Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an essential practice for businesses to enhance their online visibility in this age of digitisation. Standard SEO focuses on optimising a website to align with search engines and receive organic traffic, whereas e-commerce SEO is tailored to online stores. E-commerce SEO tackles transactional intent and user experience in a way that simply doesn’t compare with standard practices — from ranking individual product pages to boosting conversion rates.
This difference is vital for devising sales and visibility enhancement strategies. In this blog, we will talk about how e-commerce SEO is different and how you can achieve it.
Understanding traditional SEO
Traditional SEO means optimising a website to promote a higher position in a search engine results page (SERP) and organic traffic to a website. Its major intention is to maximise the visibility of your content, reach more people, and ensure valuable and relevant content can be found by users. Traditional SEO is applicable to a wide range of websites, blogs, informational websites, and businesses.
For instance, some of the core components of traditional SEO are:
- Content optimisation: Writing quality, engaging content that matches user intent and utilises relevant keywords. This enables search engines to see what the page is about, which ultimately enhances its ability to rank for particular searches.
- Backlink building: Cultivating a robust web of quality backlinks from authoritative domains, indicating trust and authority to search engines.
- Technical SEO: Making sure that the site loads quickly, is mobile-responsive, simple to explore, and contains suitable metadata and structured data for easy understanding by search engines.
- User experience (UX): Site layout changes, load speed improvements, and working on accessibility with quality site structure to help keep users on the site and reduce bounce rates.
A traditional SEO approach attempts to build a more holistic digital footprint for a business that appeals to both users and search engines without necessarily focusing on a transaction. It focuses more on informational and navigational intent above direct transactions. It lays the groundwork for successful digital marketing campaigns.
Understanding e-commerce SEO
E-commerce SEO is a niche of search engine optimisation dedicated to increasing the visibility and ranking of online stores in search engine results. E-commerce SEO differs from SEO with informational intent, which is traditional SEO, focusing on informational content. Outside of informational intent, e-commerce forms transactional intent, which aims to attract potential customers actively searching for products to purchase.
The main objectives of e-commerce SEO are to optimise product pages for ranking on specific keywords, enhance website navigation to provide fluid user experiences, and ultimately lead to conversions.
Unique elements of e-commerce SEO are:
- Product page optimisation: Writing clear product details, adding keywords, and optimising product images are all essential for attracting and retaining buyers.
- Site architecture: Organizing the site so that users (and search engines) can easily find categories, subcategories, and product pages.
- Conversion rate optimisation (CRO): Improving page speed, adding clear calls-to-action, and offering trust signals such as reviews and secure payment alternatives to increase sales.
- Structured data markup: Use of schema to enhance product data, reviews, prices, and availability in SERPs.
The unique challenges of e-commerce SEO mean that you have to find a way to balance what search engines expect with what users expect, creating a well-performing site that can be discovered a lot and can turn users into customers. This personalised approach sets it apart from conventional SEO methods.
Key differences between e-commerce SEO and traditional SEO
E-commerce SEO is distinct from traditional SEO, and it is critical to understand those differences in order to develop effective strategies geared toward achieving your online business goals. Although both work to optimise websites for better visibility and performance, the differences between an SEO strategy and an e-commerce SEO strategy boil down to their goals, focus areas and user intent.
Focus areas
The logic of SEO, as we know it, involves mostly content-heavy pages, blogs, service pages, and info pages. It mainly consists of addressing user questions, ensuring authority and getting organic visitors.
On the other hand, e-commerce SEO focuses more on product and category pages. These pages shouldn’t just perform well but should also provide detailed product information that helps customers make buying decisions. Optimisation includes adding product-specific keywords, high-quality pictures, pricing information, and customer feedback. Proper structure and internal linking are also important for category pages to improve navigation and search visibility.
Keyword intent
Conventional SEO tends to focus on informational and navigational keywords. So, users looking for “how to choose a laptop” or “best laptops for students” are looking for information rather than purchasing it in an immediate manner. The aim is to do good and build trust, which can eventually turn into conversions.
