7 eCommerce SEO Tips for this year
The idea behind eCommerce is simple to grasp but difficult to master — offering products and services through a virtual storefront that’s visible for those ready to make a purchase and entice those who aren’t ready just yet. The difficulty lies in becoming visible and mastering the ever-changing landscape of eCommerce SEO.
Hopefully, these eCommerce SEO tips, highlighting some of the latest trends in the sector, will help boost the visibility of your online storefront and drive more highly qualified traffic to view and, ultimately, buy your products.
Table of Contents
- Why Bother With eCommerce SEO?
- eCommerce SEO Trends for 2025
- SEO for eCommerce: Finishing Thoughts
- eCommerce SEO FAQs
Why Bother With eCommerce SEO?
Can SEO be a worthwhile investment if you are maximizing your marketing efforts on every other possible channel, covering paid advertising on Google and Bing, social media management, and community building on all important social channels? The answer should be a resounding yes.
SEO is worth it. For starters, data suggests that 37.5% of all internet traffic comes to eCommerce sites, with 43% of all eCommerce traffic coming from Google and 23.6% of all eCommerce orders traced back to search engines. In simple terms, if you neglect basic SEO practices, you’re willingly handing over these users to your competition.
Regardless of the type of eCommerce you do and the platform you use, an SEO strategy can bring several benefits to your business.
Submitting your site to search engines can give you a head start on optimizing, with optimized content creation helping you build more trust with new and recurring customers. Custom design can enhance your visibility and optimize the buyer’s journey for customers, eliminating confusion and distrust.
eCommerce SEO Trends for this year
eCommerce SEO experts agree that the landscape of online commerce optimization is currently undergoing a noticeable transformation due to technology advancements and customer behavior changes.
So, how can you improve your eCommerce website SEO? We have all the right answers for you below.
- Use artificial intelligence to answer search queries
- Embrace voice search
- Explore visual search
- Use AI copywriting tools to boost content creation
- Aim for featured snippets
- Leverage video SEO
1. Use Artificial Intelligence To Answer Search Queries
With more than 75.7% of marketers using AI tools regularly, it was only a matter of time before artificial intelligence started making shifts in SEO too. In today’s world, optimization experts can leverage the power of AI to automate tasks and generate content. To personalize search experiences, marketers can create more precise SEO strategies that propel the content creation process and fine-tune writing content to meet search intent.
For instance, generative AI can create new content based on the data it used to learn. From an SEO standpoint, this means that search engines can formulate summaries to respond to user queries. It eliminates the need to scroll the results or visit sites, allowing users to quickly read the AI-generated summaries at the top of search pages.
A great example of this is Bing AI, launched in 2023, which uses its own copy to answer search queries. Or Google’s Gemini (previously called Bard). It provides a summary of the first few results in the SERPs.
While this may raise fears that users will just read summaries instead of visiting your site, you should remember that there will still be a need to get more concrete answers and to read up on other specifics.
So, how to leverage this trend? Focus on creating authoritative content so that search engine AI bots quote your site as a summary source. This will give users another good reason to click on it and get more detailed and credible information.
2. Embrace Voice Search
Voice search with the help of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant is becoming more popular, with predictions stating that 157 million users in the US will use them by 2026. In 2022, over 50% of the US population used voice search daily.
Optimizing for voice search involves more than tweaking existing SEO practices — it requires understanding how users naturally speak and search.
Alexandra Baciu, SEO Manager at Avid Panda, explains that effective SEO practices already set a strong foundation for voice search. However, she emphasizes the importance of creating content that mirrors the words and phrases customers would use in casual conversation.
For instance, businesses should focus on answering common questions and using the same language customers might employ when discussing products or services. Baciu highlights that addressing customer questions effectively can make a difference in whether your content ranks for a voice query.
Optimizing for voice search will be more crucial for eCommerce than ever, so be sure to target long-tail keywords and question keywords, while keeping your site fast and mobile-friendly to ensure a high rank.
