Ecommerce SEO services: what are they and why do businesses need them? The answers to these questions start and end with the changing world of commerce. After all, the ecommerce industry is booming – with customers increasingly leaning on both online and offline touchpoints.
For businesses, this means designing and creating a cohesive journey across every touchpoint, both online and offline. But how do you ensure that your customers can find you online? And how do you ensure that the experience they receive is consistent across every interaction? In this blog, we explore the value of ecommerce SEO services and how businesses can embrace these services to bolster their online presence in 2022 and beyond.
What is SEO for ecommerce?
Before we consider the importance of ecommerce SEO services to businesses, let’s look at what ecommerce SEO is.
To understand SEO services for ecommerce, you first need a basic understanding of what SEO is and how it works. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It refers to how search engines prioritise results based on the website experience, content, and the search terms used by the consumer.
In ecommerce, SEO is an organic way of putting your online store in the eye-line of your target audience. And by making your ecommerce site visible on search engines, you receive more direct traffic from interested consumers. What you do with those users is up to you; however, SEO provides a leg-up in attracting the right audience.
Why you need ecommerce SEO services
If SEO is simply a case of building your site visibility for search engines, what exactly do SEO services do? After all, if you run a business, then surely you are in the best position to enhance the content yourself?
Ecommerce SEO services deal with a lot more than just the content on your website. With search engines more attuned to user experience than ever before, it’s no longer just about what you sell. It’s about how you sell it, market it, and support the user experience through their whole journey. It is, in short, about your digital strategy.
For many businesses, the customer journey starts well before they reach the website. From email marketing to social media, a well-rounded customer journey can start anywhere. What matters is how that journey ends.
Ecommerce SEO services allow your business to:
- Build a reputable online presence
- Use keywords to attract and engage interest from potential customers
- Position your business as a local solution where relevant
- Deliver solutions to customers in a way that suits them
- Boost online performance and conversion
- Ensure you are competitive in an increasingly digital market
Ecommerce SEO services put you in a position to optimise the digital market and adapt to the changing demands of consumers. With the right services in place, your business can compete in the saturated market and stand out from the crowd.
So, where do you start?
Transparent, fair and flexible pricing options with access to all of our services. Senior experts. Fast turnarounds. Remarkable designs!
What is an SEO audit of an ecommerce website?
If you’ve decided to make a move towards embracing SEO for your ecommerce site, you first need to conduct an audit. This will let you know what position your online presence currently holds and what changes need to be made. An audit considers the various user experiences and journeys to and across your website. The end result is to pinpoint any potential stumbling blocks and obstacles.
Armed with this information, your business can start its move to embrace SEO. And your SEO ecommerce website audit will provide a roadmap of what needs doing and why.
This audit generally involves:
- Traffic to your website across different devices. How many users are landing on your website on a smartphone, laptop, tablet, PC, etc?
- How does the device impact the overall customer experience? Most businesses are surprised at just how high the number of mobile users is – with the SEO audit encouraging them to put more focus on the experience from a mobile device.
- Which website components work well, which are difficult to navigate, and which don’t work at all.
It is crucial to recognise that an SEO audit is not just about finding the website but about the user’s experience once they land on your site. This has become particularly prominent since 2020, when Google launched its Core Web Vitals system to assess search engine rankings. This new working system considers the user experience as much as the keywords and value of the content.
Armed with the results of this audit, your business is ready to move into the SEO services for ecommerce plan.
How to choose the right third-party company
With so many business areas to focus on, you might decide that navigating the minefield of SEO is best left to the experts. For many businesses, outsourcing their ecommerce SEO allows them to focus on the daily running of the business, leaving the digital marketing side to a company.
But how do you find the right company that can quickly and effectively understand your vision?
What to look for in a great company
First thing’s first, SEO is not a quick fix, and it’s not something you can focus on for one month and then abandon for weeks on end. SEO is a long-term solution committed to consistently delivering value to your customer base and keeping up to date with the experience across the whole website. This often requires regular tweaks, updates, content refreshes, and new features.
So, when it comes to looking for a great third-party company, you want one in it for the long run. This means partnering with a company that focuses on strategy, understands your market position, and has ideas to bring you to the top. Most of all, you want a company that can get you to that top spot and keep you there.
Some of the things we advise looking for are:
- Client reviews and testimonials – have clients got good things to say?
- Results, showing conversion before and after the implementation of an SEO strategy
- Does the company work with or have experience with your businesses industry/niche?
- Do they offer bespoke packages tailored around your business need?
For more on exactly which services you should be looking to outsource, keep reading. The following section looks at the top SEO services and why they matter to your business.
