eCommerce SEO Best Practices for Increased Profitability: Proven Strategy and Tips

With the vast majority of consumers turning to search engines like Google and Bing to find products, a well-optimized online store can make the difference between thriving and merely surviving.

Today, we’ll explore the critical steps, strategy, and best practices needed to ensure your online store attracts and converts customers from search engines. But before diving into the specifics, let’s understand why eCommerce SEO is so crucial for your online store’s success. 🔥

The journey to success through SEO for eCommerce sites can be broken down into several stages. 

• Impressions: Initially, your focus is on ensuring that your website appears in search results for queries relevant to your products. 
• Positions: This visibility is critical because nearly 75% of organic traffic comes from the first page of search results, highlighting the importance of ranking within the top 10 positions on Google.
• Traffic: However, reaching the top 10 is only part of the challenge. SEO is an ongoing, dynamic process that determines how effectively you can convert searchers into customers. 
• Sales: Ranking well not only increases your site’s visibility but also enhances its credibility, driving higher conversion rates and, ultimately, profitability.

This article, authored by experienced eCommerce SEO professionals 🧘‍♂️: 

• Oleksandr Kryvotsiuk, an eCommerce SEO expert with over 10 years of experience, focuses on search engine optimization and marketing strategies.
• Veronika Kovalska, an eCommerce marketer with over 5 years of experience, specializes in branding and digital strategies to drive targeted traffic to online stores.

👀 We will guide you through the strategies needed to elevate your eCommerce website SEO performance, ensuring sustainable growth and increased revenue. By the end of this guide, you’ll have a clear roadmap to boosting your store’s sales. 

eCommerce SEO to Increase Impressions

Let’s start with the first crucial stage: increasing impressions. 💥

Making sure your web pages are appropriately indexed by search engines and appear in search results for queries relevant to your target audience is the main goal here. Achieving this is the foundation of any successful eCommerce SEO strategy, as it directly impacts your site’s visibility and potential to attract organic traffic.

Stage #1: Keyword Research: Understanding Your Audience’s Search Behavior

To maximize your store’s impressions, you first need to understand how your audience searches for products like yours. This process begins with comprehensive keyword research. 🔎

Utilizing advanced tools such as Ahrefs, SeRanking, or SEMrush, you can gather search queries that are closely related to the products you offer. These tools provide valuable insights into the search terms your potential customers are using, helping you align your content with their intent.

During keyword research, you’ll identify key phrases that users commonly include in their searches to refine results. For example, a user searching for “blue t-shirt mens” is specifically interested in blue men’s t-shirts, not just any t-shirt. Recognizing and incorporating these nuances is critical because relevance is the cornerstone of eCommerce website SEO. 

The more closely your content matches a user’s query, the higher the chances that search engines will rank your pages favorably!

To ensure your site appears for a specific query like “blue t-shirt men,” your online store should have a dedicated subcategory featuring all the blue t-shirts you offer. This not only enhances the relevance of your pages but also improves the user experience by helping customers quickly find what they’re looking for.

Stage #2: Building the Semantic Core: The Blueprint of Your Online Store

Once you’ve collected and analyzed your search queries, the next step is to group these keywords and create the semantic core of your online store. The semantic core is essentially a blueprint of your site’s content structure, detailing the specific groups of search queries for which your store should be optimized in Google search. 🔎

The eCommerce website structure should reflect this semantic core, with pages organized into various levels—main categories, first-level subcategories, second-level subcategories, and so on. 

This hierarchical structure mirrors the depth and detail of the search queries, ensuring that each page is highly relevant to the user’s intent.

For instance, the group “blue t-shirt mens” might correspond to a first-level subcategory, while a more specific query like “mens blue t-shirt XL” would correspond to a second-level subcategory. By organizing your content in this way, you make it easier for search engines to index your pages and for users to navigate your site.

Stage #3: Internal Linking: Enhancing Site Navigation and SEO

Effective internal linking is another crucial component of increasing impressions. Within your store, linking between pages—especially within categories—should be facilitated through SEO filters. These filters not only help users narrow down their search results but also create internal links to relevant subcategories, boosting SEO for eCommerce websites.

Additionally, internal linking should be reinforced through breadcrumbs and menus, providing clear pathways for both users and search engines to navigate your site. These actions are foundational to your online store’s success, potentially accounting for up to 50% of your SEO effectiveness. 📈

Without well-organized subcategories, your store’s pages may fail to appear in search results for specific, detail-oriented queries, such as those involving product color, size, or other attributes.

