ecommerce marketing seo

E-commerce Keyword Research: Understanding Customer Awareness

Effective e-commerce
SEO begins with comprehensive keyword research. Most e-commerce websites struggle with keyword research because they don’t understand the five stages of customer awareness. These stages include: unaware, problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and most aware.

Start with the “most aware” stage and work backward. For instance, in the unaware stage, customers have informational intent, using long-tail keywords like “how to make cold brew coffee”. Content at this stage should inform prospects about dark roast coffee and its benefits.

In the problem-aware stage, customers understand the benefits and search for phrases like “dark roast versus light roast”. Dedicated pages are needed for these queries. The solution-aware stage involves customers ready to pick a brand. The product-aware stage sees customers evaluating specific products.

Technical SEO Audit: Identifying Opportunities

Conducting a technical SEO audit is crucial for e-commerce SEO.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider is an excellent tool for this purpose, as it crawls your website to find technical SEO opportunities. Integrate it with Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and AHRefs APIs for a comprehensive audit.

Identify crawl depth issues by checking if any page is more than three clicks deep into the site architecture. Google struggles to crawl and index deeply buried pages. Resolve this by using sitewide navigation. Check internal link coverage, looking for pages with fewer than five internal links. Add internal links to high-quality pages.

Address pages with poor SEO performance by filtering GA click impressions and Ahrefs referring domains columns.
Options include deleting irrelevant, thin, or outdated content, redirecting to eliminate keyword cannibalization, consolidating salvageable content, optimizing high-quality pages, or upgrading outdated pages.

Optimizing User Experience for E-commerce

User experience (UX) is critical for e-commerce success. A significant factor is page loading speed; 40% of shoppers abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

To improve UX, resize images to be large enough for zooming but not excessively large. Compress images using tools like Optimizilla to reduce file sizes.
Convert images to WebP format, the fastest file type.

Optimize URL structure for relevance. For example, a good URL should clearly indicate the page’s content, like “example.com/blue-prom-dresses”. Effective URL structures produce breadcrumbs, which function as internal links, improving crawlability and indexability for Google.

Creating Epic SEO Content for E-commerce

Four types of SEO content are essential for e-commerce. These include product category pages, product pages, blog content, and linkbait. Category pages should give users exactly what they want without excessive text.

Use product pages for SEO when there is evidence in Google, such as “cowhide rug cleaner”. Blog content should target informational keywords to drive organic traffic and build brand awareness.
Informational keywords can guide searchers deeper into your funnel.

Creating quality content in your field establishes topic authority, helping Google understand your website’s relevance. Linkbait, such as free tools and infographics, is engineered to attract backlinks. Use ChatGPT to brainstorm content ideas.

On-Page SEO and Natural Language Processing

Effective on-page SEO is essential. Place your target keyword in the URL, page title, meta description, H1, and first sentence.
This alone can outperform 80% of websites. For top-tier performance, use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to build relevant content.

Google uses NLP to extract ideas from your page to understand its relevance. Enter your keyword into a content optimization tool like Rankability to see topics covered by competitors. The Rankability score measures your page’s relevance compared to top competitors. Cover as many relevant topics as possible. Focus on brevity.

Don’t focus on keyword stuffing.
More words do not equate to better SEO results. Instead, concentrate on making your content concise and relevant.

Acquiring Customer Reviews to Build Trust

Customer reviews significantly influence purchasing decisions. 91% of people aged 18 to 34 trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.
Use third-party review platforms to build trust.

Create a free Google Business Profile to collect reviews. Streamline review collection with tools like NiceJob, Birdeye, and Podium. If selling on Amazon, prioritize collecting as many reviews as possible.

Customer reviews enhance credibility and can greatly impact your e-commerce SEO performance. Actively encourage customers to leave reviews to build a strong reputation.

Backlinks: The Cornerstone of E-commerce SEO

Backlinks are the most important ranking factor in Google. Build a personal brand to attract backlinks through interviews and expert contributions.
Write guest posts and use specific search strings in Google to find opportunities.

Outsource link building if you have the budget to save time and focus on high-impact activities. Digital.PR is recommended for digital PR and link building, using techniques like reactive PR and expert contributions.

They also build and promote linkbait to journalists, securing links on powerful websites. Focus on quality over quantity in link building.
One powerful link can significantly improve your SEO performance.

E-commerce SEO Myths and Realities

Many e-commerce brands fall into the trap of pursuing blog traffic, thinking it will automatically translate into sales. However, ranking for keywords like “why should I use natural face wash” might bring traffic, but it’s unlikely to convert into sales.

The key is to focus on ranking **money pages**. These are the pages that directly drive revenue, such as product and category pages.

Agencies sometimes overcomplicate SEO with audits and technical fixes, but the only technical SEO aspects that truly matter are ensuring the site is crawlable and indexed, has no broken links, offers great mobile and desktop UX, and has a clear site hierarchy.

**Organic search revenue** is the most important key performance indicator. If SEO efforts aren’t increasing revenue, they’re not working.

Prioritizing Money Pages

To maximize return on investment (ROI) with SEO, focus on ranking in the top three for transactional keywords.

Creating collection pages can quickly boost revenue. One example cited involves increasing revenue from $2,000 a month to $10,000 a month by building collection pages.

Instead of writing endless blog content, focus on building and optimizing pages for more transactional keywords and fewer informational keywords.

It’s essential to build and optimize pages for transactional keywords rather than informational ones.

Focusing on category pages, as opposed to blog content, can be more effective.

Effective Link Building Strategies

Many SEOs suggest that thousands of backlinks are needed to rank, but often, only 10 to 20 quality backlinks are sufficient. Avoid cheap SEO services that flood sites with low-quality links, as they can hurt rankings.

**Link insertions** are often more effective and cheaper than guest posts. With link insertions, you can find a page that already has traffic.

Building relationships with industry bloggers and journalists can be cost-effective in the long run. Creating standout content that earns links naturally is difficult and less scalable.

Earning links typically costs around $5,000 a month with digital PR.

Essential SEO Tools

Knowing how to use SEO tools doesn’t automatically make you an expert at ranking pages.

SEMrush is considered an excellent all-in-one SEO tool for competitor analysis, keyword research, and backlink analysis.

Google Ads Keyword Planner is a free tool for keyword research. Although it provides a range for monthly search volume rather than an exact number, it’s still a valuable resource. The average cost per click can indicate keyword competitiveness.

Screaming Frog is an all-in-one technical SEO tool, which is free for up to 500 URLs. It can identify broken links, analyze H1s and H2s, meta descriptions, page titles, and URLs.

Prioritization and Focus

A significant portion of results (80%) comes from a small percentage of efforts (20%). E-commerce brands often waste money on bad SEO advice or tactics.

Focus on ranking money pages and getting quality backlinks. Ignore everything else to see real revenue growth.

Building and optimizing money pages and building better backlinks drive the majority of the revenue. Mastering these two aspects can significantly scale e-commerce SEO revenue. ecommerce marketing seo