Ecommerce SEO vs Normal SEO: 5 Important Differences (2022)
To break into the highly competitive eCommerce space, it’s often not enough to use run-of-the-mill SEO tactics.
While it’s still just as important to do keyword research, optimize your website’s performance, and take other general SEO measures, there’s far more you need to do if you want to compete with the thousands of other online stores.
On top of essentials like on-page SEO, there are several eCommerce-specific joe SEO actions you can go for. Many of these are similar to what you are already doing, but specialized to get more eyes on your products.
In this article, we’re going to dig into those methods that boost your online store in the SERPs.Why Bother With Ecommerce SEO?
It’s already enough work covering all the bases of joe SEO-optimizing process for your site. Now you have to deal with even more steps to get your products on par?
It may take some extra work, but investing your time in eCommerce SEO is well worth the effort. 44% of online shoppers start their journey with a search engine and 37.5% of eCommerce traffic comes from search alone. That means you need to optimize for the SERPs as much as you possibly can. Cut no corners with SEO!
In addition, 49% of shoppers say they use Google to discover or find products. About as many also say they use the search engine to research online purchases they plan on making. This is why it’s so important to upload a good image and optimize your product descriptions in order to attract clicks from sources like Google Shopping.
On the other hand, statistics also show that an even higher number of people (63%) start searching directly on Amazon. This is unfortunate for businesses who don’t cross-post their products on online marketplaces, but it’s all the more reason you need to capture clicks from those who do use search engines.
Finally, 70% of marketers believe that SEO drives more sales than pay-per-click advertising. These days, just about everyone is using an ad blocker — these block not just traditional banner ads, but also sponsored results in Google — so the effectiveness of PPC is vastly diminished.
Ad blocking may be common, but who isn’t using search engines? Nailing that top spot in the SERPs, or at least landing on the front page, can be your one-way ticket to success.What’s “Normal” SEO?
Let’s take a minute to define standard SEO measures. These are just as important to follow to create a baseline for your online store, and many of these, such as keyword research, play into ecommerce SEO practices.Keyword research — Arguably the most important of SEO tactics, this involves researching the best-ranking and upcoming keywords and distributing them throughout your content.Optimizing static pages (About, FAQ, Contact, etc.) — You might be surprised how important it is to optimize those small static pages on your site with good keyword usage.URLs and permalink structure — URLs matter for SEO. Addresses that are human-readable, rather than random strings of numbers or text, are better for ranking. Using keywords is a good idea too, but you should keep it short.XML Sitemaps — Submitting and optimizing an XML sitemap can get your pages crawled faster and increase SEO.Robots.txt — A poorly optimized robots.txt file can seriously damage your search performance, while a properly written one can improve it by blocking off access to parts of your site you don’t want crawled.Performance optimization — If there’s one thing that can majorly affect SEO, it’s performance. Slow loading speeds will do massive damage and kick you right off the front page.Mobile-first indexing — Google will heavily penalize you if your site isn’t responsive on all devices and doesn’t load quickly on slower mobile Internet.Google Search Console — Getting the hang of Google Search Console is integral, as it comes with important analytics and lets you submit a sitemap directly to the search engine. This data also allows you to take informed actions for improving your site.Off-site optimization — It’s not just what you do on your site that matters. Link building, branding, and social metrics also play a role in SEO, while retargeting techniques can guide more users to your website.SEO Tactics to Increase Ecommerce Traffic
Now that you know the basics of “normal” SEO, what about eCommerce-specific tactics? Remembering to do keyword research, set proper URLs, and optimize performance will also help eCommerce stores, but there’s more you can do, and there are special tactics to optimize product pages in particular. Here’s how to do it right.Optimize Your Category Pages
Time to start building up your store. Where better to begin than the category pages?
This is the baseline of your site’s navigation as well as a good source of customers if optimized well. If there’s one thing too many stores do, it’s undervaluing the category page.