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How to Improve Ecommerce SEO
Using Competitor and Search Data
An ecommerce website should do more than attract traffic from Google. It should help potential customers find the right products, navigate the store easily, and complete a purchase.
In this article, we’ll look at four practical ways SEO specialists can use Serpstat to research competitors, plan a site structure, evaluate search demand, track rankings, and identify technical issues.
In this article, we’ll look at four practical ways SEO specialists can use Serpstat to research competitors, plan a site structure, evaluate search demand, track rankings, and identify technical issues.
When optimizing an ecommerce website, SEO specialists usually need to answer several questions:
How can Serpstat help your e-commerce business with crucial goals? Let's consider four examples of automating tasks for e-commerce to turn organic search into a more consistent source of qualified traffic and sales.
- Which keywords, content formats, and link-building tactics work in this market?
- Which routine tasks can be automated, including keyword research, site structure planning, technical checks, and rank tracking?
- Which product categories or content areas could help the business expand?
How can Serpstat help your e-commerce business with crucial goals? Let's consider four examples of automating tasks for e-commerce to turn organic search into a more consistent source of qualified traffic and sales.
Build an Ecommerce SEO Strategy with Competitor Analysis
Start by analyzing the websites that compete with you in organic search. This can help you identify successful content and SEO tactics, estimate the level of competition, and better understand search demand in your market.
Keep in mind that your organic search competitors may differ from your direct business competitors. These are the websites that rank for the same commercial and informational keywords as your store.
Keep in mind that your organic search competitors may differ from your direct business competitors. These are the websites that rank for the same commercial and informational keywords as your store.
How to solve this task?
1
First, we must collect a list of relevant competitors, using, for example, keywords that describe your products or services completely. Then, to evaluate their SEO traffic, analyze the keywords they rank for, and search for top pages not only by traffic and search volume in organic search but also by backlinks. This will give you an understanding of what works best for your industry and how to improve your strategy, such as expanding the site structure, pricing policy, etc.
2
Accelerate competitor analysis with SERP Crawling Service. Although you can view analytics for an individual competitor or keyword, API methods and particular API services provide a more comprehensive picture of the entire market. For marketing research, you can collect tens of thousands of keywords and get a set of big data for any region.
- Choose keywords for further analysis and copy them to the clipboard:
- Use these keywords to obtain SERPs via Crawling service in a particular region. Since these domains rank high and are already at the top, we can research their keyword data, structure, and metrics. In order to identify the peculiarities of the business processes and content strategy of the industry leaders, a detailed analysis of the content will be necessary.
So now, we have the top 100 organic search results by keywords "tattoo machine", "tattoo ink" and "tattoo needles", landing pages, meta tags, and structured data usage of market leaders.
Prices for different products are also available in the results:
Prices for different products are also available in the results:
Prices in the snippet in JSON format
These results can help you identify the pages and domains worth analyzing further to understand how competitors generate sales through organic channels with such a pre-made study.
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Start your first project with the help of our specialists.
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Plan an Ecommerce Site Structure with Keyword Data
To build an SEO-friendly ecommerce site structure, you need a comprehensive keyword list that reflects how potential customers search for products, categories, brands, attributes, and related information.
Keyword data can help you plan category and subcategory pages, improve navigation, and connect commercial pages with relevant informational content. For building your good optimized website structure, and setting up your catalogs and navigation, you have to collect the most complete keyword list, which will not only connect you with the target audience but also help convert traffic into sales.
Keyword data can help you plan category and subcategory pages, improve navigation, and connect commercial pages with relevant informational content. For building your good optimized website structure, and setting up your catalogs and navigation, you have to collect the most complete keyword list, which will not only connect you with the target audience but also help convert traffic into sales.
1
Collect keywords using competitors identified earlier within the following reports: Domain analysis — Keywords/Tree view, URL analysis — Keywords, etc. Using this information, we can identify missing categories, subcategories, and content topics based on competitor data. We can benefit greatly from competitor data and thus save time.
Other Domain analysis functionality will help you get a tree-view structure of a competitor's websites, next to the keywords its URLs are ranking for. This approach will also help you provide a more logical internal linking structure on your e-commerce site. With the filtering by position, search volume, or keyword in the URL, it will be easier to get the needed results:
2
Manage keyword research for different search terms and expand the site structure with the assistance of Search suggestions and Related keywords.
This is how we identify a keyword list that will lead to conversions, not just visitors. Use filtering to get more accurate results. If a keyword has high search volume and high difficulty, it will be easier to target more specific long-tail keywords to rank better in organic search.
This is how we identify a keyword list that will lead to conversions, not just visitors. Use filtering to get more accurate results. If a keyword has high search volume and high difficulty, it will be easier to target more specific long-tail keywords to rank better in organic search.
Ready-made samples of keywords from different reports you can copy, export, and collect in one document or send to the Keywords Batch Analysis for more relevant metrics and results from four more search databases (the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). Clustering can be started directly from this report:
Keywords batch analysis report
3
Once the keyword list is ready, use clustering to group queries with similar search results and intent. The resulting clusters can support the creation of new category, subcategory, product, and informational pages. Besides, it's harder to work with e-commerce giants, containing, for example, large electronic components sold through product names with markings, model numbers, SKUs, manufacturer part numbers, and product variants.
To automate this routine, you can start keyword research using clustering from scratch.
To automate this routine, you can start keyword research using clustering from scratch.
Keyword mapping will be beneficial for your project to create clusters and adapt your website to Google's algorithms. A clear keyword map can reduce page overlap, help search engines understand the purpose of each page, and make it easier to optimize categories and product pages for distinct search intents.
