Did you know? In 2018, Australians spent $27.5 billion buying goods online, a 24.4% increase year on year (YOY).
With those types of growth figures, now’s a good time to get into the eCommerce business.
Of course, it isn’t just the amount of online shopping that’s growing – so too is the competition.
With opportunity comes opportunists – as online shopping becomes more popular and accepted, the amount of other eCommerce businesses you’ll have to compete against grows.
In such a crowded market, it’s key that you find something to make you stand out from the crowd.
If so, eCommerce SEO might be just what you need.
What makes eCommerce SEO different from conventional SEO?
Your product range stands on its own, with high-quality offerings from around the world that offer fantastic value to shoppers – of course, that isn’t going to be much use if people can’t find your offerings online!
As someone who runs an eCommerce business, you understand better than most the importance of generating traffic to your website.
You also understand the crucial role search engine optimisation can play in driving traffic to your website.
Ecommerce SEO is fundamentally similar to optimising other websites, with a lot of the techniques applicable to both eCommerce and service websites.
Best of all, it’s something that not many of your competitors are doing – you’d be surprised how many eCommerce businesses are neglecting their SEO by focusing entirely on other parts of their digital marketing mix like PPC advertising, remarketing and email catalogues.
It’s true that each of these are still important – in our experience however, search engine optimisation offers the best ROI and long-term results.
The thing is, while eCommerce SEO has the same goals as “regular” SEO, it also plays out very differently. As they say, the devil’s in the details – while the tools may be the same, the mentality and strategy will need to be different.
Optimise for products, not keywords
With traditional service websites, your SEO strategy might focus on optimising your website and creating content around specific keywords. For example, a plumber might try to optimise their website for searches like “leaky pipe repairs”.
While this approach works for service websites, they’re less ideal for eCommerce SEO.
Don’t get us wrong, ranking for high volume, general search terms like “online hat shop” is great. It’s also a lot of time, however – time that could be better spent propping up your ranking for what we in the business call long tail keywords.
Basically, this means getting specific – for eCommerce SEO, that means optimising for the specific products you offer.
Optimising for specific products and product categories is the key when creating SEO strategies for eCommerce websites.
Not only is it way more time-efficient, but a lot of potential buyers aren’t Googling for things like “online hat shop”.
No, they’re Googling for specific things they’re looking to buy, typing in specific products or product categories.
You want your site to be optimised for these searches!
Think about what customers want to know
Most eCommerce sites have listings for each of their products, complete with pictures as well as specs and features. A lot of them stop there.
The thing is, product information isn’t the only type of information customers are looking for.
Say you run an online store that sells hair products. Naturally, a lot of your customers are going to be searching for specific types of products – however, that isn’t all.
Whether it’s how to use specific products, styling tips or advice for how to deal with certain types of hair, it’s important to also consider what your customers want to know when you perform keyword research.
All of which can be crucial information when undertaking a content marketing strategy!
While it’s important to optimise for specific items and product categories, it’s equally important that you optimise your website to give potential customers the information that they want.
Content marketing is still key
Content marketing is at the heart of many modern SEO strategies. And that includes eCommerce SEO as well.
Just like any other side, an ongoing stream of high-quality, original, and most importantly, well-optimised content is the key to getting your site to rank higher. Good content:
- Improves your credibility and domain authority
- Increases the number of potential landing pages
- Helps you rank for the search terms you want to be found for
Many eCommerce SEO tutorials focus on things like optimising product descriptions and updating your meta tags. While they’re important, many eCommerce businesses end up overlooking the power that content marketing offers.
And that in turn gives eCommerce businesses that do use content marketing Melbourne a leg up over the competition!
Ecommerce SEO tips
Optimise descriptions and meta tags
Sales copy and product descriptions aren’t just there to sell your products – they also play a crucial SEO role as well.
While every eCommerce site has flavour text, not all of them take the time to optimise them. This gives you an edge that you can use to get a leg up over the competition!
Content is king
Like any other SEO strategy, eCommerce SEO lives and dies on content. And we aren’t just talking about product descriptions or sales copy, either – it’s just as important that your eCommerce site uses content like images, video and more to really sell your goods.
Not only that, but this also helps on the SEO front as well. Google loves multimedia content – it’s one of the (many) things Google looks at when ranking content.
You need a technically solid website
One of the biggest eCommerce mistakes is when your catalogue isn’t crawlable. Crawling refers to Google discovering and indexing your webpages and product listings – if it can’t be crawled, it won’t show up on a Google search.
Ecommerce sites tend to be much more complex, with more pages on your site, subcategories, layers and branches. This means more points of failure, and a much higher risk of crawling errors, messy code and other technical issues.
Site structure is crucial
Site layout is an important part of SEO in general. A concise sitemap or logical internal linking structure can help Google’s bots parse and understand (and rank) your website.
When it comes to eCommerce SEO, structure is even more important. And not only from an SEO standpoint either – it also helps users navigate and find the products they’re looking for.
Choose an SEO agency in Melbourne with experience helping eCommerce sites
If there’s one thing to take away from reading this article, it’s that eCommerce SEO requires a different approach from information and service websites.
Unfortunately, not all SEO agencies have experience working with these types of sites.
Many attempt to use strategies and tactics designed for completely different types of websites, or fail to account for the unique circumstances of eCommerce businesses.
Take our word for it: there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all SEO strategy. Each one needs to be tailored to match your business, as well as your competition and market.
Over the years, our Melbourne SEO agency has worked with all sorts of businesses, including a number of eCommerce sites.
Using in-depth keyword research and strategies that are tailored for the unique needs of eCommerce businesses, we’re able to bring in more business and generate more sales – in some cases, we’ve been able to double the amount of visitors to their websites!