Advanced SEO For E-commerce Websites [7 Best Practices in 2021]

In the last few years, the competition online and in the SERPs has only intensified. For e-commerce businesses to succeed, they must be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their marketing efforts they can continue to improve.

E-commerce is a highly competitive environment. To surpass your competitors, you need to thoroughly optimize your product pages, set up ad campaigns with surgical precision, and stay alert about customer reviews.

We hope you find this data and the insights we’ve gleaned from it to help develop and improve your digital marketing and site development strategies moving forward into 2021.

#1. Mobile-First Indexing

Mobile-first indexing has been a popular topic over the past few months. We’ve seen many articles on the subject discussing how it may impact site appearance in search results.

It’s essential, though, not to confuse mobile-first indexing with ranking — remember the basics of indexing and ranking regarding this topic.

1.1 Indexing vs. Ranking

Search engines perform two main tasks — indexing and ranking. The mobile-first index means that mobile pages will be crawled first, and Google will revert to desktop pages if no mobile page is available.

The factors Google uses to determine search rankings include mobile usability (mobile-friendliness). Mobile-friendly content will be ranked higher in search results when a user is searching on a mobile device — this has been a factor that’s been around since 2015.

Keyword rankings differ based on whether the searcher is using mobile or desktop. This is due to Google ranking factors and roadblocks in their mobile results, such as mobile page speed as a ranking factor and the intrusive interstitial penalty.

1.2 Make sure your site is mobile optimized

If you haven’t already, the first step you need to take is to switch to a responsive website as soon as possible. Other options for optimizing your mobile site include having a separate mobile site, but responsive design is generally recognized as the easiest to maintain.

To check whether your site is currently mobile-friendly, check out Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool.

If you use WordPress to power your website, it can be easily mobile-optimized by using a modern theme and tweaking or hiring one WordPress maintenance service. We recommend 12 here.

1.3 Start thinking mobile-first

With their move to a mobile-first index, Google effectively states that mobile is leading the search. If they haven’t already done so, brands need to follow suit.

Thinking mobile-first doesn’t mean mobile-only. Desktop still has a vital role to play in search and the overall conversion funnel for many industries.

A mobile-first strategy will consider the types of searches typically undertaken on mobile and develop content best suited for those searches.

Google’s micro-moments explain the specific search intent behind different query types and show how this might affect the search results returned in each case.

So start focusing on your eCommerce site’s mobile users. Make them your priority for the year ahead, rather than thinking of desktop as the primary platform. More traffic is coming from mobile devices, and if your site can’t match mobile users’ needs, you’ll lose the sale. Optimize now for mobile-first indexing, and you’ll see your overall site traffic and sales increase as a result.

#2. Ecommerce SERP features

When planning your eCommerce SEO campaign, it’s essential to think beyond standard organic listings. Consumers now expect to see rich content in SERPs, including video, images, local map results, featured snippets, and more.

But there are other SERP features such as featured snippets (around 2.27% of searches) and instant answers (about 2.08%). The data indicates that there are valuable opportunities out there when optimizing an eCommerce site for SERP features.

2.1 Image Packs

Another important SERP feature for eCommerce is images. Around 89% of e-commerce keywords featured images on the SERP, as with the competitors I analyzed.

If you are not ranking in the search’s organic listings, your website can be first within the image pack.

By investing in excellent product photography and correctly optimizing images with keyword-focused alt tags, your images stand a better chance of appearing in the SERP image packs and increasing click-throughs to your website.

2.2 Reviews

For TTS’s target keywords, approximately 32% of search results pages display reviews in this sector in general. Therefore, Hallam knew it was essential to ensure that reviews were implemented on the site and the relevant schema markup.

When trying to boost visibility in competitive SERPs, review rich results on product listings give a website an edge, with positive ratings known to increase click-through rates from the search results.

