SEO Guide For New Ecommerce Websites

Paid ads are a quick way to push your Ecommerce website to the top of SERP while email marketing brings $45 for every dollar spent. With all this in mind, maybe SEO isn't that important for Ecommerce?

Well, let the statistics speak for themselves:

• 70% of marketing specialists consider SEO to be more effective than PPC advertising
  
  
• The first five organic results get more than 67% of all clicks
  
  
• Websites on the second page get less than 1% of clicks
  
  
• Over 60% of marketers prioritize SEO in their marketing strategy.
  
  

And while the majority of product searches in the USA start on Amazon, search engines are the second place people go to shop. Therefore, those who manage to appear at the top of Google search results surely benefit from their position.

An SEO-friendly website is one that search engine crawlers find easy to index. Here are the main features of such a website:

• Unique titles and meta descriptions on all pages. Meta data is visible on a SERP and can attract visitors or draw them away. Google looks at these data to understand what the page is about and whether it's relevant to the assigned keywords.
  
  
• Descriptive URLs. Permanent links or slugs should be relevant to the corresponding page content and properly formatted (use dashes to separate words).
  
  
• Fast loading pages. According to EduBirdie, 74% of users are not ready to wait more than 5 seconds for a website to load. Google supports this trend, ranking slow-loading websites lower.
  
  
• Unique content. Copying content from other websites is an absolute no-no and can result in removing it from the search for a while or forever.
  
  
• Optimized images. Despite the obvious breakthrough in image recognition introduced in Google Photos, there is no evidence that search engines read website images properly. They still prefer text. Yet, users love images and Google knows that, so make sure all your website visuals have relevant names and ALT descriptions.
  
  
• Structured pages. A web page should have a meaningful structure to make it easier for a reader to scan and grasp what the page is about. Crawlers prefer clear structures too, for which semantic layout is used. That's why most first-page websites follow the header-body-footer pattern, communicate hierarchy, and visually emphasize the meaning of the text.
  
  

The bottom line is: the better your Ecommerce site displays the value of its content to both visitors and Google bots, the more likely it is to get higher rankings.

Just like with the good-old marketing, SEO is never too early to start. So, here are the technical SEO tips for Ecommerce that most experts agree on:

A large portion of SEO involves working with keywords. However, growth is impossible without realizing who your target audience is and what their needs are. Defining a target audience ensures your website gets the right traffic that will result in conversions.

A target audience is people searching for products and services like yours. Knowing what terms they use and optimizing your website to those terms can help you turn them into clients. To define your target audience do the following:

Start with the current demographics. Check Google Analytics (or another tracking tool that you're using) for insights about people who are interested in your products or services. From a CRM, you can get a breakdown of audiences that convert the most (their age, location, language, etc). If you got a following on your social media accounts, chances are your audience is interested in buying from you. Finally, meet with your sales and support teams for even more insights.

Determine search intent. Users search the web for three purposes:

• Informational. This type of queries usually start with "why", "how to" and such.
  
  
• Navigational. These aim to get a user to a certain website or page, e.g. "Walmart".
  
  
• Transactional. These queries are looking to take a specific action and include "buy", "shipping", "online" or specific product names.
  
  

Search around your main keywords and analyze their ranking, what kind of content they offer, note down common themes. All this information should give you hints about what purpose users have in mind when searching for those specific terms.

Survey your customers. The best way to get to know your clients is to talk to them. Use newsletters and social media to ask questions. Then analyze answers and look for trends.

Popular ways to gather feedback are:

• Social media contest
  
  
• Questions on Instagram stories
  
  
• Feedback box
  
  
• Customer satisfaction box on order confirmation page
  
  
• Abandoned cart popup
  
  
• Email surveys
  

You have done this when planning your Ecommerce website, but it's worth taking another look. Besides your direct competitors, who you are trying to outperform in product and service quality, there are also SEO competitors. Let's say you're a sportswear company. Along with the terms "sportswear" and "running shoes", you should rank for "sports" and "football", right?

However, as seen in the screenshot, the competition comes from newspapers. That's why it's so important to monitor keywords search volume and competition for the best ROI.

Make keyword analysis. To determine your SEO competitors, you should go back to your customer persona and once again sketch out topics they could be interested in. Next, use a keyword planning tool to see how competitive the keywords are and which ones will bring more ROI. Then you can perform a basic search on Google and the first SERP with your chosen keywords will show your SEO competitors.

