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Some key challenges small businesses may face in eCommerce SEO include optimising for product-specific keywords, managing numerous product pages, and ensuring a user-friendly shopping experience. Effectively targeting product-specific keywords requires in-depth research and an understanding of consumer search behaviour, an area our eCommerce SEO consultants specialize in.

Ensuring a seamless, user-friendly shopping experience is also crucial, as site navigation, page load speed, and mobile responsiveness significantly impact SEO performance and customer conversion rates.

The additional revenue your eCommerce store receives from hiring a great eCommerce SEO agency should outweigh the eCommerce SEO cost.

Yes, Local SEO is particularly important for eCommerce businesses with physical stores or those targeting specific geographic markets. It helps increase visibility to consumers searching online within their area, driving both online traffic and foot traffic to physical store locations.

Implementing Local SEO strategies—such as optimising for local keywords, claiming and updating Google My Business listings, and gathering local reviews—enables businesses to connect with their local audience more effectively.

As we touched on before, visibility is EVERYTHING. Your business relies on customers purchasing your incredible products online — but first, they have to discover your website. And that starts with Google.

According to Think with Google, 49% of shoppers say they use the search engine to discover new brands and products. Think of Google as window shopping in the digital world: If your brand isn’t displayed on the shelves, there’s no chance of them making the final purchase.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re selling leather shoes online. A customer looking to buy leather shoes might look up “buy leather shoes Australia” and get served with a few results.

Given that the top 3 Google search results get 75.1% of all clicks, chances are this customer will end up clicking on one of your competitors — without even considering your business.

And if you think you can close the gap via paid search, think again. While Google Ads definitely should be part of any solid eCommerce marketing strategy, it’s far more costly than SEO. Unless you have thousands to invest in Google Ads, eCommerce SEO NEEDS to be part of your game plan.

Several Australian businesses have successfully dominated the online eCommerce market, with many expanding their digital presence to meet the growing demand for online shopping.

Woolworths and Coles, two of Australia’s largest supermarket chains, have established robust online platforms offering home delivery and click-and-collect services, making grocery shopping more convenient than ever.

In the electronics and home appliance sector, JB Hi-Fi continues to lead, bolstered by a strong online sales presence and a wide range of products. Kogan has also become a major force in Australian eCommerce, offering competitive prices on a diverse array of goods, from electronics to home essentials. As a popular marketplace, Catch.com.au provides consumers with access to everything from fashion to gadgets, making it a go-to for value-conscious shoppers.

The Iconic, known for its trendy fashion and fast delivery options, has earned a loyal following in the online retail space. Bunnings Warehouse, traditionally a brick-and-mortar hardware giant, has significantly increased its online presence, particularly in the DIY and home improvement sectors, offering convenient delivery options for its vast range of products.

These businesses are not only leading in sales but are also setting the pace for eCommerce innovation in Australia, continuously refining their strategies to meet consumer needs and stay ahead of the competition.

Social media has gradually evolved into a critical component for eCommerce, but its pivotal role in driving online retail success really began to take shape in the early 2010s. While platforms like Facebook and Twitter existed prior to this, their potential as a marketing tool for businesses was not fully realised until digital marketing strategies started to evolve.

Initially, social media was mostly used for personal networking and sharing content, but as these platforms grew in size and engagement, businesses began to notice the vast opportunities for reaching potential customers. The rise of Instagram in 2010, followed by the introduction of shopping features and ads on both Facebook and Instagram in the mid-2010s, marked a turning point in the way social media interacted with eCommerce. Social media’s role began to shift from being merely a communication tool to an integral part of the customer journey — from discovery to purchase.

A key moment in this transformation was the rise of “social commerce,” a term used to describe the integration of social media and eCommerce. This development allowed consumers to not only discover products through social media feeds but to directly purchase those products within the social platforms themselves. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram introduced shoppable media like “shoppable posts” and “Instagram Shopping,” where businesses could tag products directly in their posts, making it easy for users to click and purchase instantly without leaving the app. This change marked a major shift, as it eliminated many of the friction points that previously existed between discovering a product on social media and completing a purchase.

The evolution of influencer marketing also contributed significantly to the rise of social media in eCommerce. As people began to trust social media influencers for product recommendations, businesses quickly realised that partnerships with these individuals could drive substantial traffic and sales. Influencers on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok created an environment where their followers not only discovered new products but were also encouraged to purchase based on the influencer’s endorsement, driving online sales directly through links and promotions.

Furthermore, the data-driven nature of social media platforms has provided eCommerce businesses with the tools to precisely target their audience, creating more personalised and effective marketing campaigns. With the ability to segment audiences based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and even purchasing patterns, social media marketing has allowed brands to reach the right people at the right time, making it easier to drive conversions and boost revenue.

By the late 2010s and into the 2020s, social media had firmly established itself as an essential element of the eCommerce ecosystem. The integration of user-generated content, paid advertisements, and product recommendations transformed social media into more than just a marketing channel — it became an essential part of the entire eCommerce experience. Whether it’s through organic content, paid ads, or influencer collaborations, social media has become a go-to resource for discovery, engagement, and purchasing.

In conclusion, social media became an important component for eCommerce as the platforms evolved into dynamic, transactional spaces. As businesses saw the potential for direct sales, audience targeting, and influencer collaborations, social media’s role in the eCommerce space became undeniably crucial. Today, it is considered one of the most powerful and indispensable tools for driving eCommerce success, helping brands reach, engage, and convert customers like never before.

In the world of online business, SEO and social media are essential tools that complement each other to enhance visibility, increase website traffic, build brand awareness, and ultimately boost sales. When combined strategically, they create a dynamic synergy that improves each other’s effectiveness and amplifies your e-commerce efforts.

Here’s how they work together:

SEO Fuels Organic Traffic

SEO plays a pivotal role in directing organic traffic to your online store. By optimising your website with the right keywords, you improve your position in search engine results pages (SERPs). As potential customers search for products you offer, your site appears higher in the rankings, attracting more visitors without relying on paid ads.

Social Media Expands Reach and Engagement

Social media serves as a vital platform for engaging with a broader audience and promoting your brand. By sharing product updates, promotions, and captivating content, you can capture the attention of potential customers. Consistent social media engagement helps to build your brand’s presence and foster customer loyalty.

The Role of Social Signals in SEO

Search engines take note of social signals, which include likes, shares, comments, and mentions on social media platforms. These interactions serve as indicators of the relevance and quality of your content, which can positively influence your search rankings. More engagement can lead to greater exposure in search engine results.

Social Media Directs Traffic to Your Store

Sharing compelling content and offers on social media can drive traffic directly to your e-commerce site. Links in posts, stories, or even paid ads can attract users to visit your website. This traffic often converts into sales, especially when combined with targeted promotions and engaging content.

Content Marketing as a Bridge

Content marketing is a key element that ties SEO and social media together. By creating informative, engaging, and optimised content such as blog posts, product reviews, and tutorials, you can attract customers and improve your website’s SEO. Content shared on social platforms generates backlinks, which further boosts organic rankings, while also positioning your brand as an authoritative voice in your niche.

Building Brand Loyalty Through Social Interaction

Social media allows for real-time interactions with your audience. Engaging with customers, addressing their queries, and creating a sense of community fosters trust and encourages repeat business. This constant engagement helps build long-term relationships and customer loyalty, which is essential for sustaining e-commerce success.

