The Comprehensive Guide to ECommerce SEO Best Practices for Websites and Amazon Listings

The question on every Amazon Seller’s mind is, what are the eCommerce SEO best practices for websites and Amazon listings, and how to improve organic ranking to reduce ad spend? We’ve got a monolith guide on the SEO best practices for eCommerce businesses, to help you drive traffic to your website, social media, and product pages. By using effective SEO marketing, you’ll find it much easier to grow your business.

Check out our monolith guide on Search Engine Optimization best practices for your eCommerce website and Amazon store – and get ready to dominate 2024. After all, we’re nearing the tail end of the first quarter – time is flying by at breakneck speed – so there’s no better time to improve your SEO strategy. Read on to find out more!

What is eCommerce SEO and Why Are eCommerce SEO Best Practices Important?

What exactly is eCommerce SEO? The best ecommerce SEO will enhance the visibility of your online store and your Amazon product listing. That means you’ll rank better on Google and Amazon. eCommerce SEO best practices involve conducting keyword research, structuring your site efficiently, optimizing webpage content, creating valuable content, and acquiring backlinks.

Unlike general SEO, eCommerce SEO involves strategies that are specific to  online retail, including understanding search engine algorithms, buyer intent, and applying these insights strategically. As the digital marketplace grows, implementing ecommerce SEO best practices becomes crucial if you plan to stand out and drive sustainable traffic and sales, therefore offering a cost-effective alternative to paid advertising.

Importance of eCommerce SEO and why you need to implement eCommerce SEO best practices

Many Amazon sellers do the bare minimum. They’ll look for a similar product on the Amazon search bar, check the title for the keyword, then stick that in their listings. The result? Inflated PPC costs. As for eCommerce websites, many people aren’t aware of the powerful ecommerce strategy to drive traffic, which means many online sites aren’t optimized for SEO.

Here’s why eCommerce SEO is important and why you should implement eCommerce SEO best practices:

• Improve user experience
• Increase visibility and bring traffic to your website
• Attract more leads and build a remarketing audience
• Create lasting value
• Lower paid search costs – it’s a lot more cost-effective than paid marketing
• Influence buyer decisions
• Boost your online sales
• Offer brand visibility

So, as you can see, implementing effective eCommerce SEO in 2024 can do wonders for your business. To be honest, optimizing the content on your website and product listings using the best practices is now a non-negotiable.

Overview of SEO benefits for online stores

To keep it simple, the goal of SEO is to counterbalance the rising costs and diminishing returns of paid ads. This offers stability and long-term results without continuous investment. Paid ads may target “window shoppers” who might not know what your product can do for them, while SEO targets customers who have real intent to buy. It’s the difference between top of funnel traffic and middle of funnel traffic; the latter is easier to convert. That means that an effective SEO campaign can help you develop quality, predictable traffic.

SEO can enhance brand trust, and provide a competitive edge by reaching customers organically, therefore establishing a foundation for sustainable digital growth and high ROI.

Best eCommerce SEO Practices in Keyword Research and Optimization

Importance of keyword research for titles, bullets, product description, and back end

It’s a jungle out there. In 2023, there were over 600 million products sold on Amazon – 12 million of these are sold by Amazon itself. So, if you’re going to make any sort of impact, and especially if you plan to reduce your PPC spend, you’re going to need to increase your organic traffic through SEO for eCommerce.

Let’s go deeper. The A9 is Amazon’s algorithm. It decides which products show up on the top of the search result based on customer search queries. Its behavior is cumulative; it’s trained to prioritize a product listing with good sales and conversion history. So, if you’ve been experiencing positive growth, it’s likely you’ll do even better because the A9 will rank you even higher — getting discovered by even more customers.

