We all know the foundation of e-commerce SEO is keyword research.
Over half of shoppers surveyed in a global retail study say they use Google to research purchases they plan to make online.
This is why SEO is your golden ticket to increasing organic visibility.
How?
Think about it: Before you create your site’s content, you need to know what terms your audience is using to search for products like yours.
How will you solve their problems without knowing the keywords behind their search intent?
You have to build your content with search engines and your users in mind.
The sooner you understand how SEO is changing and adapt your strategies, the sooner you’ll see ROI from e-commerce SEO.
Isn’t it impressive how far SEO has progressed?
Jump on the SEO train with me and I’ll show you why it’s important.
Why Is E-commerce SEO So Important?
You’re trying to get new customers to have all eyes on you.
You can’t win their attention if search engines can’t easily find you.
Your site is basically the secret menu at Starbucks if you don’t invest in keyword research.
That’s why it should be the critical first step in your e-commerce SEO campaign.
One of two things will happen if you don’t get SEO for e-commerce right:
You won’t rank on page one—or near the top—because your target keywords are too difficult.
The keywords you choose won’t drive in the traffic you’re aiming for or align with customers’ search intent.
However, getting your potential customers’ attention can be expensive.
For example, the average cost per click for the apparel industry is about 89 cents. The average cost per action is right below $10 when you break down WordStream’s results. Cost per action is a pricing model where payment is contingent on a qualified specific action, like a sale or submitted form.
While cost per click generates fast, profitable sales, you could spend thousands reeling in new customers.
By using SEO for e-commerce, you’re gaining free organic traffic by getting your site to show up in the SERPs.
But there are some missteps you should avoid if you want to see success.
Common E-commerce SEO Mistakes
What are the user’s needs?
If you keep this question top of mind, you should have a solid e-commerce SEO campaign.
Here is a list of at least three e-commerce SEO mistakes I don’t want you to make:
Vague Product Descriptions: This is a place to fit in keywords that make sense for your product. Write a product description so your customer knows what to expect. Even when you’re naming the product, think about a user’s potential search queries. Optimizing your product pages gives them a great chance at a top ranking for items. Product descriptions provide clarity and answer important questions that encourage users to follow through with their cart.
Display of Product Reviews: The beautiful thing about product reviews is they’re customer generated. It’s basically on-screen user-generated content. Reviews share customers’ unique experiences with your product. The page is like a living update, bringing more people to your site. Take advantage of the SEO benefits reviews bring to your e-commerce site. For added benefits, make sure you implement product review schema so your reviews will be even more prominent in Google SERPs.
Non-Interactive Title Tags: Titles are not only a matter of SEO. They should line up with your users’ search intent. Focus on unique phrasing. The formula I like is this: Brand + Model + Item Type = Interactive Title Tag. If you want to see if the titles for your products are unique, use Ubersuggest to double-check.
There are many more benefits to SEO for e-commerce—and mistakes to avoid. I’ve got some examples of e-commerce SEO in action to serve as inspiration for you.
E-commerce SEO Sites That Are Crushing It
Some people say SEO is dead.
Well, I say they’re wrong.
No matter which side of the fence you’re on, you can’t deny the benefits SEO has on e-commerce.
Especially now with social e-commerce, there is big money to be made. Researchers see a trend in e-sales that will go beyond $1.3 trillion by 2025.
SEO for e-commerce done right drives relevant traffic to your social channels and website without spending big on paid ads.
Once you see those qualified leads come in, make sure your strategy is in place to convert them.
We chose these three examples to focus on because:
I’d like to show and tell you who’s crushing e-commerce SEO right now. We chose these three examples because:
They have schema mark-up on the pages which helps create a more enticing SERP result
They have built strong, natural looking backlink profiles
All of these factors are extremely important to help with boosting rankings. Our research shows that show when sites implement SEO strategy and optimized copy, they see a larger keyword universe and higher domain authority. Combine these together and you get high organic traffic numbers.
Let’s take a closer look.
Etsy: Strong E-Commerce SEO Strategy
Etsy is a global online marketplace where brands can buy, sell, trade, and collect one-of-a-kind products. It’s a marketplace where you’ll likely find your new favorite handcrafted items from independent artists and designers.
This is a great environment for a brand to win at e-commerce SEO.
Etsy is making strong strides in SEO marketing right now.
In May 2022, Etsy ranked for over 14 million keywords in position one through ten, including nearly 5.5 million of those in the top three positions.
Etsy’s main navigation is intuitive and easy to use. There’s a banner with season-specific, popular items for the summer as well as popular gifts people are purchasing.
Businesses gain brand visibility thanks to how content is laid out over the site. There’s a strong emphasis on discovery. Etsy leans a lot on “keywords by intent,” especially via blog mentions. Their most trafficked blog article features the best Etsy shops, which nets 1,061 visitors and $462 in revenue.
Overall, 61.1% of Etsy’s keywords are informational and 29.9% are transactional. A whopping 87.4% of keywords owned are non-branded. This shows us what users want to know about the brands within Etsy. How they’re educated as an audience matters during their buyer’s journey.
I’d also like to mention a lot of Etsy’s success comes from stellar Core Web Vitals. This is a huge ranking factor in this mobile-first index ranking world. The faster people see their shopping interests during their user experience, the better.
Etsy gets this right all while supporting the shops that rely on them for a degree of brand visibility.
Overstock: A Great Core Web Vitals Example
Overstock is an online retailer that sells home goods at low prices.
Like Etsy, Overstock has great Core Web Vitals, so user experience with their online database is sharp. They are a tech-driven company, so that’s to be expected.
Based on what users are looking for, they win a lot of traffic for non-branded keywords (83.2%) vs. branded keywords (16.8%). Overstock is capturing users searching for queries that are not associated with their brand. Meaning, they are catching a lot of users looking for a solution their site can solve.
It makes sense why much of the site’s keyword intent funnels in through informational search queries (47% in May 2022). The data shows customers want to be informed before they make their purchases.
Transactional searches are almost equally as high (42% in May 2022). Think of a popular search like “patio furniture.” The products Overstock offers are essentially what users are searching for.
SEO for e-commerce serves Overstock well by targeting keywords users are looking for, even if it’s not branded. They have mastered aligning keywords with users’ search intent, allowing them to see results with strong performing non-branded terms.
Lulus: How SEO for Ecommerce Helps A Brand
Lulus is a fashion brand with an affordable luxury feel.
They recently upped their Core Web Vitals, helping them rank higher and garner more organic on-page sessions. That’s just one of the ways they’ve upped their game.
Let’s look at how they’re crushing SEO for e-commerce to get these results.
I know it sounds simple, but if you’re searching for a cocktail dress for a company Christmas party, Lulus points you in the right direction on their site.
You’ve got the keywords and directions for your users. Now, they’re bound to trust you and follow through with their cart.
It goes the same way with backlinks. Lulus’ backlinks profile speaks for itself, with well over 19 million referring domains.
Follow links make up 80% of Lulus’ backlinks, signaling to search engines that the site is trustworthy.
Selling amazing products is one thing. Having outside sources vouch for your brand online makes you look even more credible. Think of the SERPs as one big popularity contest, and having other people vouch for you is a big help.
The traffic will come to you as potential leads to convert. They will make secure purchases knowing you have what they need, and they’ll come back to shop for other items they need in the future.
Whether they’re from fashion blogs or influencers, backlinks are e-commerce SEO gold.
This is how Lulus did it.
That’s what SEO for e-commerce does for a brand. It shows your customers you are their solution.
What We Can Learn From E-commerce SEO Done Right?
SEO for e-commerce is a game changer, so spend some time on it.
To play the game right means appearing high on the first page of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo for terms your potential consumers use.
If you know how your audience makes decisions, you can create content that guides them through their purchasing journey.
Yes, having high-quality content and copy matters. It won’t convert to users if your keywords don’t have high-quality search intent, though.
Strategic internal linking—linking to other URLs on the same site—and optimizing product and category pages are some of the hardest parts of e-commerce SEO. However, they’re definitely on my list of e-commerce SEO best practices.
That’s why I’m here. To give you SEO tips that work for you.
Conclusion
Search engines like Google mostly focus on providing users with a valuable experience.
Your website needs to make usability its top priority.
We all know the foundation of e-commerce SEO is keyword research.
Over half of shoppers surveyed in a global retail study say they use Google to research purchases they plan to make online.
This is why SEO is your golden ticket to increasing organic visibility.
How?
Think about it: Before you create your site’s content, you need to know what terms your audience is using to search for products like yours.
How will you solve their problems without knowing the keywords behind their search intent?
You have to build your content with search engines and your users in mind.
The sooner you understand how SEO is changing and adapt your strategies, the sooner you’ll see ROI from e-commerce SEO.
Isn’t it impressive how far SEO has progressed?
Jump on the SEO train with me and I’ll show you why it’s important.
Why Is E-commerce SEO So Important?
You’re trying to get new customers to have all eyes on you.
You can’t win their attention if search engines can’t easily find you.
Your site is basically the secret menu at Starbucks if you don’t invest in keyword research.
That’s why it should be the critical first step in your e-commerce SEO campaign.
One of two things will happen if you don’t get SEO for e-commerce right:
You won’t rank on page one—or near the top—because your target keywords are too difficult.
The keywords you choose won’t drive in the traffic you’re aiming for or align with customers’ search intent.
However, getting your potential customers’ attention can be expensive.
For example, the average cost per click for the apparel industry is about 89 cents. The average cost per action is right below $10 when you break down WordStream’s results. Cost per action is a pricing model where payment is contingent on a qualified specific action, like a sale or submitted form.
While cost per click generates fast, profitable sales, you could spend thousands reeling in new customers.
By using SEO for e-commerce, you’re gaining free organic traffic by getting your site to show up in the SERPs.
But there are some missteps you should avoid if you want to see success.
Common E-commerce SEO Mistakes
What are the user’s needs?
If you keep this question top of mind, you should have a solid e-commerce SEO campaign.
Here is a list of at least three e-commerce SEO mistakes I don’t want you to make:
Vague Product Descriptions: This is a place to fit in keywords that make sense for your product. Write a product description so your customer knows what to expect. Even when you’re naming the product, think about a user’s potential search queries. Optimizing your product pages gives them a great chance at a top ranking for items. Product descriptions provide clarity and answer important questions that encourage users to follow through with their cart.
Display of Product Reviews: The beautiful thing about product reviews is they’re customer generated. It’s basically on-screen user-generated content. Reviews share customers’ unique experiences with your product. The page is like a living update, bringing more people to your site. Take advantage of the SEO benefits reviews bring to your e-commerce site. For added benefits, make sure you implement product review schema so your reviews will be even more prominent in Google SERPs.
Non-Interactive Title Tags: Titles are not only a matter of SEO. They should line up with your users’ search intent. Focus on unique phrasing. The formula I like is this: Brand + Model + Item Type = Interactive Title Tag. If you want to see if the titles for your products are unique, use Ubersuggest to double-check.
There are many more benefits to SEO for e-commerce—and mistakes to avoid. I’ve got some examples of e-commerce SEO in action to serve as inspiration for you.
E-commerce SEO Sites That Are Crushing It
Some people say SEO is dead.
Well, I say they’re wrong.
No matter which side of the fence you’re on, you can’t deny the benefits SEO has on e-commerce.