Leveraging Social Media for Local SEO

For businesses with a physical store or a specific service area, social media can improve your local SEO efforts. By setting up a Google My Business profile, gathering reviews from customers, and incorporating location-based keywords in your posts, you can attract local customers who are searching for products or services in your area.

The Synergy of SEO and Social Media

Ultimately, SEO and social media form a powerful, interdependent strategy that drives e-commerce success.

Here’s how they complement each other:

• SEO boosts organic search visibility and website traffic.
• Social media increases your reach, promotes brand awareness, and drives traffic.
• Social signals from social media engagement can enhance SEO rankings.
• Content marketing, optimised for both SEO and social media, engages your audience and strengthens brand loyalty.

When you integrate both SEO and social media into your overall e-commerce marketing plan, you can improve your online presence, connect with your target audience, and increase your sales. This combined approach helps to build a strong foundation for your online business, fostering long-term growth and success.

Yes, eCommerce SEO can be a powerful tool for expanding your Australian store internationally. By optimising your website for search engines and targeting global markets, you can attract customers from different countries who are actively searching for your products.

This includes using international keywords, setting up hreflang tags for language and region targeting, and ensuring your website is accessible and user-friendly for different audiences. Additionally, leveraging global eCommerce platforms like Amazon, integrating local payment methods, and focusing on international shipping options can further help reach global consumers.

With the right SEO strategy in place, your Australian eCommerce store can build a strong online presence and drive international sales, helping you grow your brand globally.

Content marketing is a must-have for ANY business, but even more so for eCommerce businesses. It helps distribute link juice across your site and gives you additional opportunities to rank for your target keywords. On top of that, it also builds up your brand authority and credibility with your target audience.

From reviews of your products to informative blog posts on your site, there are a plethora of opportunities to rank for relevant keywords using content marketing. In this section, we cover the content must-haves for eCommerce stores.

Use content pillars on your site

Content pillars are a proven strategy to make your rankings and revenue soar. These are topics or themes which guide your eCommerce content creation, making it easier for search engines and visitors to navigate through your content. They’re also a great way to internally link from high-authority pages to lesser-known pages to improve crawlability and rank for long-tail keywords.

So how can you create content pillars that will get you more organic traffic? Follow these steps:

1. Understand your target audience and their buyer personas. This will make it easier to generate valuable content for them.
2. Set up social listening to monitor conversations and see what your audience is looking for.
3. Use your keyword research to complement your content marketing and help your product and category pages rank for relevant search terms.
4. Keep an eye on your competitors to see the type of content they’re creating.
5. Brainstorm key topics related to your audience. These might be different product categories (i.e. laptops, TVs, phones), or different themes (i.e. Beauty, fashion, health).
6. Write your content pillar pages. These are important pages, as your other pieces of content will sit under these pillars.

Need help working with content pillars? Learn about the best ways to leverage this strategy.

Have a company blog

Google LOVES new and fresh content, which is why blogging should be part of every eCommerce business’ agenda. When you publish blog posts on a regular basis that are related to your field of expertise, Google will rank you higher as a source of authority within your niche.

Think of topics related to your business and target keywords, then create a content calendar for your online store. Within each of your blog posts, try to incorporate links to products that are organic and relevant. For example, if you’re a pet store writing a post on the benefits of catnip for cats, you might link to your catnip grass products or cat category page in the body copy of your blog post.

Stuck on content ideas for your next blog post? Here are some tools that might help:

• BuzzSumo
• Answer the Public
• Reddit
• Wikipedia
• The “People also ask” section on Google
• Google Trends

Create videos on trending topics

Video marketing is an underutilised tactic by a lot of eCommerce companies, DESPITE the fact that they can help better sell your product, give you additional opportunities to rank on Google, and give you the potential to go viral.

So what do you create videos on? Anything and everything that’s relevant to your niche. Identify what your audience might like and share by looking at competitors, or seeing what other YouTubers/TikTokers/Instagrammers are posting.

Going viral is easier said than done. But if you can do it, you’ll tap into a gold mine. Do it right, and your viewers will do all of your link building for you.

A final word of advice: Be mindful not to create anything too offensive in a bid to grab attention online. It’s tough to shake a video that’s gone viral for all the wrong reasons.

Distribute press releases

Influencer marketing gets all of the spotlight these days, but good old fashioned digital PR is just as valuable when it comes to building a strong backlink profile for your online store.

Why?

Good press releases give you an avenue to promote your product to big mainstream publications, like the Sydney Morning Herald or the ABC. These huge websites have incredible domain authority, and getting featured in one of these will go a LONG way in boosting your domain authority.

At the same time, you can insert links back to your eCommerce website in a completely organic way and seed it to distribution websites — generating a ton of quality backlinks to your pages.

Consider, for example, if you’re running a beer-of-the-month subscription service. You could work with a new brewery on an exclusive release for an upcoming subscription box, then put out a press release to local media. Another option could be to submit your product to gift guides for Father’s Day or Christmas.

With a newsworthy angle and a well-written press release, you’ll be well on your way to building your online presence and drumming up more backlinks.

Technical SEO matters for any website, but it’s even more important when you’re running an eCommerce site.

When you’re juggling multiple variations of the same product, or working with a constantly shifting roster of seasonal items, it’s easy to let the technical elements slip — and your rankings will slip along with it.

Don’t worry. you don’t have to be a tech whiz to improve your online store. Here are some of the most common issues that occur on eCommerce sites, and how to fix them. But first things first: getting the right tools.

Get the right tools under your belt

It starts with having the right tools. These platforms help you identify problems that may be preventing your website from being crawled and indexed correctly on search engines, such as duplicate content on your pages, broken link issues, slow site speed, and more.

• Google Search Console is a fantastic starting point. This free tool allows you to measure your site speed, see which product and category pages are being indexed by Google, review any broken links, test and improve your mobile usability and more. You can also enable Search Console data sharing to Google Analytics.
• SEMrush’s Site Audit Tool is another one to add to your SEO stack. SEMrush can help you pinpoint double-ups of content, broken link or broken image issues, pages missing schema markup, and links on HTTPS pages leading to HTTP pages.

Other handy SEO tools include:

• Screaming Frog SEO Spider, a crawler that mimics how a search engine bot would crawl your pages.
• Ahrefs Site Audit, a user-friendly platform that crawls your important pages and generates an SEO health score, issues and recommendations.
• Botify, an in-depth tool that links search intent with technical SEO.
• BrightLocal, a dedicated local SEO tool that helps you take the lead in localised searches.

You have duplicate content on your pages

There’s no way around it: eCommerce websites are often enormous. You might be selling hundreds or thousands of products at any given time, including items in different colours, styles and sizes. While this is great for customers, it also means that the chances of double-up and triples up pages are incredibly high.

Search engines see duplicate content as a spammy practice and may end up penalising your website by decreasing your ranking in Google search. And while you might not deliberately be copying and pasting content, you might end up with duplicate content where you least expect it. For example, even the same paragraph about free shipping and returns, copied and pasted across different product or category pages, may be seen as duplicate content by search engines.

