How to SEO optimize your ecommerce website (8 Tips)
[MUSIC PLAYING] ALAN KENT: So you want
your e-commerce website to be number one
in search results. Go for it. The challenge is, is so
does your competitors. Hi, my name is Alan Kent. And I'm a developer
advocate at Google. In this episode, I introduce
some basic SEO tips, particularly relevant
to e-commerce. These tips are not a
guarantee of success. But they will help you get
started on your SEO journey.
SEO, or Search
Engine Optimization, covers actions you take to
improve the ranking of your web pages in search results. You can have different
goals when you tackle SEO. For example, a website
that earns revenue from showing ads typically
wants to increase the volume of site traffic. However, for e-commerce,
a more common goal is to increase sales. A large number of visitors
that do not make a purchase is less useful than a
smaller number of visitors that do make purchases. Similarly, think
about which products you want to drive traffic to. Do you want to drive traffic
to fast-selling products in the hope of
getting return visits, or to products with a
higher profit margin? There is no single best
answer for all sites. Such considerations come
from your business strategy. It is, however,
important to think through your goals
for your own site so that you measure and optimize
your support for your business goals.
In this episode, I share eight
SEO tips for e-commerce sites. But there are many
more great resources on Google Search Central. Check out the video description
for additional links. Let's dive in. The first tip is to nail
the technical basics. Maybe you've developed a
great content strategy. But you're not getting
the traffic you expected. The first step is to
make sure you have the technical basics in place. For example, if Google
cannot crawl your website, it does not matter how
great your content is. One great tool to find
technical issues on your website is Google Search Console. There are a number of
reports available reporting on a range of potential
issues on your site. To address issues on your
site, follow the advice given by Google Search Console. If there were issues
with individual URLs that you have since fixed,
use the URL inspection tool to check to see if issues
have been fully resolved. Also, if you control the
URL structure of your site, make sure your URLs
and internal linking are friendly to crawlers. Check out designing
a URL structure for e-commerce websites
on Google Search Central for advice on how to
design URLs for your website.
If your platform
does not give you control over the structure of
URLs on your site, don't worry. Many common platforms take
care of these issues for you. Next, it is worth checking
details, such as page titles. Consider including the
details in the title, such as the brand name
and the color of products, so that the title provides
useful information to shoppers and clearly distinguishes
between different products on your site. The page titles are used as a
basis for the title links shown in search. You may also consider adding
structured data to your web pages to ensure Google
correctly understands the purpose of each page. For example, there
is structured data for describing products
on product pages that can help Google understand your
product attributes with greater accuracy. Again, check out
Google Search Central for advice on adding structured
data to your web pages.
Final, review the remaining
e-commerce guidelines on Google Search Central
for additional techniques. There are many considerations,
such as whether to keep out-of-stock products
listed on your site. And if so, how to inform
Google that they are currently not available for purchase. Product pages are an
obvious choice to optimize. You want shoppers who
are ready to purchase to find a product on your site. But what else? Tip number two is
to have content relevant to users at different
stages of the shopping journey.
For example, your homepage
may be a great landing page for a shopper who wants
to buy a photography gift, but does not know
what to buy yet. Your home page often
describes many products you have in stock, along
with special offers. Category pages allow you
to get more targeted, describing areas you
have a range of products in, for example, bags to
hold photography equipment. Rather than products, shoppers
early in their shopping journey may be looking for advice on
how to pick the right product. Product reviews may be more
important to such shoppers. Providing useful
resources for shoppers may also help increase the
recognition and reputation of your website. To check the breadth and
quality of your site, think about likely searches by
shoppers at different stages in their shopping journey.
Once you have set a
queries, try them out. Does your site come
up well positioned? What about your competitors? Also check the Search Console
performance report for queries where your site is being shown. This may help you understand
where you are doing well and where you are not. Once you've determined
a set of queries that you want to rank
well for, analyze sites that rank
higher than your own to see what inspiration
you can draw from them. What gaps exist
in your own site? How can you fill out your own
unique story, so you stand out from the crowd? If you find product pages are
struggling against competitors selling the same
products, consider writing your own
product descriptions in a way that is
unique to your site. This can help you capture
different search traffic than your competitors. In summary, develop your
own content strategy, try it out, measure
its effectiveness, then continue to
refine and adjust to help create your
own distinctive voice for your site.
The third tip is to make
sure you mark up your product variant pages correctly. Product variants are when
you have multiple colors or sizes of the same product. Informing Google
of the relationship between product pages can
help Google better understand your site content. To look for issues,
Google Search Console can be used to explore the
relationship between pages and their levels of traffic. The URL inspection
tool can also be used to check the status
of individual pages. On your site it is recommended
to give each product variant a unique URL. For example, add
query parameters to hold the product
color or size.