The below factors impact your SEO results on Amazon:

• Keyword relevance – so, choose the best keywords for your business, ones that don’t have a ton of competition, but are still relevant to your product
• Conversion rate – it’s not enough to drive traffic to your listing; you have to convert visitors as well through effective conversion tactics like images, A+, and customer service
• Sales history – it sounds tough, doesn’t it? In order to get more sales you have to first make sales. But that’s the chicken-and-egg situation of selling on Amazon.
• Impression – how often does Amazon display your ads to potential buyers? The more impressions you get, the higher the chances that customers will find your product.
• Click through rate – also known as CTR, this is how often people click on your product after seeing it in the search page
• Reviews & ratings – the algorithm will give more juice to product listings that have positive customer experiences, so make sure your customer service is on point!
• Price – are you competitive? If you’re priced too highly, people will think you’re too expensive and ignore your product altogether, but if you’re priced too low, people will think your value is also low.
• Stock availability – there will be little point to a successful SEO strategy on Amazon if you run out of stock, because people can’t buy you once they’ve discovered you.
• Backend keywords and search terms – these are the “hidden keywords” – healthy keywords you still want to rank for, but don’t want to put in the front end. These include misspellings, translations, and synonyms.
• Product images – humans are visual beings. They are more likely to buy from a pretty image than a set of words. Now, images have no basis on eCommerce SEO, but remember, conversion and CTR play a role in influencing the A9, so you’ll want to incorporate professional imagery in your listing to improve your sales – and, therefore, your performance.

Tools and strategies for finding the right keywords in SEO for eCommerce

Use a good SEO software to help you find the best eCommerce keywords. In fact, consider using ore than one, because the software sometimes finds different keywords. When you use more than one SEO software, you cover a larger base, and incorporate more of those relevant keywords in your listing. That increases the possibility of using the specific words that your target customers use when they look for your product.

It’s best to employ the services of an SEO company to help you out here. There are many tricks and hacks that seasoned agencies use in order to improve the ranking of their clients. They’ve made SEO into an art form and a science, and each one has their own secret sauce to help your performance grow.

YLT Translations is one such SEO agency. We conduct targeted keyword research for 15 countries. It’s crucial to generate new keywords for every marketplace, because what the Americans call a product may be different from what the Brits call the same thing. Also, don’t use machine translations to translate your keywords from one language to the other; the translations will be clumsy and inaccurate, and you won’t get the CTR and conversions that you need to boost performance on the A9.

Where to incorporate eCommerce SEO in your Amazon product listing

Here’s a guide for where to put keywords in your product listing:

1. Title: stick the most relevant keyword with the highest search volume in the title. Then stick in a few more depending on how long your category allows your title to be.
2. Bullet Points: make sure your bullet points are readable! Don’t make the mistake of stuffing keywords in your bullets, assuming customers don’t read. Even if they don’t read as much as they enjoy your images and A+, the algorithm will know if you’re keyword stuffing, and you’ll get penalized for it.
3. Back End: don’t forget to put high-ranking keywords in the back end! Don’t duplicate them; if you’ve already put a keyword in your bullets, title, product description, or meta tags, you don’t need to put it in the back end.
4. Meta Tags and Product Description: Did you know that the first 170 or so characters on your product description show up as the meta description on Google when a customer happens upon your keyword? So make the first sentence of your product description your unique selling proposition, and that way people will understand what your product is about even if they bypass the Amazon search page to find you.
5. Alt Text: you won’t rank on page 1 if you use alt text in your images, but not using it is a downright shame. Alt text educates the search engine on what the image is about, so include keywords, and make the description cohesive, instead of a nonsensical string of keywords.

Optimizing Product Pages using the best practices in eCommerce SEO

Best practices for product descriptions and images

Always, always, always use high resolution images for your eCommerce store. This way, whether a customer is accessing your website from their mobile, laptop, tablet, or a massive external monitor, they receive the full benefit of your photos.

Here are other tips to help you:

• Optimize for mobile
• Include social proof by way of testimonials
• Know your buyer persona
• Make it scannable – so, easy to digest. Remember, humans only have around 8 seconds before they lose interest and jump to your competition.
• Highlight what makes your product unique
• Keep the background as simple and uncomplicated as possible to let your product stand out
• Use contrasting backgrounds – so, if you’re selling a dark brown shirt, the background should be light in color to let the shirt really pop
• Show multiple angles and perspectives so customers get a thorough understanding of your product

Your product descriptions should also be scannable. Use bulleted lists, short paragraphs, and ample white space. Make your headers stand out with a larger font.

