Ecommerce SEO is one of the biggest drivers of traffic for online stores.
Ecommerce brands that don’t leverage it miss out on a large portion of high-intent shoppers, in a way that costs way less than ads and pays dividends for much longer.
This guide explains what it is, why it’s important, as well as tips and tools to implement it well.
What Is Ecommerce SEO?
Ecommerce SEO is the process of optimizing your site for the purpose of increasing visibility on search engines like Google and Bing. When it comes to ecommerce, you’d want to make sure that potential customers can find your brand when they input search terms related to the products you offer.
Improving your search engine ranking goes a long way toward driving organic traffic to your ecommerce site, thereby introducing more people to the first stage of your conversion funnel.
Ecommerce SEO tasks involve crafting detailed product descriptions, earning backlinks from authoritative sites, improving page speed, and more.
Why Is SEO Important For Ecommerce?
Short answer: It brings you more traffic and brand awareness.
You probably acquire customers through multiple channels such as paid ads and social media content. They usually target users who are not yet at the stage of buying and therefore take a longer time to convert.
There’s another group of shoppers that are ready to buy. They’d search for your products via search engines, and would hit purchase if they find something suitable.
These shoppers are valuable and you’d want to appear where they search. Implementing ecommerce SEO can help you rank higher and increase your visibility on search engine. While you can also do that with paid ads, organic results tend to gain better trust. It also costs a lot less.
And even if they don’t buy eventually, you’d have gained brand awareness among your target audience.
Ecommerce SEO best practices: 6 Tips for Success
Ecommerce SEO can be complex. As you incorporate these best practices into your SEO strategy, it helps to create a workflow to make sure you don’t leave anything out.
- Perform keyword research
- Optimize website architecture
- Improve on-page SEO
- Work on technical SEO
- Leverage content marketing
- Build high-quality links
1. Perform Keyword Research
Ecommerce keyword research is the first step in your ecommerce SEO strategy. It helps you identify high-value search terms your target customers are using to find your products.
When doing keyword research, take note of their search intent. Search intent refers to why someone looks up a search term, or what are they trying to achieve. There are 4 types of search intent:
- Informational: User wants to find out more about a topic, or how to do something
- Navigational: User wants to find a website or page
- Commercial: User wants to look for options before buying
- Transactional: User wants to buy something
Commercial and transactional are the most valuable. Because they target users who are lower down the funnel and take a shorter time to convert. But they’re also usually more competitive, so it’s important to target a good mix.
With that, here are some common ways you can perform keyword research.
Explore Google and Amazon autocomplete suggestions
Before you start, you’d likely have some terms in mind related to your products. For example, if you sell couches, “leather sofa” or “wooden bed frame” would be potential keywords.
Bring those keywords to Google, type the query into the search bar, and Google autocompletes it with relevant search terms. Even just typing “bed frame” can give you many good ideas.
These are good ways to find long-tail keywords—keywords that are more specific and usually comes with stronger purchase intent. They’re also typically less competitive and easier to rank for.
You can do the same with Amazon’s autocomplete. In fact, Amazon may give you better suggestions since it’s more ecommerce product-driven.
Review categories on Amazon and competitor sites
While you’re on Amazon, spend some time reviewing relevant categories. Enter any category, and you’ll find many subcategories with terms you can target.
For example, if you’re a women’s fashion retailer, go to Clothing, Shoes, Jewelry & Watches, select women, then hover over “Women” in the top navigation bar.
There, you’ll find many categories under women’s fashion. Click into the ones you sell to reveal a treasure trove of keywords, like this.
Try keyword research tools
At this point, you’d probably have a good list of keywords. You can validate them on keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs by looking at their search volume and keyword difficulty (KD).
For example, I plan to target “bed frame with storage”, but I’m not sure if there’s enough search volume or if it’s easy to rank for it. I’ll input that keyword into Semrush and it’ll give me estimates.
SEO tools are also a good way to do keyword research. Simply enter a keyword, and it’ll provide a list of keyword ideas, along with the volume, intent, and KD.