How to fix it on your site

Run an audit for duplicate content on your eCommerce site using Screaming Frog, SEMrush or Ahrefs. Once you’ve found double-ups, use a canonical tag to indicate which pages you want to be indexed. All you need to do is add the “rel=canonical” tag to duplicate pages, which tells search engines that they’re identical for a reason. This is incredibly useful if you have multiple pages to sell variations on the same product, such as a TV with an OLED screen versus a 4K screen.

Your pages are slow

Google loves fast, zippy websites. But did you know that your customers also have the need for speed? In fact, a one second delay on your eCommerce store can result in 7% less conversions.

In other words, if you’re generating $10,000 a day on your online store, you’ll lose $700 just because your website took one second longer to load.

Slow-loading pages are a surefire way to hinder your rankings in search, deliver a poor user experience, and send revenue plummeting. But when you’re running an eCommerce site with tons of images, slow hosting providers or bloated code, these extra bits and bobs add up.

How to fix it on your site

Start by running a site audit for page speed using Google PageSpeed Insights. The tool will show how your online store’s loading time stacks up, and provide recommendations where you can shave off the seconds on different pages on your site. You can also check your site speed report directly in Google Analytics.

On top of this, there are a number of best practices you can implement to optimise your pages for site speed. These include:

• Compressing images on your pages.
• Cutting out the code bloat on each page using the recommendations from Google. This is particularly common if you’re using a pre-built theme from your eCommerce platform.
• Identifying and remove broken links using one of your site audit tools or Broken Link Checker.
• Cutting down your server response time by switching to a faster DNS provider.
• Switching on browser caching. This allows previous site visitors to load the page without needing to send another HTTPS request to the server, which results in faster loading speeds.
• Ditching the fancy carousels or parallax. While they might look great, these are the fastest way to drag down your site load times. What’s more, these often result in a poor mobile user experience AND deliver low click rates to boot.

The wrong pages are ranking

This problem is another thorn in the backside for eCommerce websites: you want one page to rank in search results, but another page is showing up instead.

Let’s say you’re selling the Nikon Z 7II camera in your online store. You have a category page for all cameras, as well as a specific product page for this camera. Ideally, you want your product page to rank for the keyword “buy nikon z 7ii” — but the category page appears instead.

How to fix it on your site

This issue occurs because of keyword cannibalisation, which is when two or more websites are optimised for the same search terms.

Review your pages and identify the strongest ones based on organic traffic, visibility and conversion rate. Focus on efforts on this one, and either:

• Remove the other page and set up a 301 redirect to your target URL
• Use the  rel=”noindex” tags or canonicalisation

For future pages, the best way to prevent it is to have one target keyword or cluster of keywords per page.

You’re not using SSL

SSL stands for secure sockets layer. This is a security protocol that establishes an encrypted link between your web server and a browser, and looks like this in the URL bar:

While SSL encryption matters for all websites, it’s particularly important for eCommerce sites. Your customers are trusting you with their most sensitive information — their address, contact details, and credit card number — and Google takes that very, VERY seriously.

How to fix it on your site

HTTPS is an important ranking signal, so you need to jump on this one stat. If you’re just starting out, you can implement this on all the pages on your site from the get-go and never worry about it again. However, if your site is currently running on HTTP, you’ll need to migrate all of your site pages to an HTTPS domain.

Migrating your site is a huge undertaking, so it’s best to work with a developer or eCommerce SEO agency to make sure it’s done right.

In order for your products to be eligible to appear in search results and other places, you first need to tell Google what you’re selling. You can do this in two ways:

1. Including structured data on your product pages
2. Uploading your product feed directly into Google Merchant Center, one of Google’s eCommerce SEO tools

While you can technically pick one or the other, Google recommends that eCommerce businesses do both. This way, you’ll increase your chances of appearing as a rich result AND maximise the amount of traffic you bring to your website.

Mark up your eCommerce website with structured data

Structured data is a way of marking up your website content so that search engines can return more informative and detailed results to searchers. Structured data helps Google go beyond the information on your eCommerce site and actually understand what the data means, as well as the best way to display it in SERPs.

While this type of mark-up isn’t unique to eCommerce websites, there are a few types of structured data that every online business should be taking advantage of:

• LocalBusiness: Display information that’s relevant to your business, such as your location and opening hours.
• Product: Help Google provide detailed product information as a rich result in Google Search and Google Images, including price, stock, review ratings, and product descriptions.
• Review: Allow Google to understand and pull relevant product reviews directly from your website to feature in search results.
• HowTo: Display ‘how to’ guides for your products as a rich snippet in search results.
• FAQPage: Provide Google with the answers to frequently asked questions from potential customers. Like HowTo, FAQPage data appears as a rich snippet in search results.
• BreadcrumbList: Assist Google in understanding the hierarchy of pages on your website.
• WebSite: Help Google understand how site search is implemented on your eCommerce store.
• VideoObject: Allow Google to present videos directly in SERPs for relevant product queries, such as a how to video or promo clip.

You can implement structured data by working directly with your developer, or following these steps:

• Go to Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper.
• Pick the type of structured data you want to use, as well as the URL or HTML source of the web page that you want to mark up.
• Select the elements on the page that you want to mark up.
• Once you’re done, click “Create HTML”.
• Add the highlighted snippets into your website HTML code.
• Run Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool to make sure your markup is working correctly.

eCommerce platforms also have apps specifically designed to help stores add in structured data and improve their Shopify SEO or Magento SEO.

On top of URL structure, it needs to be as easy as possible for search engines to crawl and index different pages on your website. A clean eCommerce site structure helps Google understand the relationship between different pages on your website, so it knows which pages to display to users on its search engine.

Google works by using ‘spiders’ to discover and crawl pages across the web. Once these websites have been crawled, they get added to an index. Google uses this index to find and display the most relevant results to a user based on the target keywords.

The best way to think of your website navigation is like a spiderweb, where each link is a thread to another part of the web. Google’s ‘spiders’ can only crawl threads that aren’t broken. If they can’t reach a section of your website, these pages won’t be crawled and indexed to be displayed in search engines.

Here are 3 tips Google recommends to optimise your eCommerce site structure:

• Make it easy for Google to crawl your website. Ensure that all of your pages can be reached by following links throughout your website. Link your menu to your category pages, then link your category pages to sub-category pages, before linking your sub-category pages to product pages. Doing so will ensure that Google crawls every page on your site, from category pages to individual products.
• Add structured data to your pages. This helps Google understand the role that different pages play in your navigation and reinforces your site architecture.
• Link to important products on your homepage and other content. According to Google, “the more links a page has to it within a site, the higher the relative importance of the page to other pages on your site.” If you want to promote a best-selling product or category page, try to add internal links wherever it makes sense — such as on the homepage or in blog posts. This reinforces the page’s importance to Google.

Having a search-friendly site structure also spreads link authority throughout your website – a must if you want to get more traffic through Search Engine Optimisation / SEO.

Make sure Google can find your store

When you’re building a new eCommerce website, you want your products to be discovered and indexed by Google as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is to register your store with Google so it can find your website as soon as you launch.

Follow these steps to let Google know about your store:

• Verify that you own the website via Google Search Console
• Submit a request to Google to crawl and index your site. You can do this either by using the URL Inspection Tool or by providing Google with a sitemap.
• Check that your eCommerce site is being indexed correctly using the Index Coverage Report.
• Set up physical business details and claim your business listing with a Google My Business account.
• Sign up for a Google Merchant Center account so you can upload your product feed and appear in Google Shopping results.