Especially now with social e-commerce, there is big money to be made. Researchers see a trend in e-sales that will go beyond $1.3 trillion by 2025.
SEO for e-commerce done right drives relevant traffic to your social channels and website without spending big on paid ads.
Once you see those qualified leads come in, make sure your strategy is in place to convert them.
We chose these three examples to focus on because:
I’d like to show and tell you who’s crushing e-commerce SEO right now. We chose these three examples because:
They have schema mark-up on the pages which helps create a more enticing SERP result
They have built strong, natural looking backlink profiles
All of these factors are extremely important to help with boosting rankings. Our research shows that show when sites implement SEO strategy and optimized copy, they see a larger keyword universe and higher domain authority. Combine these together and you get high organic traffic numbers.
Let’s take a closer look.
Etsy: Strong E-Commerce SEO Strategy
Etsy is a global online marketplace where brands can buy, sell, trade, and collect one-of-a-kind products. It’s a marketplace where you’ll likely find your new favorite handcrafted items from independent artists and designers.
This is a great environment for a brand to win at e-commerce SEO.
Etsy is making strong strides in SEO marketing right now.
In May 2022, Etsy ranked for over 14 million keywords in position one through ten, including nearly 5.5 million of those in the top three positions.
Etsy’s main navigation is intuitive and easy to use. There’s a banner with season-specific, popular items for the summer as well as popular gifts people are purchasing.
Businesses gain brand visibility thanks to how content is laid out over the site. There’s a strong emphasis on discovery. Etsy leans a lot on “keywords by intent,” especially via blog mentions. Their most trafficked blog article features the best Etsy shops, which nets 1,061 visitors and $462 in revenue.
Overall, 61.1% of Etsy’s keywords are informational and 29.9% are transactional. A whopping 87.4% of keywords owned are non-branded. This shows us what users want to know about the brands within Etsy. How they’re educated as an audience matters during their buyer’s journey.
I’d also like to mention a lot of Etsy’s success comes from stellar Core Web Vitals. This is a huge ranking factor in this mobile-first index ranking world. The faster people see their shopping interests during their user experience, the better.
Etsy gets this right all while supporting the shops that rely on them for a degree of brand visibility.
Overstock: A Great Core Web Vitals Example
Overstock is an online retailer that sells home goods at low prices.
Like Etsy, Overstock has great Core Web Vitals, so user experience with their online database is sharp. They are a tech-driven company, so that’s to be expected.
Based on what users are looking for, they win a lot of traffic for non-branded keywords (83.2%) vs. branded keywords (16.8%). Overstock is capturing users searching for queries that are not associated with their brand. Meaning, they are catching a lot of users looking for a solution their site can solve.
It makes sense why much of the site’s keyword intent funnels in through informational search queries (47% in May 2022). The data shows customers want to be informed before they make their purchases.
Transactional searches are almost equally as high (42% in May 2022). Think of a popular search like “patio furniture.” The products Overstock offers are essentially what users are searching for.
SEO for e-commerce serves Overstock well by targeting keywords users are looking for, even if it’s not branded. They have mastered aligning keywords with users’ search intent, allowing them to see results with strong performing non-branded terms.
Lulus: How SEO for Ecommerce Helps A Brand
Lulus is a fashion brand with an affordable luxury feel.
They recently upped their Core Web Vitals, helping them rank higher and garner more organic on-page sessions. That’s just one of the ways they’ve upped their game.
Let’s look at how they’re crushing SEO for e-commerce to get these results.
I know it sounds simple, but if you’re searching for a cocktail dress for a company Christmas party, Lulus points you in the right direction on their site.
You’ve got the keywords and directions for your users. Now, they’re bound to trust you and follow through with their cart.
It goes the same way with backlinks. Lulus’ backlinks profile speaks for itself, with well over 19 million referring domains.
Follow links make up 80% of Lulus’ backlinks, signaling to search engines that the site is trustworthy.
Selling amazing products is one thing. Having outside sources vouch for your brand online makes you look even more credible. Think of the SERPs as one big popularity contest, and having other people vouch for you is a big help.
The traffic will come to you as potential leads to convert. They will make secure purchases knowing you have what they need, and they’ll come back to shop for other items they need in the future.
Whether they’re from fashion blogs or influencers, backlinks are e-commerce SEO gold.
This is how Lulus did it.
That’s what SEO for e-commerce does for a brand. It shows your customers you are their solution.
What We Can Learn From E-commerce SEO Done Right?
SEO for e-commerce is a game changer, so spend some time on it.
To play the game right means appearing high on the first page of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo for terms your potential consumers use.
If you know how your audience makes decisions, you can create content that guides them through their purchasing journey.
Yes, having high-quality content and copy matters. It won’t convert to users if your keywords don’t have high-quality search intent, though.
Strategic internal linking—linking to other URLs on the same site—and optimizing product and category pages are some of the hardest parts of e-commerce SEO. However, they’re definitely on my list of e-commerce SEO best practices.
That’s why I’m here. To give you SEO tips that work for you.
Conclusion
Search engines like Google mostly focus on providing users with a valuable experience.
Your website needs to make usability its top priority.
So what gives, and how can you push past a three percent conversion rate? E-commerce optimization is all about making it easy for your visitors to buy from you.
How do you do that? It starts with diving into your analytics to see where visitors are getting stuck. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry—I’m going to walk you through it.
First, however, let’s talk about why CRO is different for e-commerce websites.
How Is Conversion Optimization Different for E-commerce Stores?
The difference in average conversion rates is partially because a service website might have one or two steps in the checkout process, while an e-commerce store could have five or six – meaning it’s all the more important for you to optimize your CRO.
This means e-commerce stores need to pay more attention to the purchase process, from product pages to the checkout page.
E-commerce stores have unique friction points, such as shipping and returns, which can impact purchase decisions.
Because of this, e-commerce owners need to take a holistic approach to optimizing their stores.
This might mean looking for opportunities to increase customer confidence through social proof and streamlined checkout processes.
Ultimately, e-commerce owners should focus on creating a frictionless purchase experience to boost their conversion rates.
Similarly, shoppers that click on product recommendations are four and a half times more likely to add items to the cart and complete a purchase.
Amazon, for example, recommends products based on previous purchases or items you looked at. This helps keep customers engaged with the site and increases sales.
They also use “Frequently Bought Together” prompts to show customers related items they may like.
Recommending relevant products to your customers also improves the personalization of your e-commerce store.
86 percent of consumers say website personalization affects their purchasing decisions. This is an e-commerce conversion rate optimization tactic you don’t want to miss out on.
When customers can see what they’re buying and get an idea of how it will look and function in their lives, they feel more confident about the purchase.
Since your visitors can’t touch and feel your products, you need to make sure the media you use on each product page does them justice.
Make sure your photos are high enough resolution to support a zoom feature to show texture and details.
If you have the space, add a 360-degree view of the product so customers can get a complete look.
If your e-commerce store sells clothes or accessories, use models to show how the items look on various body types.
Besides images, consider using demo videos or explainer videos to show your products in action.
Remember, you don’t have to generate all the content yourself either.
Encourage customers to submit visual content or source your images and videos from social media, which perform double duty as social proof, which will help increase conversions.
Be sure to include all pertinent information, such as size, color, and fabric content.
Use clear and concise language to avoid confusion and highlight the unique features of your products.
E-commerce CRO Strategy #3: Streamline Navigation
You can’t make sales if site visitors can’t find what they want.
Your site’s navigation is often the first place shoppers look if they have a specific product or category in mind.
Navigation that is confusing, too complex, or difficult to understand will cost you sales and customers. In fact, a HubSpot case study found that simplifying or removing navigation elements from middle-of-the-funnel landing pages resulted in a 16-28% increased conversion rate!
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for e-commerce website navigation. The best way to design a website menu depends on the nature of your products and how your customers like to organize information.
Here are a few steps for creating effective e-commerce website navigation:
Use heat maps or do user testing to find how and where users click.
Prominently display categories on every page.
Include clear labels and concise descriptions for all menu items.
Create intuitive and logical menus based on how your customers browse your site.
Avoid burying essential menu items in nested sub-menus.
Test different navigation structures to see what works best for your customers.
An example of great e-commerce navigation comes from Apple.
If you have a large number of products, a drop-down menu that lists everything can be overwhelming.
If Apple included all its products and services in a drop-down menu, its website would have very clunky and confusing navigation.
Not only would that work against the brand’s minimalist image, but it’d also be hard for customers to find what they need.
Instead, Apple opts for clean top navigation with no dropdown or secondary menu item:
When visitors click on a top navigation item, they’re directed to a menu page that lists options within the category:
Doing away with a complicated drop-down also helps streamline the mobile user experience, which is increasingly important.
Providing a clear path to the products customers are looking for makes it easier for shoppers to find what they need on your site—which increases sales.
This can help improve your search engine ranking, as Google (and other search engines) favor sites that are easy to navigate.
If you’re unsure if your site is easy to navigate, or have seen drop-off points in your analytics, consider using a heat map tool like Crazy Egg to see where people click on your pages.
You can also use a tool like Optimizely to test different versions of your navigation and see which one leads to more conversions.
Once you’ve identified any potential drop-off points, it’s time to start making changes!
E-commerce CRO Strategy #4: Add a Wish List or Favorite Option
Wish lists and favorite options allow users to save items they might buy later.
This is a great way to increase conversions because it gives users the opportunity to “test drive” your site and come back later to buy products they love.
Creating a wish list also requires customers to create an account for your e-commerce store.
This allows you to offer relevant promotions and gather customer data to improve user experience and increase sales.
Wish lists can help you:
alert customers about special offers available for items on their wish lists
deliver targeted content based on items they’ve shown interest in
identify retail trends and seasonal activities to improve demand forecasting
understand what your customers are looking for and offer similar products
Research from Google found 40 percent of online shoppers think their experience would be better if they were offered a wish list.
In addition, make it easy for your customers to create wish lists on other platforms. For example, enable “Pin It” buttons so visitors can share your products on their Pinterest wish lists.
Or, promote the use of the “Save” feature on Instagram and Facebook.
There are many ways to make it easy for your customers to save products they are interested in.
If you use Shopify as your e-commerce platform, you have two options for adding a wish list feature: add custom code to your site, or add a wishlist app, like Wishlist Hero.
On BigCommerce, all you need to do is enable wishlists in your shop’s settings.
WooCommerce offers an extension so you can allow users to add items to their wishlist when they shop your store.
E-commerce CRO Strategy #5: Streamline the Check Out Process
To avoid losing customers at the checkout, make the process as quick and easy as possible.
This means offering clear and concise shipping information, providing a guest checkout option, and ensuring all payment methods are available.
You should also ensure the checkout process is easy to navigate with all required information requested upfront.
Here are a few ways to streamline the checkout process:
Use a single-page checkout: This will keep customers from going through multiple pages to check out.
Save billing and shipping information: Customers hate having to enter their information each time they make a purchase, so make their checkout process easier by saving and auto-filling their information.
Use a progress bar: Let customers know how far along they are in the checkout process so they don’t get impatient.
Offer a shipping calculator: This will help customers determine how much their shipping will cost and whether or not they want to continue with the purchase.
Personalize page to their local currency: Customers feel more comfortable when they’re making a purchase in their local currency.
