SEO is always evolving, and this is why it can be so difficult to keep up.  Having a great SEO strategy means constantly trying new things and improving on what you already have. Even though SEO for blogging is pretty straightforward, e-commerce SEO is very different. There is a lot more to think about when it comes to e-commerce SEO, like the additional product and category pages. So, what should you focus on to ensure your e-commerce website dominates search engine result pages and attracts the right customers?

Pick The Right Keywords

Picking the right keywords has consistently been ranked as one of the most important SEO tactics for e-commerce websites. When doing SEO, you should pick the right keywords for your products as well as all your pages. To find the right keywords, research high-volume searches for keywords that you would like to include and make sure that your pages target those keywords.

It is also important to remember that some of your visitors are looking for information about a product while others are looking to purchase the product once they land on your website. Because of this, you should research keywords that serve both intentions.

A good strategy is having targeting keywords that direct users to your website and then finding the right keywords for particular pages and products. Both of these categories of keywords should be directly related to your products or the types of products on your website.

Optimize Your Product Descriptions

A common mistake made by many e-commerce webmasters is using the descriptions that come from product manufacturers. These descriptions are usually not optimized for SEO and because lots of websites selling the same or a similar product might use the same or a very similar description, you end up being penalized for duplicate content by search engines. Additionally, many of these product descriptions are so badly written that they are of no use to buyers.

To avoid both of these problems, write SEO-optimized product descriptions that can help your website rank higher to the buyers who visit your website. Ensure that you organize the content in a way that leads the buyer along and treat the description as an FAQ of everything that a buyer would like to know about the product. The most important questions to answer include how the product can be used, who it is for, and what the buyer can do with it.

When optimizing your product descriptions, you can also try to answer the questions that are answered on Google snippets. If you are able to answer a question with such high visibility, you will increase traffic to your website, which has positive SEO effects for your website.

Do Not Neglect Category Pages

You will likely spend a lot of time optimizing your product pages and end up not putting enough effort into your category pages. Optimizing your category pages gives you the opportunity to target broader keywords that you might not be able to fit anywhere else.

The keywords you chose for your category pages should have a high search volume even when they are not strictly optimized for the search pages they are used on. By using keywords with high search traffic, you will be targeting buyers who are on their buyer’s journey, those looking for something vague, not necessarily those who are looking for a specific item or model.

Additionally, higher-ranking category pages ensure you are sending people to pages you are sure work. This helps you to avoid sending people to pages that might no longer exist, which leads to 404 errors that can tank your rankings. You also avoid sending people directly to pages where products are out of stock, which could increase your bounce rate, thereby affecting your rankings negatively.

Optimize Your Product Photos

Image searches have exploded over the past few years and have become very relevant to Google. Doing proper SEO on your images can lead to a bump in traffic and ranking as a lot of people are directed from image search pages to your website.

Ensure that the meta tags, the file name as well as the alt tags are all descriptive enough so the image can come up when a buyer searches for a relevant keyword. All three of these need to include highly-researched and relevant keywords.

Also, try to keep your image sizes low. Although Google has not confirmed it, research shows that Google often favors images that are smaller.

Improve Your Website’s Speed

The people working at Google have confirmed that your website’s speed does factor into your ranking. Additionally, pages with a faster loading time have been proven to rank higher. Improving your website’s speed, therefore, is not only critical for a good user experience but also for higher rankings.

When doing technical SEO for your e-commerce website, it is important to ensure that your website runs fast and smoothly. Even when you have the best copy and have included all the right keywords in all the proper places, all this will be for nothing if a user closes your website because it loads too slowly.

This poor experience is thought to be one of the reasons why Google “penalizes” pages that run slowly as they aim to make the internet and the pages that are found on their search result pages, faster.

Good Links (Still) Matter

While good, helpful content is important, Google still values great backlinks. Getting good quality links can be challenging, especially for new commerce websites. However, it is still possible to write great content that people will link to.

When writing content that people will want to link to, you need to decide whether you will write about your industry or on related topics. The latter opens up lots of opportunities to write different types of content on varied topics, including those not directly related to your products.

The SEO strategies discussed above can help you improve your e-commerce website’s traffic, sales, and revenue by helping you rank higher on search engine result pages. Because there will be a lot of work that will go into implementing all these tips, you can work on one area at a time and then do additional work when the foundation work is complete.