The Best E-Commerce SEO Strategies: 9 Tips for Online Retailers

By Brett Farmiloe

SEO optimization is critical to a successful e-commerce website, and who better to provide insights than the leaders in the field? From focusing on commercial pages and product listings to optimizing the mobile experience and leveraging voice search, here are nine practical SEO optimization strategies for e-commerce websites.

SEO strategies for e-commerce websites

1. Focus on commercial pages and product listings

"Our approach is always multifaceted. However, we typically focus on optimizing the commercial pages of the website first, such as category pages and product pages, since users searching for these types of pages are likely to have high commercial intent and there is more potential for them to convert.

"One distinct challenge in e-commerce SEO is managing product listings for large sites with a constant influx of new products. Despite this challenge, it's also a valuable opportunity, as product pages can drive high conversions and should be a top priority in your SEO strategy.

"To help tackle this, one thing we'd recommend is creating and implementing bulk metadata templates for title tags, meta descriptions, H1 tags, and alt text. These templates should target relevant keywords and provide a concise yet informative description of the content. This technique helps streamline the optimization process and improves UX."
—Paul Friend, The SEO Works

2. Harness the power of product reviews

"For e-commerce businesses, one significant way we've optimized for SEO is by harnessing the power of product reviews. These reviews provide fresh, user-generated content, which search engines favor, as they signal the website is updated regularly and offers relevant information. Product reviews are powerful because they provide:

• Fresh content: Search engines are always on the hunt for new content. Regularly updated product reviews give search engines new content to index, which can boost the website's relevancy and freshness score.

• Long-tail keywords: Customers use natural language in their reviews, sprinkling them with potential long-tail keywords. These phrases, though less common, can be highly specific and thus carry a higher conversion rate.

• Enhanced CTR: Positive reviews can be showcased in search results using rich snippets. Star ratings displayed next to a product can significantly increase click-through rates from the search results."

—Andrew Gillespie, Paramount Digital

3. Implement horizontal navigation and address SGE challenges

"Having generated over 16 million leads and $900 million in revenue for my clients through my agency, one crucial way I recommend e-commerce businesses optimize for SEO is by implementing a horizontal navigation structure to give their pages the best chance at ranking. This means customers can use filters such as color, brand, and type to browse products on category and subcategory pages. This approach allows the use of long-tail keywords and lets those pages be indexed.

"A unique challenge in e-commerce SEO for 2023 and beyond will be Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE). While it’s currently in Beta, SGE will cause brand retailers to lose organic search traffic as links displayed in the interface will go to other online stores offering the product. SGE for e-commerce will contain an overall product description, images, reviews, and relevant brand products, all in a carousel format in Google search."
—Guy Sheetrit, Over The Top SEO

4. Programmatic metadata implementation and unique content

"One way I've optimized e-commerce websites for clients is by programmatically implementing metadata (like title tags, meta descriptions, and canonicals) that follow SEO best practices. It can be an enormous challenge to implement on-page SEO optimizations at scale that don't sound robotic—but it's also a great opportunity. Adding unique, handwritten content to high-performing/priority pages also helps a lot. This is effective for category landing pages."
—Ken Freel, Nuaveu

5. Handle duplicate content with canonical tags

"One unique challenge in e-commerce SEO is handling duplicate content caused by product variations (e.g., color, size). The opportunity lies in using canonical tags to point search engines to the 'main' product page, thereby consolidating link equity and improving rankings."
—Harry Boxhall, Boxhall Marketing Ltd

6. Use structured data and optimize images

"I've optimized e-commerce sites through the efficient use of structured data, especially review schema markup. This structured data type provides a star snippet to the page in question. The target page stands out in search results, signaling trustworthiness. A clear SEO benefit of this method is an improvement in click-through rates.

"A unique e-commerce challenge is optimizing the site's product images for performance—balancing size and quality. I've found switching to the WebP image format a great way to address this issue. WebP is a modern image format developed by Google. It offers high-quality compression, resulting in much smaller image sizes than JPEG and PNG."
—Medha Dixit, Digital Chakra Limited

7. Write comprehensive descriptions and address loading times

"Writing thoughtful, comprehensive product descriptions is a strategy I live by. Ultimately, search engines need text to understand your page and determine whether it helps searchers find exactly what they want, so search engines can rank it accordingly. We ensure every description includes relevant keywords and provides real value to our customers, going beyond basic specs to tell a story, answer questions, and address common concerns.

"E-commerce websites face a distinct challenge when it comes to slow loading times because of the high-quality images they use. While these visuals are crucial for sales, they can hamper user experience and negatively affect your search rankings. Not optimizing images, failing to implement caching, and not using a content delivery network (CDN) are common culprits. Strike the balance between including captivating visuals to sell your products while not slowing your site by implementing browser and server-side caching, using image compression, and leveraging a reliable CDN."
—Gabriele Asaro, Clash.gg

8. Include subcategories for broad searches

"One thing we have done was to include subcategories in addition to our regular category pages. For example, we have a sports collectibles website for which we created categories for each sport, and then also created categories for each team within that sport. This gives us a lot more opportunity to rank for searches than just the broad category searches."
—Isaac Hammelburger, SearchPros

9. Optimize the mobile experience and leverage voice search

"We've focused on optimizing our mobile experience, given the increasing number of mobile shoppers. We've implemented AMP (previously known as Accelerated Mobile Pages) to ensure our site loads quickly on mobile devices, which is a factor Google considers in its rankings.

"An interesting opportunity in e-commerce SEO is voice search optimization. As voice-activated devices become more prevalent, optimizing for voice search can give us an edge. We're experimenting with conversational keywords and FAQ sections to capture this emerging trend."
—Shoaib Mughal, Marketix

About the Author

Post by: Brett Farmiloe

Brett Farmiloe is the founder and CEO of Featured, a platform where business leaders can answer questions related to their expertise and get published in articles featuring their insights.

Company: Featured
Website: www.featured.com
Connect with me on LinkedIn.