Importance of unique content and avoiding duplication

Duplicate content can create pretty big problems. Writing about something more than once is unnecessary, and it creates an inability to use unique canonical URLs, which reduces crawl effectiveness. Plus, duplicate content uses a 302 redirect, which can have a negative effect on your ranking. Not to mention, customers are likely to be disappointed because of identical information; fresh and new content is always a better idea.

Utilizing user reviews and ratings for improved trust

Did you know that 95% of consumers read the customer reviews before making a purchase? By implementing social proof through user reviews, you increase the dependability and trust in your product. Those reviews offer insights into consumer opinions on products, services, and experiences, which can improve sales and conversions by establishing brand credibility. Also, your SEO rankings will improve.

Put it this way – reviews can lead to an 18% uptick in sales and significantly higher conversion rates. So get those reviews in, and make sure you publish them on a page on your site.

eCommerce SEO Strategies in Site Structure and Navigation

The way your eCommerce website is laid out has an effect on SEO. That’s because search engine crawlers prioritizes flat style architecture over a pyramidical architecture, since the former needs less clicks to access.

Simplifying site architecture for better user experience

Think about your favorite eCommerce website. It could be for clothing, electronics, or even travel. Chances are, you like it because it’s easy to find what you need from the home page – and not just through a specific keyword on the search bar, either. The website is laid out in an intuitive way that considers the customer journey, so finding what you need is easy as pie.

Search engine crawlers like websites with a flat site architecture, because it’s much easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.

That said, most flat architecture websites have keyword-stuffed home pages, and this should definitely be avoided. Consider what your customers are looking for and divide that website into categories that make sense. Selling clothing? Put product pages for tops, bottoms, underwear, and outerwear. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but a flat site architecture will help search engines rank you much higher overall.

Importance of breadcrumb navigation and URL structure

Breadcrumbs are a navigational guide. You’ll see them on Amazon – they’re the blurb on the top that tells you which category, sub-category, and sub-sub-sub-sub-category you’re in. Websites have the same. They display the current page’s position in relation to previously visited pages, or the structure of parent pages. This makes navigation and orientation much simpler for customers to follow.

Optimizing product URLs with descriptive keywords, avoiding special characters, and using hyphens instead of spaces can enhance SEO. Keep those URLs short and simple. adapt consistency across categories, and optimize breadcrumb navigation so all users – especially those on mobile – can navigate your site with ease. Nobody likes websites that make you feel as lost as Alice in Wonderland, so keep those URLs and breadcrumbs simple to keep the user journey much more seamless.

Mobile Optimization and SEO Best Practices for 2024

In 2021, 55.4% of internet traffic came from mobile devices, and this number has likely increased since then. There’s a strong likelihood that customers are viewing your website and Amazon product listing through their cell phones, which means optimizing your digital assets for mobile use is a non-negotiable.

The necessity of mobile-friendly design for SEO for your eCommerce website

Here are three huge reasons why mobile optimization is one of the best ways to improve SEO performance:

1. Search engines prioritize websites optimized for mobile devices because of the sheer traffic that comes from mobile devices
   1. Google’s mobile-first indexing means Google will look at a website’s mobile version first. It’s also more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages than a website that isn’t optimized for mobile.
2. Mobile-friendly optimization boosts user experience
   1. Better user experience means lower bounce rates. When viewers have a tough time navigating the site, and if they experience slow load times or pages that are hard to read, they’ll likely leave the site, which leads to a high bounce rate – and lower SEO scores.
3. It leads to higher search engine rankings and inbound links, which ultimately increases traffic and leads conversions
   1. In short, Google prizes user experience when ranking websites, and a mobile-friendly website design is very user friendly. So that leads to improved search engine rankings, and increases website traffic.

How to create a mobile-friendly website?

Here’s a checklist to follow:

1. Make sure the design is responsive. Check the design on mobiles, tablets, laptops, and desktops. The design should adjust in layout and content to suit the screen size.
2. Optimize your site for speed. More on that a little later in this blog.
3. Simplify navigation. Use a collapsible menu to make your navigation easy to access and use, and keep your menu items short and straightforward. Group related items together. So, make navigation 10x easier than it is now – and then make it easier by 10x again.
4. Use legible fonts! Nothing overly complicated that might make viewers cross-eyed!
5. Optimize images and videos. Visual assets tend to slow down your website’s loading time. Optimize them for mobile – use compressed versions, and make sure they’re easily viewable on mobile devices.