3. Explore Visual Search
According to data from Invest, text-based, traditional keyword searches are efficient for 74% of users who want to find the right products online. It makes sense, as visual search allows users to compare images rather than text to assess the way a product looks, which is essential when buying clothes, furniture, or even cars.
For instance, Bing Visual Search enables users to upload images or use their camera to search for information or other images. Google Lens has a similar feature, with the company introducing Multisearch in 2022, which enables combined search via images, text, and voice.
The steady rise of visual search means that eCommerce sites should place more emphasis on their image SEO, ensuring that graphics are accurate, representative, high-quality, and appealing, and come with optimized alt text and file names for better discoverability.
4. Use AI Copywriting Tools To Boost Content Creation
Ever since the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, content teams and copywriters have been embracing generative AI to ramp up content production. With the help of such tools, copywriters can write anything from blog posts to ad copy in seconds.
However, as Bryan Philips, Head of Marketing at In Motion Marketing, points out, AI’s true potential lies in its ability to deliver hyper-personalized experiences. By using AI-driven content personalization, businesses can dynamically tailor content based on user behavior, aligning with buyer personas and journey stages.
This approach not only enhances user engagement but also fosters stronger connections between brands and their audiences.
5. Aim for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are highlighted single results that will aim to answer the search query directly, often referred to as position zero. Featured snippets can be tables, answers, definitions, paragraphs, and lists, and you can optimize your content to rank for this position. Optimizing for featured snippets means grabbing the most prominent position in the search results. You can leverage this trend by keeping your keyword research up-to-date and optimizing your content formats, including videos, tables, lists, and paragraphs.
6. Leverage Video SEO
YouTube, the second-largest search engine, is a key source of video content that Google features in its main search results. YouTube SEO can greatly help you boost your visibility and ensure that your products come up high on both Google’s and YouTube’s results.
Andertons Music Co is a fine example of video content done right, as it ranks high on both search engines. The brand reviews music instruments and other products in an informative and expert, but fun way that keeps users engaged and interested. To leverage this trend and optimize your videos on YouTube, consider breaking them up into chapters or sections to help your viewers and search engines understand what the content is about. Closed captions are also highly recommended, as well as adding a detailed description and optimizing your tags and title to help Google understand the video.
7. Improve User Experience
User experience is one of the Core Web Vitals Google uses to rank pages. In March 2024, Google changed these metrics and replaced the First Input Delay (FID) with Interaction to Next Paint (INP). This means that the search engine now measures the time it takes a webpage to respond to user interactions when clicking a link or a button.
This provides a better assessment of how fast users can interact with different page elements, with a good INP value being under or just around 200 milliseconds. In light of this, ensuring you’re on top of your technical SEO is a must. Put your trusted agency on the case and perform a site audit to ensure that none of your site elements are lagging or may be a cause for potential UX issues.
SEO for eCommerce: Finishing Thoughts
Getting eCommerce marketing right can be difficult, especially on your own. Managing ad campaigns, producing content, handling social channels, and focusing on SEO can be exhausting, often leading to missed key touchpoints in your strategy, resulting in wasted budget and reduced ROI. However, if you partner with an expert external team, you can optimize all these processes and get the most out of your digital eCommerce ecosystem.
eCommerce SEO FAQs
1. Are images important in eCommerce SEO?
Yes. Images can help with traditional optimization and with visual search. They can also improve user experience and create more desire in users to ultimately purchase a product.
2. Are product descriptions important?
Absolutely. Detailed, keyword-optimized descriptions can help you rank higher organically. They also provide users with vital information about your products, allowing them to make more informed decisions about their purchases.
3. Can you rely on Generative AI entirely for content creation?
Not yet. While artificial intelligence has advanced, generative AI may still be incorrect. It’s always a good idea to rely on the prowess of experienced copywriters who can tweak the content or copy produced by machines.
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