Ecommerce SEO Services: What Sellers Need to Know

In 2021, around 24% of ecommerce sales were attributed to organic traffic, and around 38% of ecommerce traffic comes from search engines. 

Ecommerce businesses often focus on paid advertising, on both Google and social networks. However, organic traffic is just as important. Despite the potential traffic from organic ranking, many ecommerce sites are poorly optimized. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is used to improve the ranking of your web pages. Ideally, if a customer searches a keyword related to your products, you want to appear above your competition. Ecommerce SEO services ensure that your website is front and center when your customer searches for your products.

SEO can fall by the wayside for DTC businesses. Here’s what you need to know to ensure that your website is competing with your competition on Google.

What is Ecommerce SEO?

SEO is an extremely valuable component of your ecommerce marketing strategy. While your paid ads will be working hard to generate sales, your SEO needs to back them up. 

Search engine optimization is the optimization of your website and its’ pages to rank highly in Google search results. You should pick keywords that are relevant to your products, and that you think your buyers are likely to be searching. These keywords feature on your listing pages and throughout your website. By making effective use of keywords, Google can identify your website relative to your keywords, and rank it appropriately.

Your product listings and web pages should appear as close to the top of the search results as possible. This increases the likelihood that your buyer will click on your page, over your competitors’ page.

PAID ADVERTISING VS ORGANIC

Paid ads are extremely important. However, it’s estimated that around 70-80% of users choose to ignore adverts in Google search results. The average user has become savvy about online advertising, and actively chooses the results that seem most organic. 

Paid advertising is a great way to get a shot of traffic to your website. However, costs can quickly mount up and you need to continue optimizing. 

Improving organic ranking and gaining traffic can be a lengthy process. However, organic traffic is free, as long as you continue to optimize over time, and as your business evolves.

A good ecommerce SEO strategy should increase traffic and sales, without extra investment.

Keyword Research

The first key component to an effective ecommerce SEO services strategy is keyword research. You need to get to know your market and your customers. Your website keywords should have a good amount of searches per month but also target your specific customer directly.

Effective SEO keyword research means analyzing the market and your competitors. Consider where your main competition is ranking. What keywords are they aiming for? This is a good starting point for further keyword research. 

You might even want to conduct customer research. Speak directly to existing customers, and ask where they found your product or service. Use polls and social engagement to understand what they search for on Google. 

Ecommerce SEO services make use of keyword research tools like SEMrush to understand the Google algorithm and keywords that have good amounts of search volume. 

Once you have a good selection of keywords, you can integrate these into your website to optimize your web pages.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is often thought to be about blogs and long-form copy for B2B businesses. However, it’s just as important for DTC SEO. Ultimately, Google crawls your website, and its content, regardless of the type of business. Therefore, any copy on your website still needs to be well-optimized.

Your content needs to help Google identify what your website is about, and what kind of visitors you’re looking for. This allows Google to rank your website appropriately. However, the search engine cannot do this if your content isn’t clear. 

Use your keyword research to optimize your website content. Your product listings, home pages, about us pages, and more, need to utilize your keywords. 

Depending on your market, you may identify that your buyers would find a blog useful. In this case, your copy needs to be engaging, but make use of your keywords. Scatter them throughout your content, to ensure that Google knows where to position your company. Not only that, but your images and multi-media content need to make use of your keywords, too.

Technical SEO

While content optimization makes up a considerable portion of your SEO strategy, your website itself needs to operate as smoothly as possible. Google considers the quality of your website when choosing where to rank your ecommerce business. 

This is referred to as technical SEO. Most modern websites are built to run as smoothly as possible, but they are not completely SEO optimized as standard. In ecommerce SEO services, it’s important to ensure that your website maximizes every opportunity to perform on search engines.

User experience

It’s critical that your users have a positive experience with your site. Ultimately, if it’s challenging to make a purchase, they just won’t. Ensure that your site is clear, with easy navigation, and the order process is simple. They need to feel confident in their purchases, and your company. Google ranks sites that are clear to categorize, and easy to navigate.

Loading speed

Loading speed contributes to both customer satisfaction and Google ranking. In the digital age, users expect instant loading. If your website cannot load quickly, Google knows that your users are more likely to switch off. Ultimately, Google cares about its users’ experience too, so the search engine will just offer an alternative website.

Crawlable

Crawling is how Google views your site and understands the contents. The website pages through all of your written content, meta descriptions, alt tags, and more to better understand how to rank your content. If your website isn’t crawlable and doesn’t take advantage of every keyword opportunity, then you aren’t getting the most out of your optimization.

Mobile friendly

Around 79% of smartphone users have made an online purchase in the last 6 months. It’s important to take advantage of this market and cater to their needs. Your website needs to be mobile-friendly. Your user experience needs to be just as clear and simple as your desktop experience. Google takes this into consideration for SEO, too.