Use Google Keyword Planner and Google Search Console
Google is a good way to search for keywords—it’s free and straight from the source.
You can only access Google Keyword Planner using your Google Ads account (setup instructions here if you don’t have it yet). On the left navigation bar, go to Tools, Planning, Keyword Planner, then select Discover New Keywords.
Enter your seed keyword, and Google Keyword Planner will share a list of keyword ideas, along with average monthly searches and competition.
On Google Search Console, you can also find keyword ideas from the queries you are already showing up for.
Go through your Performance Search results and look for queries that:
- Rank between 8–20
- Have high impressions but low clicks
- Have low impressions but high CTR
- Contain multiple words and are more specific, a.k.a. long-tail keywords
Browse online communities
You can often find trending keywords in online communities like Reddit or Quora.
These are places where your target audience find solutions to their problems, or reviews of products they’re looking for.
To conduct keyword research on Reddit, search for your product. Look through subreddits that discuss your product or topics around it. See what keywords and phrases are used here.
For example, if you’re a outdoor apparel and equipment brand, you might search for climbing gear and look for relevant communities. Find popular posts within active subreddits and eyeball for keywords.
Here, we can pick out keywords like drying agents and fine. You can expand these into search terms like “chalk without drying agents”, or “extra fine chalk”.
Automate keyword research with Hypotenuse AI’s SEO keyword suggest
For ecommerce brands with larger catalogs, searching for keywords one by one might be too time consuming.
In that case, automation would make sense.
Hypotenuse AI’s SEO keyword suggest automatically suggests best-fit SEO keywords based on your:
- Product title
- Brand
- Product details
You can do this in bulk, for catalogs with hundreds or thousands of products, saving you time from manual research.
How to choose the right SEO keywords for your ecommerce brand
There are tons of keywords you can rank for, but we need to choose strategically for the best ROI.
The key points to consider when choosing SEO keywords are:
- Search intent: What are users looking for when searching for the keyword and do your products that match the keywords well
- Search volume: Are the number of searches worth the effort—this can be debatable since trends come and go, but you can validate it on social channels
- Keyword difficulty: How difficult it is to rank for the keyword
2. Optimize Your Website Architecture
Site architecture is especially important for ecommerce since you will have many pages on your website, each dedicated to a product.
The way you structure these pages impacts your user experience (UX) and UX plays a crucial role SEO.
A well-optimized site architecture:
- Helps search engines crawl and index your category and product pages easily
- Allows users to find the products they’re looking for in less time
- Ensures that search engines understand your page content and show it to the right audience
As your ecommerce product catalog grows, this structure becomes increasingly complex. That’s why it’s important to plan your product taxonomy in a way that allows your site to scale easily.
To improve your website for SEO and UX:
Use a clear product taxonomy
Organize products into logical categories and subcategories based on attributes like type, brand, or purpose. A hierarchical structure ensures easy navigation and helps search engines understand content relationships.
Example: Living Room → Sofas → Leather Sofas
Keep URLs and breadcrumbs organized
Ensure category and product URLs follow a clean, hierarchical structure (e.g., example.com/sofas/leather-sofas). Implement breadcrumb navigation to reinforce structure and improve both UX and SEO.
Minimize click depth
Users should reach any product in three clicks or less. Keep navigation intuitive by:
- Linking category pages → Subcategories → Products
- Adding search and filter features to help users find products faster
- Improving navigation paths by providing shortcuts to key pages, such as contextual internal links for complementary products
3. Improve On-Page SEO
Now that you’ve got your keywords down pat, the next step would be to make sure you incorporate them into your site. In this section, we pay extra attention to how you can optimize seo for your ecommerce product pages and category pages.
Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
The title tag and meta description are what search engines and potential customers use to evaluate how relevant and valuable the page is. Thus, they play a vital role in determining your page’s click-through rate (CTR).
Optimized title tags and meta descriptions should include the following:
- Primary keyword
- Modifiers like buy, popular, premium, next-day delivery
- Unique selling points like durable or lightweight
- Urgency like limited stock or sale ends soon (sparingly)
Keep your title tags to 55–60 characters and meta description below 160.