On the screenshot below, you can see how the Serpstat Keyword Research tool shows the level of competition for each keyword (KW difficulty), the volume of monthly searches, cost per click, the number of results in SERP for the keyword and domains that rank for that keyword.

Competitor keyword analysis helps to answer three main questions:

• How difficult is it to rank for the chosen keyword?
  
  
• What keywords do your competitors rank for which you don't?
  
  
• What keywords neither of you rank for but you should?
  
  

By determining overly competitive keywords, you can strip them out from your keyword list and save resources. Next, having analyzed gaps, you can start ranking for new keywords and try to outperform your competition by better covering niche topics.

Analyze backlinks. Websites at the top of SERP have amazing backlink profiles. You can use your favorite competitor analysis tool to find out where they get their backlinks from and tweak your own backlink strategy.

As a new website, specialising on a narrow market may seem odd. You want to expand your client base as much as possible to get profit quicker. However, focusing has some solid benefits like being able to become an expert, lower client expectations and more effective marketing. Which in summary will give your increased profits.

Here is a strategy for picking a niche for your new Ecommerce website:

• Find where websites with lower domain ratings are ranking. Look for keywords that bring new and weaker websites to the top of Google SERP.
  
  
• Find an area with lots of traffic and topics that you could cover. Look for low-competition keywords that have decent search volume. Usually, these are long-tail keywords (3+ words). If you can find 10 or more keywords that meet the above criteria, that might be your niche.
  
  
• Look where profitable products are selling. Now that you've found an area with not too many Ecommerce websites to better, and with a lot of topics to write on, you should make sure there is any money. Conduct a niche analysis to see if anyone sells products like yours. If there are few, you might want to consider looking for a different niche.
  

Adam Berry, a digital director at Wingard Creative, said: "Great hosting boils down to the 3 S's: speed, support and security."

Depending on your expertise — and budget — you can choose from managed and unmanaged types of services. With a managed service provider, you can fully delegate your Ecommerce website configuring, backing up, patching and managing security issues. An unmanaged type requires more hand-holding, though you have support agents to assist you.

Next, you should estimate how much traffic you expect. For a website that is going to feature at the top of Google one day, pick a dedicated or cloud-based server. This way you won't find your website crashed amidst surging sales.

Get to know server types. A VPS (virtual private server) is well-suited for online stores, providing excellent reliability and security. The downside: running a website on VPS requires a substantial share of server maintenance and management skills. Also, hosting providers tend to run several VPS instances on one box. That means your website's performance may be affected as websites in your box scale.

Probably the best option is a cloud server, albeit pricey. It offers unlimited configuration suits and lets you scale endlessly without any rebuilds. The more you need, the more you pay.

Don't get locked to your host. Make sure you can change your hosting provider, just in case. Do regular backups so that, when the moment comes, you can just load all your files to a new provider's service.

For the same reason, it's recommended that you own your domain name.

Popular web hosting providers in 2021:

Hostinger. This hosting provider is known for its low prices. In fact, their pricing starts from $1.39/month which is the lowest in the market.

Hostinger has great WordPress, WooCommerce, Drupal and others onboarding, is available for Windows and Linux, and provides 24/7 support in many languages. The uptime is 99,99%, page loading speed is more than decent, and it comes with a free website builder.

Most reviews found online note reliable servers' performance, intuitive interface and excellent customer support. The pricing has some tricks that are not evident at the first glance though. Thus, if you want to take advantage of their $1.39 per month deal, you have to commit to Hostinger for 4 years. Also, their policy provides refunds only if a new domain was cancelled within four days after registration.

Overall, if you are new to website building and ready to commit to a hosting provider for years, Hostinger is a very appealing option for an Ecommerce website.

Bluehost. This is another solid choice for Ecommerce website owners on a budget. It comes with all the basic Ecommerce functions like content distribution, built-in brandmover and security package. Right after you set up your account, you're offered a detailed website building checklist, which is a feature unique to Bluehost. In addition, it is super user-friendly for newbies with their website builder, 24/7 support, extensive analytics, and SEO tools.

Oddly enough, Bluehost doesn't specify its uptime. User reviews found on the web report 99,94% uptime which is actually quite good.

On the cons side, you won't find a monthly payment plan from Bluehost. The minimal hosting plan is for 12 months. Additionally, some users complain about support being sluggish

Nexcess. This managed host is suited for Ecommerce. They serve an amazing list of platforms including Woocommerce, WordPress, Magento, Drupal, BigCommerce and more. Additionally, they offer Nexcess Cloud Accelerator that can improve your website's loading time.