Top ecommerce SEO services
With SEO services focusing on ensuring that the right audience finds your website at the right time, the top services are about visibility and communication. But as we’ve already explored, it’s not all in the keywords you use as part of your content strategy. Ecommerce SEO also involves the user experience from start to finish. That means looking at what will put you above the competition.
So, what are the top services for ecommerce SEO, and why do they matter?
1. Optimising Content
This is the mainstay of SEO, as it involves building a content strategy that connects users to the solutions they need. A clever SEO content strategy will improve the quality of each content block and integrate headers, tags, and metadata. At the same time as ticking all of these backend boxes, optimising content means simply attracting readers by sharing genuinely interesting and valuable content.
Make sure each of your product pages has one, unique H1 and a unique meta description. Avoid using templates that insert the same data for each product to maximise search visibility.
2. Keyword Research
While closely linked to content optimisation, keyword research deals exclusively with the terms that will draw in the right audience. Keywords are a big part of what search engines look for, with a regular keyword research strategy introducing businesses to new terms and customer interests. Not to mention, designing a keyword strategy based on competitor success rates can prove invaluable to helping your business compete.
Product pages often lack content. Make sure you fill out your pages with well written descriptions that are informative to visitors and include keywords.
3. Web Design
An ecommerce SEO service strategy is not complete without a great website to match. User experience is heavily reliant on an easy-to-navigate and attractive website, with design playing a pivotal role. For a business looking to increase its online success, ecommerce web design should simplify the customer journey, optimise navigation, and highlight your product or service value.
4. Technical SEO
This service is all about what’s happening behind the scenes of your website. Technical SEO considers the structure and build of your website, looking at site speed and responsiveness. It also focuses on keywords and design, marrying the user experience with the solution that consumers are looking for.
Technical SEO also involves mobile responsiveness, using the SEO ecommerce audit to ascertain the devices commonly used by your consumers. This information then informs your third-party company how the website can be optimised across different devices.
Secure your website with HTTPS: No online store should be running without this certificate as this keeps all your customers personal and payment information encrypted.
5. Link Building
This is an important factor in ecommerce SEO because it establishes your website as credible and reputable. Search engines regard you highly when you can create valuable links between your website and other high-quality websites. Your website is established as providing consumers with the information they need in a reliable and accessible way.
And this doesn’t just work in one direction. Having both inbound and outbound links on other websites will create authority – though this requires high levels of vetting and maintenance. Skip ahead to the final part of this article for a more detailed look at link building and how it works.
6. User Experience
The final service is simple, yet it covers virtually every aspect and touchpoint relating to your ecommerce site. User experience is what will make or break the connection between a website and a user – with long load times, unstable elements and difficult navigation all pushing users away. By focussing on user experience as a service in itself, you benefit from showcasing your business from the first to the last interaction.
7. On-page and Off-page
When it comes to ecommerce SEO, it isn’t just about how many people read about and find your website. It is also important to make sure that every reference is reputable and supports the high-quality experience you are looking to offer.
On-page ecommerce SEO does what it says on the tin, with this service focussing on all the elements that make up your website. Outsourcing your on-page SEO services means that you will be looking for a company to deliver all of the optimisation techniques discussed above, with regular reports on their effectiveness. Most importantly, on-page SEO is consistent and long term, enabling your business website to reach the front of the pack and stay there.
Off-page ecommerce SEO looks at the links you establish away from your website. The more high-quality links you can circle back to your site, the more reputable your business becomes. Not only that, but these links are also achieving the kind of direct and organic marketing that can put your business in the eye line of endless new customers. But despite its benefits, off-page SEO is often overlooked by businesses due to the amount of upkeep required in ensuring each linked page is active and holding its quality. When you work with an SEO service company, off-page SEO turns from a chore to an effective means of outreach.
Increase brand awareness, build trust and drive conversions.
General FAQ
What are ecommerce SEO services?
Ecommerce SEO services make sure that your website is ranking highly on search engines. These services focus on user experience, quality, keyword strategy, and on-page and off-page strategy.
What are the benefits of ecommerce SEO services?
Ecommerce SEO forms a big part of a successful digital marketing strategy. By focussing your business on what search engines want, you attract new customers and rank more highly on search results. The end benefit is that you will, eventually, sell more.
How much do SEO services cost for ecommerce businesses?
SEO services are on the rise with more businesses than ever before embracing the importance and power of online. The cost will depend on the results of your audit and the amount of work involved, as well as the size of your commerce site and the company you work with.
We recommend always getting a few quotes from different companies.
