Find keywords for your products. When it comes down to it, you want to sell more on your site. If including a keyword on one page is good, isn’t it even better to include it on more than one page? To improve your SEO results, include these competitor keywords in your product descriptions. Optimize your product descriptions with long content Research into Google’s ranking factors has shown again and again that Google prefers long-form content. Include LSI keywords While you may think Google is only looking for the keyword you’ve included, there’s a secret kind of keyword that Google also pays attention to. As you gain backlinks and social shares to this type of content, it shows Google that your site has valuable content that users find interesting. Create a list of categories and parent pages, designate a set of product pages under those, and maintain the structure as you add new pages. Include customer reviews and interaction The first and easiest way to provide engaging content on your product pages is to include customer reviews. What SEO techniques will you use to sell more on your e-commerce site?
If you want to increase your sales on your e-commerce site, look no further than SEO.
While SEO is usually touted as a great way to increase your web traffic, it’s excellent for e-commerce, as well.
According to research by HubSpot, SEO is the #1 challenge in inbound marketing.
The better your rankings are on Google and other search engines, the more you will sell.
But there’s more to SEO than just showing up high in the SERPs.
You also need to encourage more purchases of your products. In this guide, I’ll tell you the exact strategies I recommend for selling more on your e-commerce site with SEO.
Let’s jump in!
1. Do extensive keyword research
As you probably already know, the biggest secret to SEO success is making sure you’re targeting the right keywords.
It’s easy if you’re writing how-to articles and other types of content, but what about e-commerce?
I’ve found there’s actually a secret type of keyword research you need to be using. To drive customers to your site to buy, you need to target keywords a little differently.
In this section, I’ll explain how.
Find keywords for your products.
When it comes down to it, you want to sell more on your site. To do so, you need to drive people to see what you’re selling!
If you’re wasting time appealing to broad search terms, you probably won’t see this kind of purchase-driven traffic.
Instead, search for specific keywords targeted at the products you’re selling.
To do this, go to Übersuggest. This is a website that will allow you to see keywords that aren’t even visible in Google’s keyword research tools.
Let’s search for “custom frames,” a broad keyword people might use when searching for frames for pictures or prints.
Immediately, Übersuggest gives us hundreds of keywords we wouldn’t have found anywhere else.
This is a goldmine of promising phrases to start targeting with our content efforts. One thing I notice quickly with the results is that local keywords pop up frequently.
If you have a local business and sell custom frames, you need to start using local keywords to drive clients and customers to your site.
Even If you don’t see one for your local area, it’s a sure bet that people are searching for it (even if it isn’t a very popular keyword).
By finding these type of product-specific keywords, you can start appearing on Google results where people are looking for products to buy.
Long-tail keywords
If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you know that I’m a big fan of long-tail keywords.
They allow you to drive massive amounts of traffic with comparatively easy effort, as compared to competing with major brands for incredibly popular keywords.
But how do you find these if you’re in the e-commerce sector?
The answer may surprise you. I’ve found that Amazon is one of the best places to find these types of keywords.
Amazon has spent millions perfecting their website to drive the maximum number of sales, and that data allows them to predict the most common search queries.
To get started, go to Amazon. In the main search bar, type in a broad keyword that represents what you sell. In this instance, I’m using “water bottles.”
Don’t actually search for the keyword just yet. Our goal is to see what Amazon recommends.
We can immediately see the long-tail keywords we need to be targeting. These are phrases like “water bottles with straws” and “water bottles stainless steel.”
These are huge opportunities for phrases your competitors probably aren’t trying to rank for.
Don’t cannibalize your keywords
A common error I see a lot of e-commerce sites making is viewing keywords as a linear equation.
If including a keyword on one page is good, isn’t it even better to include it on more than one page?
Unfortunately, no. This will tell Google to rank both pages with the same keyword, and you’ll lose credibility for both.
This is known as cannibalizing your keywords.
Instead, you need to use a separate keyword for each product. Make sure each one of them is different so that Google doesn’t confuse which keyword it should target for each page.
Thin wallet company Bellroy makes sure not to repeat the same keywords on all the items in their Minimalist collection.
