Why SEO Matters for eCommerce Websites

Any small business that doesn’t have a website is at a significant disadvantage. However, even if you do have a website, if you haven’t optimised it for SEO, it will not attract potential customers and clients. That is unless you develop SEO eCommerce strategies and implement them effectively.

The best way to do this is to hire a team of professionals in the field of eCommerce SEO. However, before you do that, it’s important to understand what SEO is and how it helps your business.

Well-developed SEO strategies for eCommerce sites drive organic traffic into your website. This is a huge benefit as it makes your products and other offers known by your target customers. A great SEO strategy for eCommerce websites will:

Bring you closer to your customers and prospective clients
Help you learn about their wants and needs

As a result, you possess vital information which you can use to improve your products and/or services.

This article will help you learn about SEO for an eCommerce website and how it can improve your online business.
What Is SEO, and Why Should You Care?
SEO doesn’t just improve the performance of your website. It also increases your rankings in the organic search of search engines like Google.

In fact, although there are several search engines available, such as Bing, Yahoo, etc., Google is by far the most influential one. This means that you should adapt your best SEO tools for eCommerce according to its requirements.

SEO activities for an eCommerce website start by filling it with high-quality content. It also should provide an excellent user experience for customers. The more time users spend on your website, the more likely it is for your website to increase its trust, traffic, and credibility.

It is best to avail of eCommerce SEO services from reputable providers. The following are some of the most common SEO tips for eCommerce sites that you need to take into account when optimising your site:

Optimise your on-page elements
Optimise the content to suit your readers
Learn about machine learning signals
Learn how to get quality backlink profiles
Keyword Research for eCommerce Sites
To build the right eCommerce SEO strategy, you need to understand keyword research. Keyword research is a method of figuring out which keywords your customers use in searching for the products and/or services you have for sale. A good keyword research tool will help you to optimise your content.

Specifically, Google keyword research is crucial for the success of an eCommerce business. It will help you to write attractive product descriptions and optimise each product page for SEO.

There are two types of eCommerce SEO keywords:

Informational keywords - These keywords will often begin with a modifier such as “how-to” and “what is.” These are phrases that people most often search for when they are looking for more information. They also use these modifiers when they want to make an online purchase.
Transactional keywords - These keywords are direct searchers for something that the customer is looking for. For example, “red summer t-shirt”. When they land on a page for this keyword, they expect to find information about the product. A “Buy Now” button should be available on the page so they can immediately make a purchase.

Although some eCommerce business owners try to do all this on their own, it is a complex process. Everything has to be properly optimised. That's why you need a team of SEO professionals who will prepare the right strategy for your eCommerce website.
On-Page SEO Strategy for eCommerce Sites
You might ask, what is on-page SEO? On-page SEO, or on-site SEO, helps in the optimisation of your web content for both users and the search engine. This includes your meta title, description, tags, internal links, and page URLs.

In this section, we will give you a breakdown of how to improve and optimise the on-page SEO of your eCommerce website.

Keyword Research and Optimization

This involves on-page SEO techniques that help you rank higher for targeted keywords your customers are searching for. These keywords are placed in different locations; some of which are found in the:

Titles
Meta descriptions
Headings
Paragraphs
Image alt descriptions

Excellent Product Pages

Each product page must be optimised for the product that it serves for. It needs to have a clean and simple display, from showing images of the product to its product description. This way, customers can easily and quickly decide on their purchase decisions.

Logical Category Pages

Categories help you to improve on-page SEO by making the entire structure of the website connected. Each eCommerce website will have many categories to work with, and they need to all be connected so that visitors can easily browse through them.

A Regular Blog

Blog posts are another way to improve on-page SEO. A well-structured blog post provides your website visitors with valuable information about your offers. It is also a great way to lead your website visitors towards your top-selling products.

Visible Reviews

Reviews left by other customers help to increase the credibility of your business. If other people have found your products and services valuable, it will encourage new customers to purchase from you.
Local SEO for eCommerce Retailers

What is local SEO? Local business SEO is different from general SEO. This is the practice of optimising your business for a specific geographic location. The goal is to attract customers from this location to quickly find your products without having to travel too far. It also allows you to bring customers to your offline location if you have one.

In simpler terms, it's one of the best ways to attract customers to your business or your sales locations.

When you start working on local SEO for eCommerce, Google will notice. There are many different signals that will trigger Google’s algorithm to:

Place your business in a specific location
Rank it according to how well-optimized your website is

The easiest way to get started is to have an official address in the location that you want to rank for. This helps to verify your business and assures Google that everything is legit.

You should also create specific landing pages for your local SEO efforts because they will be easier to rank for specific keywords. For example, if you want to rank for “summer t-shirts, NYC,” the best way to get started is to create a specific page for this keyword.

However, like general SEO, local SEO efforts are also complex and need to be monitored at all times. No matter what niche you are working in, there will be a lot of competition to beat. Luckily, WebMeridian has specific services for local SEO and an entire team to help make sure that your business is the best one for your location.
Content Marketing and Link Building for Online Retailers
A content marketing strategy includes a detailed analysis of the type of content that your website visitors want to see. But it isn’t just about the content. It’s also about the keywords that the content is connected to and the answers that it needs to provide.

A content marketing plan also takes into account the following:

The social media platforms that your business should be present on
The target audience that you want to reach
Hashtags
Posting schedules
And much more

Essentially, it is an entire plan, usually created on a monthly cycle, on how to proceed when you start posting content online. If you’d like to find out more about this, check out our content marketing blog to learn more.

SEO link building is another important aspect of content marketing because it links your content across the web. One way to do this is to connect content with anchor text that provides more information on a reputable website. Some other link-building strategies rely on other websites to link to your own website. Building links is complex, and yet it is one of the most important aspects of SEO.
Key Takeaways
SEO is crucial for eCommerce businesses, and it needs to be taken seriously if the business is going to succeed. More and more people are shopping online, especially now.

However, it is also a lot of work, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will be wasting hours and hours of your time. Don’t make this mistake.

Here is where eCommerce SEO strategies come in. Developing and implementing these strategies can help you optimise your online store. When done effectively, it will result in increased visibility and higher search engine rankings.

So use your time wisely to work on your business and expand the quality and diversity of your products. And while you do this, lean on WebMeridian to do all the complex work for you. Our satisfied eCommerce customers have seen their business grow to incredible heights. It only takes one free meeting with us to set up your account and learn about your goals and ambitions for your business.