Guide to basic SEO practices for an e-commerce site

Launching your e-commerce site without taking SEO into account is like creating a shop without ever opening the blinds. People could be interested in your offer without ever seeing what you have to offer.

To develop your business, it has to be visible. Your targets need to know that you have a solution to their problem or an offer to their request!

One of the best levers nowadays to increase your visibility is to be present on the web. In just a few years, search engines have become the major sources of information worldwide. There are answers to all the questions or needs that Internet users have, but only a few sites manage to do well in a market that is more than saturated.

Today, we are going to see how to ensure that your products are well positioned on the SERPs. However, it is important to remember that the results of an SEO strategy are seen in the long term (about 6 months). We will briefly go over the basics of SEO for your online shop.

The architecture to be respected for an e-commerce site

An e-commerce site must have a good architecture to be able to guide customers towards a purchase process. In fact, your site's mesh must be designed so that all your pages are accessible in 3 clicks or less. To do this, there is a common basis for almost all online businesses.

A "good" tree structure for your e-commerce site consists of developing your home page, then your category / sub-category pages and finally the product pages. This way, in a maximum of 3 clicks, a user can access all the pages of your site.

How to build an e-commerce site?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to list your products in search engines, here are a few links that can help you build your online shop.

- Here is a comparison of the top 10 nocode website building platforms

In this article, you will find a comparison of different nocode website creation platforms with a short presentation of each of them.

- The different platforms for creating a marketplace

Digidop offers you a comparison of the best no-code platforms to create your markertplace with ease. Find out more about Webflow, Bubble, Sharetribe and Arcardier to build your marketplace according to your needs!

- Webflow Ecommerce vs Shopify: which is the best platform for your e-commerce?

Discover in this article a comparison between two "big" e-commerce website creation platforms: Webflow Ecommerce VS Shopify. A comparison according to 5 criteria (Design, Simplicity, Price, SEO, Features) that will allow you to choose (according to your needs) which is the best platform to use for your online shop!

- nocode's top tools to develop your business

Here is a non-exhaustive list of no-code tools to use for your e-commerce shop according to the different management areas: Design, Payment, SEO, Automation, Marketing or performance monitoring!

Optimising the homepage of an e-commerce site for SEO

The homepage of your online shop (e-commerce) must be optimised to demonstrate your expertise and allow visitors to know what they will find on your site.

To optimise the SEO of your e-commerce homepage, several tips are available!

Using title tags

First of all, to structure your content, it is necessary to use headings. These titles give your content a common thread. This is important for Google's algorithms , but also for your readers:

• For Google, because it gives a certain hierarchy for the robots (H1 > H2 > H3 > ... > Hn)
• For your readers, as it makes your content easier to read/understand

The "only" rules for this part are:

• One H1 per page
• Respect the order of the titles (no title skipping)

Optimising the Title

Title (or Meta-Title) is the title of your page that will appear in the SERPs.

The rules for its Title :

• It must be a maximum of 60 characters long
• It should include the name of your site and a short sentence to show your offer

Optimising the Meta-description

By Meta-description, we mean the few sentences that are used to describe your content / page. It is a short text that must also be optimised, as it will give an indication that will inform Internet users. This short description should not be neglected, as it will determine whether the user will click on your website or not. It is an element of differentiation, so it must be convincing!

The rules to respect for its Meta-description :

• It should be approximately 155 characters long
• It should include the keywords of your sector and be descriptive of your business

The content of your e-commerce homepage

Even if your goal is to sell, the homepage of your e-commerce site should not be a pure list of products.

This page should :

• Contain text (to allow the indexing robots to understand you) with keywords (NO BURNS)
• Be updated regularly (featured products, trends, etc.)
• Contain images with descriptive ALT tags

Optimising the category pages of an e-commerce site for SEO

You have the possibility for your online shop to create specific pages for your categories (Men, Women, Children for example). You can also make sure that your categories only appear in your menu (so no specific pages). If you choose the first option, you will need to :

• Optimize Title: Name Category + Site Name
• Optimise Meta-description
• Respecting the order of the headings
• H1: Category name + Description
• H2: Short descriptive text (of the category)
• H3: Name of subcategories
• Setting up a breadcrumb trail (Here is how to set up a breadcrumb trail for your e-commerce site in Webflow)