Review the clusters manually before using them in the site structure. Remove irrelevant queries, separate keywords with different intent, and avoid creating multiple pages that target essentially the same query. Such analysis will give you the opportunity to:
Review the clusters manually before using them in the site structure. Remove irrelevant queries, separate keywords with different intent, and avoid creating multiple pages that target essentially the same query. Such analysis will give you the opportunity to:
- Restructure clusters and move non-target keywords to separate clusters or delete them;
- Create new pages based on clustering, and prepare technical requirements for your copywriter;
- Build a structure for a new store, based on clustered keyword data:
The ready-made structure of an e-commerce website
Depending on the main task, you can control how your keyword pool is formed by choosing the right cluster type or strength.
When the project is ready, check not only ready groups but also the connection strength between the keywords (how close that search terms are to the cluster's topic on a scale from 0 to 100%) and the homogeneity (the semantic consistency of a cluster, from 0 to 100%), if these metrics are still available in the current interface.
When the project is ready, check not only ready groups but also the connection strength between the keywords (how close that search terms are to the cluster's topic on a scale from 0 to 100%) and the homogeneity (the semantic consistency of a cluster, from 0 to 100%), if these metrics are still available in the current interface.
Keywords clustering indicators
In case you decided to add a blog as an additional category, which might bring more traffic, you can start another clustering project to create a few thematical pages — topic clusters — to tell your reader about questions they are interested in. To easily collect such queries, use the Search questions report.
There are several categories you can focus on:
- Homepage;
- Product category and subcategory pages;
- Product pages;
- Brand pages;
- Promotional and seasonal landing pages;
- Buying guides and educational articles;
- Product comparison pages;
- Video demonstrations and FAQ pages.
Estimate Search Demand for Products and Categories
Demand for ecommerce products may remain stable throughout the year or change significantly by season, location, and customer need. Before creating a new category or launching a campaign, review the search volume trend rather than relying only on the latest monthly value. If you are interested in finding out the search volume dynamic for a particular category over a particular period of time in a particular region, you can use the Search Volume Crawling Service.
1
Collect keywords you are interested in, for example using search terms you want to add as categories to your e-commerce website: tattoo needles, tattoo cartridges, tattoo inks, tattoo blog, tattoo machine, tattoo aftercare, tattoo power supply;
2
Detect a region you want to analyze (in my example, it will be New York City).
3
Use Search Volume Crawling Service or available keyword trend data to compare demand by month and region. This can help you identify seasonal peaks, prioritize categories, and plan content or landing page updates before demand increases:
In this example, the data indicates that interest in "tattoo aftercare" remains relatively stable but increases during spring and summer.
If your website is already running and you want to compare demand to different categories, using competitors' sites, you can check them via the Rank Tracker and re-optimize specific pages for other terms to rank better.
If your website is already running and you want to compare demand to different categories, using competitors' sites, you can check them via the Rank Tracker and re-optimize specific pages for other terms to rank better.
1
Create a project for the domain, URL prefix, or exact URL. Add target keywords, regions, and relevant competitors to track their positions without spending extra credits (check current pricing terms). Don't forget to use the schedule option to control your project on a daily basis, or weekly/monthly.
2
Use the Positions history report to identify categories or product pages that have lost rankings, remain outside the top results, or perform worse than expected for their target keywords.
3
A full-scale Competitors report will give you more ideas according to brand-new rivals who appeared in the top 20. Revisit pages that are losing visibility or ranking for irrelevant queries.
Identify Technical Issues and Assess Site Health
Slow loading, broken pages, duplicate content, incorrect canonical tags, and indexing issues can affect both organic visibility and user experience. These problems are especially common on large ecommerce websites with many categories, filters, product variants, and frequently changing pages.
Using the Serpstat website SEO audit tool, you can not only control the performance of a page but also get suggestions on improvements. Considering the scale of an e-commerce site, this analysis will save you a lot of time.
Using the Serpstat website SEO audit tool, you can not only control the performance of a page but also get suggestions on improvements. Considering the scale of an e-commerce site, this analysis will save you a lot of time.
The main issues across the site can be speedily examined with the Page audit tool:
To run such a technical audit, insert the URL and start the analysis.
- HTTPS and security issues;
- Titles, descriptions, and H1 tags;
- Broken internal links;
- Redirect chains;
- Duplicate pages and meta tags;
- Canonical tags;
- Image optimization;
- Structured data;
- Crawlability and indexability;
- Page performance.
To run such a technical audit, insert the URL and start the analysis.
When reviewing performance issues:
1
Compress and properly size product images;
2
Remove or delay unnecessary third-party scripts, and minify CSS and JavaScript where appropriate;
3
Use browser caching and a content delivery network, and reduce render-blocking resources;
4
Check page templates on both mobile and desktop.
Performance changes should be tested before deployment, as aggressive script changes may affect ecommerce functionality, analytics, checkout elements, or product filters.
Conclusions
Improving ecommerce SEO requires more than increasing organic traffic. You also need to connect relevant search queries with the right category, product, and informational pages while maintaining a clear site structure and good technical health.
Competitor research can reveal market opportunities, keyword data can support the site structure, demand trends can improve planning, and regular audits and rank tracking can help identify problems before they significantly affect visibility.
Automation does not replace SEO analysis, but it can reduce repetitive work and give teams more time to review data, prioritize opportunities, and improve the shopping experience.
Competitor research can reveal market opportunities, keyword data can support the site structure, demand trends can improve planning, and regular audits and rank tracking can help identify problems before they significantly affect visibility.
Automation does not replace SEO analysis, but it can reduce repetitive work and give teams more time to review data, prioritize opportunities, and improve the shopping experience.
Related cases:
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