Choosing your e-Commerce SEO campaign launch strategy

When you’re building a new eCommerce website, there are a few approaches you can take. You might choose to do a soft launch, launch a portion of your website to the public and Google, or launch everything at the same time.

Each option comes with its own pros and cons, both for your broader business game plan and for your eCommerce SEO. Take time to weigh these up before launching so you can put your store in the best position to succeed from day one.

The Grand Reveal

In this strategy, you keep your entire site inaccessible to customers and Google. Users might need a password to access your website content, which means you can keep a tight lid on everything until you’re ready to launch.

Pros of the Grand Reveal: 

• You’ll be able to sync your website with other campaigns to maximise the impact of your launch.
• You’ll be able to test everything and make sure it works before you launch to the public.
• Your content won’t be visible before launch, which may be important for sales and marketing strategy.

Cons of the Grand Reveal:

• It will take more time for Google to crawl and index your website. It means there’ll be a delay before you appear in Google Search and Google Shopping, which may, in turn, affect your traffic and sales.

Actions to take: Register your site as soon as possible after launching your eCommerce site. This way, you’ll minimise the delay between launch and your website appearing on a search engine like Google.

Homepage Launch

If you want to start driving traffic to your website and building hype ahead of your launch, you might choose to launch your homepage before launching the rest of your store. This homepage could be a “Coming Soon” page with a link to sign up to your newsletter for the latest updates, or a preview of your upcoming products.

Pros of the Homepage Launch:

• You can register your store with Google ahead of your launch as part of your homepage SEO strategy. This means that your page title tag and meta data will be visible in Google Search ahead of your product launch, even if your products aren’t live yet.
• It gives you a place to drive traffic and improve off-page SEO. This is great if you’re running a pre-launch campaign on social media or working with influencers.
• You’ll be able to capture valuable data from potential customers. When you do launch, you’ll already have an existing database of people who have demonstrated an interest in your products and who are more likely to buy.

Cons of the Homepage Launch:

• Detailed product information won’t be visible in Google Search and Google Shopping until your entire website goes live. As a result, users who are searching for your products won’t be able to discover them until your store is launched.

Actions to take: Verify your website ownership as soon as possible. Once your products are available, you can proceed with the other steps to register your store, such as adding your physical store details into Google My Business for local SEO or setting up your Google Merchant Center account.

Launch without product availability

Want to get your online store indexed and maximise your search visibility for the best keywords ASAP? One way to do this is to launch your full eCommerce website but disable any purchasing functionality until you’re ready to ship orders to customers.

In addition to launching your website, you might choose to allow customers to pre-order products or sign up to be notified when your website does launch.

Pros of launching without product availability:

• All of your site content and products can be crawled and indexed by Google, including your meta tags. When you do launch your website, everything will already be visible to shoppers on Google Search and Shopping.
• Customers will be able to browse all of the products you have on offer. They’ll know exactly what they want to purchase when you are ready to launch.
• You’ll be able to build links and drive traffic to specific product web pages. This way, you can start running Google Adwords and social media campaigns to drum up interest ahead of launch.

Cons of launching without product availability:

• You might end up with some unhappy customers if everything seems functional, but they can’t place orders or find broken links. They might flood your customer service with enquiries or even end up going to a competitor’s website instead.

Actions to take: Follow all of the steps above to register your website with Google. When it comes time to upload your product feed to Google Merchant Center, remember to mark up your stock as unavailable for purchase using [excluded_destination]. A final tip: don’t disable your add-to-cart functionality, as it could affect Google’s ability to verify the final price of your product.

Start with a soft launch

A soft launch is a great way to test the waters and get your website indexed ASAP, while also buying time to host an official marketing launch down the line. You might choose to only make a few products available during your soft launch, or opt to push your entire website live but not drive any traffic to your online store.

Pros of a soft launch:

• Google can crawl and index your website as soon as it goes live. When you do choose to launch on a bigger scale, potential customers will already be able to discover your website via organic search.
• It’s the most simple and straightforward method. There’s no need to worry about disabling any functions or not having visibility in Google Search and Shopping as soon as you launch.
• Your site is fully live and functioning. You’ll be able to test your eCommerce store with real customers and gather their feedback, then implement these recommendations before launching to a broader audience.

Cons of a soft launch:

• You’ll need to have everything ready and functional, and you’ll need to be prepared to fulfil orders as they come in. Because of this, a soft launch is far more labour-intensive than simply launching a homepage or putting a website live without product availability.
• There’s a risk of becoming a victim of your own success. If your website gets referenced by someone on social media, you might end up with a flood of orders that you weren’t prepared for.

Actions to take: Verify and register your eCommerce website with Google as soon as it launches. Keep all of this information and your product feed up to date as your website evolves in the weeks and months following your soft launch, particularly if you’re planning to run a large-scale marketing campaign to officially launch your store.

Be mindful of Google’s Core Web Vitals update

Core Web Vitals is a new set of performance metrics that Google uses to analyse the speed signals that are critical to delivering a superior user experience. Google takes into account three key factors — largest contentful paint (LCP), first input delay (FID), and cumulative layout shift (CLS) — in order to generate a total “page experience” score:

Why does this matter for eCommerce websites?

Simple: Google takes Core Web Vitals into account when considering where pages will rank. In turn, this means you need to make sure your online store receives the best score possible if you want to improve your ranking in search results.

Ready to learn more? Get the lowdown on Core Web Vitals and how to achieve the perfect score for your site in our Google Core Web Vitals guide.

Implement faceted navigation on your pages

Faceted navigation is a navigation system that helps eCommerce sites deal with extensive lists of results. This enables shoppers to personalise a page for what they’re searching for, and can help shoppers search for specific long-tail keywords related to the product they’re trying to find.

Let’s say that you’ve selected “crop tops” from the “Shop by Category” section on the site. After you’ve done this, the facets under the “Shop by category” section on the page will change from broad products to different types of crop tops, including “crop tanks”, “crop jumpers” and “long sleeve crops”.

Faceted navigation is great for users, as it makes your site easier to navigate when dealing with large amounts of products or information. However, these also come with a host of challenges as you’re dealing with complex swathes of data. If you’re looking to bring this type of navigation system to your site, check out our guide to faceted navigation.

Don’t delete last season’s products

Product life cycles are a natural part of any eCommerce business. Some items might expire for good, while others could be out of stock for a limited amount of time (the classic example: toilet paper and COVID-19).

It may be tempting to delete or remove these products from your site — but don’t. Doing this can cause havoc with your SEO performance, as you might have other pages or websites backlinking to those products.

If your item is temporarily out of stock, there are a couple of approaches you can take to ensure that you don’t lose relevance with your target audience and slip in search engine results:

• Enable customers to filter temporarily out of stock products. You can also make these filters unavailable to search engines, so it won’t affect your page’s reputation with Google or Bing.
• Push your out-of-stock items down to the bottom of results on your website. This gives your site the chance to display available products first, while still allowing search engine bots to crawl your out-of-stock items.

For more on this topic, have a read through these out of stock SEO tips for eCommerce stores.