Stage #4: Technical SEO: Ensuring a Solid Foundation

While content and structure are vital, technical SEO is equally important in ensuring your site is fully optimized for search engines. Regular technical audits are essential to identify and rectify issues that could hinder your site’s visibility or ranking. 

🧨 A few common technical SEO pitfalls include:

• Slow Site Loading Speed: A sluggish website can significantly impact user experience and rankings.
• Incorrect URL Structure: URLs should reflect the hierarchy of your categories and subcategories, aiding both user navigation and SEO.
• Errors in Robots.txt or Sitemap Files: Misconfigured files can prevent search engines from indexing your site properly.
• Canonical/Hreflang Tag Errors: These tags help manage duplicate content and regional variations, respectively, and must be correctly implemented.
• Navigation and Category Structure Problems: A confusing or illogical structure can frustrate users and reduce your eCommerce website SEO effectiveness.

Addressing these issues is critical, as even minor technical errors can have a significant impact on your store’s search visibility and, by extension, its profitability. For a more detailed exploration of eCommerce SEO audits, refer to our dedicated blog post on the subject.

By focusing on these elements—keyword research, semantic core development, internal linking, and technical SEO—you lay a strong foundation for your online store, increasing its chances of appearing in search results and attracting the right audience. This is the first and essential step toward a profitable eCommerce SEO strategy.

On-Page SEO to Improve Search Rankings

Let’s move on to on-page SEO, a critical component in boosting your online store’s visibility and driving organic traffic. In eCommerce SEO, a significant portion—80-90%—of traffic is generated by category and subcategory pages. This is because search engines like Google prioritize these pages when users search for broader terms, such as “blue t-shirt men,” where the intent is to explore options rather than find a specific item. This focus on categories and subcategories makes on-page SEO particularly vital for eCommerce websites.

To optimize on-page SEO effectively, I’ve identified three key areas: SEO content, the number of products, and structured data. Let’s delve into each.

SEO Content

SEO content plays a crucial role in forming the snippets that appear in search results—specifically, the title and description tags. These elements are not just placeholders; they are essential for conveying the relevance of your pages to both users and search engines. Crafting compelling and keyword-rich titles and meta descriptions is the first step in ensuring your pages stand out in search results.

Beyond titles and descriptions, adding well-structured content to your category and subcategory pages can significantly enhance their relevance. This might include product descriptions, category introductions, and FAQs that address common customer queries. Such content not only improves user experience by providing valuable information but also creates opportunities for internal linking, further enhancing SEO performance.

💻 For example, a category page for “blue t-shirts” could include a brief introduction about the variety of blue t-shirts available, along with links to subcategories like “men’s blue t-shirts,” “women’s blue t-shirts,” or “blue t-shirts under $20.” This approach helps search engines understand the page’s relevance to various queries while guiding users to the specific products they’re looking for.

Number of Products

The number of products listed within your categories and subcategories is another crucial factor in on-page SEO. While this may not fall directly under the SEO specialist’s responsibilities, it’s essential for maintaining the integrity of your SEO efforts. Categories and subcategories should offer a comprehensive range of products that align with user intent.

For instance, if a user searches for “blue t-shirts” and lands on a category page that only displays two or three options, or worse, shows t-shirts of various colors, it could lead to higher bounce rates and lower engagement. 

This poor user experience can negatively impact your rankings. Therefore, it’s crucial to ensure that each category and subcategory is populated with a sufficient number of relevant products, giving users plenty of choices and encouraging longer site visits. 🖥️🖱️

Structured Data

Structured data, also known as schema markup, is an advanced on-page SEO technique that helps search engines understand the content on your pages more accurately. By adding structured data to your category and product pages, you can provide additional context about the elements on your page, such as product ratings, prices, availability, and FAQs.

💡 For example, implementing structured data for product reviews can enable rich snippets in search results, displaying star ratings directly beneath your page link. This can increase click-through rates (CTR) by making your listing more attractive and informative at a glance. Similarly, using structured data for FAQs can help your page appear in the “People Also Ask” section of Google search results, further increasing visibility and impressions.

Off-Page SEO to Build Domain Authority

Off-page SEO plays a vital role in increasing your online store’s visibility and impressions by leveraging factors that occur outside your website. While on-page SEO optimizes your internal elements, off-page SEO focuses on building credibility and authority across the web. Activities like brand mentions, backlinks from authoritative sites, and social signals can significantly improve how search engines discover and rank your pages, increasing impressions.