Reduce clicks: Try to make the checkout process straightforward, so customers don’t get frustrated and leave.
Provide order confirmation: Once a customer has completed their purchase, send them an order confirmation to let them know everything went through successfully.
Include trust symbols: Add trust symbols like security seals to reassure customers their information is safe and their purchase is legitimate.
Remember, the easier you can make it for customers to buy, the more likely they are to convert!
E-commerce CRO Strategy #6: Add More (and Better) Social Proof
Social proof is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal to boost e-commerce conversion rates.
Adding social proof elements to your site increases confidence in potential buyers and nudges them towards completing a purchase.
reaching out to influencers for social content creation
promoting UGC on your social channels
Frequently Asked Questions About E-commerce CRO Strategies
How can I improve my e-commerce conversion rate?
To increase your e-commerce CRO, consider adding recommended products, making sure your product pages shine, implementing simple navigation, providing a wish list option, streamlining the checkout process, and adding social proof.
How are e-commerce conversions calculated?
E-commerce conversions are the total number of visits to your e-commerce site divided by the number of purchases.
What is a good e-commerce conversion rate?
The average e-commerce conversion rate varies depending on the type of product you sell but is typically around two percent. Some of the top e-commerce sites have conversion rates between 5 and 10 percent.
What is CRO in e-commerce?
E-commerce conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of making adjustments to your site with the goal of increasing the percentage of visits that result in a purchase. In e-commerce specifically, CRO is focused on optimizing the product page, checkout process, and overall user experience.
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Conclusion: E-commerce Conversion Optimization
E-commerce conversion optimization is key to driving growth for your business.
While blogs and service sites rely on traffic from search engines and social media, e-commerce sites need to optimize SEOand every step of the buying process.
When starting an e-commerce conversion rate optimization strategy, start by looking into your customer data and website analytics. Use heat mapping tools to see where customers are clicking and what they scroll past.
Despite the growth of social selling for e-commerce, SEO keyword optimization is still crucial to long-term business success. Why? Because that’s how most customers find you.
Search traffic is responsible for 65 percent of e-commerce sessions. If you’re not optimizing for keywords, buyers won’t find you among your competitors.
SEO offers many other advantages. SEO offers many other advantages. For instance, it has a fantastic ROI when done correctly.
If you want further proof of SEO’s advantages, case study after case study shows how a few tweaks can potentially get your site to the front page of Google.
A few words of warning before I move on:
Don’t expect results overnight. SEO can take time to yield results, but it’s a valuable investment that pays off long-term.
Don’t let SEO overwhelm you. There are numerous areas of SEO I could discuss here, but let’s just focus on keywords for now.
Why Should E-Commerce Companies Care About SEO Keywords?
To stay ahead of the curve, you need to do everything possible to optimize your site, rank higher in SERPs, and increase visibility. You’ve probably guessed by now, but one of the best ways to do this is with strategically chosen keywords.
For guidance, your chosen keywords should be:
Relevant to your product and target audience.
Attainable in search results.
Lucrative in terms of driving targeted, profitable traffic to your online store.
When it comes to finding keywords, you need resources to help you along the way. This is where Ubersuggest comes in.
Ubersuggest is a free tool that makes it easy to research keywords and identify which ones to target.
But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s talk about how Ubersuggest helped our e-commerce customer, Portrait Flip, improve traffic and drive ROI.
Portrait Flip is an online store that creates real portraits by real artists from customer photos around the world. Using Ubersuggest for its keyword research, the company increased its organic traffic by 70% in just two years and increased revenue by 32.33 percent over their goal.
Perhaps you think that’s unattainable. However, there’s a simple reason behind the enhanced results: you drive more relevant, organic traffic to your website by optimizing your pages by targeting the right keywords.
How to Use Ubersuggest to Create a Killer Online Store
From SEO audits and competitive analysis to monitoring results and adapting your approach, plenty goes into running a successful online store. However, there’s no need to get overwhelmed. With the right tools, creating a killer e-commerce store isn’t complicated.
Below are five steps to creating a killer online store using Ubersuggest. (link to each section)
Once you do that, go to the dashboard and click on “Add Your First Project.” Next, add your website URL and name.
It’s also essential to connect your project to your Google Account to see how your keyword strategy is affecting your Google presence. Here’s how to do that:
Go to the dashboard.
Select the project you want to connect to Google Search Console.
Click ‘connect with Google.’
Connect the account or select the ‘Use another account’ option.
Remember, SEO takes time, and there might be some trial and error along the way. Therefore, once you’ve set it all up, I recommend you use Ubersuggest at least once a week to:
Check-in on your SEO progress (you can use the different weekly alerts to help you understand where to focus your efforts).
Work through the suggestions in your dashboard.
See what your competitors are up to and take small steps each week to compete against them.
Find new keywords to target on your product pages (try A/B testing product pages with different keywords to see which one ranks higher).
Portrait Flip did this and achieved significant success and savings:
“We were able to create and implement a clear SEO strategy with Ubersuggest starting in January of 2020 that helped our organic traffic take off. We’ve saved thousands of dollars on paid advertising by keeping Ubersuggest at the heart of our SEO, and we’ve watched our SEO and our revenue grow exponentially, too.”
Step #2 Perform an SEO Audit.
The Ubersuggest Site Audit is the best place to start with your Keyword Strategy. When you perform this analysis, you get a general overview of your website’s SEO standing.
From here, you can understand where your website ranks in terms of industry-standard for optimal SEO health.
To perform a site audit:
Go to the project dashboard.
Find SEO explorer on the left side menu and select ‘SEO Analyzer.’
Wait for the analyzer to create a report; your report sorts errors by difficulty and how fixing them impacts your SEO.
Review your report. Pay careful attention to the ‘See All SEO Errors,’ on the associated tab.
Click ‘What is this, and how do I fix it?’ on the associated tab.
Once you’ve reviewed the major issues, select the ‘SEO Analyzer Overview’ option. This takes you back to the site audit main page.
Now, you’re ready to review the second part of your audit report, which details your desktop and mobile web speed. Use the orange circular toggle, to switch between Desktop and Mobile reports.
Fix the issues, return to the ‘SEO Analyzer’ overview, and choose the ‘recrawl’ button at the top of the page.
Finally, review the report to see if you’ve fixed the errors or if there are any fresh ones.
Here’s how Portrait Flip used the site audit feature.
First, Portrait Flip optimized its results by focusing on the ‘Broken Link’ finder.
This helped the business understand where it was losing potential customers due to broken product links.
Portrait Flip also found the ‘Page Load Time’ report invaluable, as the company was keen to see if any added website code was inadvertently increasing its load times.
Again, this may not seem like a significant issue. However, speed is crucial for online shopping. Ideally, you want your e-commerce store to load within two seconds. Anything above that adds to your bounce rate and customer dissatisfaction and leads to lost sales.
After fixing simple issues on the Portrait Flipw website, 98 percent of the revenue generated from its SEO and PPC efforts in 2021 came from organic search.
Step #3 Research Keywords to Target
Now, this is where the fun starts.
You can use the Ubersuggest Keyword Reports to understand which keywords to include in your content to drive relevant and lucrative traffic.
The keyword overview allows you to see how competitive a keyword is and its search volume trend over time. To narrow down your keyword choices, think of the general search terms your target audience might use when searching for a product you sell.
The keyword research feature shows you how people search for keywords related to your business and your products. It enables you to uncover valuable keywords that other competitors aren’t targeting.
How Portrait Flip uses these tools:
Content marketing is at the heart of Portrait Flip’s efforts to attract traffic to its site. For example, the business used blogging and posted regularly on its social media channels. However, these efforts weren’t driving traffic the way the company hoped.
This is where Ubersuggest proved its worth.
The Keyword Overview report enabled Portrait Flip to find relevant keywords to focus on and that prospects use in their searches.
Next, Portrait Flip optimized its blog posts and e-commerce product pages with new keywords.
Finally, Portrait Flip used the Keyword Idea and Content Idea reports to help them plan out their next blog topics.
The results were exceptional.
Portrait Flip exceeded their traffic expectations in one quarter by over 27 percent—and that’s without any paid advertising. If you’re planning on using these reports, here are a couple of tips to get the most out of it them:
Find The Most Competitive Keywords
Use the ‘SEO Difficulty’ filter to help determine which keywords are more competitive than others. Be intentional in comparing this with the ‘Paid Difficulty’ feature to help decide if you should pay for Google Ads against the keywords.
NOTE: Keywords with high Paid Difficulty are usually lucrative. However, they are almost always more expensive.
Search by Location
If you want to attract a worldwide audience, search for global keywords on the ‘location’ tab. You can target your geographical search towards specific local traffic or by country. This can help you find unique keywords in different regions to target.
Step #4 Conduct a Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is an essential part of any effective SEO strategy. By understanding your competitors, you can learn what techniques and keywords they’re using to rank well in search engines and replicate their successes.
Ubersuggest makes this task more manageable than ever. Just use the following tools:
Keywords by Traffic: Go to Ubersuggest, enter the competitor domain URL, and hit “Search” to find the top keywords that the website ranks for. Note any organic keywords and monthly traffic, the domain score, and backlinks. You can also add your competitor’s URL as a project in your Ubersuggest dashboard for regular tracking.
Backlinks Opportunities: Discover what websites are linking to your competitors and get a detailed overview of who to reach out to request links back to your site. Here’s how:
1. Enter your domain name or URL from your site into the Backlinks Opportunity tool. (Linked above).
2. Enter a competitor domain or a URL from their site.
3. Click ‘search.’
You can also use the Ubersuggest Chrome Extension for keyword analysis directly in Google search results, YouTube, AND Amazon pages for further insights.
How Portrait Flip used Ubersuggest’s competitive analysis tool:
Portrait Flip monitored how its competitors were performing and what keywords they were ranking for. Specifically, the company used the Keywords by Traffic and Top Pages by Traffic reports together to get an idea of keywords they were losing out on. Using the information, Portrait Flip secured Page #1 on Google above competitors for primary keywords that drove converting traffic to their site.
Step #5 Start Tracking Your Progress
As you work on your SEO Keywords, it’s critical to be patient and track your progress over the long term.
Although you might see results with your plan in the next few weeks, as I’ve repeatedly stressed, SEO is an ongoing process and it takes time to get results. Typically, you can expect to wait a few months, so if you’re not seeing immediate progress, don’t get discouraged.
When you track your keywords, you can see which ones aren’t working and use some fresh ones to optimize your content.
Then rinse and repeat!
Keep testing and learning. A/B test different targeted keywords on product pages over time and track to see which performs best.
You can use Ubersuggest to monitor keyword performance. Here’s how:
In your Dashboard, you can view SEO progress over a specific time. Plus, you can see your progress in keyword ranking and estimated traffic value.
How Portrait Flip did this:
As they tracked their progress, they found that most of their year-to-year growth came from organic traffic, which steadily grew once they started using Ubersuggest.
Conclusion: Using Ubersuggest to Improve Your E-Commerce Store
One of the toughest tasks for e-commerce business owners is standing out from the competition. Gaining visibility, discovering the right keywords, identifying backlinking opportunities, and conducting competitive analysis are some of the most challenging tasks every online store owner faces.
Fortunately, Ubersuggest offers a solution to these common problems, allowing you to enhance your e-commerce store in key areas. This allows you to increase visibility, attract targeted prospects, and enhance conversions.
