Search engine optimization is low-hanging fruit for ecommerce websites. Despite the fact that SEO has one of the highest ROI of any ecommerce marketing campaign, many online stores are put together with little to no consideration of search engines.
Instead, many rely on social media or paid ads which can be great for companies but typically require a constant effort and stream of income. Ad spending costs companies billions of dollars every year — an amount that is only increasing.
On the other hand, SEO primarily requires effort upfront — once you rank, you can practically make sales on autopilot with no recurring expense.
With this in mind, understanding SEO best practices can help transform and unlock your ecommerce business.
On-Page SEO Strategy
On-page SEO for ecommerce platforms is all about making sure your keywords are in the right places. It’s a way of ensuring Google knows precisely what your page is about.
On-page SEO is essential because it also helps you appear in other Search Engine Results Page (SERP) features.
The factors that involve ranking for SERP including the following:
Ecommerce keyword research.
Keyword research is the critical first step in an ecommerce SEO campaign.
If you get this part wrong, one of two things will happen:
- You’ll target keywords too difficult to rank for and won’t make it to page one.
- You’ll rank for keywords that don’t garner traffic or cause customers to buy.
Neither of these situations is ideal, which is why ecommerce keyword research is so important — it will ensure you target keywords that are easy to rank for, have decent search volume and have high conversion rates.
However, there is more to choosing keywords than simply looking at how difficult it is to rank or how many people search for them. The following four options can help you to perform ecommerce keyword research, find keyword difficulty (KD) and search volume and uncover buyer intent:
1. Determine if you are choosing the right keywords.
Unless you use a tool like Ahrefs, you likely won’t have keyword data for the phrases you picked. You need to determine keyword difficulty, search volume and buyer intent to know which keywords to use.
Using Google Keyword Planner, you can find rough search volume and CPC to determine buyer intent. However, it doesn’t give you keyword difficulty (KD) or spread.
If you want to get serious about your SEO efforts and maximize your keyword spread, consider creating a keyword matrix.
A keyword matrix is a way to dig through relevant keywords and organize your spreadsheet to quickly determine the best possible keywords to use on each of your pages. It’s based on KD, search volume and search intent.
2. Use Amazon for keyword research.
Amazon is a gold mine of high buyer intent keywords since people typically search on Amazon with the intent of buying something.
To find keywords with Amazon, start typing in your seed keyword. In response, Amazon will spit out autofill suggestions. These are all keyword ideas — put them in a Google spreadsheet to keep for later.
As you can imagine, if you have hundreds or thousands of products, this could take a long time. That’s where the Amazon Keyword Tool comes in.
This tool automatically scrapes Amazon’s autofill suggestions for any keyword you type in. Each time you search, check off all the keywords and add them to your list, then download that list to a CSV with the “Download Selected Keywords” button.
3. Find keywords through competitor research.
If you have competitors who rank higher than you in search results, you can use their site to take keyword ideas. First, type your keyword into Google, choose a competitor and scan their category and product pages for potential keywords.
It is important to remember that you shouldn’t blindly use the same keyword as your competitors simply because they outrank you — there are other factors such as domain authority.
It is also critical to consider breadcrumbs, an advanced navigation function that helps Google scan and index your site. You can tell if you’ve set up breadcrumbs correctly by entering your site into Google. If you see “yoursite.com -> category -> subcategory”, you have breadcrumbs set up.
4. Use Ahrefs to help you find keyword opportunities.
Ahrefs is an all-around, fantastic SEO tool. You can use it for keyword research, competitive research, building backlinks and much more.
Through its easy-to-use system, you can view built-out reports of keyword rankings on your site and your competitors, allowing you to see how you stack up and where you can make improvements.
Ecommerce product pages.
Product and category pages are arguably the most important pages to rank. If someone finds them in Google, they immediately have access to all your products in that category.
To properly optimize these pages, you need to put your target keyword in the following places:
In the URL.
Putting your primary keyword in the URL is a simple way to improve search rankings. This is especially relevant for websites competing in more competitive niches as optimized URLs are an additional way you gain the edge on your competitors to drive more traffic.
You can also customize them to whatever keyword works best for your category page rankings.
In the title tag (H).
The page title tag, or H1 tag, should have the keyword as close to the beginning as possible. This works to promote the central themes of the page and help you rank organically for the title tag.
In body copy.
Body copy is where things get a little trickier. Most category pages get straight to the products without an introduction, which isn’t ideal for Google.
It would be best to aim for at least a 300-word intro with your keyword included at least 2-3 times.
In image alt text.
Since Google can’t read images, they rely on alt text to know what the image is and what it includes.
