2.71 billion people worldwide are expected to shop online in 2024. This is more than ever before, but with over 5.6 million merchants now active on Shopify, how can you get noticed? You’ll be happy to know that the answer is not spending hundreds of thousands on Google ads. With the right SEO strategy, you’ll have traffic flying in in no time. Stay tuned for our four ultimate tips to get visitors onto your e-commerce site.
1. Internal Linking
Internal linking refers to hyperlinks pointing from one page to another on the same website. When a user clicks on an internal link they are taken to a different page on your website – it’s as simple as that. For example, we often place internal links in our blogs to our case studies page so users can get a better understanding of our work. Or, more often than not, we’ll include an internal link to a topically relevant blog or service page to support the user journey and build topical relevance.
It has a whole host of benefits, helping to increase traffic, improve indexability, and boost sales. Internal linking is crucial for any website, but especially so for e-commerce sites. Let’s get more into why this is…
Why Is Internal Linking Important For E-commerce Sites?
Internal linking is a massive help when it comes to improving user experience. As a user yourself, think back to a recent experience with e-commerce. It may not even occur to you that online shopping is quite so easy (often too easy!) because of the ease of use provided by things like internal links. No one wants to be searching high and low for that red v-neck top they’re after. Internal linking greatly improves the site’s navigation and helps your customers move between pages. Of course, this is especially important for e-commerce websites which often have a vast number of product pages and category pages.
Just look at this screengrab from Next’s website; they stock over 10,000 women’s clothing items but their combination of image and textual internal links here makes things nice and easy for the user.
Internal linking doesn’t just help out the user, it’s also super beneficial for search engine crawlers. Through internal links, Google can better understand the structure and hierarchy of your website and connect topically-related pages, helping the algorithm to discover and crawl each page. Why should you care about indexability? Well, the more pages crawled, the more traffic and potential conversions!
Another element contributing to getting those pages ranked is link equity. This term refers to the value passed between pages within a website. Essentially, internal linking spreads the love – ensuring that all those little product pages get the attention they deserve from search engines.
Lastly, internal linking can be deployed to highlight key features on an e-commerce website. I’m talking sales, promotions, reviews, new collections etc. With effective graphics and copy, these links will draw attention and prompt users to click through.
2. Content Marketing
When developing an SEO strategy for any domain, the importance of content cannot be underestimated. Get your content marketing right and the merits are endless: backlink potential, boosted traffic, increased click-through rates, improved customer experience – the list goes on.
If you’re dealing with an e-commerce site you should focus first and foremost on your product and category pages. These have the most impact on customer experience, and the most value for revenue. Despite this, many online stores tend to neglect these pages, adding minimal content because it is a time-consuming task for a big e-commerce site.
However, prioritising your product and category page content is a great way to get a leg up against the competition. Researching and implementing your keywords onto these pages is a hugely effective way to scale the SERPrankings. Below you’ll see the content on a product page from Hayes Garden World – who knew there was so much to write about a garden bench!
Once your product and category pages are updated and optimised with useful text and quality images, turn now to strategic content. This is your longer-form content such as buying guides and blog articles, covering topics like ‘how to use’ your product, or ‘aftercare for’ your product.
This is a great place to target related long-tail keyword traffic for raising brand awareness; providing additional insight could also help to sway your customers’ buying decision. It showcases the site as an expert in its field which, if we consider Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, cannot be overlooked! By developing this two-part content strategy you’ll successfully target different levels of the funnel and boost sales. To return to tip 1, strategic content is also a fab place to stick your internal links. Lure users in with helpful blog content then send them over to your key conversion pages.
As an example, here’s how we’ve been implementing industry blogs into New Millenia’s content strategy to target relevant long-tail keywords, and drive engagement that’s useful to their users.
3. Focus On User Experience
User experience is critical for e-commerce SEO because Google prioritises websites that offer a satisfying and accessible experience to users – leading to higher rankings and increased organic traffic. UX and SEO truly go hand-in-hand; here are a few boxes to tick to ensure users have the best time possible on your site.
- ☑️How is your loading speed holding up? You’ll know first hand that there’s nothing more infuriating than a slow-loading website – there are only so many hours in the day! To make sure users stay on your site once they’ve clicked through, improve your loading speed by optimising images or reducing code. For a more in-depth guide to help you brush up on technical SEO, head over to our ‘5 Steps For Conducting A Technical SEO Audit’.
- ☑️Does your website have a user-friendly navigation menu? This makes it easier for people to find what they’re looking for and helps Google out too.
- ☑️How does your site look on mobile? Google has been prioritising the mobile version of domains for indexing since 2019. This means your e-commerce website must be mobile-friendly to even think about ranking!
4. Acquiring Backlinks To Deeper Pages
A final point is the importance of building links to your e-commerce site to help drive organic traffic. Digital PR links are recognised as a good indicator of your site’s trustworthiness, but we’re not just talking about links to your homepage – it’s really worthwhile to secure links to specific landing pages. Pick out key, high-return pages and develop a targeted digital PR campaign to help grow authority within these sections. This will boost the authority of the individual page and bring in more conversions over time. Plus you’ll benefit from link equity again here. The deeper page being linked to will receive a boost in authority, and this will then be passed to connecting pages. Looking for a few top tips to build natural backlinks? See our guide here.
Get Expert Help With Your E-commerce SEO
In the competitive landscape of e-commerce, where copious online stores will be offering similar products, enhancing your visibility in search results is critical. Cedarwood Digital is an award-winning e-commerce agency with extensive experience driving online traffic for large, and small, retailers. If you fancy a chat about our ecommerce SEO services please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