With more consumers shopping online than ever before, retailers must work hard to get noticed.
What if you don’t have the budget for ads? Are you doomed to fade into the online abyss?
Absolutely not.
Over half of consumers prefer to shop online. Great news for online retailers like you, right?
With the growth of online marketplaces and hoards of choices available to consumers, it’s tough to get the attention you need to drive traffic and revenue.
Today, I’ll share 25 e-commerce tips to get more visitors to your site—without spending a dime on paid ads.
Best of all, many of these tips are easier to implement than you might think.
What Are the Benefits of Using Non-Paid Strategies to Increase E-Commerce Website Traffic?
Many marketers focus on paid e-commerce strategy because they think it’s the only way to outshine the big brands, but that isn’t always the case.
With 95 percent of website traffic hitting the first page of Google, all the traffic you could hope for is there, waiting.
One of the most obvious benefits of non-paid e-commerce strategies is you don’t need to invest money to drive traffic. You’re not trading dollar-for-dollar; instead, you’re trading time or resources for sales.
Another benefit is focusing on non-paid traffic means building a better, easier-to-use website. According to a study done by Amazon Web Services, 88 percent of online shoppers won’t return to a site they had a bad experience on.
With all the options for e-commerce shopping, why would they?
We’re completely inundated with options. The threshold for mistakes and user experience problems is getting lower and lower.
Finally, thinking outside the box helps build a real business with long-term potential.With paid ads, as soon as you turn off your budget, your traffic will plummet.
SEO, email marketing, and on-page experience are long-term strategies that pay off over time.
25 E-Commerce Strategies to Drive Traffic (Without Paying for Ads!)
Overall e-commerce sales have grown steadily year after year and show no sign of slowing down. By 2025, e-commerce sales could hit nearly 7,400 billion dollars. If you’re having trouble getting the traffic you want, there are tons of opportunities to get a piece of the pie.
Here are some e-commerce tips you can implement today to get more traffic to your site.
1. Start a Referral Program
Leads that come from referrals convert at a 30 percent higher rate than any other marketing method. If you don’t have a referral program for your e-commerce store, it’s never too late to get started.
Keep in mind, it doesn’t have to be elaborate.
Take GetResponse, for example. You get a $30 account credit for every person you refer to the software.
Offer something of value to existing customers for every customer they bring to you; it’s as simple as that!
Start producing content regularly whether you have to hire someone or write everything yourself. I’m definitive proof that this strategy works.
If you don’t currently have a blog on your e-commerce website, starting one is easy. Most e-commerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify have built-in blogging templates to help you get started.
3. Improve the On-Page Experience
Google makes it crystal clear that the on-page experience is one of the most important factors they look at when determining whether a site should rank.
On-page experience refers to (but is not limited to):
To use these e-commerce tips, start by running the reports linked above. Google will offer you tips and strategies to improve your on-page experience.
Improving these factors helps increase your e-commerce traffic because your site looks better in Google’s eyes, and it’s easier for users to navigate, which keeps them coming back.
4. Build an Email List
Repeat customers spend 67 percent more than new customers—and one of the best ways to bring them back is by building an email list.
Why?
You’ve already established trust with them, and they know what you have to offer.
Take a look at this example from Birchbox:
Offering a unique promo code encourages customers to return and makes the offer feel exclusive and like they’re getting something that isn’t available to everyone.
To build an email list, try these strategies:
Offer a small discount (10 to 15 percent) for users that sign up for your email list.
Make your list feel exclusive by promoting new products only in your email list.
Post teasers about an upcoming email announcement on social media to encourage followers to sign up.
5. Retarget Email Subscribers
Once you’ve built out an email list, you’ll want to retarget users based on onsite behavior. Retargeting, in this case, means sending an email to someone who has shown interest in your business but didn’t take the action you were hoping for. (It can also be used for paid ads, but in this case, we’re covering non-paid strategies.)
Abandoned cart emails are one of the most effective ways to leverage email retargeting. In fact, they’re responsible for recovering nearly 30 percent of abandoned carts.
You can also send current customers suggested products related to a previous purchase. As we already covered, it’s easier to go after customers you already have than find new ones.
Here’s a quick guide to retargeting your email subscribers:
Look for ways to retarget users in your email marketing platform. For example, MailChimp has a retargeting email guide that walks its users through the process.
Implement the easiest retargeting campaigns first. Generally, abandoned cart emails and recommended products are easy wins.
Test other retargeting campaigns to see what works. For example, ask for reviews a week or so after purchase or suggest a new collection.
6. Optimize Your CTAs
Only around two percent of your web traffic will convert on the first visit, so capturing email addresses through your CTAs is crucial.
You need to experiment a bit to see what works. Even something as simple as the color of your CTA button can make a difference.
For example, Performable found that switching their CTA button from green to red boosted their conversion rate by 21 percent.
Try different CTA buttons and phrasing to see what works and test them side-by-side using A/B testing.
Don’t stop at colors, though. You can also test your CTA’s:
copy
placement
font type/size
including images
landing page
Offer
7. Improve Your Checkout Process
Nearly 70 percent of people abandon their cart. This can be due to hidden fees, shipping costs, too many steps, and a poor overall experience. The best e-commerce tips build on what you’re already doing, and the checkout process is a great place to start.
While people are more comfortable than ever shopping online, they also have high expectations for the process. How do you improve the process? Here are a few tips:
Get rid of hidden fees and be upfront about pricing.
Share shipping fees early in the process.
Limit the number of clicks to convert.
Scandiweb did a great case study of the steps to improve their checkout experience. You don’t need to go nearly this far, but it’s a smart e-commerce strategy to implement no matter how big or small you decide to make it.
8. Develop a Rewards Program
A white paper by Altfeld shows that when selling to an existing customer, the probability of closing that sale is as high as 70 percent.
What’s the most effective way to bring customers back? Loyalty programs!
Rewarding customers for returning and doing business with you again is a brilliant and timeless strategy.
For every dollar spent, you earn one dollar in rewards. The more you spend, the more rewards you’re eligible for, including discounts and free shipping. It’s so simple when it’s broken down this way, but the hard part is coming up with a smart rewards program.
To set up an effective rewards program, you’ll want to:
See what your most profitable customers have in common (location, products, interests, etc.)
Look at data to see what drives purchases. This will help you set up a reward program. Do they like free shipping? Discounts? Access to new product lines early? Use a survey to ask customers if you aren’t sure.
I’ve mentioned SEO already, but this step focuses on internal linking within your e-commerce website. How can this improve e-commerce traffic?
Sites without proper internal linking don’t rank as high as those with a solid link-building strategy.
By creating a web of links on your site, you’re telling Google that you are an excellent resource for what people want to buy and you’re a wealth of knowledge in whatever niche it is you sell in. That will improve the user experience while also improving your worth to Google.
Here are a few tips for adding internal links:
Identify hub pages—these are important pages you know your users want to see. Add links where it makes sense that point to these pages.
Link to related products on your product pages. If you sell tents, link to other camping gear, for example.
Use “breadcrumbs” in the navigation to help users quickly navigate back to core pages.
Use easy-to-understand anchor text, like this: Here’s more information about internal linking best practices. It’s clear what you’ll get if you click the highlighted text.
10. Get Active on Social Media
Ninety-one percent of people read at least one review before making a purchase. Where is a great place to get a lot of customer reviews?
Social media, of course.
Are you using social media to drive traffic to your e-commerce store?
Are you using it as a place for customers to land if they have something positive or negative to say about your business?
You should be doing both things because it helps show customers that you’re a real business with real people and not just some brand.
You need to be there for your customers. Sixty percent of people want to connect with someone during the sales process.
Remember that one time you were in a brick and mortar and wanted help finding something, but you walked around and couldn’t find anyone to help you?
How did that make you feel? Unimportant?
As people turn to e-commerce, they expect to have the same customer service experience they get in person. That means you need to be available to answer questions and assist throughout the sales process.
There are plenty of live chat software to make this process simple. Leveraging chatbot automation, which answers common questions before connecting users to a live person, can also make it more affordable.
12. Focus on Value Upfront
Your e-commerce strategy cannot revolve around you asking your customers to do things without making them feel like they’re getting the most for their time and money.
A great example of this is email marketing. We all know we need a lead magnet if we expect anyone to give us their email, right?
We’re getting to a point where just offering a product isn’t enough to make a sale.
You need to offer free shipping, free trials, fast shipping, bonus offers, and handwritten letters to drive sales.
Whatever you decide to offer, make sure it’s clear what you’re offering upfront so people can see the value before they click to buy.
This also extends to other areas of your site, such as:
product pages
landing pages
CTAs
social media posts
13. Improve Your Product Pages By Focusing on Benefits not Features
It’s essentially a representation of your customer. What do they do? How do they act? How do they think? What makes them click?
If you don’t have a specific avatar that you’re marketing to in your e-commerce business, you’re potentially leaving money on the table.
17. Use Trust Signals
According to TrustedSite, lack of business legitimacy causes 50 percent of cart abandonments.
What are we talking about when we say legitimacy?
Trust.
As someone works through the purchase process, they might start to feel uneasy. Are you a real site, or a scam? Is the quality going to match their expectations?
How do you avoid mistrust?
Add trust signals to the process. These include:
badges
third-party verifications
customer reviews
testimonials
HTTP
Adding a video of yourself or someone in the business is another great way to show customers you’re a real business.
These people expect you to pay the cost of shipping their products no matter how much they spend. You can thank Amazon for that.
That said, offering free shipping isn’t the revenue buster you think. As an added bonus, if you do everything else right on this list, you’ve likely secured yourself that customer.
There are a few ways to make free shipping work for you:
Up your prices to cover the shipping cost, then make it “free.”
Offer free shipping as a loyalty program reward.
Ask for an email address in exchange for free shipping.
Offer free shipping only for purchases over a certain amount.
19. Keep User Data Safe (and Make Sure Your Customers Know It)
This e-commerce tip goes hand-in-hand with trust signals, but it’s important on its own.
E-commerce sites collect a lot of data about their customers, including onsite actions, banking or card information, addresses, and potentially even social security numbers on your website.
What are you doing to protect this information?
Here are a few ways to keep your customer’s information safe:
Make sure you let your customers know that you’re doing all of this. When asking them to input sensitive information, include all the steps you take to protect their data.
20. Use Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is when you pair up with another brand or influencer to help them promote your products.
We see this frequently on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram.
With the influencer marketing market growing to 16.4 billion in 2022, the potential is there.
Start reaching out to influencers in your niche and see if they sell endorsements. Send them free products to test out.
At this point, you’ve read through 20 e-commerce tips; all of which will help you drive more traffic to your site and convert at a higher rate.
If you want to succeed, you need to implement these strategies. However, not all strategies will work for every brand. Or they might work, but with a different approach.
For example, an e-commerce fashion website might get better results using influencers than a B2B manufacturing e-commerce company.
The only way to know is to research, test, and pivot. If something doesn’t work for your audience, try something new. It’s the only way to keep growing.
22. Create a Sense of Urgency
Visitors who leave your site without purchasing rarely complete the sale.
Urgency offers a compelling reason to complete the purchase now.
Maybe it’s “Act now! Quantities are low!” or “Buy now for free shipping!” or “This is a limited time offer!”
