Getting your online store seen in the search results can seem daunting at first – that’s where our e-commerce SEO checklist comes in. The good news is that people are searching for your products right now. You just need to help them find you.
You won’t appear at the top of Google immediately, but by following our SEO e-commerce checklist, you’ll make several improvements which will add up to big results in the long run.
Let’s take a look at how you can make that happen for your site.
- How do I make SEO online store improvements?
- Content
- e-Commerce keywords
- On-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Conclusion
How do I make SEO online store improvements?
You might’ve read the section above and done a double-take at 16 steps. Yep, it’s a long one… But don’t ‘bee’ afraid, we’re going to walk you through it step by step and show you it’s not worth the stress. Anyone can improve their online store.
While it’s true, there are no shortcuts to a higher-performing website, many of these steps are fairly simple (you might already be implementing them!) and they become second nature in no time at all. It’s all about getting into good habits and watching your e-commerce website grow organically over time.
With a little nourishment here and there, you can steadily improve your practices and create an SEO bedrock that will stand firm for years to come. And that starts with good content.
Content checklist
Content marketing and SEO go back a long way. Content marketing is exactly what the name suggests: marketing by producing content. And SEO is a set of techniques you can use to put that content in front of broader audiences by appeasing the search engine overlords.
Together, they can radically improve the visibility of your e-commerce site. Here are a few things you can do on that front.
1. Strive for quality content
With a change as simple as producing well-researched, relevant and high-quality content, you can ramp up your chances of ranking higher on the search engine results page (SERPs). And with 59.2% of all web traffic originating from Google organic search, why wouldn’t you?
But the million-dollar question: what makes quality content? Well, it’s fairly simple.
Put yourself in the shoes of your audience, consider their needs and ask yourself what they’re thinking. Quality content is content that answers these needs by offering quick and easy solutions. Make them easily digestible, accessible and entertaining and users will linger on your pages. You might even tempt them to buy…
2. Make your blog a honeytrap with “extras”
In line with the philosophy of high-quality content, another way of giving your SEO a healthy leg up is by including useful supplemental content.
Think important information, videos, infographics, media, FAQs, brochures… the list goes on! Whatever you anticipate will engage users and help them through the buyer’s journey from the awareness to the decision stage will do your website’s SEO favours.
3. Supplement your social media strategy
If you’re focused primarily on social media, inbound content marketing is a brilliant way to supplement your efforts: you can recycle long-form content into snippets for social media posts and you can direct traffic from one to the other. While the power that social media signals have over SEO is up for debate, they work well together and having another string to your bow can’t hurt.
e-commerce keyword checklist
The next part of the e-commerce website SEO checklist takes us to keywords.
You want to attract the right kind of traffic to your site, and more of it. That means getting the correct keywords on your site that will allow you to cast out the proverbial net further and generate those all-important leads. Really, keywords are the bread and butter of SEO.
4. Perform effective keyword research
The first of our keyword tips is: Do your keyword research. You should use e-commerce SEO tools to identify the organic keywords people are using when looking for your products. Make sure that these keywords are right for you, and then consider refining them into long-tail keywords to match your products.
For e-commerce platforms such as Etsy, where you are competing against thousands of similar stores, make sure you make use of every category, front load your listings with the keywords you have selected and think very carefully about all the tags you have available. The more precise the better.
5. Spy on your competitors
An excellent way to find keywords is competitor keyword analysis. Check which keywords drive traffic for your competitors and use them to your advantage. There are several competitor analysis tools out there to help you with this step, but if you’re unable to invest in these yourself search for a relevant term and see what recommended searches Google returns for you.
Once you’ve identified the keywords you want to rank for, place them on the transactional pages on your site. This will help new organic traffic find its way to you.
On-page SEO checklist for e-commerce sites
Now you need to make sure that your pages themselves are optimised – this will help make sure that visitors to your site are relevant.
6. Headings and page structure
It’s important to make sure that you make the most of the keywords you found in stage one. This means placing them on the correct pages in title tags, H1 headings and product descriptions, then occasionally throughout your body text – without overdoing it.
A typical product page structure will use H2 and H3s headers to separate your long descriptions into parts, making them easier to digest.
Using a hierarchical structure across your product, category (and blog!) pages is a useful SEO booster as it helps robots crawl the page, parse it and identify the key bits of information. It also looks so much better. What can we say? Design and SEO make the best double act.
7. Optimising images and graphics
Your images are also important. You should give image files clear and informative names and provide alt text to describe your images. This will help both users and Google. Besides, it’s 2023, all of your content should be accessible without fail.
One more thing: make sure they’re only as big as they need to be with additional data stripped out. You can do this with Photoshop by ‘saving for web’ or within site plugins. This means your images will load faster and speed up your website.
