It’s no surprise that all eCommerce brands want to sell more products. Organic search is a compelling channel for eCommerce and can be very profitable given that the traffic itself is not paid for, unlike with Google Ads, display ads or paid social media campaigns. However, developing eCommerce SEO into a profitable channel can be a challenge for teams new to SEO or when it’s not clear where to start.
With this in mind, here’s three key things eCommerce brands can be doing to kick start their eCommerce SEO programme and turn organic search into a profitable, revenue-driving channel.
Content Strategy & Keyword Mapping
Aligning your website content to the way that customers search is crucial for driving organic traffic that converts into product sales. To do this, you need to have a strong understanding of how customers search for products in your space, and ensure your site has relevant content that covers these potential touchpoints.
One pitfall I sometimes see is eCommerce businesses interpreting this to mean investing in blog content. Articles relevant to your customer pain points have their place, but it’s essential to not overlook the key commercial pages on your site, name product collections and product detail pages.
Align Product Collections with relevant search trends
Collection pages, also known as category pages, are essential for eCommerce SEO, but can be overlooked. Collections are pages that list groups of related products with common traits. Let’s imagine you run an eCommerce website selling laptops. There’s a few different ways that customers might search for a new laptop:
- Laptops
- Windows Laptops
- Dell Laptops
- HP Laptops
- Apple Laptops
- Apple Macbook Air
- Apple Macbook Pro
- 13-14 inch laptops
- 15-16 inch laptops
You could therefore create a page for each of these topics, showing a different selection of products:
| Page name | Product selection |
| Laptops | All laptops (Apple, Dell, HP) |
| Windows Laptops | Windows laptops (Dell and HP) |
| Dell Laptops | Dell laptops only |
| HP Laptops | HP Laptops only |
| Apple Laptops | Apple laptops |
| Apple Macbook Air | Macbook Air laptops only |
| Apple Macbook Pro | Macbook Pro laptops only |
| 13-14 inch laptops | All laptops with 13-14 inch screens |
| 15-16 inch laptops | All laptops with 15-16 inch screens |
Consider that while you could have listed all these product category under a single “laptops” page, you’d have only offered your customers one entry point from a search engine to find your products.
Instead, you could have 9 (or more) ways for customers to find your products, capturing the different ways that customers search for products, depending on where they are in their buying journey. This means you can pick up more customers who’ve narrowed down their search to a specific type or brand of laptop, and now need to find a trusted retailer to pick a specific model and make a purchase.
You can identify these search topics and map them to relevant collection pages with keyword clustering. For more information follow our guide to keyword clustering, which includes a free template so you can get started!
Consider non-brand keywords on product pages
Product collections are not the only way to improve the visibility of your eCommerce pages. Product pages themselves can also be optimised for relevant keywords that your customers search for. This can be a good strategy for sites with a smaller product range, where each product can be mapped to an individual non-brand keyword or topic.
It’s something that works for Strykk with their non-alcoholic spirits. They have one non-alcoholic vodka product, allowing them to optimise the product page for this keyword:
If you decide to follow this approach, make sure that your product pages do not conflict with your collection pages, ensuring you have one page per distinct topic. Again, a robust keyword clustering and page mapping process is the way to establish and maintain a logical page structure.
Implement relevant schema structured data markup
Schema.org is a form of structured data that can be used to label specific attributes on your pages. This is then picked up by search engines like Google and Bing, allowing them to annotate search results with these attributes in search results.
Below is an example of product data being shown in a Google shopping products carousel:
This is beneficial for eCommerce sites as it can make your product listings more compelling to searchers, for example due to better price or better customer review ratings, improving click through rate.
There are a few schema types all eCommerce sites should consider using:
- Product Schema to call out key product attributes including:
- Product name
- Product description
- Product image
- Availability (in stock/out of stock)
- Pricing & currency
- Shipping information to highlight benefits such as:
- Supported shipping destinations
- Shipping rate
- Shipping policy
- Delivery time
- Breadcrumbs to help annotate site structure
- Organization schema to highlight:
- Name(s) of the business
- Social media profiles
- Contact points such as sales or customer service numbers
- Accepted payment methods
- Returns policy
Schema data can be applied to pages either using JSON-LD or Microdata, I recommend doing whichever is easiest, in spite of Google preferring JSON-LD, as in reality it makes little difference.
There are plenty of guides out there on how to implement schema data, but if you get stuck, why not get in touch?
Get people talking about your products and business
With your content strategy and schema data sorted, you can now think about how to grow the presence of your products and brand across the web. To do this, think about how to fix any weak points and then how to build fame.
It’s important to remember that SEO – or any type of digital marketing for that matter – does not operate in a silo. If your eCommerce business suffers from poor customer reviews, has a punitive returns policy, slow shipping methods or lack of stock, then customers are less likely to want to buy from you no matter how high you rank in Google.
Make sure you have a clear plan to fix any of these weak points so customers will want to buy from you. As an example, consider why people may want to buy tech products from John Lewis instead of alternatives who can often be cheaper. That comes down to brand reputation (trust that any issues will be resolved), value add services (free 2 year warranty when most other retailers rely on the 1 year manufacturer warranty) or convenience (ability to order online and pick up in-store if you happen to have a local store).
Next, think about awareness. Consider who your target market is and where they spend time on the web – remembering that this should go beyond Google alone. How could you reach customers in those places? Consider some of the following:
- Investing in video content for Youtube or TikTok
- Running influencer campaigns to build brand awareness
- Providing product samples to the press for review
- Run data studies or surveys based on values your brand stands for or problems your products solve
- Establish co-branded campaigns with other brands you share an audience with
Advising readers to diversify away from Google might seem counterintuitive for an SEO consultant to suggest. However, the truth is that your users don’t just look to the Google ecosystem to shop for products so you must be there too.
Building your brand on a range of platforms feeds into your search engine visibility, whether directly through search engines finding backlinks on other websites, or increased demand through brand search. And let’s not forget that platforms like YouTube and TikTok have their own search functionality and are an important place for customers to discover new products!
Wrapping up
By focusing on these three core areas, you can set the right foundations for eCommerce SEO success. If you need help and support from a trusted expert, why not get in touch with us at Atkinson Smith Digital, where we regularly work with eCommerce brands to enhance their online visibility. Find out more about our search strategy, technical SEO and international search services, or get in touch to see how we can help you.