If your item is permanently out of stock or discontinued, opt for one of the following on your site:

• Add no-index for products that are no longer available and never be back in stock, so Google’s crawler will focus only on the available and relevant product pages.
• If you’ve already removed products and you can’t re-enable the page, add a 301 permanent redirect to the respective category.
• If you’ve removed a product but have a similar product, you could consider implementing a 302 temporary redirect. However, use these with caution as they may affect your conversion rate.

Sync your SEO with your social media

SEO and social media are an absolute dream team for any online store. An increase in social engagements has been linked to a long-term ranking improvement, which means that you NEED to incorporate social media into your SEO strategy.

Social media can also influence consumer purchasing decisions. In fact, 74% of people check social media to help them make purchasing decisions and 43% of people claim they’re more likely to buy a product if they learned about it on social media.

So how do you use social media to skyrocket rankings and revenue?

• Optimise your social media profiles. Make sure you have a relevant bio and a link back to your online store, and ensure it’s consistent across all channels.
• Optimise your site for social. Link your site back to your social media platforms, and include an option to share on social and follow your account on every product page and blog post.
• Use paid social media advertising to promote your products, improve visibility for an important page, or boost interesting and useful content.

Tailor your SEO strategy to your eCommerce platform

Most eCommerce sites are powered by Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, or Squarespace. Each of these platforms has its own set of advantages and disadvantages when it comes to SEO, so it’s critical that you get to know your platform and optimise for success.

Need help? Here are some resources to get you started.

• Ultimate Guide to Magento SEO
• Everything To Know About Shopify SEO
• Squarespace SEO checklist
• WooCommerce SEO guide
• WordPress SEO guide

We’re glad you asked. eCommerce SEO can improve your site’s conversion rate by optimising product descriptions with targeted keywords and enhancing its speed and mobile accessibility. Well-crafted product descriptions help match user search queries more accurately, increasing the likelihood of clicks.

These standard and technical optimisations contribute to a better overall user experience, making it easier for potential customers to find and engage with your products—and get in Google’s good books.

Keyword research is the backbone of any solid eCommerce strategy. They’re what customers use to discover your category and product pages on Google. If your website appears when they’re looking for what you’re selling, you’ve got an unstoppable formula for online revenue.

The end-goal is to tailor every page on your eCommerce site to unique and specific search terms. However, with 81,000 searches conducted EVERY SECOND, you need to have laser-sharp focus when it comes to your target keywords. You want to hone in your efforts on the most profitable keywords that bring in high-converting customers.

How do you judge the value of a keyword?

It all comes down to search intent.

Understanding search intent

There are several reasons why someone conducts a search on Google — but keywords can typically be clustered into one of four categories:

• Informational intent. These searches occur when a user is looking for specific information, such as “quest bar ingredients” or “how are vases made”.
• Navigational intent. A user is looking for a specific page or business. It might be something like “Facebook login”, “Kogan” or “Online Marketing Gurus contact”.
• Commercial intent. Also known as product research intent, commercial keywords are used when a user wants to know more about a specific product. These could be search terms like “best 24 hour gyms” or “Macbook Pro vs Surface Laptop”.
• Transactional intent. The user is looking to make a purchase. These keywords typically include buying words, such as “buy potted plants online” or “Nintendo Switch discount code”. Transactional keywords are the holy grail for eCommerce SEO, because the user is demonstrating a clear intention to convert.

As an eCommerce site, your goal should be to focus on the latter two. These are the most likely to have eCommerce intent, and users searching for these terms are far more likely to make a purchase than those browsing for information online.

Key indicators that a keyword has eCommerce search intent:

• If a search term contains a word like “for sale” or “buy”
• It’s a product SKU, such as “asus gl552jx”
• It contains dimensions or sizes, like “basketball shoes size 12”
• It’s a branded search or a product term search, such as “apple watch”

That’s not to say that you should ditch informational keywords altogether. Reaching these users with educational content is a great way to build trust early in the game and facilitate future conversations.

Conducting keyword research

Now that we’ve covered off search intent, it’s time to actually FIND the search terms your potential customers are using. Luckily, there are a ton of great tools out there to help you find the right keyword ideas for your campaigns.

Honing in on your target keywords

Once you’ve got a list of keywords, it’s time to pinpoint the keywords you’ll be targeting.

The key here is to avoid highly competitive keywords that are near-impossible to rank for (at least when you’re starting out). Instead, start out by targeting the low-hanging fruit. These might be keywords with a lower search volume or less competition. Once you’ve built up a solid SEO presence, you can start going after those high-competition keywords.

So how do you do this?

1. Look at the competition for your target keywords

Most keyword research tools will generate data around the level of search volume, clicks, click-through rate and keyword difficulty for a specific search term. These are incredibly handy when it comes to understanding the level of competition out there, and identifying similar keywords to target.

In this example below, the search volume for “audio technica m70x” is high but the keyword difficulty is low — making it a prime keyword to target for eCommerce SEO.

On the flipside, a generic keyword like “buy headphones” will have more search volume but be INFINITELY more challenging to rank for.

2. Conduct a keyword gap analysis

A keyword gap analysis is a great way to map the keywords you and your competitors are ranking for in order to find opportunities to appear higher in search. You can run a keyword gap analysis using SEMrush’s Keyword Gap tool, which looks something like this:

You can also use the tool to identify where each competitor is ranking for your target keywords, and find unique keywords to rank for in the future.

3. Explore long-tail keyword options

Long-tail keywords are highly specific search terms that people are looking for. These are typically over 5 words, and make up 70% of all web searches:

Long-tail keywords are also less competitive than short-tail keywords, as the search volume is much, MUCH lower. That means that they’re easier to rank for — plus, they typically have a higher conversion rate because the people searching for them are looking for something very specific.

For example, a short-tail keyword might be “buy dark chocolate” while a long-tail keyword might be “buy organic fair trade dark chocolate”.

So how do you find long-tail keyword ideas? Simply seed a primary keyword into your keyword research tool, and it’ll generate a bunch of related search terms:

Calvin Klein Australia did precisely this in an incredibly successful eCommerce SEO strategy. The team focused on keyword opportunities that were low-hanging fruit and would drive incremental rankings for significant organic traffic growth. Their efforts paid off: the team increased their search visibility from ranking in the top 3 positions for 582 keywords to over 2200 words by targeting long-tail keywords, while also ranking for highly competitive terms like “women’s online fashion” and “Australian clothing”.

Read about more amazing eCommerce businesses getting great results with digital marketing in our Top 10 List of Ecommerce Case Studies.

4. Focus on targeting one set of keywords per page

If you try to rank for everything, you’ll end up ranking for nothing. Each of your product and category pages should be optimised for a specific keyword or set of keywords: for example, a page containing black dresses should be optimised for search terms like “black maxi dresses” or “petite black dresses”.

Now that you’ve researched and refined your list of target keywords, it’s time to put your eCommerce website to work — and that means optimizing your online store to rank for the keywords that matter.

In this section, we’ll go through everything you need to optimise the on-page elements of your eCommerce site. This will help ensure that all of your product and category pages are primed for search engines and users, which in turn will help get your online store discovered by more people online.

1. Optimise your online store site architecture

A clear, simple and structured website is a must-have in any SEO strategy. A well-optimised site architecture makes it easy for Google to crawl all of the pages on your website. Plus, it makes it easier for your customers to navigate, and delivers a seamless user experience — all of which are critical ranking factors in SEO.