2.3 Featured Snippets

Alongside image optimization and implementation of reviews, you may focus on featured snippets. Featured snippets appear in position 0 of the search results, and Google selects what they feel is the most helpful content from a web page to appear here as the answer to a question or search term.

Gaining featured snippets is a great tactic for eCommerce sites. In this example, Google has pulled through the headings of the subcategories on the page into a bullet point list: The site appears as a featured snippet for the commercial phrase “school sports equipment” with the relevant category page.

To maximize your chances of appearing for these kinds of high-value, high-volume terms, ensure that your site has clear organized information architecture and that subcategories have concise crawlable text that Google will be able to present as a featured snippet.

SERP features are a fantastic asset when it comes to search. They increase your visibility, authority, and sales. The top results often display various SERP features, with the most common across the globe being reviews, site links, carousel, and images.

#3. Link Building

When deciding which sites to prioritize in the algorithm, Google looks for quality and credibility signs, showing users trustworthy information. Backlinks to your site from quality, high authority domains will indicate that you have credible content and will allow you to rank higher in the SERPs.

Link building can be an important SEO force for eCommerce businesses, gaining user traffic by increasing site authority (and thus their ranking in the SERPs) while also driving direct link traffic.

Constructing this strategy correctly allows you to win the best positions. It makes it easier for your user or client to find the information they’re interested in and construct the best backlink profile, comparing your website with the competitors you have in your niche.

3.1 Top Anchors

When developing your backlink profile, you need to be strategic. Ideally, your backlinks with anchor texts should lead directly to a relevant product or to content that your audience would be looking for. You may not always get to choose how external businesses and publications link to your site, but you can control the links you’re building yourself.

Consider user search intent; that should be the driver for what you’re linking to and when. Developing an intelligent link-building strategy means creating intuitive anchor texts that bring up content relevant to the user’s interest.

Many of the top anchors were call-to-action (CTA) oriented, creating a clickable link where they asked users to take action like “buy now,” “click here,” or “shop,” although the most popular anchor text was “website.”

3.2 Types of Backlinks

Quality backlinks improve your rankings in the SERPs, bring traffic to your site, and help your target audience members discover your site and products quickly and effectively. Most websites put most of their links in text content that can be presented as a product description, in a blog post, or anywhere else.

When we looked at the most popular backlink types, we found that backlinks inserted into text accounted for 93,17% of the backlinks’ total number. The form, frame, and image work for some eCommerce players as they want their clients to find the information differently but still in a user-friendly way.

So, pay attention to your competitors’ tactics and analyze which backlink types are the most represented. By following their example, you will effectively grow and build a diverse backlink profile for your site.

The form backlink is the least represented in the electronics, children, food, furniture, home & garden, sports & recreation, and travel verticals.

3.3 Follow vs. Nofollow Backlinks

There is much discussion about how dofollow and nofollow backlink attributes can impact your position in the SERPS. Follow backlinks are more advantageous overall because they’ll pass “link juice” onto your website, giving you some SEO perks from the other site’s domain authority.

If you’re focusing on link building to increase your SERPs placement, you should prioritize dofollow backlinks. That being said, no follow backlinks from high authority sites can still send you large volumes of quality, relevant traffic.

This is beneficial overall because they will belong to your natural backlink profile. While you can’t control the type or number of backlinks you receive from other sites, there are steps you can take to improve your backlink profile.

Creating original, helpful content on your site is a good step: your audience and industry peers will find this valuable and want to share it, linking back to you in the process. It can be a blog post detailing new strategies, an in-depth tutorial, or an infographic that automatically gets you a follow backlink when people grab the embed code to share it.

Link building can be an essential SEO force for eCommerce businesses, gaining user traffic by increasing site authority (and thus their ranking in the SERPs) and driving direct link traffic.

Constructing this strategy correctly allows you to win the best positions. It makes it easier for your user or client to find the information they’re interested in and construct the best backlink profile, comparing your website with the competitors you have in your niche.