Optimising the product list pages (Subcategory) of an e-commerce site for SEO

Your subcategories allow you to display your product list. In order to optimise the SEO of these pages, here are some recommendations:

• Optimise Title: Subcategory name + Site name
• Optimise Meta-description
• Respecting the order of the headings
• H1: Name of the sub-category + Description
• H2: Short descriptive text (of the subcategory)
• H3: Name of products
• The products must contain : Name, price and a short description
• Putting a breadcrumb trail
• Set up a filter system (Note that the filter system is SEO optimized on Webflow)
• Avoid infinite scrolling (set up a pagination system)

Optimising e-commerce product sheets for SEO

This is one of the most important points, if not the most important point, in this article. We will look at some tips to help youoptimise your product pages:

• Optimise Title: Product name (+ brand) + Subcategory + Site name
• Optimise Meta-description (describe the product)
• Respecting the order of the headings
• H1: Product name + Brand
• H2: Short descriptive text of the product
• Text content: Describe the product as well as possible, answering potential questions (why this product, why to buy it, etc.) + Put words in bold
• Breadcrumb trail
• Putting structured data tags "Product
• Set up an internal linking system with similar/recommended products
• Only one URL per product (no different URLs for 2 different sizes for example)
• Setting up a review system (Find out what is at stake with reviews for your online business)
• Putting up FAQs
• Diversify the types of media files (images / videos)

Learn in Webflow how to design product template pages for your e-commerce site.

Do not forget the legal dimension for your E-commerce site!

To launch your online shop, you must certainly optimise your pages for SEO, but you must not forget to remain within the law. Indeed, it could be penalizing for your whole site, if you do not respect the web regulation. To help you, we have written a complete RGPD guide to stay in compliance and not be penalised.

How to position your e-commerce products well in search engines?

To be present on the web, you need to be positioned on search engine result pages called SERP (Search Engine Result Page). To simplify things as much as possible, an Internet user enters a query on a search engine and the latter will propose the most relevant results according to specific algorithms. These different results are classified on different pages. The objective is to reach at least the first page (ideally aim for the first three results) to be able to generate traffic to your website. The basic step is therefore to define the keywords and queries on which you want the search engines to reference you.

To avoid over-optimisation, you can/should do a semantic field analysis of your keywords. Use synonymy to allow Google to understand what you are talking about which will then allow you to be ranked on relevant SERPs. Important point, do not compete pages of your site together.

One of the most important points to generate natural traffic is to be strategically positioned on certain SERPs (Search Engine Result Page). In recent years, the way people search for information on search engines has evolved. A few years ago, search engines were not as sophisticated as they are today. Before, to search for information on Google, we would type 2, 3 or 4 keywords in the search bar. However, today, with the improvement of the algorithms, to find information, we type our entire query. This phenomenon has become even more widespread with the development of voice search.

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Thus, it is strategic to optimise your natural referencing by positioning yourself on long trails. A long tail is an SEO strategy that aims to position yourself on a series of keywords with a lower volume of searches.

The aim of an SEO content strategy is to put yourself in the shoes of Internet users and identify their needs in order to meet them as best as possible.

To position your products well, there are 3 important types of queries in e-commerce:

1 - Transactional queries: This type of search is formulated by an Internet user with the aim of purchasing a product or service. This is often expressed as : Action verb + Name of the product / service

Example: Buy Iphone 13 pro

2 - Browsing requests: This type of search is formulated by an Internet user with the aim of finding a site/page already known without necessarily having any purchasing intentions.

Example: Fnac phone

3 - Informational queries: This type of search is formulated by an Internet user with the aim of obtaining more precise ideas, advice without the intention of purchasing.

Example: Comparative smartphone 2021

Other (technical) criteria to be optimised for SEO

Accessibility and User Experience

The term UX(User Experience) is often used in the web domain. UX stands for user experience. This term refers to the experience that a user of your website has. The aim is to make this experience the best possible. There are several ways to improve the quality of the user experience. One thinks directly of the design of the site, its interface, and its various types of interaction. However, the writing of your content can also have an impact on the UX.

If your content is not well spaced out, contains only blocks of text or is not readable, it will inevitably worsen the UX. If this is the case, you may have a high bounce rate or low session times. Your content will not be highlighted by search engines.

Conversely, if you create readable and attractive content, it will make your traffic want to stay and why not visit other pages on your website. It is therefore important when writing SEO optimised content to take into consideration the expectations of users.

