7 Best Practices to Boost Your eCommerce SEO

No matter the size of your ecommerce site, you are undoubtedly aware of the importance of SEO. For many smaller ecommerce operators, that importance was prioritized when the site was designed and launched, and then pushed to the back of the list – after all, the site is optimized, it is time to start dealing with day-to-day operations, right?

Unfortunately – no. Search engine optimization is and should be, an ongoing concern and part of your marketing and growth strategy. Our expert team here at Digital Authority Partners has compiled a list of seven top tips to help you stay ahead of the game.

Want to learn more about the Digital Authority Partners approach to SEO? Watch this video!

Focus on Mobile SEO

Over the last handful of years, mobile internet traffic has outweighed desktop and laptop; 57.45% of global traffic comes from mobile or tablets according to these statistics. What does this mean for your ecommerce site? If you are not mobile-optimized you are going to lose potential customers. 

Ensure that your page loads quickly, is fluid (will work the same on any device screen size), you have used local SEO keywords where appropriate, and that your title tags and meta descriptions are relevant and keyword-heavy.

You do not need to sacrifice the desktop experience, though. You can create a parallel mobile site to ensure that both your mobile and desktop visitors have an optimized experience with the same information – both in terms of usability and for SEO purposes.

Adapt to Voice Search

Voice search has risen in tandem with the growth in mobile traffic and requires a different set of website SEO guidelines. The typical user will search at a desktop using seemingly disconnected words and phrases, with little attention to localization, relying on the search engine to assess location intent. Voice users will mainly speak in full sentences with more of an emphasis given to ‘near me’ or ‘closest’ terms.

Appealing to (and ranking for) those voice searchers will only become ever more important as time passes. You can start by using appropriate long-tail keywords, with local intent built-in, and by structuring your site to answer questions – ‘where can I order flowers’ rather than ‘flower shop online’, for example.

Look at User Experience

User experience, or UX, refers to how visitors to your site interact with it. This impacts so much of the various search engine algorithms, and it should be considered not only as part of your design strategy but also your ecommerce SEO. To put it simply – the more intuitive your site is for the user, the easier they find it to navigate and make a purchase, and the longer they will spend on your site. 

This leads to fewer bouncebacks, and signals to Google and other search engines that your site is valuable – and thus worthy of a higher spot on the results page. Factors that can have a big effect on usability are page load speeds, content, layout, and navigability. A couple of examples of the importance of the user experience:

• Mobile users do not typically expect (or want) to scroll horizontally as it interrupts the flow of the page when viewed on a smaller device
• Action boxes (buy it now, learn more, etc) should all be clearly defined and link to the expected page

Making mistakes on the user experience side will not only lose the potential customer that you have on-site now but will lower your ranking and cause you to lose potential customers in the future as well. Check out this article for more on the importance of UX.

Be Intelligent

Artificial intelligence has already moved from cutting-edge technology to an intrinsic part of everyday life. Search engines use AI to help accurately rank your website. So, there is no reason for you not to use the same technologies to ensure that you are ranked highly. You can use SEO automation tools that incorporate artificial intelligence to make sure that your keywords are accurate and up-to-date, your paid ads are well-targeted, and that search intent is continually taken into account.

The best part? Not only will your SEO be better, but you can focus on other areas of the business and trust that your site is still being optimized.

Use Snippets

Featured snippets are small amounts of text that show at the top of the page when a search is conducted. They are designed to provide quick, accurate answers to search queries, and as they appear above the results listing, they are a great way of boosting the visibility of your site and the number of visitors that you get. To get your site featured, you will need to determine what your potential customers are asking, and then design a clear and relevant response that can be trusted and has value to the user.

Incorporate Video

Using videos on your site can be very effective in boosting your search engine page ranking – as long as you do it appropriately and with the user at the center of your efforts. Search engines use the time that customers spend on your site as a key part of the SEO algorithm, so if you have an interesting, engaging, and relevant video then you can boost the amount of time that your visitors spend on your site.

This can be a tricky proposition when it comes to ecommerce sites. It is a lot easier and more natural to incorporate a video into a blog than it is a retail experience. Some ideas you might consider are how-to videos, clips of your products in use, or well-shot product videos to make sure that the experience is more relevant for your users. You can find out more about the importance of video for ecommerce in this article.

Be Secure

If your site has poor security then your search engine ranking position will suffer in two ways. First, users will leave the site quickly (increasing your bounce rate, and decreasing your time on site) and secondly, if you are subjected to a malicious attack then the search engine may be unable to access your pages at all. This will take some back-end work, but you should ensure that your site is ‘HTTPS’ rather than ‘HTTP’ – it shows that your site security is strong and that customers can trust you with their sensitive data.