Building Backlinks from Authoritative Sources

Backlinks are the backbone of off-page SEO. When reputable websites link to your online store, search engines view your site as more trustworthy and relevant. The more high-quality backlinks you acquire, the more authority your site gains, which leads to more frequent crawling and indexing by search engines. 🔎

Brand Mentions

When your brand is frequently mentioned across forums, blogs, social media, or news outlets, search engines take note of your growing authority and relevance in the market. ❗

Social Signals and Engagement

While social media signals are not direct ranking factors, they are important in driving traffic to your site and increasing impressions. When users engage with your brand on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or X (Twitter), they generate social signals that indicate the relevance of your content. Additionally, social media activity can lead to more shares, more exposure, and potentially more backlinks from content creators who discover your products or services through these platforms.

Influencer Marketing

When influencers share or link to your content, it not only drives traffic but also strengthens your SEO profile by signaling to search engines that your brand is trusted and influential within your niche. 

Guest Posting

Similarly, guest posting on high-authority blogs allows you to build backlinks while positioning your brand as an expert in your field.

 eCommerce SEO to Improve Rankings  | Insights from Real Case Studies

💡 It is important to understand that this is a slow process because, as a rule, new pages get positions outside the top 30 of Google due to low trust. While this process takes time, a consistent effort through both off-page and on-page SEO can move your site into higher-ranking positions, driving more traffic and increasing sales. So, what specific actions can you take to improve your rankings?

Off-page SEO to Improve Rankings

High-quality link building is aimed at generating new external links to the website from trusted web resources. You can also add activities that increase brand awareness on the Internet. Backlinks to your homepage, as well as to category and subcategory pages, are essential for building authority and trust with search engines. 

You can also add activities that are aimed at growing branded keywords. 🧨 These can be advertising campaigns that encourage users to generate search queries that mention the brand. These campaigns not only drive direct traffic but also foster organic interest in your brand, helping to elevate your ranking positions over time.

💡 For example, when users search for “Amazon men’s t-shirts,” this demonstrates growing interest in the brand. Search engines interpret this as an indicator of trust and relevance, which can improve the rankings of your site for various keywords, both branded and non-branded.

On-page SEO to Improve Rankings

On-page SEO is equally critical in improving rankings. 

Blog

One powerful tool in this regard is an online store blog. 🖊️ A blog serves multiple purposes: 

• it attracts additional traffic, 
• educates users about your products, 
• and serves as a funnel that can direct visitors to relevant product categories. 

Internal links embedded within blog posts can pass SEO value to your category and subcategory pages, enhancing their authority.

Categories and subcategories

In addition to blogging, increasing the range of products in your store and adding fresh content to existing categories and subcategories can have a positive impact on rankings. Google favors dynamic and regularly updated content, so adding new products or updating descriptions signals that your site is active and growing. 📈

Keyword Research

A strategic approach to improving rankings is to focus on low-competition search queries, especially for newer or smaller online stores. These are longer, more specific queries, often referred to as long-tail keywords, that contain multiple refinements. 

For example, while competing for “men’s t-shirts” might be difficult against large retailers like Amazon or eBay, targeting queries such as “blue men’s t-shirt XL cotton” or “eco-friendly men’s t-shirt blue” provides an opportunity to rank higher for less competitive search terms.

Multi-level Structure

The multi-level structure of an online store allows you to optimize for these low-competition, long-tail keywords. As a rule of thumb, the more specific a search query is, the lower the competition. This is a valuable strategy for new or smaller eCommerce businesses looking to generate organic traffic quickly.

By identifying and optimizing for these long-tail keywords, your store can rise to the top of Google for niche queries, driving targeted traffic and sales. This approach also sets the foundation for gradually ranking for more competitive terms as your site grows in authority.

Key Takeaways

eCommerce SEO is a multi-stage process. 🪜

• On-page SEO is critical for category pages: The majority of eCommerce traffic comes from category and subcategory pages, so optimizing these pages with relevant content, structured data, and an ample range of products is essential.
• Off-page SEO builds authority and trust: High-quality backlinks, brand mentions, and increasing branded search queries are key off-page tactics that can improve your site’s ranking and domain authority.
• Target low-competition keywords: Newer or smaller online stores can rank quickly by focusing on long-tail, specific search queries that have lower competition, generating traffic while building trust over time.

❗ NOTE that SEO for eCommerce sites is a long-term game. Moving up in rankings takes time, but consistent efforts across both on-page and off-page strategies will lead to higher search visibility, more traffic, and increased sales.

Contact our team of experts for a personalized consultation, and let us help you build a profitable SEO strategy tailored to your online store. Click the link below to schedule your free consultation today!