You can approach it from various angles, as long as the feeling of “don’t miss out on this” is created with your visitor.
offer free shipping for orders over a specific amount, say $25 or $50
24. Launch New Products
According to Nielsen, 63 percent of buyers like it when manufacturers offer new products. What does this mean for you as an e-commerce store owner?
You need to launch new products and make innovations in your industry regularly. The best e-commerce tip I can offer you is to focus on making a difference for people.
See what the competition is doing and figure out ways that you can take it to the next level.
If you don’t manufacture your products, there are still ways to innovate.
For example, if you’re selling home improvement products, perhaps you could find a way to bundle multiple items together? You could even create a bundle subscription box.
25. Spend Your Money Elsewhere
While this whole list of e-commerce tips focuses on how “not” to spend money, perhaps you could take whatever you would spend on paid ads and spend it somewhere else.
Spend it on outsourcing high-quality blog content, SEO strategy, or influencer marketing.
Every business should have a marketing budget regardless of how big or small it is. If you’re currently spending money on paid ads, think about what else you could do with that budget and experiment with other paid options.
E-Commerce Tips Frequently Asked Questions
How can I increase my e-commerce website traffic quickly?
Social media and influencer marketing are the two fastest ways to get more e-commerce traffic. Other methods like SEO are more of a long-term solution.
What percent of my e-commerce traffic should be from non-paid sources?
In years past, organic traffic had some of the highest rates of conversion simply because people are finding you naturally. This means you’re likely a solution to a problem the visitor has. It’s tough to put an exact number on this though because every business is different. However, you can succeed with nothing but paid traffic if your strategy allows for it.
How do I track my e-commerce website's traffic?
There are many ways to track e-commerce traffic. You can use your site’s Google Search Console dashboard as well as tools like SimilarWeb and Ahrefs.
What is organic traffic to an e-commerce website?
Organic traffic is website visitors that find your site without the use of paid advertisements, often by searching on sites like Google or Bing.
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Conclusion: E-Commerce Tips
As you read through these 25 e-commerce tips, which ones resonated with you the most? Do you feel more equipped to drive traffic to your store?
The most important thing to understand is that you don’t have to do all of these things perfectly, you just need to gradually implement them to see results.
Figure out what is currently wrong in your e-commerce store and identify the low-hanging fruit. Perhaps you simply need to ramp up blog content or update your checkout process. Most of those changes can be completed in a few days or weeks.
With all of these tips and tricks available to you, the possibilities are endless.
What are some of the ways you boost e-commerce sales without spending money on ads?
There are plenty of e-commerce marketing channels available to grow your business, such as social media, PPC, SEO, and network marketing.
Successful e-commerce business owners, though, know that email marketing is one of the most profitable channels available.
Let’s take a look at “what is e-commerce email marketing?” and why e-commerce businesses should use it.
Finally, we’ll delve into the 10 best e-commerce email marketing strategies that you can implement immediately for great results.
What Is E-Commerce Email Marketing?
E-commerce email marketing is a marketing channel that enables you to send marketing messages to current and potential customers.
The strategies you use can be simple, like sending a weekly email blast with featured products, or complex—with multiple automated email series for cart abandonment, customer re-engagement, and exclusive membership deals.
Why Should E-Commerce Businesses Do Email Marketing?
As an e-commerce business owner, you’ve probably heard the sales pitch for just about every marketing channel there is.
You may even dabble in email marketing currently, but perhaps you don’t understand just how valuable a tool it is to your sales strategy.
Email marketing is a unique process in that, unlike social media or SEO, you own every piece of the funnel. Most importantly, you own the email subscriber list.
Why is that so important? With 4 billion daily email users (which will climb to 4.6 billion by 2025), you can’t afford to miss this incredible opportunity.
Through email marketing strategies, an e-commerce business can benefit from brand awareness, customer engagement, and high-intent customers. We also can’t ignore the conversion rate boosts that e-commerce businesses see when they implement a solid email marketing strategy, with the best ROI when compared to other marketing channels.
While much of this article will focus on email marketing strategies for active marketers, we understand that not every e-commerce business is yet set up for email marketing.
Set realistic and sustainable goals to grow your business, such as building an email list or improving customer retention by X percent.
Select an email marketing software like MailChimp or Constant Contact.
Map out your initial campaigns (e.g., welcome series, abandoned cart series, or new product launches.)
Decide how you’ll collect email addresses. Many e-commerce companies offer a small coupon in exchange for email addresses.
Set up landing pages as needed for campaigns.
Set up campaign tracking with your chosen analytics provider.
Take the time to establish a firm foundation and you’ll be off to a better start than even many seasoned e-commerce businesses.
Best E-Commerce Email Marketing Strategies
Whether you’re new to email marketing or you’re looking to optimize your current setup, our best e-commerce email marketing strategies will provide you with a solid foundation to build your email marketing empire.
1. Start With a Welcome Series
For the best impression with new subscribers, establish a welcome email series. This gives you a chance to share your brand story, highlight your best products, and even offer a discount to drive sales.
Beyond that, a welcome series drives serious engagement. With an average open rate of 68.59 percent and an average click-through rate of 16.05 percent, a welcome series is a great part of your larger email marketing campaign.
Why?
First and foremost, a welcome series implies more than one email. Two or three emails is the sweet spot and anything beyond that is considered “spammy” and may scare off new subscribers.
With two emails, you have the chance to welcome the customer and invite them to connect. With three emails, you have the chance to do the previous two while also getting to know the customer more personally.
Take, for example, the NewEgg welcome series below which welcomes the customer and then invites them to connect with the mobile app:
Whether you choose two or three emails, you want to be sure to include a few key elements in each email.
The initial welcome email should:
thank the subscriber
welcome them to the brand
let them know what to look forward to in future emails
If you made a promise upon sign-up, like a discount, that needs to be included as well.
The second welcome email should then:
give subscribers a further way to connect through mobile apps or social media
focus on the value you or your products can provide to their lives
tell them why they should purchase
2. Be Sure to Include a Clear Call to Action
What do you want your subscribers to do?
Whether that’s reading your latest blog post, watching a promotional video, or buying your newest product, your customers should know exactly what you want.
A call to action, or CTA, is a prompt given to users in a newsletter, on a website, or in a video. The prompt is usually a button or hyperlink that will help the user to achieve the goal.
According to Unbounce, including just one clear CTA in emails boosts clicks by 371 percent and sales by 1617 percent.
When it comes to effective CTAs, clear and concise is the way to go.
This means testing variations of your most used calls to action to see what elements your users respond to best. This includes verbs, button shape and color, length, and word order.
Unbounce saw an increase of 90 percent in their click-through rate just by changing “Start your free 30-day trial” to “Start my free 30-day trial.”
3. Use Personalization to Segment Your List
When is the last time you received an email that was specifically tailored to you?
If you’re like most people, that email had a greater chance of compelling you to act.
In fact, personalized promotional emails lift transaction rates and revenue six times higher than non-personalized emails.
Contextual personalization utilizes where a customer is in their journey. For example, just beginning to research the topic or being ready to make a buying decision.
Demographic personalization utilizes demographic information such as age, gender, location, and household income level to inform recommendations.
Behavioral personalization is the use of past purchases or website behavior (e.g., abandoned carts). Consider this email from Etsy that advertises products based on past purchases:
Depending on the size of your email list, you can even combine these categories to create intersections. Try combining past purchases with new location-based recommendations.
As your segmentation becomes more specific, the marketing campaigns will become more personalized and, more likely than not, successful.
Therefore, automated email campaigns can be an invaluable tool in your overall marketing strategy.
From welcome series to cart abandonment to transactional emails to re-engagement campaigns, automated emails for e-commerce can level up your email marketing strategy.
Any email marketing software worth its weight will publish advice to help you automate your emails.
Discounts to offer: If you want to secure a sale, try offering a discount code on the products they have in their cart.
Subject lines: Subject lines strongly influence the CTR of your cart abandonment series, and can make sure your audience opens their email and reads the information you’re providing.
Calls to action: Your CTA needs to convince your prospective customers to return to their carts.
Additionally, your cart abandonment series can be a great place to personalize. The obvious one here is to include the products left behind in the cart like Chewy does below:
6. Perform Split Testing
How do you know whether your email campaigns are as effective as possible?
Without split testing, you don’t!
Split testing (sometimes called A/B testing) is a marketing strategy that pits two or more similar variations of an element against one another.
For example, a split test may test the efficiency of two CTA buttons, one black with white text and one white with black text.
The goal is to find the best variations of common email elements to ensure that your emails have the greatest return on investment—such as testing user experience design elements.
Once you have statistically significant (as determined by you) results in hand, it’s time to implement changes if necessary.
7. Use Email to Encourage Engagement
We’ve touched briefly on engagement in the welcome series section. However, engagement emails don’t need to be reserved only for welcome email campaigns.
Email newsletters offer a unique opportunity to capture your audience. This is especially true if open rates are high but click-through rates are lacking.
Segment your audience according to their engagement, and deliver appropriate messages accordingly.
Subscribers who have previously converted, for example, are 74.7 percent more likely to do so again.
Here, you would want to capitalize on brand trust. Ask yourself:
“Why did the customer buy from me before. Why should they do so again?”
This would be a good opportunity for a product recommendations email based on their previous purchase.
If it’s a consumable product, then a subscription offer email is easy enough. If it’s a non-consumable product, then a complementary product email is a safe bet.
For subscribers yet to convert, focus on building brand trust and offer discounts to make a purchase less risky.
8. Offer Exclusive Experiences and Rewards to Loyal Subscribers
Segmentation makes it easier to personalize emails and reward loyal customers.
By segmenting your email list by longtime subscribers or the greatest money spent, you can provide an exclusive experience that makes them feel valued by your brand.
Notice I say experience and reward as opposed to discount.
Can a discount be a reward? Absolutely. However, discounts do have a downside. In particular, they can cheapen your brand’s value, especially in the eyes of loyal customers.
A loyal customer knows the value of your product.
Instead of a discount offer, consider an experiential reward. This is also backed by millennial spending habits. After all, 78 percent of millennials would rather spend their money on an experience than a product.
Give away once-in-a-lifetime trips.
Offer meet and greet events with brand ambassadors.
Design a top-tier social media group where you host virtual events.
9. Set Up Back In Stock or Wishlist Emails
We’ve touched on the importance of automated emails, and we’ve even covered two automated campaigns in particular:
A welcome series.
A cart abandonment series.
The next on our list to highlight is the back-in-stock (or “wishlist” emails.)
With recent constraints on the supply chain, more brands than ever have had item stocking and inventory troubles.
You can either waste an opportunity by removing temporarily unavailable items from your website, or you can capitalize on customer wants with back-in-stock emails.
As the name suggests, back-in-stock emails alert customers when a product they expressed interest in is back in stock and available to purchase.
Depending on your platform, a back-in-stock email option may be a product page feature or it may require additional configuration (and add-ons like an app).
However much effort it takes on your part, the return is worth it!
According to a study by Barilliance, back-in-stock emails had the highest open rate (65.32 percent) when compared to alternative post-purchase emails.
10. Utilize Dynamic Content
We already know that personalization drives conversions.
The same can be said for a subset of personalization known as dynamic content, which has been shown to increase email ROI by 100 percent!
