An Essential eCommerce SEO Checklist for 2023 to Get More Traffic

How do you realize whether it is time to update your eCommerce SEO checklist is due?

Well, a sudden drop in traffic, website migration, or simply because! You don’t at all times need a reason to update your eCommerce SEO strategy. Whatever the rationale, as an eCommerce business, you don’t want a possible user to miss your website on the product search query. 

Google uses over 200 aspects to rank a web site. So from definitive keyword research to oh-so-seamless user experience, your website must undergo a barrage of SEO checklists for eCommerce web sites to check off. 

Ready to strike off the primary one?

Unearth Top-Searched Keywords and Queries

When we expect of SEO, keywords robotically pop up, which isn’t any surprise, given they’re an integral a part of an SEO checklist. There is, in spite of everything, no shortcut to organic rating. 

Finding top-searched keywords is important for eCommerce businesses since they’re the primary checkpoint in the buyer journey. You could make a sale if a consumer sees your page within the Google search results for a product search query. So, conducting efficient keyword research is crucial for an efficient eCommerce SEO strategy.

A couple of pointers mentioned below when doing so will help. 

• Go for keywords with high search volume and low-ranking competition.
• Ensure to select one goal keyword for a selected page together with a number of related keywords.
• Ensure the keywords you select align with the intent of the services or products page.

While these are fundamental pointers, they make an enormous difference. For example, if you happen to are a cosmetics brand and wish to sell your eyeliner, the keyword “eyeliner” alone won’t aid you find users. Instead, use other relevant keywords inside the range of 1 to 15 with a high search volume.

For example, once we put the word “eyeliner” within the Ahrefs tool, we get a listing of relevant phrases and keywords. Ensure to use no less than the primary few phrases for higher searchability. 

After having a bucket filled with keywords, you filter out the appropriate ones. Keeping in mind the below pointers will help. 

Filter the Right Keywords 

• Find and incorporate local keywords if you happen to aim to enhance the visibility of your product page in local search results.
• Perform competitor evaluation to determine where your competitors stand with the precise keywords. 
• Incorporate long-form (long-tail) keywords to goal users for a niched product. 
• Lastly, use tools reminiscent of Google Analytics to monitor the performance of keywords on each page and make data-driven decisions. 

After you’ve got the ultimate set of keywords for each page, incorporate them into the content. Many SEOs suggest using roughly 1 keyword for every 100 words, factoring in about 1% keyword density. This is a secure number and saves your content from being stuffed. 

It’s easy to assume that SEO is solely about keywords and content when it’s equally concerning the website’s user-friendliness and structure. This brings us to our next point.  

Enhance the Overall Website Experience for Users 

Improving the user experience is a broad term. So, it’s vital to break it down further and look into each segment intimately. 

When we are saying enhance the web site experience, it includes – 

• Page performance and user experience, 
• Proper site architecture, 
• Friendly URLs and seamless navigation.  

Let’s begin with the primary point.  

Improve Page Performance and User Experience 

Search engines assess the standard of your site’s user experience. This makes page experience a critical think about SEO because it directly affects the user’s interaction together with your website. A couple of reasons how this factor helps boost SEO are: 

• When a web site gives a positive experience to a user, they’re more likely to engage with the web site and return in the longer term. 
• Websites with Core Web Vitals, like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), are likely to rank higher. 
• Since Google uses mobile-first indexing, it’s a must for your website to be mobile-friendly. 
• Slow-loading pages robotically increase bounce rates, ensuring your page speed is optimized. 
• A great user experience leads to a reduced bounce rate and increased dwell time (dwell time is the time a user spends on the web site after clicking on a search result). 
• Ensure your website is secure (https). 
• Check whether the APIs utilized in the backend are fast and scalable. 
• Don’t load page elements that aren’t critical to the user.

Structure Your Site with a Logical Hierarchy

Site architecture is solely the way in which a web site is organized. From the layout of the online pages to the design elements, a correct site architecture allows users to easily access all content and features of the web site. 