Craft compelling product descriptions
Considering how they can be tedious to write, product descriptions are often an overlooked opportunity for SEO. After all, they play a crucial role in compelling potential customers to add your product to their cart.
Your description shouldn’t just convey the features of the product, it should also highlight its benefits to your target audience. The more compelling your product descriptions, the longer people will remain on your page—a signal to search engines that the product is indeed valuable to them.
To help search engines better understand your product, your description should be keyword-rich, including both the primary keyword as well as any related terms.
Since search engines typically penalize duplicate content, you’d also want to ensure that each product page features unique content. This means that, no matter how similar, each product should feature a different description.
Our product description generator takes all these factors into consideration when crafting the perfect sales copy for your products. But if you’re looking for a guide on how to get started yourself, this article might be able to provide some insights. We’ve also put together a couple of product description templates for those in need of some inspiration.
Optimize product images
Optimized images improve search rankings, page speed, and user engagement. High-quality visuals help showcase products effectively, while SEO-friendly images enhance discoverability in Google Search and Image results. Follow these best practices:
- Use descriptive file names like “black-leather-recliner” rather than "image0012.jpg"., and keyword-rich alt text like “black leather recliner with wooden armrests”
- Ensure high-resolution images for clarity and include multiple angles to enhance user experience (you can use Hypotenuse’s AI image editor for this)
- Use tools like TinyImage or TinyPNG to compress images to maintain quality while improving load speed
- Convert your image file to webp for best performance
- Implement structured data for ecommerce to help search engines understand and display product images in search results
Leverage category page copy
The body copy of category pages are also an opportunity for SEO. Beyond title tags and meta descriptions, search engines also look at the body copy of each page to determine its ranking.
Thus, these are good places to insert your keywords as well. Besides making sure that they are used throughout, try to feature your keywords early on in the copy.
Never keyword stuff though. Instead, you should always make sure that your copy is both compelling and fluent. Unnatural-sounding copy can put people off and have a negative impact on the user experience.
4. Work On Technical SEO
Technical SEO is a crucial aspect of optimizing your ecommerce website for search engines. It focuses on improving the technical elements that affect your site's visibility and performance. By implementing the right technical SEO strategies, you can enhance your website's ranking and provide a smooth user experience.
Page load times are also taken into account by search engines when ranking pages.
Due to their nature, there are a few SEO issues that ecommerce sites commonly face, especially if the site features a large number of products:
- Duplicate content: This has significant impact on the “crawlability” of your ecommerce site. Unless there’s a good reason for having two similar pages, you can avoid this by deleting and redirecting the duplicates with a canonical link.
- Slow page speed: There are a number of reasons this might occur, though it can often be attributed to bloated code or large image files.
- Broken links: With new products being introduced and olds ones phased out, missing or broken links, which might confuse crawlers, may surface as it gets hard to keep track of your product pages.
- Deep Pages: The rule of thumb is that no page should be more than 3 clicks away from your homepage, as a flatter site structure makes it easier for both web crawlers and potential customers to navigate.
- Schema Markup: Ecommerce schema helps search engines understand how to interpret and display your pages.
The schema properties most relevant to ecommerce sites are:
Review and rating schema allows Google to include a summary of reviews or ratings your product has received.
Product schema allows Google to provide detailed information about the product, including its price, availability and condition.
Breadcrumb schema helps Google signal to users the page’s position in your site’s hierarchy, so that they can navigate it more effectively.
FAQ schema allows Google to display relevant FAQs (along with their answers) regarding your brand or product.
5. Leverage Content Marketing
Creating high-quality content that is valuable to your target audience, such as SEO blog posts, infographics or videos, is another strategy you can adopt to boost traffic to your site. It remains an effective way to incorporate other keywords that might be relevant to your brand.
Writing blog articles
Blog articles are an effective way to address common search queries relating to your primary keyword.
