How to Beat Your Competitors with the Best eCommerce SEO Tactics

Consumers today rely on Google’s search results to make important day-to-day life decisions. They search for anything and everything they need - such as a good restaurant nearby, a tour package, or a mobile phone they want to purchase.

With Google having such strong influence over consumers today, you need to rank higher than your competitors in search results.

As an ecommerce brand, missing out on top positions in the SERPs (search engine results pages) is equivalent to missing out on clicks and conversions. To help you step up your SEO game and beat your competitors, here are the best ecommerce SEO tactics.

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The Best Ecommerce SEO Tactics to Boost Your Rankings

Search engine optimization of your ecommerce site can help you drive high-quality organic traffic to your site. The best part about SEO is that it brings you sustainable results that last longer than other forms of marketing.

Getting your ecommerce site to rank requires a lot of work since ecommerce sites consist of too many pages. This includes your homepage, category pages, individual product pages, and blog posts too. This means that a ton of different factors will affect your site’s rank.

The following tips and tricks can help you create and implement the best ecommerce SEO strategy for your brand.

1. Do Competitor Research

Competitor research is one of the most important parts of an SEO strategy. You should know who you’re competing with - their strengths, Domain and Page Authorities, the keywords they target, and where they get their backlinks from.

These details can help you plan your SEO strategy easily. For example, if your competitors have higher DAs, you should focus on long-tail keywords they aren’t using. Because competing against them for the same keywords may be difficult, even futile.

Also, check out their site structure - the way they showcase their products on their category pages and other types of product recommendations.

2. Find the Right Target Keywords for Your Site

The effectiveness of your SEO efforts is completely dependent on the keywords you choose to target. Make sure that you choose the right ones - consider their relevance, demand or search volume, competition, and keyword difficulty score.

For example, if you sell coffee filters, you should not aim to rank for the keyword “coffee” or “coffee filters.” These are generic keywords and are extremely difficult to rank for. Instead, target more specific, long-tail keywords like “coffee filters in California,” “small coffee filters California,” or “disposable coffee filters California.”

You need to find keywords for:

• Homepage: Target your brand name here to drive brand awareness.
• Category Pages: You should target short-tail keywords here that have high search volumes. You can choose 3-5 keywords for category pages.
• Product Pages: Every product page should target specific product-related keywords to attract people who intend to buy.
• Blog Posts: You need to create content that is relevant to your audience. You should look for focused keywords related to the topic you choose. Your blog is an ideal place to capitalize on long-tail keywords that can help you rank higher with the best ecommerce SEO tactics.

3. Eliminate Site Errors

You should check your ecommerce site for errors that might be affecting your overall SEO results. Identify them and eliminate them to optimize it for improved rankings, greater traffic, and faster conversions.

The most common issues that can pull your best ecommerce SEO efforts down include:

• Duplicate content
• Slow page load speed
• Poor usability
• Mobile unresponsiveness
• Broken links
• No customer reviews
• Not using breadcrumbs
• Not using SEO-friendly URLs

In order to identify these issues, you can use a number of tools available in the market. For example, check your site for duplicate content on Copyscape. Similarly, you can use Google PageSpeed Insights tool to check your site’s load speed. Tools like W3C Link Checker or Dr. Link Check to discover any broken links on your site. Once you’ve identified the issues, you can take appropriate measures to optimize your site for improved search results.

4. Build High-Quality Backlinks

Google values backlinks to your page from sites that have higher Domain Authority. You can create quality backlinks to your ecommerce site through guest posting, social sharing, and influencer marketing.

Guest Post

Guest posting is one of the best ecommerce SEO tactics to improve your site’s performance in search results. In order to create valuable inbound links to your site, you should reach out to high-authority sites in your niche.

Create great content that can add value to their audience. Then connect with them to contribute to their site. Many bloggers and top sites are willing to publish your content in exchange for a link to your site. However, some may also expect a freebie offer or monetary compensation as well.

Reach Out to Influencers

Influencer marketing is on the rise with more consumers trusting recommendations from their favorite influencers.

If you partner with the right influencers, you can showcase your products to a large pool of people, who are interested in buying them. Valuable influencer collaborations can help you build high-quality backlinks, get greater social reach, and loyal customers. It will thus improve your ecommerce site rankings too.

For this, you can leverage different types of influencer collaborations. You can either ask your influencers to write sponsored blog posts or product reviews that include links to your website. If the influencer’s blog or website has a high DA, these backlinks can be immensely valuable.

Revolve, a California-based ecommerce retailer, partnered with top Instagram influencers in fashion and beauty domains. To increase brand awareness and sales, the brand invited these influencers to spend a weekend at an estate in the Hamptons, NY.

These bloggers enjoyed their stay at the estate that provided access to a swimming pool, tennis courts, and a life-sized chess set. Meanwhile, Revolve asked them to pick their favorite pieces from the brand and feature them in their posts with the hashtag #REVOLVEintheHamptons.

The campaign generated 1,700 interesting posts that brought immense engagement to the brand.

Here is a post from their campaign:

Image via Instagram

Although, it’s an effective way to promote your ecommerce brand, running successful influencer campaigns is both difficult and time-consuming. You may want to consider using influencer marketing platforms like Grin to drive the best results with minimal effort.

These platforms can help you find relevant influencers and reach out to them easily. They can help you run your campaigns and track your ROI from influencer marketing too.

Conclusion

When you follow the best ecommerce SEO practices, you will see an increase in high-quality traffic to your site. Relevant traffic will further lead to more conversions and repeat customers.

You should understand that there is no fixed rule to go about creating the best ecommerce SEO strategy. Google keeps changing its search algorithms to provide better results to searchers. So you’d need to optimize your ecommerce site for the latest updates by Google.

SEO may require a lot of time and effort. However, it’s one of the best, surefire ways you can boost traffic to your ecommerce site.

Do you use any other SEO tactics to boost your ecommerce site rankings? Please feel free to share them in the comments below.

Brandon Brown

Brandon Brown is the CEO of Grin, an influencer marketing software solution for brands. Prior to Grin, he was led marketing for the #1 energy drink market in the world, Los Angeles & Orange County, at Red Bull North America.