So, what is dynamic content?
Dynamic content is personalized content generated based on user signals:
Product recommendations based on past purchases or previously viewed products.
Calls to action tailored to the user’s browsing behaviors.
Free exclusive offers (such as ebooks and white papers) for someone in the “research” stage of the buyer’s journey.
With most major email marketing software companies, dynamic content will be an impressive addition to most e-commerce email templates.
E-Commerce Email Templates
Here are a few e-commerce email templates to help you build your e-commerce email marketing campaigns.
1. Welcome Email Template
This welcome email template combines clean lines combined with pops of color to be striking and eye-catching. When customizing it, make sure to use the large “featured image” space for a friendly brand image or a featured product lifestyle relevant to you.
Make your big sales event known with this beautifully stylized email template. Featuring bold text and modules for product imagery, your customers will easily see the value in your offer.
4. Product Recommendations Email Template
Let your product recommendations do the talking with this image-heavy recommendations email template. The faux navigation also adds a standout touch that makes your readers feel as if they’re shopping your website.
5. Follow-Up Email Template
With a clean, streamlined design, this follow-up email template is ideal for soliciting post-purchase feedback from your customers.
How much should I make from e-commerce email marketing?
What you earn from e-commerce email marketing is relative to what you invest. With an average of ROI $36 earned for every $1 spent, you’re likely to earn more from e-commerce email marketing than most (if not all) other marketing channels.
How does e-commerce use email marketing?
E-commerce relies heavily on email marketing as a way to connect with both current and prospective customers. It’s used as a way to promote new products, communicate exclusive offers and deals, and engage with the target audience.
How do I start e-commerce email marketing?
To start e-commerce email marketing, all you need is an email marketing software, some e-commerce email templates, and one or two fully fleshed-out campaigns. The rest will fall into place as you grow your subscriber list.
How important is email marketing for e-commerce companies?
Email marketing is a critical part of any effective e-commerce marketing strategy. Without email marketing, you could be leaving tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.
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Conclusion: E-Commerce Email Marketing
Whether you’re a new or seasoned e-commerce business owner, email marketing should have a large part to play in your overall marketing strategy.
It’s not difficult to get started, and once you do you now have the best strategies in hand to make your campaigns a success.
To recap, the 10 strategies you should implement in your e-commerce email marketing strategy are:
Start with a welcome series.
Be sure to include a clear call to action.
Use personalization to segment your list.
Automate what you can.
Create a dynamic cart abandonment series.
Perform split testing.
Use email to encourage engagement.
Offer exclusive experiences and rewards to loyal subscribers.
Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.
Every great online store starts from the same place—with an ecommerce website builder. These tools make it easy for anyone to launch an ecommerce business by building a website from scratch.
So if you’re interested in selling products or services on the web, you’ll need to find an ecommerce builder to create your online store.
You don’t have to have any web design experience whatsoever to get started. To find an option that suits your goals, check out recommendations below.
You’ll find in-depth reviews of the eight best ecommerce website builders, followed by a brief buyers guide to help you narrow in on the best one.
#1 – Wix Review — The Best Drag-and-Drop Ecommerce Builder
Wix is one of the best overall site builders on the market today. The platform can be used to create any website—including ecommerce sites.
More than 160 million people across the globe have used Wix to create a website from scratch. There’s no code to write, no technology to master. If you know what you want, you can build it in Wix.
Start with one of Wix’s beautiful online store templates. These have been used by thousands of businesses to get their products and deals in front of customers. From there, you can customize the look and feel of your site to match your brand using the simple drag-and-drop ecommerce website builder.
Wix is a great option for beginners. Anyone can use this platform to build an ecommerce site, regardless of technical skill level. Here’s what makes Wix so great:
Intuitive drag-and-drop site builder
500+ stunning templates
Optimized for SEO
App marketplace for custom functions
Advanced design features like video backgrounds, animations, and scroll effects
Mobile-optimized ecommerce site
Custom domain, free hosting, and free SSL certificate
Supports multiple payment methods
Product pages and store manager tools
$300 in advertising vouchers
24/7 customer care
Unlimited products
Ecommerce plans from Wix start at $23. But I recommend starting with the Business Unlimited plan, at a minimum. It’s just $4 more per month and comes with enhanced features.
You can start building your Wix site for free to try out the drag-and-drop builder. Then take advantage of a 14-day free trial to access premium features.
#2 – BigCommerce Review — TheBest for Large Ecommerce Sites
BigCommerce is another industry leader in the ecommerce world. For more than a decade, this platform has served ecommerce sites in 120+ countries.
Over $25 billion in merchant sales have been powered by BigCommerce. It’s a great option for people who don’t want to hit annoying limits about what their site can and can’t do.
This platform is great for wholesalers, international ecommerce sites, B2B sellers, and multi-channel sales. For selling at scale, look no further than BigCommerce.
Easy to use and secure platform
Powerful ecommerce analytics and customer insights
Drag-and-drop building tools with no coding required
WordPress integration
Custom checkout capabilities with checkout API and SDK
Built-in Javascript, HTML, and CSS for full theme customization
Optimized for mobile and SEO
Built-in faceted search
Cross-channel sales support (brick & mortar, social, marketplaces, etc.)
Multiple currency support
Global CDN
Cross-border fulfillment
Built-in payment processing
Overall, BigCommerce is my top recommendation for large ecommerce websites. If you want to sell online without restrictions, this will be a top option to consider.
#3 – Squarespace Review — TheBest for Beautiful Ecommerce Designs
Squarespace is another all-in-one website builder that can be used to create any type of website.
But unlike other traditional site builders out there, Squarespace is optimized for businesses. With the exception of the personal plan, all Squarespace subscriptions come with built-in ecommerce functionality.
Squarespace is a popular choice for creative professionals who want to showcase their portfolios and sell online. It comes with features like:
Award-winning design templates
Built-in tax tools
Supports sales for subscriptions and digital content
Discount codes and gift cards
Secured checkout process from any device
Abandoned cart recovery tools
Ecommerce integrations for shipping and payment processing
24/7 customer support
You’ll need to connect your own payment processor to run an online store with Squarespace. Ecommerce plans start at $18 per month. Upgrade to the Basic Commerce plan ($26 per month) to avoid 3% transaction fees.
If creating a visually appealing ecommerce site with stunning designs is your top priority, Squarespace should definitely be on your shortlist.
#4 – Square Online Review — TheBest for Small Businesses with Physical Retail Space
Square is best known for its payment processing and POS solutions. But the platform also provides business owners with the ability to create a free online store.
If you’re a brick and mortar retailer that’s currently selling with Square POS, you can easily expand your online presence by building an ecommerce site using Square Online.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the features and benefits that you’ll get with Square Online:
Fast setup with no coding required
Built-in payment processing
Automatic sync with your Square POS system
Supports in-house and on-demand delivery
Instagram integration
Inventory management tools
Accept gift cards, Google Pay, and Apple Pay
Launching an ecommerce site with Square Online is free; you’ll only pay the transactional fees (starting at 2.9% + $0.30). For advanced features, paid plans start at $12 per month. Try it for free.
#5 – Bluehost Review — The Best Turnkey WooCommerce Store Builder
It can be a hassle to get a WooCommerce store up and working brilliantly.
From managing the WordPress plugins—both WooCommerce itself and the companion plugins needed to power up WooCommerce for your needs—to conducting regular updates, health checks, backups and so on, building a WooCommerce store can be daunting.
With their specialized WooCommerce Online Stores offering, Bluehost has made setting up a WooCommerce store a breeze.
It starts with Bluehost’s Online Store Creation Experience, a tool that will guide you gently through initial store creation and product uploads.
I love this because Bluehost has long been one of WordPress’ recommended hosting providers. They get WordPress, so who better to trust with maximizing the best ecommerce store plugin for it?
And remember what I said above about companion plugins?
Well, Bluehost has picked out the top ones your web store will need and included them at no charge to you.
That’s a big deal since it would cost you $80 each to install and utilize USPS shipping, FedEx shipping, and UPS shipping, for just one example. Right off the bat, you get the three major shipping providers and Bluehost saves you $240.
And that’s just three of the many plugins included.
Bluehost is generous with included features beyond that, as well. In the basic package, you’re allowed unlimited products and access to traffic analytics, 24/7 support, easy payment processing, manual order creation, and much more.
Plus, you get a free year of CodeGuard Basic for regularly backing up your site.
All of this comes at a good price of $12.95/month if you agree to a 36-month commitment. But if you’re serious about running an ecommerce store, I’d expect you want to be around for at least three years.
Upgrade to Premium—which starts at $24.95/month for the same 36-month term—and you’ll also get the ability to sell subscriptions, customize your products on a deeper level, and book appointments online.
Plus, they’ll give you CodeGuard basic completely for free, as well as domain privacy and protection.
In essence, Bluehost is taking so much work, research, and upkeep off your hands, there’s no question that this is one of the easiest ways to build and maintain an ecommerce store on your WordPress site.
If you currently have a WordPress website and need to add shopping cart functionality to it, WooCommerce will be the best option for you.
This plugin is built specifically for WordPress, and it’s one of the most popular WordPress plugins on the market today.
What makes WooCommerce so great? Let’s take a closer look:
Fully customizable with features that can extend its functionality
Flexible and open-source
140+ gateways and payment integrations
Ability to manage orders on the go
Supports physical products, digital products, and subscriptions
Hundreds of free and paid extensions
Fully scalable
Developer-friendly with REST API
To get started with WooCommerce, you’ll need to have an existing WordPress site. That means you’ll have to handle the domain registration and hosting on your own as well.
Shopify is king in the ecommerce space. Trusted by 1+ million websites in 175 countries, it’s one of the most popular ecommerce platforms available on the market today.
More than $200 billion in online sales have been facilitated via Shopify.
The platform is extremely versatile. Whether you’re starting a new ecommerce business from scratch or expanding your physical presence to an online store, Shopify can accommodate your needs. It comes with everything you need to build your website and start selling online:
Industry-specific templates
Supports multiple sales channels (point-of-sale, social media, online marketplaces, etc.)
Drag-and-drop store builder
70+ templates
Custom domains
Secure checkout
Gift cards
24/7 support
Unlimited products
Built-in payment processing
Shipping discounts
Marketing tools
Business insights
Regardless of your business size or industry, Shopify’s ecommerce platform is versatile enough to support your site.
If you have unique needs and you’re working with a developer or designer, Shift4Shop (formerly 3DCart) might be the solution for you.
Shift4Shop isn’t quite as popular as some of the other ecommerce website builders on our list. But with that said, it’s not for everyone.
While Shift4Shop does have drag-and-drop building tools to accommodate beginners, the software is powerful enough to support the needs of developers and design experts. So it can essentially be as simple or complex as you want it to be.
Other top features and noteworthy highlights of Shift4Shop include:
200+ built-in features
200+ ways to accept payments
50+ free themes
Simple and versatile shipping setups
Robust security
Supports dropshipping
Supports subscriptions, tickets, events, and print-on-demand sales
Powerful CMS
Optimized for SEO
All plans come with secure hosting, unlimited orders, 24/7 support, and no transaction fees.
If you use Shift4Shop for your payment processing, the entire platform is free to use. Whereas some ecommerce website builders cost hundreds of dollars a month, Shift4Shop doesn’t cost a thing more than the transaction fees, which you would still be paying on a platform that cost money.