How to check and improve mobile usability of your eCommerce site

First, use eCommerce SEO tools to check your mobile responsiveness. Check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test or BrowserStack, and identify areas for improvement that you can fix immediately.

Then, keep on checking! An important part of SEO is making sure you’re staying on the ball. So keep checking your website for mobile responsiveness, relevancy, and user journey. Use Google Analytics to pursue a data-driven approach, and optimize your website consistently, constantly, as time goes by.

Speed Optimization

As we’ve mentioned, Google considers user experience when it’s analyzing a website for ranking, so the friendlier your website is for customers, the better. So, slow websites lead to frustration, and an increase in the bounce rate. Faster websites enhance user experience, keeping viewers nice and engaged, and increasing the chances they’ll become customers. Let’s take a look at speed optimization and why it’s one of the most important aspects of SEO.

The impact of site speed on SEO and user experience

Did you know that a delay of just one second leads to a 7% reduction in conversions? People have short attention spans – especially for eCommerce, when they want what they want, when they want it. If the photos of the shirt they’re eyeing take too long to load, they’ll lose interest, and will look for similar products from your competitors.

So, yes, website speed and user engagement are cousins.

In addition, slow speeds affect bounce rate and conversion rate. Form taking too long to load? Close tab. Photos aren’t appearing? Open competitor site. Goodbye shopping cart; not even a tidy email campaign will improve performance if your website isn’t holding its own with speed.

On the other hand, fast websites lead to improved conversion rates. Is it easy to find the product? Is it easy to see what a product looks like from all angles? Are the videos quick to digest and quick to load? Awesome; add to cart. Odds are, that customer that had a fun time shopping on your website will be back, again and again.

And that, friends, will improve your SEO ranking.

Tools and tips for improving page load times

Here’s how to improve page load times and boost SEO performance:

– Compress and resize images to enhance website speed.
– Implement a CDN to distribute content and alleviate server load.
– Reduce HTTP requests to speed up page loading.
– Activate caching to decrease load times for repeat visitors.
– Limit plugin use to essential ones to prevent slowdowns.
– Choose a high-performance hosting service for better site speed, especially for sites with heavy traffic.

Using Schema Markup

Sometimes, technical SEO issues can reduce traffic to your site. That’s when schema markup comes into play.

Schema markup is a code that helps search engines understand and categorize web page content. It acts like a guide, using a special vocabulary to explain page elements in a way search engines can grasp. While humans can easily interpret visuals and context, search engines need this coded guidance to correctly identify and classify information like recipes or reviews. Essentially, it’s like giving search engines a pair of glasses to see and interpret web content more clearly, improving how information is presented in search results.

Schema markup enhances web pages by providing search engines with a clear understanding of their content, allowing for better indexing and richer search results. By including detailed structured data, websites can display additional information directly in search results, such as reviews, recipes, and event details, making the content more appealing and accessible to users. This improves visibility, user experience, and potentially the website’s ranking in search results.

Link Building Strategies

You’ve heard of the importance of backlinks to your eCommerce site before. It’s a powerful SEO tactic that boosts performance in a massive way. Loosely defined, backlinks are links that go from one website to a page on another website. They’re significant for SEO, because they let search engines know that others vouch for your content. Backlinks are a signal to search engines that your content is credible and valuable, which can improve your ranking. Backlinking is also known as off-page SEO, since it happens off your website. Backlinking isn’t easy; 41% of companies believe that backlinking is the biggest challenge when it comes to SEO.

Nevertheless, they’re a crucial part of ecommerce marketing, and they will affect your SEO.

Importance of high-quality backlinks for eCommerce sites

Backlinks enhance SEO rankings by acting as endorsements from other websites, suggesting content quality and relevance. They not only help search engines discover and index your content more effectively but also increase referral traffic and domain authority, a useful metric for gauging SEO success. Although domain authority doesn’t directly affect Google rankings, it’s valuable for competitive analysis. Additionally, backlinks can boost brand visibility by exposing your site to a wider audience. Effective backlink building requires a strategic approach but doesn’t necessitate expert SEO knowledge.

