Ecommerce SEO services are perhaps the ecommerce SEO agency’s greatest challenge. Shopping sites can be one of the most difficult of all website genres to work with. The situation becomes more difficult as search engines steadily improve their ability to assess content quality and filter duplicated content from top positions.
For many online shops, the problem with any given ecommerce product page optimization is that the manufacturer’s website is the source of authoritative content. Added to that are often hundreds of online retailers all copying the manufacturer’s product description and images verbatim! Every retailer is then striving to attain better rankings in search results and increased organic traffic for those same items, and their particular categories…
At the same time, Google is getting smarter at filtering out the trivia and rewarding the source of the authoritative content! If you copy word for word, you immediately consign yourself to mediocrity! It’s important to understand the minutiae that’s why an experienced ecommerce SEO consultant is able to improve website performance.
Ecommerce website SEO packages
Ecommerce SEO Plan – from $1,695
From $1,695 – on-site ecommerce search engine optimisation. This is a one-off fee; focused on ecommerce SEO best practices to optimise all main pages, categories and products on your website to maximise rankings. This cost covers the initial works AND at least 3 months of consultancy, monitoring, tweaking and reports....
Ecommerce platforms
I can work with any of the mainstream shopping cart systems to provide ecommerce product page optimization, including:
- WooCommerce: the best online shop software for a WordPress-based site.
- Wix – a common DIY site choice.
- Shopify – is great for getting up and operating fast.
- Ecwid – for starting with a free plan – and then growing.
Ecommerce Page Optimization – Points of Difference
To rank well in e-commerce and connect your online store to potential customers, you need a point of difference and an ecommerce SEO strategy. Increasing your long-term sales and revenue will include properly categorising and describing your product lines. Use every opportunity to ensure that every page is accurately described and unique. Thorough long-tail keywords research is important to rank higher in search engine results and improve your conversion rate. Most people are too damned lazy to take the time to do that. Therefore, tedious effort and time-consuming attention to detail across an ecommerce site with hundreds of pages will reap rewards and drive sales – that is a key part of my ecommerce SEO plans.
Effective ecommerce store optimisation is also reliant on the tools built into the shop content management system to drive traffic to your website. Most current mainstream cart applications pay attention to the SEO aspects, and provide;
- Search-engine friendly URLs
- Manually controllable Title and meta Description for effective target keyword insertion
- The ability to use accurately named images, and to tag those with Image Alt descriptions etc.
- Internal linking strategies are just as import in a shop as they are in blog posts and pages.
- External link building is also important in SEO for ecommerce, but best focused on citations to underpin your shop location.
However, you must make the effort to learn how to use the tools provided both wisely and well. The moment you do that, you step head and shoulders above much of the competition…
- Whilst it’s estimated that there are 200+ elements that Google processes in its relevancy ranking algorithm, some are more important than others!
- We may have no control over the rules of the game, but we can use them more effectively than our lazier competitors to gain a competitive advantage!
See this: E-commerce SEO Guide
Shopping Carts & Category SEO
Online shops divide Products into Categories and sub-categories – it’s both normal and desirable as it makes it much easier for a shopper to locate the items he or she wishes to purchase.
Often, the categories directly represent high-volume keyword search phrases e.g. “fly fishing rods.” All too frequently, online shops fail to provide any static, descriptive text on the page. Therefore, there’s a dearth of accurate on-page information as to what the page contains. Instead, there’s a series of cryptic Products headings e.g. “Temple Forks 4-pce #9 weight” with some equally brief technical details. The page is therefore rendered devoid of context, with no clear and unambiguous explanation as to its intent and purpose.
Product categories and product tags are prone to generate duplicate content so great care is required in the structure and use. We use your robots.txt file to request search engines to NOT index the trivia.
# Block Woocommerce assets
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /wishlist/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Disallow: /*add-to-cart=*
Disallow: /*?filter
Disallow: /*?orderby=*
Disallow: /*?add-to-wishlist=*
# Block Search Assets
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: /*?s=*
Disallow: /*&p=*
Disallow: /&preview=*If you use Yoast or AIO SEO plugins, be sure to set these nil content pages to noindex:
- Cart
- My Account
- Checkout
Category Hierarchy
Categories are important because they are usually placed at level 2, and subcategories at level 3 within the shop hierarchy of the site. Product pages are at best level 3, and usually level 4. The deeper a page is pushed within the site, the less its perceived importance and the more difficult rankings are to attain for it.
Categorise Your Categories
To attain the best results, your ecommerce SEO optimization should aim your categories at carefully targeted, high-volume keyword search phrases… As part of your SEO campaign, focus on high-quality content.
- Each page URL should incorporate the targeted phrase
- Page Title tags should have the targeted phrase first, followed by relevant descriptive text
- All page meta Descriptions should incorporate the targeted phrase at the beginning, plus relevant descriptive text using closely related keywords.
- If there is the opportunity to use Category Images, name them wisely, and add brief descriptive Image text, image titles and captions that incorporate the relevant target phrase identified in keyword research.
- On the page, add an accurate H1 heading plus a paragraph that encapsulates the targeted phrase and describes the essence of the page content.
- Internal links are more difficult on an e-commerce site but are important.
Presenting Your Products
Don’t use the manufacturer’s product descriptions and images verbatim – doing so immediately defines your site as a 2nd rate imitator. Instead, rewrite the (usually cryptic) product names and descriptions, ensuring that relevant keywords are incorporated within the text.
Product names should incorporate a clue as to the genre or category in which they sit. There are usually constraints on the length of titles. Sometimes if they are too long, they will break across lines and distort the page’s layout. Using the previous fishing rod example, we should take the vague “Temple Forks 4-pce #9 weight” in the Fly Fishing Rods category and revise it as best we can within the length constraints;
- Temple Forks 4-pce #9 weight rod
- Temple Forks 4-pce #9 weight Fly Rod
If your shop system generates filenames that include both the category and the product name in a subdirectory format, that is great. E.g. /yoursite.com/fly-fishing-rods/temple-forks-4-pce-8-weight.html
If it does not, consider trying to create ‘slugs’ or URLs that incorporate the category – for example;
/yoursite.com/temple-forks-4-pce-8-weight-fly-fishing-rod.html
Product Photos and Images
By all means, use the manufacturer’s images – they are usually professionally done, sharp and crisp. Unfortunately, they are usually badly named! For example, an SKU Code and numeric sequence…for example; /yoursite.com/images/TF9p8w001.jpg
Change the names by adding the product name and at least a hint of the category, e.g.
/yoursite.com/temple-forks-4-pce-8-weight-fly-rod.jpg
If you are lucky, your system will add Image Alt tags automatically, either using the Product Name, or the image file name. If you’ve properly prepared the images prior to uploading, you’ve given both your Category and individual Product pages an insertion of relevant keywords into an important area that Google organic search assesses as part of relevancy ranking algorithms.
Page SEO Summary
SEO experts all agree that paying attention to the apparently trivial means you will be rewarded. SEO for ecommerce websites is complex. Each individual element might in itself contribute a minimal amount. Collectively, social media marketing, search engine optimization and content marketing work across a large ecommerce website to translate into thousands of additional keyword rankings. It also improves the user experience. Painstaking attention to detail by your ecommerce SEO agency is tedious, but it is important! Ask Picasso…
You can and should use Google Search Console and Google Analytics
Please don’t hesitate to enquire about SEO proposals and pricing, we are always happy to help.
References
Page last updated on Thursday, October 12, 2023 by the author Ben Kemp