Then select one of the variants
to be the canonical variant. All variants should include
the URL of the canonical page to help Google understand the
relationship between the pages. Finally, check that the
canonical page includes text describing all of
the variants available, such as all colors and sizes. This could be using text
in the product description, such as, this product is
available in green and blue. But it can also be as simple as
having a color swatch on a page to let the user change the
color with alt text describing each color choice in text. This is so the canonical
product variant page will match searches for all
of the variant colors and sizes a user may try. There are also a
number of sales events that occur on a recurring
basis, such as Mother's Day. Tip number four is
to make sure you reuse the same URL across
all event occurrences, rather than introducing
a new URL for each event.
This can help Google
correctly understand and trust the purpose of such pages. To identify problems, check
the URL for promotional event pages on your site. Sorry, there are no
automated tools for this. For example, avoid
URLs that include the current year in the path. Once you've picked a URL
for a promotional event, remember to reuse the
same URL each time. After the event, consider
leaving the page up with a summary of
previous offers or describing products that are
likely to be on sale next time.
For example, for
Mother's Day, you may include a number of
traditional Mother's Day gifts that you sell. Update the page before
each event with the current offers, but keep the page alive
and in Google indexes all year round, rather than
waiting for Google to find and index a new page each time. Tip number five is performance
of web pages matters. Performance is obviously
important to users, as a page that takes
too long to load may be abandoned by the user.
Performance is so important
that user experience has also been made a Google ranking
signal, influencing the ranking of pages in search results. This can be
particularly important if you use a same
supplier-provided product description as other
sellers online. If two product pages have
the same textual content, page speed may be
the factor that decides which page comes
first in search results. The page speed insights
report is a useful report for checking the
performance of a web page. You can provide the URL
of one of your pages. And it performs a number
of lab tests on the page, as well as displaying field data
from the Chrome user experience report for your
page, if available. You can also use tools
like Google Analytics to measure the
performance of your pages. The page speed insight
report includes a list of potential problems
it identifies on your site. It also includes a
list of recommendations on how to address the problems. You can also check
out the other episodes in this series for advice
on specific topics, such as image and
JavaScript optimization.
OK, so you've been
following Google's SEO advice for a few weeks now. But you've not
seen much benefit. What's next? Tip number six is, wait
for it, to be patient. SEO, unfortunately,
is a long game. Some ranking signals may
take many months to change. Worse, there is no
guarantee of success. The HTTP Archive reports
that approximately 20% of the website in archives
support e-commerce. That means there is a lot of
online competition out there. Google Search Console,
as previously described, is the best tool to check
that your content on your site is being indexed
correctly without errors. It can also be used to
explore traffic to your site. If traffic is
trending upwards, that may be a positive sign
you're on the right track. It can take months to reap the
benefits of a content creation strategy.
But that does not mean there is
nothing you can do until then. Think about how to diversify
your site traffic sources. Do you have a
marketing campaign? Are you active on social media? Do you have an email newsletter? Have you approached
independent reviewers to review products on your site? If you also have
a physical store, do you have signs
or pamphlets that link to your online presence
with URLs or QR codes? As well as the additional
direct traffic, authentic external links to your
site can improve your ranking. If you have done your
best to improve your site, but are still not getting
the results you want, tip number seven is to
seek professional help for your website. There are many
agencies available that provide expert SEO advice.
Beware, however, of
schemes that claim to improve your ranking
by paying them to create more links to your site. Artificially linking
to pages on your site goes against Google
quality guidelines and may have negative
repercussions on your page rankings. Still here? Great. Let me finish with my
ultimate tip for SEO. Remember, it's all
about the user. The ultimate goal
for Google search is to put the best
possible content in front of users performing a search. Algorithms change over time. But the ultimate goal does not. This does not mean
you should not measure your site's performance. It is still
recommended to make use of tools such as Google Search
Console and Google Analytics to collect data on your site. But think about changes
to help your customers rather than focusing on Google
search results specifically. For example, check the bounce
rate of pages on your site. If users land on a page but
do not stay on your site, it may be worth reviewing
your content strategy. Maybe you're attracting
the wrong sorts of users with your current content. The best strategy is to
create content and experiences that best serves your customers.
Rather than think
about Google-specific ranking algorithms that
seem to work at the moment, build your content strategy
around serving your customers and let Google worry
about the search algorithms to find
the best content. This may involve checking what
typical customers are searching for or staying on top of
current search trends. Google makes search trend data
available for public access at trends.google.com. As well as textual
content, also make sure you include high-quality
images and videos on your site.
Visual media is increasingly
important on e-commerce sites and the web in general. I hope you found this
episode on SEO tips for e-commerce websites useful
to get you started on your SEO journey. To be informed of new content
as it becomes available, make sure to like and subscribe. Until next episode, take care. [MUSIC PLAYING].