The same applies toweb accessibility. An accessible site is an inclusive site. This means that everyone can consult and navigate it without hindrance. Unfortunately, people with disabilities are often left out. Indeed, it can be difficult to navigate on a site for certain types of disability (visual, auditory, motor, etc.). Making a site accessible means allowing everyone to access the same information and Google wants to highlight this.

Optimising URLs for SEO

A URL identifies the location of a web page on the Internet.

While a URL is a path to a web page, it is also very important information for Google crawlers. In fact, your site's URLs will give search engines an idea of the content and intent of your page. They will make it easier for Google to understand your site's tree structure. This is also a plus for the UX because users will also understand where they are on your site thanks to optimised URLs.

Having optimised URLs does not have a big impact on the SEO of your web pages. However, as we have seen before, helping Google and providing a good user experience can only benefit you.

How to optimise your URLs?

• The URL must be readable (separated with / and -)
• The URL should be short (if possible)
• The URL must consist of your domain name
• The URL must be secure
• The URL must include keywords
• The URL must not contain any characters other than letters or numbers
• The URL should not have too many levels (Example: Https:// www.exemple.com /Services /SEO/ Optimisation /URL/ best-practice)

Have a secure site

We mentioned this earlier with URLs, but it is important that your site is secure. It should say"HTTPS". Again, this has a small impact on your SEO, but there can be big consequences to not having a secure site. Indeed, the site can be considered as dangerous by Google if it does not include the mention "HTTPS". Obviously, if this happens, users will not be reassured and you will lose a significant amount of traffic.

On the other hand, if your site is secure, it can have a positive snowball effect:

• Internet users are confident
• They will visit your site
• This improves your conversion rate
• It improves your visibility
• So there is an increase in your traffic (so probably more quality traffic)
• And finally, some Internet users may become leads

To obtain the "HTTPS" mention, you just have to order and install an SSL certificate from your web host.

Optimising your site for mobile phones

A little more than half of the world's internet traffic is on mobile. When you realise this figure, you realise that you should not neglect the small screens when creating and optimising your website.

This is a critical factor that Google takes into account when ranking sites on its search engine. Indeed, your site must be "Mobile Friendly" because if it is not, it will not rank well. In your SEO strategy, you should always keep in mind that Google wants to offer the best experience and the best answers to Internet users. Knowing that half of the traffic comes from mobiles, it is logical that Google favours sites optimised for these devices.

How to optimize your site for mobile phones?

• Your site must be responsive (the size of your content must adapt to the size of different screens)
• Pay attention to the layout of your buttons / CTA (Call to action)
• Pay attention to the size of your pop-ups
• Pay attention to the layout of your content (not too close together, images that fit the screen size...)
• Navigating your site should be easy and intuitive
• If possible, design your site for mobile and then for desktop (in this sense, there is little risk that your content will not adapt from one device to another)

Google offers a tool to find out if your pages are mobile friendly: Mobile Optimisation Test

Optimising the loading time of your pages

Once again, an important criterion taken into account by Google's algorithms for your natural referencing. A fast site is a site that converts. The longer the loading time, the higher the bounce rate and the lower your ranking. Let's go back to the infamous statistic that more than half of the users leave your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

There are several steps to improve the loading time of your website, here are some of them:

• Compressing your images
• Compressing your videos
• Minimising your code
• Using a CDN

Generate backlinks to your site

In addition to internal linking, there is also external linking. For external linking, links point from one site to another. It is important in your content to also link to trusted sites with a high domain authority. This shows the search engines that you are credible.

In its SEO strategy, it is also important to look at netlinking. This is a strategy that, in a rough way, consists of collecting links from other sites that point to your own. In this case, one wishes to obtain backlinks. Backlinks give credibility to one's site if the site that links to one's own has a strong domain authority. However, they also create "juice" and thus show Google the relevance of our content. It is the equivalent of word of mouth!

Beware, certain practices are strongly penalised by Google in netlinking strategies. Penalties can fall, because the purchase of links is penalised.

How can Digidop help you with your E-commerce ?

Digidop is a nocode web agency that can help you in the development of an e-commerce site. We guarantee you a reliable, fast and efficient site to improve your online visibility. In addition to all this, we train you on the best practices to use to reach the first pages on search engines.