The potential to save big is yet another reason I recommend Shift4Shop. Subscriptions are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. Try it free for 15 days.
What I Looked at to Find the Best Ecommerce Website Builder
Before you start searching for different ecommerce site builders, it’s important to understand how to evaluate these options.
Much will depend on where you are starting from and where you want to go.
Someone who wants to add ecommerce functionality to an existing website, for example, has a different set of challenges than a person who is still planning to launch their site.
Here are the major factors to consider as you’re shopping around and narrowing down your top picks.
Technical Skill Level
What is your technical background?
Some ecommerce website builders are designed for beginners, others are made for advanced users and developers, and the rest fall somewhere in between. If you’re a DIY-type person, then your technical abilities will play a significant factor in choosing the right platform.
Beginners should aim for platforms that don’t require coding. These website builders will let you put everything together with simple drag-and-drop functionality.
Advanced users and developers may want the ability to access the site’s backend code for advanced customizations. Businesses should consult with their tech team or whoever will ultimately be working on the site before finalizing a decision.
Business Stage and Size
New business and rapidly scaling startups won’t necessarily have the same needs in an ecommerce website builder. Some of you might even be looking to sell a handful of products online as a small side project or part-time job.
If you already have an existing website, you might not need a complete site builder. There are other tools out there that can add shopping cart functionality to your current site (more on this shortly).
Do you still need to register your domain name? Have you picked a web hosting plan yet?
There are website builders out there that provide you with all of these capabilities out of the box from a single platform. In other instances, you’ll need to get your domain and hosting plan separately.
Dropshipping
Dropshipping makes it possible to run an ecommerce website without having to buy, store, or ship inventory to your customers. When someone purchases something from your website, the supplier handles fulfillment and ships the product directly to those customers.
If you’re interested in running an ecommerce site that follows this business model, you need to make sure that your site builder supports dropshipping.
While not every website builder will come with dropshipping functionality out of the box, the best ones will seamlessly integrate with dropshipping software and third-party tools.
Design and Templates
Start to think about the visual aesthetics of your ecommerce site. The best ecommerce website builders will make it possible for you to create a beautiful site without having to hire a designer.
The easiest way to do this is by starting with a pre-built template and customizing it with your content. You should be able to choose a theme or template that fits with your brand image and industry.
As you start browsing and evaluating different platforms, you’ll quickly realize that the templates and design tools aren’t equal across the board—some are undoubtedly better than others.
Built-in Functionality
Not every ecommerce website builder comes standard with a long list of functions. In some cases, you’ll have to customize your site’s functionality by adding features from a marketplace or app store. Depending on the functionality you’re looking for, you might even need to integrate your site with a third-party tool or platform.
With that said, other site builders will provide you with all of the functions you could possibly need out of the box (with some restrictions).
There’s really no right or wrong answer here; it’s all about personal preference. Would you rather have every feature at your disposal as soon as you create an account? Or do you prefer adding functionality as needed?
The answer to these questions will help you narrow down your choices.
Limitations
Your ecommerce website builder might restrict how many products you can sell on the site. Some platforms will even charge you extra fees based on your traffic volume.
This usually isn’t a concern for new websites, but as your site scales, this can definitely become a problem.
Look beyond the rock-bottom prices and entry-level plans offered by different platforms. See how much it will cost you if your product list doubles, triples, or quadruples. Will you incur extra fees?
Some ecommerce site builders are better for selling just a dozen products or so as opposed to managing extensive product catalogs in the hundreds or thousands.
Conclusion
The first step to selling online is finding a viable ecommerce website builder.
Which one is the best? It really depends on what you’re looking for. Here are my top recommendations:
Shift4Shop — Best developer-friendly ecommerce software
For many people, Wix is going to be the absolute easiest option on this list. All the builders I picked are intuitive, but if your not super confident in your technical skills, Wix is a safe bet.
Of course, if you already have a WordPress site, WooCommerce is going to be even easier. For new WordPress sites, go with Bluehost, as they include so much at a great price.
In order to find the best option for your website, refer to the buying guide, reviews, and recommendations outlined in this post. This will definitely help you narrow down your options.
If you’re retailing products and want to reach the widest audience possible, having a well-optimized e-commerce website is an absolute must.
Why? Well, there are several benefits.
A great e-commerce website helps you understand the basics about your customers, for example, demographics like their locations, age groups, and how they found you.
By using tracking, you can then use your visitor’s information for behavior analysis to get to know them even better.
An e-commerce website does more than this, though. It can also help you understand where things are going wrong. For example, which traffic sources don’t work, which offers don’t appeal, and cart abandonment issues and their potential causes.
Of course, the more obvious reason you would want to have your site fully optimized: the growth of e-commerce worldwide. Year on year, e-commerce keeps growing, and this pattern looks like it will continue.
If you’re already online, that’s great. However, you risk remaining invisible to fresh prospects and new leads if you don’t take proactive steps to increase visibility.
How do you do that? It’s simple enough: with SEO for e-commerce.
What Is SEO for E-Commerce?
SEO for e-commerce is a strategy that helps web retailers rank higher in search engine results. A well-designed and optimized website with high-quality content will rank better in search engines such as Google, increasing your store’s visibility and driving traffic.
In other words, SEO for e-commerce concentrates on optimizing your site, which makes it easier to get leads and conversions.
However, unlike SEO for content-focused websites, SEO for e-commerce is more than just adding keywords, writing blog posts, and gaining links. You need to understand how search engines work and what they reward.
That means having a working knowledge of SEO for e-commerce, considering Google’s guidelines, analyzing buyer intent, and implementing it strategically.
E-Commerce SEO Best Practices
E-commerce for SEO is a complex field, and with millions of online retail sites in existence, it’s not always easy to make your site stand out.
While it might seem like a huge challenge to build your SEO rankings, you can make a positive start by applying some best practices. In time, this increases your chances of visibility and gaining more organic leads and customers.
For the unfamiliar, what do best practices for SEO for e-commerce look like? Well, you could start by addressing fundamentals like:
navigation
internal links
avoiding clutter
creating unique content
including alt text for images
However, there’s far more you can do. Below, explore our list of SEO for e-commerce best practices you can implement today.
1. Perform Keyword Research the Right Way
There are many different ways to optimize your e-commerce site, and not every approach is suitable for every site or product. However, some guidelines apply to every online retailer, and one of them is performing keyword research correctly.
Yes, you want the most relevant and popular keywords in your industry, but you must also understand buyer intent.
Keyword intent is the intention behind a search query. You can identify it by looking at the specific phrases and terms people use when looking for an item online.
There are two main types of keyword intent you see most often.
Informational Keyword Intent
Informational keyword intent is used in SEO to describe the type of information the searcher is looking for.
These types of searches usually consist of:
How tos: These are searches that contain questions such as “how do I?”
Direct purchase: These involve searches with keywords like “buy this.”
Factual queries: These use words such as “fact” and “information” when a searcher wants more details about a subject.
Commercial Keyword Intent
Commercial keyword intent is when people are looking for information to help them make a purchase. This means that they want to find what they need and buy it as fast as possible.
Consumers typically use commercial keyword intents when they know what they want but don’t know where to find it yet. You see this when you’re typing specific terms into Google like “buy digital camera” or “find new laptop deals.”
Commercial keyword users typically have more intent to purchase and are less likely to search for information about the product or service than just researching where to find it.
Determining Keyword Intent
Deciding consumers’ keyword intent seems challenging, but you can make it easier on yourself. For example, AgencyAnalytics breaks it down into stages.
Analyzing SERPs: Pay special attention to paid ads, knowledge graph results, and organic listings.
Look at Google ads for commercial intent: Seeing bid prices for keywords gives an idea of how competitive keywords are.
Review your analytics: Look for content with high bounce rates as it may mean it doesn’t match with searcher intent.
You could also use keyword tools like Google’s keyword planner. Others you can try include:
Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is a free online tool that can find long-tail and related words to any topic or keyword, or you can opt for the paid version.
This tool is great for content writers, bloggers, copywriters, and marketers who want to generate new content ideas or find out what users are searching for about a given topic.
Features include:
backlink data
rank tracking
site audit reports
Backlink Data
To see what backlinks you are getting from other sites, go to the backlink analyzer under SEO Explorer. This can help you see who is already a fan and what related sites you can target for more linkbuilding.
Rank Tracking
See how you rank in organic SERPs for your target keywords with Ubersuggest rank tracking. That way, you can see how you have improved over time. This is under Dashboard on the left side.
Site Audit
Run a site audit to track what issues need to be fixed on your site that could be affecting user experience and organic traffic. Think of the audit as a starting point, then review it regularly to make sure you’re fixing other issues. This is under the SEO Analyzer section. One the audit has run, it will tell you your top SEO issues and how to fix them.
Answer the Public is a great tool. It lets you uncover what people all over the world are curious about and going through.
Answer the Public is intuitive, too. Just enter your keyword on the homepage to understand precisely what people are asking. It can also help you find which topics are most popular at any given time, which might be helpful as another tool for keyword research. However, if you want further guidance, there’s a set of tutorials available.
It’s free to use, but you can upgrade to pro for more features. The following example uses “multivitamins.”
The results give a detailed picture of the kind of questions people are asking and give a better idea of intent.
2. Optimize Product Pages to Improve Ranking
If you want to attract and acquire new customers, look at your on-page user optimization. It matters because it gets your site a higher rank, meaning fresh streams of organic traffic and more conversions.
Not every area of your e-commerce site needs optimizing, so in this section, let’s focus on the ones that matter most to online retailers: product descriptions, images, and reviews.
Optimize Your Product Descriptions
A product page is interesting because it has a lot of different features that all need attention. You also want a few things to stand out from the page to gain visitors’ engagement and get them to click through.
To begin optimizing your e-commerce product pages, you need to keep in mind three key aspects:
What are the most crucial things on the page?
How can you maximize visibility and impact with these elements?
How can you use this information to improve your product description’s effectiveness?
Now, start looking at what you can do to maximize the impact of your product descriptions. This could be things like.
adding multiple, high-quality, unique images
including keywords
including detailed, keyword-rich descriptions
adding calls to action (CTAs)
including testimonials
Optimize Your Images
A sometimes neglected area of SEO for e-commerce is images. Photos are an excellent way to communicate a message and draw in an audience. However, they can also distract people from the message you are trying to convey, so be careful not to use too many images and crowd your descriptions.
Although quality images are vital to show your goods at their best, there’s more to it than that. Optimizing your images for SEO will give you higher search engine rankings and more traffic from potential customers and may gain you traffic from social media channels.
Here are some pointers for optimizing your images:
Choose suitable images for your platform. Your host usually specifies optimal image sizes and other image guidelines.
Provide captions with alt tags for pictures.
Use the right keywords in file names.
Feature Reviews
Reviews provide a snippet of information that helps shoppers weigh whether to go with a particular product or store.
Reviews are vital for success in e-commerce as so many people rely on them. Additionally, they help you build trust with your potential customers and improve conversion rates.
You can encourage customers to leave reviews by sending automated messages whenever they purchase. You can also set up email campaigns to send out reminders or offers once they have left a review on your site.
Before moving on, here are more optimization tips:
Use canonical tags to link duplicate product pages and similar group products together.
