Is eCommerce SEO Different From Regular SEO?
Creating a unique website for our small business clients means paying attention to the search engine optimization, or SEO, of every page. It’s how we get your website the attention it deserves using unique content. There is no blanket SEO strategy, though – the tactics we use can change based on the kind of website our client needs. The SEO of an eCommerce site has always been different from regular website SEO. With Google’s many algorithmic changes, though, optimizing an eCommerce site is much different from the SEO tactics of other websites! Here’s what we consider when setting up an eCommerce site for a client.
Main And Supplementary Content: Earning eCommerce SEO Credibility
The amount and type of content make a big difference for eCommerce SEO. The main content (MC) is the product description and other forms of content, such as images and reviews, that are unique to the URL of the product page rather than being site-wide elements. Product pages that have a small amount of unique MC (images, descriptions, etc.) won’t receive a high-quality rating. However, many eCommerce sites sell similar products, and the MC of their category pages can be almost identical.
Overcoming this problem means looking more closely at what makes a website worthy of recommendation, and search engines must examine other quality signals. These include any supplementary content (SC), content Google describes as information that contributes to the overall user experience but doesn’t directly help the product page achieve its goal. However, any SC should still be related or relevant to the main content of the page.
eCommerce SEO also relies on how a site organizes the information. Small businesses that sell products directly on the site need to use a layout type called layered navigation.
What Is Layered Navigation?
Layered navigation makes it easy for your audience to filter and find products based on a set of attributes. By building a practical sitemap that lets visitors narrow their searches by category, brand, price, or other valuable properties, you are making it easy for customers to take the first step in their purchasing decision. Without layered navigation, visitors will feel overwhelmed by the number of items and may search for a more user-friendly website – something Google’s algorithms understand.
Let’s use an example of a clothing eCommerce site. When a female shopper visits a website for clothes, she can use filters for woman’s clothes so that all the options relevant to her will come up without having to scroll through clothes for men and children. The visitor can then filter with attributes such as brand names, price, size, etc. If she has to go through every option on the site, the visitor will become overwhelmed and turn to another shop where browsing is a more positive experience.
An eCommerce site needs to be user-friendly because you want your users to leave positive reviews for your site. As mentioned earlier, Google puts a lot of weight on MC, and product and site reviews are a great way of earning more of it!
Reviews Are Essential For eCommerce SEO!
Google is a big fan of user activity and thus holds a special place in eCommerce SEO. Reviews, comments, and other forms of user-generated content (UGC) are crucial to your site’s ranking. This SEO content has numbers and values attached while requiring little maintenance from the site’s owner.
What UGC brings more than organic MC is a conversation. The more your business and the products you sell are discussed by commenters, the better your page ranking can be. To this end, you
should focus your website and parts of your marketing strategy toward cultivating these comments:
- Have feedback boxes and other elements that point visitors towards your reviews section on the site, your Google My Business profile, or social media.
- After a visitor has completed an order, have a box come up asking for a review.
- Follow up any conversions with an email asking about their experience, linking them to your reviews section.
- Open your website’s blog section to comments (if you have time to monitor them!).
If you’re looking to make the most of your eCommerce, SlyFox has the answers. Our SEO tactics will get your site the attention and conversions your small business needs to succeed.
