9 Ecommerce SEO Tips that Actually Boost Your Traffic

Use this ecommerce SEO tip to diagnose any potential usability issues and implement the correct solutions.

4. Use HTTPS

Usability is one of several factors that play a part in your visitor’s website experience. Security is another one that you can’t overlook; just as you saw before, this is for traffic and conversion purposes.

HTTPS, which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is the secure version of HTTP, the main protocol used to exchange data between a user’s browser and a store’s server. HTTPS fosters a safe environment for financial transactions, communication, and data submissions.

In 2014, Google announced adding an SSL 2048-bit key certificate on a website would count as a minor ranking factor. A year later, a Google engineer stated that HTTPS works as a tie-breaker when two different search results compete for a position.

Indeed, using HTTPS is a cheap and easy ecommerce SEO tip to increase your store’s performance.

All ecommerce platforms have made it easy to add an HTTPS protocol to a domain after redirecting it to their platform. Here are the guides for three of the largest ecommerce platforms:

• Shopify
• BigCommerce
• Squarespace

5. Write magnetic meta descriptions

A meta description is an HTML meta tag used to describe a page’s content. Every search engine result has one, which shows underneath a page’s title and URL.

A meta description works like a mini-ad, promoting a page’s value proposition and inciting a user to click on it.

While meta descriptions don’t improve your SEO directly, they can increase your organic CTR—a ratio that specifies how often people click on a search engine result page after seeing it. The higher the click-through rate, the higher the number of clicks it has generated for a given number of impressions.

Marketers use CTR as a metric that pinpoints an ad’s relevance, search result, or page element. To be clear, the higher the CTR, the more traffic you can expect to get — even if you don’t rank first for a keyword!

In the example above, you can see two search results for the same keyword: “Buy car battery”. But while the first one shows a relevant meta description and the second one shows a generic one.

The first one sells you the idea of buying a car battery by highlighting fast delivery times and more. While informational in nature, the second one doesn’t fit the search query or entices the click.

To find your organic CTR:

1. Go to your domain’s Google Search Console (sign up and install it if you haven’t done it already) and download your keywords into a CSV file.

2. Open the spreadsheet and delete all branded keywords — i.e., keywords showing your brand’s name.

3. Organize the keywords by their position.

4. Sum the number of clicks for each position and divided them by the number of impressions they generated.

Optimize the pages with low CTR and high volume of clicks and impressions. Here are some extra ecommerce SEO tips for writing meta descriptions:

• Add your keyword to your meta description. It doesn’t help with SEO, but when a user searches for that keyword, Google will highlight it.

• Focus on the benefits. Remember to think of your meta description as a mini-ad.

• Use natural language. Your meta description should look natural and not like a sales pitch.

• Be specific. What specific benefits can your page (or product) provide the visitor? Show it.

• Use a CTA. It will catch people’s attention, especially if it leads to a product page. Here’s a list of the most commonly used CTAs.

6. Create content that answers your user’s queries

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Help Google fulfill its mission by creating content that answers your user’s search queries! When you ßbrainstorm content ideas, think about the user’s goal—this refers to their intent and specific desires and needs.

For example, if a user searches for one of your product’s names and you serve them with the page of the corresponding product, you will fulfill their desire, which we can assume is to learn more about your product or buy it.

As Shealyn Rater explains, a content marketing strategy should be built around three main ideas:

• Creating content with clear conclusions. Teach your readers solutions that they didn’t know about. Whether your product is a part of that solution is irrelevant; focus on helping the reader before making a sale.

• Focusing on quality over quantity. You may see your competitors and feel pressured to create high volumes of content, but that’s a mistake. Create the best content possible for each targeted keyword, analyzing your competitors, and provide content that’s 10x better than theirs.

• Writing for people instead of algorithms. Google wants content built for people, not to satisfy or manipulate their algorithm.

7. Embed your products within your content strategy

Your ecommerce marketing strategy and your content strategy are one and the same. Your content should promote your store without pushing your products indiscriminately.

Since 80% of user’s searches are informational, your content most likely will target informational keywords that focus on the solution to the user’s problem and not your product.

Take a look at Peak Design’s blog. Their blog posts aren’t about their backpacks — the product they sell — but traveling, the activity that drives their customers to buy their products.

You want to write with SEO in mind, but not exclusively for it. Google wants their users to be happy, and to do that, your content needs to be about them.

Bulletproof became a nine-figure business by focusing its content around their unique coffee recipe. If they only focused on their coffee beans, they would have grown to the size of every other coffee roaster, which is far from the current revenue numbers Bulletproof generates.

Making money from your ecommerce content is within your reach only if you prioritize your customers’ needs first over yours.

8. Run a “branded” link building strategy

So far, our ecommerce SEO tips have been focused on the on-site part of SEO: keywords, on-site optimization, and content. The second part of a successful SEO strategy is link building, which allows Google to understand the value and authority of a given domain and page. The higher the authority, the higher Google will likely rank a page.

For an ecommerce store in a competitive industry to succeed, it must stand out. As Siimon Reynolds put it, you want to “zig when others zag.” That means, your marketing strategy should focus on building a household name that can stand new competition, trends, or market downturns.

You can do so by running a link building strategy aimed at building brand awareness. Start by using an SEO tool like the ones mentioned above, and analyze your top competitors, the links they have earned, and the type of links they are.

Your competition provides a target to reach for while showing you potential link building opportunities to take right away. The truth is, all successful brands build links naturally as a consequence of their popularity and industry presence.

Your link building strategy should start by creating links that are natural to brands like yours. Three ways you can implement such a strategy include targeting:

• Brand Mentions. Look for opportunities where sites mentioned your brand without linking to your store. Likewise, check your competitors’ mentions and reach out to the same sites asking for a mention.

• Directory Sites. Search for directories around your industry or location that mention brands like yours.

• Resource Pages. Find pages that link to brands like yours and reach out, asking for a link.

9. Find your linkerati

Every link building strategy is built around getting others to link to your site.

People who link to your site are called “linkerati,” including journalists, bloggers, industry experts, and more.

When you create content, you want to think about them, so by the time you reach out to them asking for a link, they will be inclined to do so. This is a must-do ecommerce SEO tip.

Volha Belakurskaya recommends using social media monitoring tools like Awario to search for brand mentions. You can also add keywords to see the people mentioning them.

Research the words they use, their expressions, interests, and problems. Look at their following and the context they use to talk about these keywords.

Give each linkerati a name and some demographic data, which you can extrapolate from their social profiles. Also, check the content they share to see what they like.

The information you recollect will help you create content with a higher chance of getting approved, thus allowing you to acquire links faster than if you pitched your content blindly.

Implement your new ecommerce SEO strategy

The SEO world is constantly changing. Your ecommerce store will have to adapt to these swings so you can continue to grow over time. However, all these tactics are well-known best practices that have shown to be resilient to Google's algorithm changes.

These ecommerce SEO tips will take time to take effect, make sure to develop an ecommerce SEO strategy that can sustain these algorithmic changes and ensure your business’ growth.

After you have developed your SEO strategy, start to implement it right away. SEO takes time, so the sooner you start, the better it will be for your store. Are you ready to boost your traffic?