Websites that rank #1 on Google have more than 3x backlinks than the rest of the sites! But the quality of your backlink is more important than the quantity. That’s why high-quality backlinks are more important than just any old backlink.

You want a backlink that’s:

• Relevant
• Comes from an authoritative source
• Generates referral traffic

So, don’t grab backlinks in an effort to manipulate the search engine to improve your search rankings. Get backlinks to drive traffic and enhance visibility, and remember, good content will lead to an organic rise in good backlinks anyway, as people want to share your page.

Effective link building techniques for online stores

Here’s a list of ideas to improve backlinking to your online store:

• Use video! It’s the best-converting tool out there
• Work with influencers – TikTok isn’t just for the Gen Z kids anymore
• Use integrated content marketing – so, your blog is a money-generating tool
• Do guest post updates. Ask editors if you can update their existing blog posts. You choose a post that already has backlinks, resulting in a stronger backlink to your site. Choose non-competing, outdated posts on a topic you already have content on.
• Guest on podcasts! The benefits can’t be properly extolled, believe us.
• Post curated statistics. So, grab statistics from government data sites or primary research studies, and compile them to save readers time.

As you can see, backlinking is heavy on outreach, networking, and relationship building, so this is where the less technical part of SEO takes place, and you have to exercise a little bit of extroversion!

More eCommerce SEO Strategies: Content Marketing for eCommerce

Now it’s time for content marketing strategies. Adding more content, especially when it’s carefully crafted around relevant keywords, can significantly boost your SEO ranking. Through content marketing, companies can weave their critical organic keywords throughout their site in a way that’s both engaging and valuable. This way, you boost SEO efforts, but an effective content marketing is also a good way to garner more backlinks.

Role of blogs, guides, and informative content in SEO

Optimizing blog content for SEO is a rigorous process; it’s not just about writing pretty words (although that’s part of it, of course).

Blogs, guides, and informative content enhance a website’s visibility, authority, and engagement. In every bit of content, you target specific keywords, provide valuable information, and answer questions that potential customers might have.

In so doing, you attract backlinks from other sites, signaling to search engines that your website is a valuable source of information.

Furthermore, by posting new content regularly – or repurposing old content – you encourage search engines to crawl your site more frequently, potentially leading to higher rankings.

Ideas for content that drives traffic and engagement

Aspiration Marketing has said it best. Here’s the type of content that boosts engagement the best:

• Video content – which generates 1200% more shares than text content
• Infographics – which are shared 300% more than text-only articles
• Lists – shared 170% more than other types of content
• Quizzes – 125% boost in sharing over other types of content
• Images – shared 94% more than text-only articles

So, here’s what you can do to boost engagement on your eCommerce page:

• Answer questions (FAQs) about your product
• Produce how-to videos
• Lists of topics related to your product, eg. the best types of sweaters for airplanes
• A quiz where you identify which of your products is best suited to your customer’s personality
• Lifestyle images of your product in real-life settings

…there are tons more. Online retailers just need to be a little creative with their eCommerce SEO best practices, so they can adapt these tips and tricks to their own businesses.

eCommerce SEO Strategies for SEO Success

Now for your social media. In 2023, there were an estimated 4.9 billion people on social media across the world, a number that’s expected to jump to 5.85 billion users in 2027. The market is valued at $219.06 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.8%.

Long story short, your social media accounts matter. In 2014, Matt Cutts, who used to lead Google’s webspam team, said that Google didn’t treat social media profiles as ranking signals, but as their own organic search results.

So, social signals don’t directly influence a page’s rank, but websites ranked at the top of the SERPs probably have strong social media presence with content shared across all their platforms.

Integrating social media for enhanced SEO efforts

Here are some best practices for eCommerce sites to improve their social efforts:

•  Integrate relevant keywords as naturally as possible in social media posts to improve searchability
• Share on-site content and encourage others to do the same
• Add relevant links; Google has stated that positive mentions online can influence the relevance of your site for specific search queries
• Build a social media following
• Encourage engagement and conversion
• Engage regularly
• Include links in social profiles
• Optimize images for SEO and social
• Make sure your website has social sharing buttons!