Their pricing plans offer quite a variety too.

Nexcess doesn't specify its uptime, but customer reviews don't express any concerns about this matter. What they do mention is excellent support, lots of freebies and advanced security features. So if you're positive that your Ecommerce website is to grow fast, you should definitely consider this hosting provider.

Different content management systems (CMS) are better suited for different purposes. A CMS can be a handy assistant or a money-eating source of irritation. It also determines the number and types of features on your website, design possibilities and even Google rankings.

There is no perfect CMS. At that, common requirements for Ecommerce websites entail:

Simple management. A CMS for Ecommerce should not rely on developers heavily. Your focus should be on techniques that increase web traffic, not on technology. The common core functionality for many Ecommerce stores includes:

• On-page categorization
  
  
• Content tagging
  
  
• Publishing and unpublishing option
  
  
• Videos and images adding
  
  

Scalability. Your CMS should grow together with your business so you don't have to rebuild everything every once in a while. The following functions will be helpful:

• Creating new categories and products
  
  
• Staging to check how changes can affect your website performance without actually impacting it
  
  

Multiple content options. As a new Ecommerce store, textual content supported by visuals and videos may seem more than enough. Yet, as you grow, you will want to explore new possibilities for customer engagement. AR, VR, virtual assistants are just a few promising forms of content currently existing in the market. You may want to inquire if your CMS provider plans for introducing tools for managing these structures. Who knows what Ecommerce will look like in several years.

Multiple programming languages. Some CMS systems run on one type of code creating the need for programmers specialized in that specific type of CMS. This can bring many headaches, so it's better to pick a CMS that offers a choice. The most popular programming languages are:

• C#
  
  
• Java
  
  
• Python
  
  
• PHP
  
  

Outstanding internal support. If a platform isn't available when you need it, it is useless. Choose a CMS that is supported by a resourceful team 24/7. Other support features to look for are:

• Live chat support
  
  
• Phone calls availability
  
  
• The amount of support provided with each package upgrade
  
  

Intuitive interface. It would be demotivating to spend lots of money on training and then realize your CMS doesn't actually do what you want it to. In terms of content management, most CMS solutions come with either of the two options:

• Classic editor allows you to add, delete and edit content.
  
  
• New generation editor tops it off with the ability to manage website design. For instance, it can be marking headings and altering on-page blocks' size to fit content.
  
  

Integrations. You might not consider it now, but the benefits of CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) and other communication and personalization software continue getting discussed. Make sure your CMS allows easy integration with most third-party content management tools, just in case. Look out for:

• Social plugins
  
  
• Email marketing tools
  
  
• Drag and drop plugins
  
  
• SEO plugins
  
  
• Heatmap extensions
  

Popular CMS platforms in 2021:

WordPress.org. Originally meant for blogging, WordPress has expanded to provide tools for pretty much any kind of business. It requires no coding skills as you can choose from thousands of pre-built themes and plugins. And if you want to move to a different CMS, you only have to download all your content in XML format. Furthermore, it is very well-suited for SEO optimization.

On the cons side, you have to set up your own hosting and domain name. Also, backups and security are all on you.

Sitecore. This is a cloud-first platform that combines content creation with marketing. It allows the creation and update of objects across all channels, which is, actually, a feature of a headless CMS. What's more, Sitecore has digital marketing tools marketers can use to collect customer data and personalize their strategies. So, if your business is heavily customer-centric and you aim to provide rich experiences, this CMS is for you.

In short, analytics is a practice aimed to evaluate your website performance and track how the changes you make affect traffic generation. Lead tracking software and analytics tools like Serpstat, Google Analytics (GA), Google Tag Manager (GTM) and others allow you to know how Google sees your website. With them, you gain access to tons of information regarding who visits your page, how they find and use it. You can utilize this data to see what keywords are the most beneficial to optimize for, what sources are linking to your website, the most linked content and more.

Often, SEO specialists combine data from several tools. Thus, Serpstat will help you monitor your position in terms of visibility and perform SEO audits, and with GA, you can identify pages that bring the most traffic.

Keywords are the pillar of SEO. Users search for products, services and information using certain phrases and you want to know those phrases to make your website visible in a relevant search. You will use your keyword list to create website categories and decide on pages hierarchy; looking at keywords' search volume, you'll be able to determine the best niche for your Ecommerce website, find content topics and see when it's time to make changes into your entire SEO strategy.