We’ve written many articles on both onsite and offsite SEO and covered everything you need in detail. Here are several of them that will help you do proper SEO:

#4. Technical SEO

Your site must be technically sound. This is a critical component of SEO success.

If a search engine has difficulty crawling and understanding your site, how can it index and serve it to the most relevant people on its results page?  This is particularly true of eCommerce sites due to their sheer size and range of filtering options.

4.1 Page Speed

Page speed is an important ranking factor for two reasons: firstly, it’s essential for search engines, and secondly, it’s important for users (which in turn reinforces its importance for search engines)

To understand how site speed can affect a search engine, it’s essential to know how websites work and how search engines interact with them.

If your server is shared with other sites or has limited capabilities, this will slow down the process by which your site is offered to users. The same applies if your HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code file are clunky or very large. All of these factors will affect how quickly a search engine can load your site for a user.

Overall, this means that the top eCommerce sites have a meager number of slow pages, especially compared with other eCommerce sites, not at the top of their field.

Standards here are high, and the correlation between top sales and top-loading speeds is impactful. Ensure that your site is up to these standards, and look for ways to improve site speed if it isn’t. However, there are still some things to look out for to speed it up.

If you use WordPress to power your website, it’s pretty easy to improve your page speed as many plugins are available. If you’re not a tech person, you can hire a WordPress maintenance company.

4.2 Optimize images

Images are the main culprit for high page load times.

Having a slow website also affects your users: if they’re on a very slow-loading website, they will possibly get frustrated and leave. Bounce rate, average time on page, and other user experience signals of this type all get analyzed by search engines now.

The poorer the user experience on your site and the fewer time people are willing to spend on it, the less likely it is that search engines will rank it. This is why page speed is a ranking factor.

4.3 Canonicalization

A canonical URL tells a search engine that although there might be specific similar URLs on the site, they are the same — you’re not trying to spam the search results with loads of similar URLs, and you’re acknowledging it.

This is a particular risk on eCommerce sites, as there are so many potential variables.  This is why it’s essential to add a rel=canonical tag, or add a canonical link to the HTML of the page, as it will tell search engines that you know that these are all similar pages; however, you would like search engines to only index and serve the main page.

4.4 HTTPS Implementation

The HTTPS protocol essentially protects the integrity and confidentiality of a user’s data on your website. The HTTPS protocol is a must for users on an eCommerce site adding their payment details and address. Users need to know that there is no risk of a data breach or their details being used elsewhere by malicious parties.

Being on a non-HTTPS site tells users that it is not secure.

As far as trust signals go, this is a relatively simple one to implement. Google wants its users to feel safe and be served websites that will not compromise them or their data — and while search engines have not specifically said that it’s a ranking factor, most likely, it kind of is.

4.5 Crawl Budget

The search engine will crawl a certain quantity of your website’s pages during a given time: that number is your crawl budget.

It will most likely show you several pages that search engines are wasting their time with: pages that have been redirected, pages that return 404 errors, blog posts from a long time ago, duplicate pages, to name a few examples.

This information will enable you to do a massive clearout of your site to maximize the crawl budget and get search engines actually to crawl, index, and serve the pages that you want.

4.6 Internationalization

This is a brief checklist of things you should be looking at to ensure that your site reaches the right audience.

For a more comprehensive view of this, read this guide.

• Ensure the site structure (CCTLDs, subfolders, or subdomains) works for your business and does not stretch your resources.
• Hreflang tags: these tell users what language and territory your pages are meant to be targeting, and they are essential. If you’re trying to optimize your site for an international audience, use them; if you’re not — and many sites only have one language version of their site — then these aren’t needed.
• Content language tags (not essential but a nice bonus).
• Geotargeting in Google Search Console.
• Schema markup (organization schema includes your different office locations, blog posting, article, product schema in the relevant language).

#5. AMP for Ecommerce

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is an open-source library that makes it easier to create beautiful, functional websites that work well on mobile.