So how do you structure your site architecture to create click-happy buyers? The key: keep it simple. Great websites aim to keep critical product and category pages within 3 clicks (or fewer) from the homepage. This means that search engines and users can easily navigate your website hierarchy without getting lost.

2. Use a logical structure for your URLs

Like your site structure, your website URLs should be optimised for search engines AND users. A long URL like “https://www.yoursitename.com/category/product/122353982/blue-vase” is harder for Google’s crawlers to read — not to mention they don’t add any meaning for your customers.

Here’s the URL template you should be using for all of your product pages:

https://yourwebsite.com/category/subcategory/product/

This template ensures your URLs are short and keyword-rich, which is crucial as a ranking factor. It also means your URLs are shorter and make sense, rather than being a nonsensical string of characters.

Pro tip: Use hyphens instead of underscores as a general best practice.

3. Add meta data

Meta data is the information that’s displayed in search results, and consists of two parts:

• The meta title for your page, which is displayed as a headline or title
• The meta description, which is a short description of your page that appears under your meta title

If you don’t specify your meta title and meta descriptions, Google will pull whatever text they can find from each of your product pages – a surefire recipe for low click-throughs. Optimise your meta tags using the following best practices:

• Keep the title tag for each page between 55-60 characters long.
• Your store name should come at the end of your meta title, like so: No. 2 Citrus Rhapsody Toner Mist – Edible Beauty | Sephora.
• Keep your meta descriptions for each page between 150-160 characters long.
• Create unique titles and meta descriptions for each page.
• Optimise your title tag and meta description for that page’s target keyword.

4. Optimise your product pages

Your product pages are your bread and butter. Customers will largely make their purchasing decision based on these pages, which is why you need to prime it to be your best salesman.

Optimising your product pages takes time, particularly if you have hundreds of products. However, doing these will increase the chances of your products ranking on Google — and of making a sale.

Follow these best practices to make your product pages SEO-friendly and user-friendly:

• Add unique content and product descriptions for each of your product and category pages. Duplicate content is a BIG no no in SEO and can send your website plummeting in search engine results. Make sure each page has unique product names, copy, and images.
• Include product specifications within your product descriptions. The more detailed you can get with your product on each page, the better. If you’re selling apparel, don’t just state that a certain item fits an AU 6-10. Give exact measurements, provide the model’s height and weight, and include a sizing chart.
• Use header tags as needed throughout the page. Each page should have one H1 tag, then H2 to H6 tags based on importance. Google pays the most attention to your H1 and H2 tags, so make sure to invest the time in optimising these for keywords.
• Incorporate important product information throughout the copy on the page. This might include your product name, product-related keywords (e.g., SKU, UPC, catalogue number, IBAN, part number, etc.), the root of the product, variations, and synonyms (e.g., “seat”, “seating”, “chair”), and other names the product might be known by.

5. Optimise the images on the page

A picture says a thousand words — especially in eCommerce. Product descriptions are great, but nothing is quite as impactful as seeing an image of the product itself.

At the very least, each of your product pages should be accompanied by 2-4 high-quality images that showcase various angles or details. However, if you want to get your products to show up on the top of Google Image search (and you should, because 72% of search engine users search for images before making a purchase), you need to optimise them with the following:

• Alt-text. This is a short description included in the HTML of your site that describes the contents of your image for accessibility purposes, as well as indexing purposes. Your alt-text should be short and descriptive, so a user can still know what’s happening on the page even if they can’t see the image.
• Page speed. The speed of your pages is a HUGE ranking factor in SEO — and, given that most eCommerce sites contain thousands of images, it’s no surprise that this is one of the main reasons why many online stores don’t rank as high as they should. Try to keep your images under 1MB or 2MB, and compress any large images using a tool like TinyPNG or Compressor.io.
• File name. Image file names are often overlooked, despite the fact that they can help your page rank in image search. Instead of uploading a product image called “IMG2307523098.png”, try to use the product name and a relevant keyword, such as “womens-green-tank-top.png”

6. Use schema markup for each page

Schema markup is a series of tags you can add to the HTML of your eCommerce website. They help Google better understand what information is on your category and product pages, and display this information in a user-friendly way in search results.

There are tons of schema tags, but these are the most important for eCommerce sites:

• Reviews and ratings, including the number of reviews for your product and the average star rating.
• Product information, such as its colour, size and category.
• Price of your product.
• Product availability that displays whether an item is in stock or not.
• Discounts or special offers.

7. Add internal linking

Links connect the dots between each page on your site — both for users and search engines. Google might not crawl and index all of your product and category pages if your store doesn’t contain internal links, which means certain pages won’t appear in Google results. What’s more, not having internal links makes it harder for customers to browse through your product catalogue and navigate your site.

Make sure you’re only internally linking to relevant pages, and switch up your anchor text so it doesn’t look spammy. You can also use SEMrush’s Site Audit tool to pinpoint any issues with your internal linking, and Google Search Console to see if there are any product or category pages on your site that aren’t being crawled and indexed properly.

eCommerce SEO plays a crucial role in driving more traffic to your online store and increasing sales. It should be considered part of your SEO strategy because it focuses on optimizing key elements such as product descriptions, images, and category pages to improve search engine rankings. By targeting the right keywords and ensuring your website is user-friendly, you can make it easier for potential customers to find your products online.

Incorporating eCommerce SEO into your overall strategy ensures that your store ranks higher in search engine results, increases organic traffic, and helps convert that traffic into sales. It also improves the user experience, making it easier for visitors to navigate, find what they’re looking for, and ultimately make a purchase.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, has always played a crucial role in driving traffic to websites, but its significance in eCommerce truly began to grow alongside the rise of online shopping in the early 2000s. As eCommerce businesses emerged and began to scale, the need for visibility on search engines like Google became increasingly clear. Without being able to appear in relevant search results, eCommerce businesses would struggle to attract customers, making SEO a vital component of their digital marketing strategy.

In the early days of eCommerce, most businesses relied on traditional marketing methods like print ads and word-of-mouth. However, as the internet became more mainstream and shopping online became increasingly popular, businesses quickly realised that ranking high in search engine results could be the difference between success and failure. As search engines like Google refined their algorithms and became more sophisticated, eCommerce sites had to adapt their strategies to keep up with changes in search behaviour and ranking factors.

By the mid-2000s, SEO had already proven itself as a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses, particularly with the rise of Google and its dominance in search engine results. Online stores began investing heavily in SEO to ensure their products appeared at the top of search results when customers searched for relevant terms. This trend continued to accelerate with the widespread adoption of Google AdWords and the increasing importance of organic rankings.

Around this time, SEO became even more integral to eCommerce as businesses began to realise that without proper optimisation, their products wouldn’t be discoverable by customers searching for similar items. Keyword research, on-page SEO (like optimising product descriptions and titles), and link-building strategies became crucial components of eCommerce SEO strategies. The importance of long-tail keywords also grew, as online shoppers began to use more specific queries when looking for products, making it essential for eCommerce sites to target those niche terms.