8. Creating a network of internal Links
The next step on our e-commerce SEO checklist is internal linking. A clever internal linking strategy can help Google to understand the structure of your site and can also help direct customers to your other products and services.
Whenever you mention a product on a page or post, place a link to it. It’s also a good idea to use one of your target keywords for the product as the anchor text. But remember you’re writing for users, not Google, so make it organic!
Like keywords, it’s better to use a few highly appropriate internal links rather than having too many. Use them wisely.
e-commerce technical SEO checklist
If you’ve followed all the steps until now, your e-commerce site should be primed for SEO improvements. You should also make sure that the following technical issues are addressed to help maximise your results.
9. Polish up your metadata
While content keywords are very important, don’t forget them in your metadata. This means creating engaging meta titles and descriptions with the associated keywords for your products and pages.
While strictly speaking this isn’t a ranking factor, the way search engines display keywords matching the search term in your metadata can increase click-through rate. So ensure you keep to the word limit and embed a call to action that will make your web pages irresistible.
10. Maximise your site structure’s potential
There are many CMS out there designed to make SEO that little bit easier. In fact, many will offer template structures built to optimise user experience or the possibility of creating a custom website tailored to your business needs.
Ensure that the site layout is logical, easily navigated and accessible to those using screen readers. This will make it easier for both users and website crawlers to traverse from page to page.
11. Improving and removing URLs
Once your overall site structure is improved, you then need to make sure that your URLs are clear, easy to read and include your keywords.
This helps both visitors and search engines learn the context of each page correctly. It should ‘bee’ obvious what your page is about, just by looking at the URL. Don’t repeat keywords within the URL and remember, we’re writing for our audience, not robots.
12. Ensure the best UX with reduced load speeds
Load speed is one of the crucial ranking factors that is often overlooked. We’ve all been there, waiting for a website to load at the brink of tearing our hair out – don’t let this be your customers. After all, it can be fixed fairly easily.
Google provides a tool called PageSpeed Insights, which you can use to measure the load time of any URL, but there are many other specialised tools out there to try out such as GTMetrix (our favourite).
If you plug in your website and it’s on the slower side, there are several ways you can make improvements:
- Opt for better hosting – this may include, dedicated resources and space, server-side optimisations and servers located near you/your target audience.
- Compress and optimise images and visual content.
- Lazy load images on your site.
- Embed heavy media from sites like Vimeo or YouTube to reduce load on servers.
- Reduce unnecessary redirects and plugins.
- Use a CDN to deliver your website local to your user.
- Implement an effective caching policy.
- Minify code.
13. Make sure your site is mobile friendly
We can’t emphasise this enough: make sure your site is optimised for mobile visitors. As mobile phones account for 70% of online visits in the UK, it would be madness not to take this into account when setting up your online shop.
This calls for mobile-first design and optimisation. If your website isn’t designed with mobile users in mind, make sure you amend your site or get a professional web developer to help you out.
14. Eradicate any website errors
Even the most tech-inclined of us find 404 errors bothersome. If any crop up on your site make sure to exploit the wonders of Google Console to check if and where anything is going wrong. If you find broken pages that Google can’t crawl, you can identify and remove them.
Usually, it’s a case of an old sitemap, out-of-stock products causing problems or a temporary server error. Either way, make sure that you take the time to deal with them as it will leave a bad impression and cause users to leave your site.
15. Help robots index and understand your site
If a search engine bot can’t crawl your site, it can’t rank your content. It’s simple as that.
This means that you need to have a robots.txt file and a sitemap.xml file. These tools will ensure that search engine bots can properly navigate your site and get it ranking – so don’t forget to keep them up to date!
16. Conduct routine checks and updates
This one should be a given: ensure all of your product information is continuously up-to-date and accurate by conducting routine checks. It’s also advised to set a regular date in your diary to complete any techy checks to ensure that everything’s running smoothly at the back end of your site.
The end of the line: what now?
With little added cost beyond the cost of your e-commerce website itself – mostly time and brainpower – you can level up your ranking game, making it easier to hit page 1 of the SERPs every time.
Once your site is ready, you should consider ongoing tactics such as a long-term content strategy and gaining backlinks, which you can cater to different segments of your audience. With the steps we’ve outlined in place, your entire e-commerce SEO strategy should become seamless.
How long until I see SEO results?
The truth is that SEO isn’t a quick win. Many factors go into climbing the Google rankings, and the time taken varies from site to site.
But, by following the steps in this guide, you’ll put yourself in a strong position to see long-term improvements. You just need the patience to see it through.
Onwards and upwards
If you’re stuck at any point on this SEO e-commerce checklist or need some website optimisation advice, get in touch with beefound.agency today. We’ll stop you from bumbling along and get you back on track, no problem.