Image alt text can give you another opportunity to include your keyword on the page and gives you a better shot at showing up in Google image results.
In the metadata.
While including your keyword in your metadata hasn’t been shown to impact rankings directly, it can improve click-through rate (CTR), which has been shown to improve rankings.
This is because when you include your main keyword in the meta description and description tags, Google bolds it in the search results:
Rinse and repeat for all your category pages, then do the same with your product pages.
How to Do eCommerce Keyword Research
What is the big idea with keyword research for eCommerce SEO? It’s really simple. You want to find terms that people are looking for. These are terms related to commercial intent and the product you sell. This includes categories for products and subcategories. Once you’ve collected these keywords, you want to separate keywords with high search volume from those with low search volume. At this stage, we won’t go into details just yet, but rest assured that will cover all the above in detail below.
First up, we need to find keywords that people are searching for. There are tons of different ways to go about this, but we’ll share the best methods for uncovering keywords.
Product, Category, and Subcategory Page Keywords
We want to find terms associated with our product. These include short-tail and long-tail terms, but more so the latter. One of the best places to find terms associated with your product and related categories is to head to Amazon. Amazon has tons of categories and subcategories come up making it a treasure trove of information. To get started, use a seed keyword and enter it into amazon’s search bar.
There are two things to pay attention to when using Amazon. The first is that it will offer a collection of terms associated with your product. These are typically long-tail keywords and are very valuable. The second thing to note is that when you search for a specific product, it offers categories associated with your search term. These “in…” categories are a great indicator of what you can use as categories on your website. Make a note of the categories.
Using Keyword Tool Dominator
Back to our list of product keywords. Amazon’s predictive text will show all sorts of products related to your search term. And this is exactly what we want to see. Copying these as you see them will be a pain. Instead, head over to Keyword Tool Dominator. It’s designed to grab terms directly from Amazon.
Keyword Tool Dominator comes with a free plan that offers two searches a day. This may not seem like a lot, and it won’t be enough to do as much research as possible, especially if you have multiple products.
You’ll note that you can purchase an Amazon-specific plan. It cost around $49 and is worth it. With this plan, you’ll be able to complete all the searches you need.
Enter your seed word and hit enter to pull up all associated terms people search for in Amazon. You’ll get a list of terms that you can export. You’ll receive keyword volumes, and keyword popularity.
Next, grab that list and head over to another tool called Ubersuggest.
Using Ubersuggest
We’re going to use Ubersuggest to gather a list of keywords people use to search on Google to start. Remember, we’re gathering as many search terms as possible. We’re also trying to save as much time by using these tools.
Ubersuggest offers a free plan, however, if you want to get as much value as you can from it, go for the $7/mo. plan. You’ll be able to complete more searches and have access to more search terms.
To get started with Ubersuggest, head over to the Keyword Analyzer in the left-hand menu. Next click on Keyword Overview, enter your seed word, select your region, and click on the search button.
You’ll see a host of valuable results appear:
It will show you:
- A graph of search volume over the last 12 months
- Search volume of your seed word
- A list of all terms related to your search term
- a search trend indicating how many searchers have taken place for this term over the last 12 months
- Keyword search volume
- a cost per click
- how difficult it would be to rank first using paid ads (measured out of 100)
- how difficult it would be to rank first using SEO (measured out of 100)
Content Ideas
Something you find particularly interesting about the Ubersuggest Content Ideas table. It’s where you’ll find titles for pages that rank using these keywords. You’ll also see how many backlinks they get and how many shares they received on social media sites like Facebook and Pinterest. We’ll be able to use this information for link building later. The information you see under the Content Ideas is gold. You literally have almost all you need at your fingertips.
Export your list of keywords and content ideas and save them in a safe place. We’ll turn back to them later below when we figure out which ones to use. This is not where your research ends. Our goal is to find as many keywords related to products you sell.
A word of advice on categories and product keywords: Do not add any unnecessary categories to your website. For example, if you sell computer peripherals, don’t include a category or subcategory for server hardware equipment because you saw the category on Amazon. It would be a better use of your time to focus on optimizing the pages you already have instead of those you don’t sell products for.
Once you identified a list of keywords for both products, categories, and subcategories, it’s time to identify which ones to use and why.
The Final Word
There are many ways to get traffic, from social media to paid ads and email. However, search traffic is the only one that’s reliable, free, self-sufficient and relatively easy to get.
If you want your site to garner significant traffic and receive the visitors you expect, learning the ins and outs of ecommerce SEO strategies can transform your business.
A simple SEO campaign can result in exponentially greater sales. The best part? It doesn’t have to take you years to achieve. By following this guide, you can find yourself there in no time at all.