Make a list of topics you want to rank for. Come up with 5-8 topics that are important for your business. Try to think as a potential customer: what words would you use to search for information on those topics? Then type them into the Serpstat Keyword Research tool and look at the monthly search volume. The more searched the term is, the more important the topic seems to the audience.

For example, someone selling leather bags might want to try the following keywords:

• handmade leather bags
  
  
• leather bags made in USA
  
  
• leather tote bags
  
  

Brainstorm related keywords. Think of related phrases that someone would use when conducting deeper research on a subject. Say, your general topic was "women's bags". In this step, your list may look like this:

• women's messenger bags
  
  
• women's leather purses
  
  
• big handbags
  
  
• etc.
  
  

Analyze user intent. Try to type keywords from the previous step into the search bar and see whether the result is relevant to your intent. Often, the same word can rank for different things and your promotional effort may go in vain due to irrelevant competition.

Thus, having typed "bags" in the search engine search menu, you can get information about:

• chanel bags
  
  
• money bags
  
  
• diaper bags
  
  
• under eye bags
  
  

Search for related terms. Google shows these at the bottom of the SERP. Also, Serpstat provides related keywords ideas so you don't have to search manually.

After you made a list of all possible keywords, use Google Keyword Planner to estimate volume and traffic and cut your list down to those with the best ROI.

An Ecommerce website architecture is a way you set up navigation, product pages and categories. The main purpose is to ensure your website visitors get the most relevant content in minimal clicks. An unofficial rule is that a visitor should be able to get to any page on a website in no more than 3 clicks.

Also, the better the structure, the easier the website is for a search engine bot to crawl. This increases your chances of high ranking. Each page on a website has to take a visitor to another page and so on without any dead ends. Pages that do not link anywhere are hard for a search engine to crawl. Also, search engines look at the number of internal links at a page to determine its importance.

Look at what's already working. Look at how your competitors organized their websites, sectioned them and did internal linking.

Remember that a selling Ecommerce website design is the one that solves a customer's problem. Depending on needs, customers can be broken in three categories:

• People looking to resolve a problem
  
  
• People comparing options
  
  
• People who decided to make a purchase
  
  

You can combine manual research with SEO tools to get a better idea of what pages and keywords rank the best in search.

Choose the right keywords. A defined website structure makes it easier to understand what keywords you should choose for which page. Thus, pages that sit higher in your structure (have more internal links) are automatically considered more important in terms of ranking, so you'll want to enhance that by optimizing for your main target keywords. For pages that sit lower, better use secondary keywords. Note that for a multilingual website, you need to make a separate keyword list for each language.

Create pages' categories. Unless your Ecommerce website offers just a couple of products, you'll probably want to categorize all the items you sell. Besides making it easier for visitors to find the product of interest, categories improve your chances of higher ranking since people tend to search for general items rather than individual products. For instance, Nike running shoes is a more searched term than Nike Pegasus Trail 3.

To come up with relevant categories, think of terms that best describe each group of your items and check with your keyword list. Then do the same for subsections and separate pages. If you're going to have filtering options, think about how those filters will be implemented and in what combinations. Don't forget that your website will grow and you'll have to add new categories and pages.

An example of an Ecommerce website with a good structure is TheSmootheStore. They have clear categories listed out on their main page. Those categories are always visible so a user can switch to another one in just one click. Also, many subcategories have related internal links, making sure all of the website pages are interconnected.

On the other hand, look at Blinkee. This is a Halloween decorations store but nothing else is clear at first glance. There are some product categories at the top right, offering filtering by new items, color, theme and some more. Yet, what if a customer wants a specific thing like a mask? They would have to scroll through all the non-blinking items in the store to find some.

Internal linking. Now that you have a clear structure before your eyes, work on connecting pages with internal linking. Not only will that enhance your website navigation but also help crawlers index your entire website faster. In terms of SEO, internal linking spreads the link juice more evenly throughout the website, helping new pages gain visibility.

You can link pages based on their importance in terms of traffic attraction and sales. The more valuable the page is, the more links should point to it.

Today almost 80% of all purchases are made via mobile devices. On top of that, Google has been utilizing mobile-first indexing meaning that mobile versions of websites are given a priority. Thus, for an Ecommerce site, looking good on a mobile device is a must.