You’ll notice that Bellroy makes a point of using different keywords on each of its products.
Instead of calling each one a wallet, it calls it a “micro sleeve,” “slim sleeve,” and “card sleeve.” It’s clear how Bellroy names their products, and it keeps the keywords distinct.
It gives Bellroy an advantage in the SERPs because Google knows what to target for each of the listings.
Find (and use) competitor keywords
Chances are, your competitors are ranking for keywords that you haven’t even thought of yet.
To take advantage of these keywords, you can do a simple Google search for what they are ranking for.
Use the Google Keyword Planner and click Search for new keywords using a phase, website, or category.
On the section where it says “Your landing page,” but enter the name of your competitor’s page instead.
In the years that I’ve done this, I found that it’s much easier to search for a specific landing page than a broad one.
If you search for a broad competitor, you’re going to get a lot of unrelated keywords along with the ones that you’re looking for.
In this example, I’ve found the landing page for Adirondack chairs on Wayfair. It’s a great, specific page for the product on a site that sells hundreds of different items.
But when I put it into Google Keyword Planner, I get messy results.
Google can’t differentiate between the Adirondack chair landing page and the other products that Wayfair sells.
For better results, choose a landing page for a company that only sells the product you’re looking to sell.
In this example, I’ve chosen a very specific competitor with a great landing page: The Best Adirondack Chair Company.
When I put this link into Google’s Keyword Planner, I get much higher-quality results.
These keywords tell me what other words people are searching for when they go to Google to buy Adirondack chairs. I find that “swings” and “wooden” appear frequently.
To improve your SEO results, include these competitor keywords in your product descriptions.
2. Optimize your product pages
It’s no secret that one of the keys to improving your results in Google is by optimizing each page you want to rank.
One of the best ways to do this with an e-commerce store is by optimizing each product.
If you have an e-commerce store, but you aren’t optimizing your product pages, you’re missing out on a lot of SEO advantages.
In this section, I’m going to teach some of the basics of optimizing those pages so you show up higher in Google’s results and sell more through your e-commerce store.
Optimize your images
One of the most overlooked methods for improving your results in Google is optimizing your images.
There are few ways to do this. The simplest is to add “alt” tags to each product photo. This is a simple way to show what keywords are being represented in images on your product page.
Another way to do this is to change the name of images on your server.
Leesa mattress does a great job of this. On the product page for their main mattress, they show an image of the mattress with Olympic athlete Aly Raisman.
The name of that image includes the mattress and Aly Raisman’s name as SEO keywords.
By renaming your images and adding alt tags, you can improve your results in Google.
Just a few simple tools can give you massive improvements and increase how much you sell through SEO.
Use keywords in your product titles
While it’s not Google’s only ranking factor, what you say in the title of your product is one of the ways Google knows what you have to sell.
For best results, make sure the product description and title are related. Be sure to use your most important keywords in both.
Igloo Coolers, for example, uses keywords for the product, features, and design in their titles.
They include phrases like “convertible,” “lunch box” and “sketched rose,” all of which boost their SEO efforts.
By making sure you include a variety of descriptors, you can ensure that Google will represent your product for the most important keywords you want to rank for.
Optimize your product descriptions with long content
Research into Google’s ranking factors has shown again and again that Google prefers long-form content.
This doesn’t just apply to content marketing, however. You can use the same techniques to boost the rankings of your e-commerce product pages.
To do so, include multiple details in each description. Your goal is to hit at least 500 words. You can also add comments and other data to extend this to as much as 1,000 words.
Joovy does a great job of this with their baby stroller product description. They include the story behind the stroller, details about the stroller, and how you can use the stroller.
They even include an extended list of features. Each one is summarized and listed beside a photo or video.
This ensures that they hit over 800 words on their product page, which gives them an advantage over competitors in Google’s results.
If we put the page into Website Word Counter, we find that it also includes a lot of critical keywords in the process. That’s another advantage when you write long descriptions.
Include LSI keywords
While you may think Google is only looking for the keyword you’ve included, there’s a secret…
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