E-commerce SEO, on the other hand, targets transactional keywords implying purchase intent. These phrases might include “buy laptops online” or “affordable gaming laptops.” This means that the optimisation of these keywords is much more closely related to revenue as they are focused on capturing users who are ready to purchase.
Technical aspects
While technical SEO is as important in traditional SEO as it is in e-commerce SEO, the priorities are different.
For classic web pages, technical optimisation means ensuring that pages load quickly, are optimally responsive on all types of screens, and that informational and other types of content are configured to be indexed correctly.
E-commerce sites need a higher level of technical competence. The site structure has to be very well structured to hold tens of thousands of its individual products, categories, and subcategories. Implement features such as breadcrumb navigation, canonical tags, and pagination to avoid duplicate content problems and to allow the user to easily navigate through your site. Moreover, e-commerce websites need to have secure payment gateways and HTTPS in order to gain the trust of customers.
Content strategy
Traditional SEO content strategies emphasise the writing of long-form, high-quality articles that answer users’ questions and provide information that is useful to them. These are usually accompanied by multimedia components such as videos and infographics.
E-commerce SEO has its own methods. Blog content may still be able to be used but the main focus is placed on product descriptions, category descriptions, and user-generated content like customer reviews, ratings, and recommendations. By serving as social proof, these aspects do not just enhance search rankings but also affect purchase decisions.
Performance metrics
Inherently, the success metrics are different between traditional and e-commerce SEO.
Conventional SEO typically gauges performance around organic traffic, time on site, and user engagement. The goal is to draw visitors in and keep them on the page, as this approach indirectly leads to conversions via brand awareness and nurturing leads.
E-commerce SEO focuses on metrics that correlate to sales, including conversion rate, cart abandonment rate, and average order value (AOV). Traffic volume also matters, but the focus, ultimately, is getting traffic to become paying customers. This means that e-commerce SEO is closely linked to sales funnel optimisation.
Strategies for effective e-commerce SEO
A proper holistic e-commerce SEO strategy can increase your online store visibility and conversions dramatically. The following are five key strategies to concentrate on:
Comprehensive keyword research
Keyword research is an essential building block of e-commerce SEO. Pursue transactional keywords that can identify your customers before they are about to buy. Using tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush, find long-tail keywords that relate to your product offerings, including “affordable leather handbags” or “buy gaming laptops online.” Categorise by product, and focus on terms that have a high number of searches and reasonable levels of competition.
Optimising product pages
Optimise every page for search intent and user experience by adding descriptive titles, keyword-rich meta descriptions, and good-quality images. Make sure to highlight product features and benefits, and use relevant keywords here in a natural way. Add alt text to images for better accessibility and SEO, as well as make sure your call to action buttons are prominent and effective.
Leveraging structured data markup
Implement schema markup to help search engines better understand your product details. Structured data enhances search result snippets by displaying rich information such as prices, reviews, and stock availability, making your listings more appealing and increasing click-through rates.
Building a robust internal linking structure
Having a good internal linking strategy will enhance site navigation and help disperse link equity. Link related articles, products, and categories to each other for a smoother browsing experience for the user and a clearer site structure for search engines.
Harnessing reviews and user-generated content
Encourage user-generated content like photos or videos of the product in action. Reviews drive trust and will increase conversions, in addition to providing you with fresh, keyword-rich content on your pages, which helps increase their search ranking.
Conclusion
E-commerce SEO is the secret weapon of pretty much every online store out there, driving in traffic, improving user experience, and ultimately helping turn leads into paying customers. By grasping its distinctive features and employing successful tactics such as enhancing product pages, using structured data, and facilitating user-generated content, businesses can gain a competitive advantage in the digital marketplace.
If you are prepared to improve the performance of your online store by implementing expert e-commerce SEO strategies, ArkenEcom is for you. Our team specialises in developing custom SEO strategies that get results. Reach out to us now to sustainably fuel the growth of your e-commerce store.