Navigation. To optimize your website for mobile, make navigation super simple and straightforward. Make sure your Ecommerce website has the following:

• Search engine
  
  
• Product comparison tool
  
  
• Product catalog
  
  

Another good practice is to choose several most important categories for the header and hide secondary elements under a hamburger menu.

Be careful with JavaScript. Avoid using JavaScript for your entire website. It doesn't look good on most mobile devices due to complexity. Furthermore, search engines often struggle to index pages made with JavaScript which may affect rankings.

Aim for simple looks. Mobile devices are small, so you have to choose carefully what you want to emphasize. Usually, it's content that brings the most value, so invest in creating quality, well-formatted and structured pieces of information. Focus on:

• High-resolution images
  
  
• Client testimonials
  
  
• Clickable visuals
  
  
• Autocomplete function in the search bar
  
  

Cut distracting elements. Since mobile devices are limited in screen space, use flash designs and pop-ups carefully (or avoid them altogether). Make sure the following elements do not interfere with the buyer's journey:

• Social media sharing buttons
  
  
• Recommended items
  
  
• Live chat invitations
  
  

All these are valuable tools to help indecisive customers make their mind, but use them sparingly. Also, make sure your calls to actions are properly sized and located before the fold.

Implement support. Mobile devices users are accustomed to getting fast solutions, so don't reserve your communication channels to a "Contact us" page. Instead, integrate social media icons and consider using live chat. This will help against bounces, and Google favors websites that grab visitors' attention for long. To avoid slowing down your website with external scripts, choose a lightweight option from a broad choice of live chat vendors on the market.

To make your website load in a blink of an eye, compress your images and think twice before adding another plugin or add-on. A simple design also helps to keep the website "lightweight", so one more reason to go minimalist.

To check your Ecommerce website's load time, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights or one of the many online testers. Some of them can even give tips on how to increase your load speed.

A sitemap is a list of all URLs and their hierarchy that helps search engine crawlers keep track of all your pages. Depending on your targeted search engine, there are different instructions on what a sitemap should contain. The general advice is to keep the more important pages in terms of target traffic attraction closer to the main page. The deeper down the page is, the harder it is to rank for the main keyword.

After you have organized your Ecommerce site's pages, it's time to code URLs with XML tags. Each URL should have data about location, last changed date, change frequency and page priority. It requires a bit of HTML knowledge and is convenient to do with one of the text editors for coding.

As a result, each of your URLs should look like this:

As you're done, add your sitemap to the root folder of your website and robots.txt file. This will show Google you added a new page to your website.

Finally, go to Google Search Console and add your sitemap to let the search engine know your website is ready for indexing.

A catchy snippet is crucial in terms of visitors' attraction. Speaking of SEO, well-crafted titles and meta descriptions increase CTR (click-through-ratio) of a page that positively impacts its ranking.

If you don't clarify your meta data to Google, it will be generated based on what's found on the corresponding page. As a result, the snippet may appear incomplete and unattractive to visitors:

What's more, you can increase your click-through-rate with rich snippets that feature images, reviews, extra links, etc:

So, make sure all of your pages have their own unique meta descriptions and title tags that do not exceed the dimensions of the snippet box (up to 920 pixels) which is between 120 to 158 characters). A good idea is to include a target keyword along with a strong call-to-action.

A URL is another way to describe on-page content to both visitors and search engines. Therefore it should be accurate and enticing.

To make your URLs SEO-friendly, make sure one can easily say what the page is about just by looking at the URL. For this, feature your target keyword at the beginning of the URL, separate words with hyphens and make sure the URL is not too lengthy.

Watch the number of folders used in a URL and cut them as much as possible. Also, a frowned-upon practice is to use uppercase letters in a URL since that may lead to duplicate pages.

The listed tips can (and should) be implemented before you launch your new Ecommerce website. Always test your website and work with your team to make necessary improvements.

Effective content marketing can help you market your brand. How-to content, video tutorials, blogs are a great way to add more traffic and increase the likelihood of conversions.

To make it work, don't forget about SEO essentials. SEO optimized content is the one that search engines find easy to understand and connect to your target topic. It has:

• Clear headlines and subheadings
  
  

Apart from making your text easier to read, a clear structure helps crawlers understand which parts are the most important and stick with it when comparing the context with the page title, meta data and what your entire website is about.

• Links to previous content
  
  

Internal links are the way to drive traffic to the page. If you want your post to rank higher, you need to link to it multiple times.

• Keywords
  
  

Come up with a list of keywords before you start writing your content. Feature them in headings, title and meta description.