of truth.

seoClarity, an enterprise SEO platform, brings all of your SEO data, metrics, and capabilities into one accessible platform, all without artificial limits. 

This unifies the different teams within your organization — from IT, merchandising managers, product teams, and content strategists — under that single source of truth in your site’s SEO data. What does this give you? Consistent, repeatable results.

A Unique Approach to SEO

We understand that between teams there are limited resources, different processes, and multiple systems. Plus, the SEO team needs to show success quickly and that requires the many different teams working together. 

With a dedicated Client Success Manager and SEO Professional Services, seoClarity offers a unique approach to successfully bring together those disparate pieces and leverages our enterprise SEO management framework.

We call it the SEO Center of Excellence — it’s our proprietary approach that focuses on repeatable processes and specific workflows that allow your entire team to focus on the end user, not the search engines’ constant changes.

See how our platform can create a Center of Excellence at your organization. Schedule a demo of the platform for a customized walkthrough.