How a web site is organized is very important from the standpoint of a search engine and a user. Let’s have a look at a number of Do’s and Don’ts of site architecture to higher understand website architecture:

Follow the Do’s of Site Architecture 

• Have a blueprint of the web site before developing it and preplan the categories, subcategories, and have pages it must have. 
• Use descriptive and keyword-filled URLs to keep users informed concerning the intent of the page. 
• Leverage internal linking to keep users browsing through your website for a substantial period. 
• Keep a well-listed sitemap (it’s an XML document consisting of records of all) to prevent duplicate content. 
• Ensure to have a logical site structure, i.e., all of the categories and sub-categories ought to be hierarchical. 

Avoid the Don’ts of Site Architecture 

• Creating a site structure with too many categories and sub-categories or too few,
• Using dynamic URLs,
• Using many subcategories under a single category,
• Keeping necessary pages deep inside the hierarchy or using misleading labels,
• Using too many pop-ups or ads.

Once the positioning architecture is sorted, comes the frontend, which incorporates easy navigation and friendly URLs. 

Create Seo-Friendly URLs and Seamless Navigation

Regarding eCommerce SEO strategy, one aspect often missed is the importance of friendly URLs and navigations. These seemingly small details greatly impact the general user experience and SEO of your online store. 

• Friendly URLs are concise, descriptive, and simple to read for each humans and serps. 
• They help users understand what a page is about at a look and make it easier for serps to crawl and index your website. 
• By incorporating relevant keywords into your URLs, you’ll be able to improve the visibility of your pages in search engine results.

In addition to friendly URLs, well-structured navigation plays an important role in enhancing the user experience in your eCommerce website. Clear and intuitive navigation menus enable visitors to easily find what they need, increasing their engagement and leading to more conversions.

A couple of ways to achieve this are mentioned below! 

• Using the HTTP protocol,
• Remembering that filenames and query strings are case-sensitive,
• Being consistent with the way you link your pages, i.e., using either a non-www version or www to ensure just one is submitted to Google Search Console, 
• Keeping the URL slugs short and keyword-oriented with hyphens in between the words,
• Avoiding brackets or commas to facilitate faceted navigation to let users easily find what they’re looking for. 

Enforce Efficient Off-Page Seo Practices 

Yes, good content and keyword optimization are necessary but so are link constructing and back-link generation. While on-page SEO helps with content optimization, off-page SEO is all about tactics to enhance your website’s ability to be found and ranked by serps. 

The query is – what practices do you have to implement?

• Develop and distribute industry-specific resources reminiscent of tutorials, webinars, infographics, or studies that could be linked to natural backlinks or shared on social media.
• Submit your website to relevant, high-quality local and general directories to enhance visibility and acquire authoritative backlinks.
• Employ public relations (PR) announcements to develop links.
• Use press releases to communicate breaking news and events to gain media attention and authority backlinks.
• To increase visibility, interactivity, and potential backlinks, share and promote your pages on social media.
• Use influencer marketing. Collaborating with specialized influencers can aid you reach a broader audience while generating significant backlinks and social shares.
• Participate in industry and community forums, Discord, Slack, and Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
• Contribute, share your thoughts, assist others, and create relationships.
• Attend or sponsor a trade show. Participating at an event can aid you make contacts, gain visibility, and gain backlinks from event web sites and media coverage.
• Set a video marketing strategy, which suggests using videos to promote what you are promoting across multiple channels.
• Begin or be a component of the industry’s live streams and podcasts.
• Create a newsletter to make the most of email marketing.

It’s value noting that off-page SEO practices require time, effort, and strategic planning. So expect it to work after some time. Whether you contact eCommerce agencies to devise these strategies or hire a specialist, off-page SEO is an extended game. 

However, when implemented accurately, these practices significantly boost your website’s organic visibility and improve its probabilities of rating higher in search engine results pages.

Final Words 

Hopefully, you’ll find the checklist informative enough to construct a strong eCommerce SEO strategy. While doing SEO could appear daunting and just like the core of what you are promoting, do not forget that it’s a component of the image and never the whole picture. Don’t hesitate to reach out to SEO agencies that also prosper in content modeling, conversion rate optimization, and frontend performance to construct a technique that garners ends in the long term.