Create a well-written page that includes the necessary information about the product, an image of the product, and a video of it in action.
Include at least one CTA on your product page. For example, “Add To Cart” or “Check Availability.”
Make sure you include shipping details and policies upfront so customers know what they’re paying from the start.
3. Make Sure Your Site Is User Friendly
UX stands for user experience. You can enhance UX by good design, making the aesthetics more visually appealing.
However, it’s not just about making a website look good; it’s about making it work well. UX includes everything from navigation, ease of use, and the overall “feel” of the website.
UX is also about making sure people can find what they are looking for, keeping them engaged while browsing, and giving visitors the best experience possible.
You may not think that UX affects SEO, but the interaction between the two began some years ago, and UX is also imperative for discoverability.
Additionally, recent changes mean that UX is soon to be a Google ranking factor. According to Search Engine Land, that means if Google thinks your website offers visitors a bad experience, it may rank lower. Google measures the new ranking with “Core Web Vitals” and has set out its guidelines online.
Many things can influence UX, but a few key factors are apparent:
Ads shouldn’t interfere with the user’s view of content.
Your site should load quickly and be mobile-friendly.
Any website should be clutter-free and easy to navigate.
You should include CTAs, so customers know what to do next.
You usually see long-tail keywords on the right side of a search engine results page (SERP).
A long-tail keyword is a term that typically has low search volume but still meets the criteria for relevancy to your business. They also tend to convert well because they’re a better match for what the searcher is looking for, and they typically give higher traffic.
For those reasons, you shouldn’t be afraid to rank for long-tail keywords because they’re a valuable source of traffic.
Long-tail keywords are great for:
competitive niches
increased conversion rates
ranking new sites more easily
You can find long-tail keywords by using Google’s “People also ask” or use a free keyword tool like Ubersuggest. There are plenty of other tools available too.
The following example uses Wordtracker, where the search for “dumbells” delivered this:
As you can see, they give you a firm idea of what your customer is looking for and of their intentions.
5. Use a Simple URL Structure
There are more detailed guides on URL structures, but this section gives you the basics.
A simple URL structure not only enhances the user experience but also improves your SEO e-commerce efforts to some extent.
Additionally, when your e-commerce site has a simple URL structure, it’s easier to share products on social media and other websites, and it can improve SEO for e-commerce as it provides more relevant data for search engines.
For the best results, URLs should be as readable and understandable as possible.
For instance, here’s an example of what NOT to do: https://www.example.com/article-about-hiking/
It would be much better to use this URL structure: https://www.example.com/hiking-articles
Google also has some advice on improving URL structure.
Additionally, you can:
Use Keywords
Search engines scan the URL and use the keywords in the URL to determine where that page should rank in the SERPs. The keywords in the URL are called “metatags” and help tell search engines what the content or topic of that page is.
That’s why you must spend some time thinking about your keywords before deciding on a URL structure.
When people search for your business online, they often type in the precise words they’re looking for. As an example, a person may type in “online shoe store” into a search engine.
Therefore, when someone types in “online shoe store,” it’s crucial those words are somewhere in your URL structure.
Use Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are a navigational tool. They allow website visitors to retrace previous steps and return to where they started. Breadcrumbs are not just a usability technique but also provide additional SEO benefits.
For example, if you visit a blog post from your main homepage, the breadcrumb for that post would be “Home > Blog > This Post.”
You find breadcrumbs in many web design tools, and you can add them by using markup tags or via JavaScript.
Avoid Stop Words
Common stop words are “the,” “and,” “of,” and “a.”
In addition, stop words are less likely to hold a reader’s interest. By removing these words from your website, you can use those spaces for more creative and relevant copy.
6. Use Schema Markups to Help Google and Users Understand Content
Schema markups are HTML tags that provide additional information about the content on web pages. By using these markups, it can improve your SEO for e-commerce efforts.
When you use schema markup, it produces rich snippets. These are a way for search engines to show more information about specific items in the search results.
They also help people find what they are looking for faster and easier by showing different types of information.
There are many different types of rich snippets, such as:
Product schema: This is an extension for products, services, and organizations. It enables discovering new products and services in web search queries by providing rich product information such as images, price, and availability. Product schema also allows the display of product ads on the SERPs.
Review schema: This enables online reviews. The author and title filters allow you to find specific people who have written reviews on your website or blog post and for searchers to find product reviews.
Product availability schema: The product availability schema is a list of products that are available to purchase. It can be a single page, or it can be within an online store. Such lists typically detail the product name, description, price, images, and variants.
Video schema: Video schema is a type of metadata used to describe the content and format. For example, video schema may include the audio language, video resolution, or age rating of the video.
Price schema: Price schema is a technique for the pricing of products or a price range.
7. Avoid Duplicate Pages and Content
Have you ever visited a website and got the feeling you’ve read it all somewhere before? That’s all too common with production descriptions and category descriptions when online retailers use duplicate product catalogs and images.
It’s understandable why e-commerce sellers just republish the same descriptions. Usually, it’s simply because they don’t have the resources to produce fresh content themselves.
However, even if you don’t have time to rewrite everything, you can still significantly reduce the amount of duplication on your site in product descriptions and other areas.
Website page speed loading time is the measurement of how long it takes for an internet user to open a web page. You can measure it by adding up the time to download all the non-hidden assets, such as images, scripts, and stylesheets.
Page speed is a ranking factor, and survey after survey shows consumers aren’t willing to wait around while a site loads.
Web-users say their ideal site speed is just two seconds, but the faster, the better. If you’re not sure about your current speeds, you can test it at Cloudflare or try Google’s tool.
What should you do if your site is too slow? First, you need to find the reason. It could be:
Your site simply has too much content for your server to handle.
Too many scripts are slowing down load times.
Images take an excessive amount of time to load.
There’s a problem with your web host.
While not all e-commerce site owners can guarantee a perfect 100 percent on Google’s PageSpeed Insights, you can try and fasten load times by:
having fewer images on the pages
compressing files
using fewer social media widgets
optimizing your images
avoiding clutter and using plenty of white space
limiting redirects and HTTP requests
fastening your server response time
Additionally, you might want to think about changing web hosts or upgrading your hosting package to accommodate your needs better.
9. Content Does Matter for E-Commerce
E-commerce isn’t just about images and keywords. Written content should also be part of your SEO for e-commerce strategy.
Posting regular content not only attracts organic traffic. It can gain your customers’ trust, boost your website rankings, and solidify your reputation as an expert in your niche too.
There are many types of content you can focus on:
sharing how-to pieces and answering FAQs
new product launches and anything newsworthy
a glossary page
including user-generated content (UGC)
testimonials and launches
video demonstrations and Q and As
webinars
For more ideas, take it a step further and get to know your audience so you understand their main concerns and problems. This allows you to write content that addresses their everyday worries and offer products that solve these.
Now you’ve got some ideas for content. However, content isn’t worthwhile without a strategy behind it. Let’s break it down:
Understand their preferred content. If you’re tracking your content data, you should see which content types get the most views. Additionally, you can ask customers and prospects through surveys or groups.
Establish a content calendar and create the content.
Publish the appropriate content for the various stages of the buying cycle.
Use A/B testing in key areas like titles.
Measure the results and tweak.
10. Link Building for E-Commerce
Link building is a ranking factor for SEO. Quality links tell Google that your site has credibility. Backlinks also influence how your website ranks for keywords.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? But just how do you go about creating these all-important backlinks?
A few ways to do this are:
creating internal backlinks
writing guest posts
using social media ads
sharing content on social media
issuing press releases
writing blog comments and sharing on forums (if allowed)
creating infographics and sharing them online
issuing whitepapers and case studies
These are all legitimate ways to build quality links. Although they can take time, you shouldn’t take shortcuts by buying links. Some paid links violate Google’s guidelines, and if you’re buying cheap links, the quality is usually questionable. Poor quality links lead to lower SERP rankings and reduced traffic, as well as a potential negative impact on your site’s reputation.
11. Add a Sitemap
A sitemap is a visual representation of your website or digital product. It provides visitors with a bird’s eye view of the website and explores different pages.
Your sitemap should detail all of the pages on your site, from category pages to product pages. It should also include all the subcategories, products, and other content within those sections.
You can develop a sitemap manually or use an automated tool such as Google’s Webmaster Tools to generate one. Sitemaps use both XML and HTML, although HTML sitemaps are more helpful to visitors.
Other tools for creating a sitemap are:
Lucid Sitemap Generator
The Lucid chart sitemap generator is a user-friendly tool that makes creating a sitemap for your website easy. It has many features, like adding categories and subcategories.
Powermapper
Powermapper is an easy-to-use tool for creating and updating sitemaps and allows you to generate one-click checkouts.
It’s a web-based tool with no coding expertise required. However, there is a fee.
12. Make Social Sharing Easy
Google’s Matt Cutts once said that social sharing doesn’t impact SEO, but many would disagree.
While social media sharing may not directly affect your SEO, sharing your content on social media increases brand exposure and gets people more familiar with your business.
Further, the more mentions you get on social media, the more influence this can have on your SEO by:
driving organic traffic and increasing visibility
improving local SEO
expanding your content reach and enhancing brand recognition
increasing backlinks
If you want an easy way to increase your shares on social media, consider getting a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to automatically post content from your site across all of your social media accounts at scheduled intervals.
Frequently Asked Questions About SEO for E-Commerce
How do I Find the Right Keywords For my E-commerce Store?
There are several free resources that you can use to find keyword ideas, such as Google AdWords, Ubersuggest, and Google’s Keyword Tool. You should also look at what your competitors are using to find the best keywords for their audience.
Finally, avoid using broad keywords that generate many clicks but don’t provide much conversion value. Use long-tail keywords where you can.
How Much Does SEO for E-Commerce Cost?
The cost of SEO depends on many factors, including the number of keywords targeted, competitive landscape, and how much effort you need to optimize each page for ranking.
It’s not easy to put a price tag on SEO because it depends on how many resources you allocate and what you want to achieve. To help you budget, Search Engine Journal provides an SEO budget calculator.
What Is SEO for E-Commerce?
SEO for e-commerce is the process of optimizing a website so that it can rank more highly in search engines. Several factors affect how well a website ranks on the SERPs, such as the quality and relevance of the content, the use of appropriate keywords to optimize the site, and the site’s load speed.
How Is SEO for E-Commerce Different?
When it comes to SEO for e-commerce, there are different areas you need to focus on, such as optimizing:
product pages and descriptions
diversifying product content and information
images on your website
your homepage
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SEO for E-Commerce Conclusion
SEO for e-commerce helps boost your website visibility, brings new queries and customers, and helps build your loyal audience.
It may seem like there’s a lot to think about. However, by concentrating on the main SEO best practices and optimizing the critical areas of your website, it doesn’t have to be as complicated as it sounds.
The most important thing to remember is SEO for e-commerce doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, it’s an ongoing strategy that requires updating as you go to get the optimum results.
What is your experience of SEO for e-commerce? Tell us below.
Are you struggling to grow your e-commerce business?
Sick of low conversion rates?
You’re not alone.
On average, only 3% of e-commerce website visitors converted into customers.
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Conclusion
One of the best ways to become successful in business is to look for clues. Brands leave breadcrumbs you can follow and reverse engineer to your benefit.
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