As mobile phones and tablets became more advanced in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the need for eCommerce websites to be mobile-friendly also became a key factor in SEO. Google’s mobile-first indexing policy, implemented in 2018, marked a pivotal moment for eCommerce SEO, as search engines began to prioritise mobile-optimised websites in search rankings. This change made it even more critical for eCommerce sites to adopt SEO strategies that ensured their websites performed well on all devices.

The rise of voice search in the mid-2010s further changed the SEO landscape for eCommerce businesses. With consumers increasingly using voice-activated devices like smart speakers and smartphones, the way people search for products began to shift. Optimising for voice search, which tends to favour more conversational and question-based queries, became an essential part of eCommerce SEO strategies.

Today, SEO is an integral part of any eCommerce strategy. With millions of online stores competing for visibility in an increasingly crowded digital space, it’s no longer enough to simply have great products or a functional website. Without effective SEO, eCommerce businesses struggle to stand out in search results and may miss out on valuable customer traffic. Factors like fast loading speeds, user experience, mobile optimisation, high-quality content, and local SEO are all important considerations in building a successful eCommerce SEO strategy.

In summary, SEO became such an important component for eCommerce as online shopping evolved into a primary channel for consumer purchasing. As search engines grew in prominence and their algorithms became more sophisticated, businesses had to optimise their online stores to ensure they were discoverable. Over the years, as Google and other search engines refined their algorithms and prioritised user experience, eCommerce businesses have increasingly relied on SEO as a cornerstone of their success in the digital marketplace.

Project Elephant saw Hootsuite create 90 pieces of content that they split into three groups, each with 30 pieces:

• Control – These pieces received no marketing efforts, paid or organic, for either search or social.
• Group A – HootSuite published these pieces to Twitter and did nothing else with them.
• Group B – HootSuite published the pieces to Twitter and then gave each a $10 budget that allowed for two days of boosting.

If Google’s claims that social doesn’t affect search are true, there shouldn’t be any difference between the average rankings that each post gains.

The pieces in the control group should achieve similar results to the promoted pieces in Group B.

That’s not what happened:

Both Group A and Group B enjoyed more search visibility than the control group. Importantly, the content in both groups leveraged a social media strategy for promotion.

However, it’s the difference between Group A and Group B that are most interesting. Group B included the boosted posts and achieved 10% higher search visibility than Group A.

This suggests that the extra attention that comes from boosting has a positive effect on search visibility. It also combines with the 12% increase that posting a piece on social media has in the first place.

This appears to lead to a long-term ranking improvement. As you can see from the above graph, an increase in social signals correlates with an improvement in rankings.

It’s important to note that Project Elephant doesn’t prove that social signals have a direct effect on ranking. We still have to take Google’s word that it doesn’t for the time being.

However, it does establish that there’s a correlation. Strong social performance seems to lead to higher rankings.

Again, this may come back to the ranking signals that social media affects indirectly. Higher visibility on social platforms can give a boost to such signals, which appears to affect ranking.

So, social and SEO aren’t as separate as Google might want you to believe. In fact, all of the data suggests that you can turn social and SEO into a dream team that leads to better rankings.

Why is That Important in eCommerce?

That covers why you need a social strategy to help with your SEO efforts.

However, there are plenty of other reasons why social plays an important role for eCommerce businesses.

Consider these stats:

• 74% of people check social media to help them make purchasing decisions.
• 43% of people claim they’re more likely to buy a product if they learned about it on social media.
• 31% of people say they use social media to check out products they’ve heard about elsewhere.

The simple fact is that social platforms can have a huge influence on your sales. Your customers use them to influence their decisions. If you’re not actively engaging on those platforms, you’re not doing all you can to get their business.

Combine that with the influence that social signals seem to have on search rankings and you see the importance of social. You need to combine your strategies to create a dream team that gets great results on both platforms.

Here’s how you do it.

1. Don’t Spam Social Media Feeds

This is the temptation that a lot of business owners face. As soon as they discover the power of social, they start sharing everything.

You end up spamming people’s feeds with every product and piece of content that you have.

That’s a bad tactic.

You end up losing so much time to posting constant links that you lose focus on other business objectives. Worse yet, you’re engaging in a tactic that doesn’t work. If you’re an overbearing presence on someone’s social media feed, they’re going to tune you out.

You might end up driving customers away instead of encouraging them to check you out.

Quality still takes precedence over quantity when combining your social and SEO strategies. One great piece posted to a social media platform will have much more of an effect than spamming 100s of product pages on your site.

Remember the correlative effect theorised above. You’re not building links when you spam content on social media. In fact, most social media platforms attach a “nofollow” tag to these links. That means you’re getting no boost at all from them.

However, you might end up with higher amounts of people bouncing off your website after clicking on a spammy link.

That’s something that Google pays attention to.

You don’t have to post constantly to maintain a social presence either. It’s more about maintaining a regular schedule through which you share useful content. You’re looking to build a consistent presence, rather than an overbearing one.

This helps your audience to understand what they can expect from you. You’re not going to spam their feeds. You’re just going to share useful content on a regular basis. That consistency leads to trust, which is a crucial part of every buying process.

This trust leads to more positive interactions. As a result, you boost the search signals that social platforms influence.

2. Remember That Social Profiles Rank Too

Social profiles have a higher presence in rankings in 2018 than ever before.

That’s the second result for a search for the Tesla brand name. Not only does Google rank the Twitter account but it also highlights some its most recent tweets.

The takeaway from this is that you need an active social media account. Google will rank it alongside your main website.

Examples of good activity include:

• Posting useful content onto your social media platforms
• Engaging with followers
• Sharing content from key influencers in your industry

Don’t create a social media account and do nothing with it. The more active you are, the more likely the account is to rank. That means higher visibility and more sales.

3. Optimise Your Profiles and Website

An active profile is the first step. There are plenty of things that you can do to optimise the profile as well.

Most social media platforms allow you to create a bio. Use this to tell people about the basics of your company and insert a useful link. This could be to your main website or to a service that you offer.

It’s also important to maintain consistency across all of your profiles. Use professional and attractive images that people will also see when they visit your website.

All of this creates credibility. People are more likely to trust your profiles, which makes them more likely to share and interact with them. This leads to boosts in the indirect ranking signals mentioned earlier.

After that, optimise your website and website architecture for social sharing too. Every blog post and product page should come with options to share and like the page for a variety of social networks.

You’re creating a cycle. Someone sees something interesting on your website and shares it on social media. Someone on social media sees that information and heads to your website. They may then also share the content, which keeps the cycle going.

All of the while, you’re indirectly influencing the ranking signals that Google pays attention to. More sharing means higher on-site engagement. That leads to better rankings and, ultimately, more sales.

4. Consider Paid Promotion

Project Elephant shows that content that receives paid promotion has a massive effect on search rankings. In fact, it almost doubles the performance of content that’s simply posted on social media and left alone.

The simple conclusion is that paid social promotion has an effect on your search rankings.

There are several ways to take advantage of this:

• Use Facebook Advertising to promote your most attractive products. Target these adverts using Facebook’s Lookalike Audience tool. This allows you to build a profile of your ideal audience from your previous sales data. This targeting means people are less likely to bounce from your website upon clicking. That higher engagement sends a great signal to Google.
• Boost interesting and useful content. That’s what worked well in Project Elephant. Again, the people who saw the post clicked on it and read the piece. The boosted post itself didn’t influence search rankings. However, it’s likely that the on-page engagement that the boost created did.

