5 essential elements of an effective E-commerce SEO strategy

1: Mobile friendliness – You can follow all the other tips in this article to the letter, but if your e-commerce site is not optimised for mobile devices it won’t matter. Google will ignore it. You might think that’s pretty harsh, but consider this: the spectacular growth of the internet economy today is driven almost entirely by people using laptops, tablets and most of all, smartphones.

Whereas 12 years ago there was no such thing as a smartphone, today there are more than 5 billion in use. Google (which controls more than 90% of all search activity) knows this and so they changed their search algorithm a few years ago to favour websites that are designed to display quickly, accurately and securely on mobile devices.

2: Effective keyword research – You may not realise it when you search for something but those words you enter into the search box are called “keywords” and they’re big business. Companies are spending vast amounts of money trying to figure out what words you’re using and how they can shape their content to cater to the keywords you enter into the search box.

The company you hire to devise your E-commerce SEO strategy will need to do thorough and effective keyword research to discover the words and/or phrases people search with that are relevant to the product or service you sell. When done right, keyword research can make the difference between seeing a slight uptick in traffic and seeing a dramatic uptick.

3: Optimising the various elements of your website (on-site SEO) – On-site, (or on-page), SEO involves making sure the details of your website and its content support your quest for a higher ranking in organic search results.

Among other things that means choosing effective URLs for your pages (that dovetail with your keyword research), using effective title tags for images, including internal links and, when necessary, external links to authoritative sites. It also means making sure all images are optimised to load quickly and that you use an effective meta description for each page.

4: Off-site SEO – This entails building a web of backlinks to your site that bolster its authority and drive traffic. “Experts” have been predicting the end of backlinks for years yet their relevance fails to diminish.

Examples of backlinking can include everything from guest posting on other sites, to asking customers to leave positive reviews on popular 3rd party review sites and engaging your audience through social media.

5: Local SEO – Google has slowly been shifting the emphasis of their search results to more fully represent local interests. That means that, whereas several years ago if someone searched for “hiking boots” it’s likely that the search results would have been dominated by companies that had nothing to do with your local community.

Today, those search results will likely include prominent links to local companies with brick and mortar stores that sell hiking boots. If you have a brick and mortar location it’s important that the SEO company optimises your site to reflect that.

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