Considering how much eCommerce traffic is coming from mobile devices, we wanted to see how many sites implemented AMP and how well they were going.

Implementing AMP on your eCommerce site will help increase mobile performance in several ways to improve user experience.

AMP is essential in helping web pages load faster on mobile devices, improving the user experience significantly. Faster load times increase the likelihood that users will stay on your site, engage with it, and potentially even purchase from it.

AMP won’t be a strong choice for all sites, particularly those that rely on dynamic pages or site features, but most other eCommerce sites should consider implementing it.

With only 10.7% of the top eCommerce sites having implemented AMP, it’s an excellent way to potentially set yourself apart from the competition and better connect with your audience. AMP’s overall implementation is shallow, so eCommerce sites that adapt now have a vast opportunity to outrank their competitors by getting that valuable, all-encompassing mobile traffic.

5.1 How Ecommerce Sites Can Utilize AMP

It’s essential to bear in mind that at the moment, AMP is somewhat limiting in terms of the benefits it can bring eCommerce companies.

For example, it doesn’t work with dynamic pages or features such as search results and shopping carts; and to be accepted as an AMP page, it must use Google’s approved HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and analytics tags.

However, that shouldn’t put you off because your faster mobile pages can increase organic rankings, with enormous benefits.

5.2 How AMP and PWAs Work Together

The benefit of AMP is near-instant delivery: great when a user first interacts with your website. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) may be slow on the first load but enables more interactive and engaging features throughout the user’s visit to your site, which means they’re ideal when used together.

For eCommerce websites looking to partner their AMP pages to their PWA, you’ll need to link the two together. Using amp-install-service-worker, a script your browser runs in the background, you can combine your AMP pages with your Progressive Web App, ensuring that your user’s experience is consistently fast while helping to increase purchases and drive revenue.

As both AMP and PWA are technical aspects, I recommend hiring a  development company to implement them on your website. If you are on WordPress, then you can hire one of the 12 best development WordPress services I recommend.

#6. Optimization of Images for Visual Search

Optimizing your images for visual searches is a necessary step in improving your overall SEO. Many top e-commerce sites are doing this already, and the vast majority of them are doing so more successfully than eCommerce sites on average.

This can be seen because only around 15% of top eCommerce sites had errors with missing alt image tags; generally, that figure was 65% for eCommerce sites.

Users are unlikely to buy any product online that they don’t see images of first, so it’s essential for eCommerce sites that image optimization is a primary consideration.

Visuals also provide a potential source of traffic and revenue: image searches make up 21.8% of searches on web properties. The usage of the emerging technology of visual search keeps expanding.

To capitalize on these facts, your images must be fully optimized to drive conversions. Image Optimization Fundamentals For any eCommerce site, investing in professional and high-quality product photography is essential to drive conversions.

Many eCommerce sites are required to use manufacturer imagery if they’re a reseller. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with using stock images, sites should use unique imagery where possible.

In the same way, you’d ideally avoid using boilerplate manufacturer copy for your products, a move away from generic imagery can help you stand out in the SERPs.

Ideally, as in the example below, you need multiple images per product, showing it from different angles, used in context, and with the ability to zoom and explore items — maybe even including a video or 360-degree photography.

#7. Schema Markup

While Google has previously denied that structured data use directly boosts ranking, it’s clear that sites can benefit in other ways by implementing different types of markup. These benefits include higher CTR, increased traffic, and better conversion rates, so better rankings can often be an indirect result of schema use.

For eCommerce sites, product schema is the most basic markup. It includes price, SKU, description, and review markup that can improve CTR if used.

Schema use has become a part of best practice as time has gone on. We must have an easy way of providing this information so that search engines accept and genuinely help searchers.

Anyone not making the most of schema is missing out on better CTR, traffic, and SERP features — and right now, that includes 47.88% of even the top eCommerce sites.

Key Takeaways