Yes, eCommerce SEO in Australia is highly competitive, especially as more businesses embrace online selling. With a large number of Australian retailers, both large and small, vying for attention in search engine results, it can be challenging to stand out. The eCommerce space in Australia covers diverse industries such as fashion, electronics, home goods, and more, each with its own set of competitors.

To succeed, businesses need to implement highly targeted SEO strategies that involve optimising product pages, building high-quality backlinks, utilising local SEO techniques, and continuously adapting to changes in search algorithms. With the right expertise, businesses can still gain a competitive edge and drive meaningful results in this crowded market.

Absolutely. Investing in SEO is crucial for Australian eCommerce businesses looking to grow their online presence, increase visibility, and drive sales. With the increasing competition in the digital marketplace, SEO helps businesses stand out in search engine results, making it easier for potential customers to find them.

By optimising product listings, improving site structure, and targeting the right keywords, eCommerce businesses can improve their organic rankings and attract more qualified traffic. SEO also provides long-term benefits, offering a more cost-effective alternative to paid advertising over time.

Additionally, SEO efforts such as local optimisation can help businesses tap into the growing trend of online shopping, particularly within specific regions. Ultimately, investing in SEO enables eCommerce businesses to build a sustainable digital presence that enhances customer experience and boosts conversions.

URL structure forms an important part of your on-page SEO efforts. A well-designed URL structure makes it easier for Google to crawl and index your eCommerce website and product pages. On the flip side, a poor URL structure could lead to content being missed or delays in your website being crawled and indexed.

When it comes to setting up your URLs, keep it simple and consistent. This means:

• Minimising the number of alternative URLs that might return the same content. If you have one product page listed under /product/black-dress and /product?sku=1234, Google won’t be able to distinguish that both URLs are the same until after it’s retrieved the pages. This can lead to delays in loading times and website crawl times.
• Keep all pages written in the same case. Otherwise, Google might think that /product/Black-Dress and /product/black-dress are two completely different pages.
• Give each page a unique URL based on the primary keyword you’re targeting, or the keyword with a high search volume.
• Supplement the main keyword in your URL with descriptive words to help Google better understand what the product and page is about. For example, /product/clay-vase is far more descriptive than /product/vase or /product/1242523.
• Using the right URL structure for product variants, such as a tank top in different colours. Google supports a number of different URL structures for different product variants, so make sure to check out their guide before creating your links.

When it comes to online stores, the UX pattern you choose can have a big impact on the way Google indexes your website — and the overall customer experience.

You might have thousands of products on your eCommerce website. Rather than display all of them on one page, you can display a subset of your products based on a user’s shopping preferences, semantic keywords, or popular items, as Princess Polly has done on its store.

On top of providing your customers with a better user experience, incrementally loading content improves site speed so your site loads faster – a must for on-site optimization and eCommerce SEO success.

There are three different UX patterns that eCommerce sites typically use:

1. Pagination, where users click “next”, “previous” or page numbers to navigate between results.
2. Load more buttons that users can click to see additional products in that category.
3. An infinite scroll, where the page automatically loads more products when users scroll to the bottom of the page.

Search engines crawl and index each type of UX pattern differently, so you’ll need to ensure that your website is optimised for search. Luckily, Google has a list of best practices you can follow to make sure its bots can crawl and index your high-quality content.

If you sell products, no online digital marketing campaign would be complete without google. So let’s take a look at some of the best SEO practices for your ecommerce campaigns.

44% of people start their online shopping journey with a search engine.

Let that sink in for a second.

Almost half of ALL people who are shopping online discover brands and products using a website like Google or Bing.

That means that if you’re an eCommerce store, your business literally depends on your visibility in search results.

This guide contains everything that you need to know to improve your visibility in search engine results pages and ensure your audience can discover you online.

Understanding where eCommerce content can appear in Google

Before we jump into Google’s recommendations, it’s important to understand exactly where your brand and products can be featured.

There are multiple spots where your eCommerce content can appear, from search results to Google Shopping and Google Maps. The key is to know what’s available to eCommerce websites and what their search appearance looks like. This way, you can use your eCommerce SEO strategy to maximise visibility across the placements that are most relevant to your product and audience.

Google Search

Every time a customer runs a search for a shopping-related query, Google will display relevant products along with the store name, rating, price, stock level, and description (provided you have the correct structured data markup).

Google Images

eCommerce products can also show up in Google Image Search. With the right structured data, your image may also display additional information once users click into it, such as the price, availability, product description, and link to your shopfront.

Google Lens

Google Lens is an AI-powered image recognition technology that allows users to search their surroundings by scanning objects, text, and more. If your products are uploaded to the Google Merchant Centre, they’ll be eligible to appear every time someone uses Google Lens to scan and search for your product.

Google My Business

On top of displaying your products to shoppers via Google search, you can also display business and product information through Google My Business. This is particularly useful if you’re operating a physical store as well as selling online.

Google My Business listings even have a spot for you to promote your products and provide links to direct customers to different product categories, like so:

Google Maps

Along with your Google My Business listing, sellers can also display products directly in Google Maps. These products appear to local searches under your listing on desktop and mobile.

eCommerce link building

Backlinks are still a cornerstone of SEO. Building links back to important pages helps make sure that customers can find that perfect product or category page, while boosting your online store’s authority in the eyes of Google.

Link building helps spread that all-important link juice through your site.

However, when it comes to link building it’s important to remember: it’s as much about quality as it is about quantity. So how can you build high-quality, high-impact inbound links that drive traffic to your page AND drive your online store up in search results? Easy — with these 3 tips.

Built hype for future releases

Got a new product dropping soon? Create a page for it on our site ahead of time, then allow people to pre-order or sign up to hear more — just like Apple:

This is a great link building strategy to generate backlinks to your site and increase your rankings. The beauty of this tactic is that you can get backlinks even more efficiently, as the page you’re building isn’t yet considered “commercial”. The goal is to create a content-rich, high-value page that gathers links organically from trusted sources.

Then, a month before the launch, increase your internal linking to those pages (such as from your home page). If you plan well, you’ll be well-positioned ahead of your competitors at the product release date.

Work with influencers

Influencer marketing allows you to kill two birds with one stone. You promote your products and services amongst your target audience AND you can improve link building for your business.

If you get lucky, you might be able to offer a free product in exchange for a review on the influencer’s blog or social channels. Other influencers may have dedicated advertising or sponsorship packages.

Gymshark does this insanely well. The company handpicks athletes and fitness influencers on various social media channels, then teams up with them to promote their products — maximising their reach, boosting their online visibility, and generating backlinks to boot.

Another way to do this is to foster brand ambassadors from your existing customer database. These people will help you promote your brand for free (read: for FREE) in online avenues, as they’re already loyal customers and believe in your product.

Have a look at the people that engage with you regularly on social channels or your biggest shoppers, and look for ways to work with them. It might be by offering them samples to review, or trading a sample product if they get people to sign-up for your newsletter.

Great question! If your site hosts a large collection of online eCommerce products or services, our experts may recommend scalable strategies such as template-based optimisations for similar products and focusing on high-priority items.

We can also prioritise products that have the highest demand, profitability, or strategic importance, ensuring that SEO efforts are concentrated where they can have the greatest impact.