Encouraging social sharing and engagement

Yet, boosting engagement on social is easier said than done. Here’s a comprehensive list on how to boost engagement on the social accounts of your eCommerce platform:

• Ask questions
• Know your audience
• Use hashtags
• Implement contests and give away stuff for free
• Improve your content
• Post regularly
• Engage with your audience promptly and genuinely
• Track engagement metrics
• Mention followers
• Share relevant content
• Use visuals
• Post videos on YouTube – and compelling content in as many avenues as possible
• Use calls to action
• Use emojis
• Be human; nobody likes interacting with a bot for forever

Think of social media as your first impression. Your handshake. You have to be real about it. You need to be genuinely interested in the person with whom you’re communicating; that’s the key to a long relationship with them. Go do the same on social. Be interesting, be authentic, and let your customers know you care.

eCommerce SEO Best Practices: eCommerce SEO Tools to measure progress

Now, it stands to reason that you’d want to measure how well you’re doing. Here’s how.

Tools and metrics for tracking SEO progress

Here are the things you should be checking regularly:

• Organic traffic
• Keyword rankings
• Bounce rate
• Conversion rate
• Backlinks
• Domain authority
• Click through rate
• Indexed pages
• Referral traffic and referring domains
• Search visbility
• Branded traffic
• Impressions
• New and lost backlinks
• Session duration

A few great tools to help you with this are:

• Google Analytics
• SEMRUSH
• Moz
• Ahrefs
• Core Web Vitals
• Google Search Console
• Moz
• Rank tracker

Guys, it’s 2024. Everything you do online can be measured. Back in the day, brands would release press releases and print ads and just hope for the best; now there are a ton of paid and free SEO tools to help you track your performance. This way, you’ll know if you’re barking up the wrong tree…

Or you’ve discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

(Okay, those are a lot of cliches, but you get the point.)

Effective Localization and Translation for Global Reach

Now, if you’re selling globally, it’s imperative to localize your website, Amazon listing, and social media for improved SEO.

Localization can significantly enhance SEO by adapting content to meet the specific language and cultural preferences of each target market. That starts with generating keywords in each language based on actual customer search behavior, as opposed to translating keywords from one language to another. It’s crucial to conduct new research for every country you sell in.

When content, such as Amazon infographics, A+, video, and website images, is translated by native speakers, it sounds a lot more natural. That translates (see what we did there) to a boost in user experience. This authenticity reduces bounce rates, because customers find the content more understandable and engaging.

Blogs that are translated properly by native speakers are particularly effective, because they incorporate regional jargon, slang, and references to pop culture, making the content resonate more deeply with the target audience.

Additionally, customer service quality is significantly enhanced when translations are handled by native speakers, who understand how to communicate with customers to satisfy their needs. You might translate something to sound correct and respectful, but will it really engage a customer to the point of garnering their loyalty? The same goes for social media.

Overall, localization through native translation can lead to a more effective SEO strategy by making content more relevant and accessible to a global audience. It’s not enough to translate; you must localize your content, so it speaks the exact language of your target market.

…good thing all the 80+ translators in YLT Translations are native speakers, right?

Conclusion: Use These eCommerce SEO Best Practices to Help Google and Amazon Help You

In conclusion, effective eCommerce SEO is not just a strategy but a necessity for businesses aiming to enhance their online visibility and drive organic growth. By embracing best practices for SEO, including keyword optimization, engaging content creation, and leveraging social media, eCommerce sites and Amazon listings can significantly improve their search engine rankings. Localization further amplifies this effect by tailoring content to meet the linguistic and cultural nuances of target markets, enhancing user experience and engagement. As we advance into 2024, prioritizing a comprehensive SEO strategy will be pivotal for eCommerce success, offering a sustainable alternative to paid advertising and fostering long-term customer relationships.

YLT Translations is well-versed in SEO for 15 different languages – so give us a call and we’ll take a look at your Amazon listing for you, free of charge, to see what needs improvement. Check it out here: https://ylt-translations.com/contact-free-listing-analysis/