Types of blog articles include:
- Product care and usage guides (e.g. how to pick the right organic facial cleanser)
- Product comparisons (e.g. Nike vs Adidas running shoes)
- Listicles (e.g top 10 wrinkle-free shirts)
- Case studies
Besides offering people greater insight into your brand and products, adding other types of content to your ecommerce site gives you the opportunity to build brand authority. Engaging, relevant and thoughtful content goes a long way in positioning your brand as an expert in your niche.
In fact, we’ve got tips for getting started, as well as a detailed step-by-step guide that will take you through writing an SEO blog post.
Improve social media presence
There are two ways around this:
- Create social media content for your brand around your content pillars
- Have others create social media content about your brand (user-generated content or UGC)
For UGC, encourage your customers to post about your brand. You can do this by creating a branded hashtag and reposting it on your social media account or website whenever a legit user publishes a post.
6. Build High-Quality Links
Link building is an essential aspect of ecommerce SEO that can significantly improve your website's visibility and organic ranking.
By acquiring relevant and high-quality backlinks, you can strengthen your website's authority and gain more exposure in search engine results.
Here are some effective link building strategies for ecommerce:
Guest Blogging
Reach out to authoritative blogs or websites in your niche and offer to write guest posts. In these articles, you can include links back to your ecommerce site, providing valuable content to the readers while also generating backlinks.
Influencer Partnerships
Collaborate with influencers or industry experts who have a significant following in your target market. By partnering with them, you can leverage their audience to gain exposure for your ecommerce brand. Influencers can feature your products or link to your website, driving traffic and building valuable backlinks.
Resource Link Building
Identify resource pages or directories related to your industry and submit your website for inclusion. These resource pages often provide a curated list of helpful links, and by getting your ecommerce site listed, you can earn valuable backlinks.
Broken Link Building
Discover broken links on relevant websites, and reach out to the site owners or webmasters offering a replacement link from your ecommerce site. This mutually beneficial approach helps the website owner fix broken links, while you gain a valuable backlink opportunity.
When crafting your ecommerce link building strategy, consider how you can incorporate it naturally into the article, and how the link benefits users of the website.
Ecommerce SEO tools to optimize and track results
Optimizing an e-commerce store for search engines requires the right tools to analyze rankings, fix technical issues, and optimize content. Here are three powerful SEO tools to help improve your site’s visibility and performance:
Hypotenuse AI SEO AI Agent - AI-Powered Content & Optimization
Hypotenuse SEO AI Agent simplifies ecommerce SEO by automating keyword research, content generation, and optimization. It helps:
- Generate SEO-optimized product descriptions, category pages, and blogs.
- Analyze ranking opportunities and suggest content improvements.
- Identify keyword gaps and enhance meta tags for better visibility.
By leveraging AI, it reduces the manual effort required for large-scale ecommerce sites, making SEO execution faster and more effective.
Screaming Frog - Technical SEO and Site Audits
Screaming Frog is a powerful website crawler that helps identify and fix technical SEO issues. It’s essential for e-commerce stores with thousands of product pages.
- Find broken links (404 errors) and fix them to maintain a smooth user experience.
- Detect duplicate content issues, which are common in e-commerce due to similar product descriptions.
- Audit page titles, meta descriptions, and structured data to ensure proper optimization.
This tool is ideal for large online stores that need deep technical insights to improve search engine rankings.
Google Search Console - Performance Tracking and Indexing
Google Search Console (GSC) is a must-have free SEO tool that helps monitor and improve search performance.
- Track keyword rankings and impressions to measure SEO success.
- Identify indexing issues and submit sitemaps to ensure all product pages are searchable.
- Get mobile usability reports to ensure your store is optimized for all devices.
Since GSC provides direct data from Google, it’s an essential tool for troubleshooting and optimizing e-commerce SEO strategies.
Conclusion
Unlike the typical SEO you may have been exposed to, ecommerce SEO is more specialized and therefore demands a more specific strategy. That said, as daunting as it may seem, optimizing your ecommerce site for search engines is definitely a worthwhile endeavor. With these best practices incorporated into your workflow, you’re sure to have an edge over your competition.
