14 ways to improve ecommerce SEO and make more sales.

Getting traffic to an online store from search engines is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available to ecommerce businesses.

Unlike paid advertising, which stops the moment you stop spending, the returns you get from a good ecommerce SEO strategy compound over time. Google (and other search engines) send a steady stream of people to your site, all of whom are actively looking for exactly what you sell.

But ecommerce website SEO is not without its challenges. Large product catalogues, out-of-stock products, filtered category URLs, the risk of duplicated content. There’s a lot that can get in the way of search visibility if it’s not handled properly.

It’s also a competitive field, with lots of online retailers fighting for the same search engine result (SERP) top spots. Because whether you sit on page one or two of Google has a huge impact on your sales.

In this guide, using our in-depth experience of ecommerce web design, development and maintenance, we walk you through 14 practical ways to improve ecommerce SEO.

14 ways to improve ecommerce SEO

1. Get your site structure right from the start

Before you start optimising individual pages on your ecommerce website, make sure the overall store structure works for both search engines and users. You need a clean, logical site hierarchy.

What does that mean?

Well, products should sit within relevant categories. And categories should sit within a sensible navigation structure, where nothing is more than a few clicks from your homepage.

This makes it easy for search engine bots to crawl your site and understand how your content is organised. It also makes it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for, which keeps them on your site longer and sends positive engagement signals back to Google.

2. Prioritise user experience

User experience (UX) is an important ranking factor. How well your website works for customers impacts where you show up in search results.

Your website has to load quickly. It has to be responsive, working as well on mobile devices as it does on desktop. Any unnecessary friction should be found and removed.

In practice, that means thinking carefully about:

• Navigation. Can someone arrive on your homepage and reach the right product in three clicks or fewer? Is your search function fast and forgiving enough to handle typos and partial queries? Are your category names written in language your customers (rather than your internal team) tend to use?
• Page layout. Is it immediately clear what each page is for and what a visitor should do next? Is there enough white space for the page to feel manageable rather than overwhelming? Are calls to action — and key actions like “view basket” and “account” — immediately visible?
• Product page optimisation. Can a customer see all the information they need to make a decision? Do you have lots of high-quality product images? How about sizing information and reviews? Are delivery and returns information listed clearly?
• Checkout optimisation. Does your site support guest checkout and multiple payment options? Can users autofill their address and save payment methods? Is there a visible progress indicator? And can users see trust signals that help them feel confident about making a purchase?

A lot of user experience comes down to web design and development. A good web team will put solid UX foundations in place so your site has the best possible chance of SEO success.

3. Map your keywords properly

When you’re deciding which keywords your ecommerce website should be targeting, you need to identify everything from broad terms (phrases suited to your homepage or category pages) to highly specific product searches (phrases suited to your sub-category and product pages).

Think about how different people search at different stages of the buyer journey. Someone searching for “backpack” is early in the process. Someone who types “black waterproof hiking backpack 50 litres” is much closer to buying. So you need separate pages for each.

Once you know the search volume and competition of each keyword phrase, you can decide which are worth targeting. Then, assign a primary keyword to each page — and make sure no two pages compete for the same term to avoid keyword cannibalisation.

4. Build out your category pages

Category pages are an excellent way to improve ecommerce SEO.

These pages target shorter, higher-volume search terms, which can drive significant traffic. And, when you create a good network of internal links (more on this in a moment), they get an SEO boost from the product pages beneath them.

The problem is that most ecommerce category pages consist of a product grid and nothing else. A short, keyword-optimised introduction — even just 100 to 150 words that explains the category — can make a big difference to how a category page performs in search.

You can also link category pages to related categories where relevant. If someone is browsing, for example, women’s running shoes, a link to women’s running socks or running accessories keeps them in your store and helps search engines understand how your pages are connected.

5. Write original product descriptions

It may be easy to simply copy manufacturer product descriptions onto your own site. But this isn’t the best approach to ecommerce site SEO.

That’s because unique product descriptions do two things: they give search engines distinct, indexable content to work with, and they give your customers the information they actually need to make a buying decision. Generic manufacturer info doesn’t tend to do either of these things.

Good ecommerce product descriptions include your target keyword naturally (in the page title, the first paragraph and the meta description). They address the questions customers commonly ask before buying, include specific product details and reflect your brand voice, too.

6. Optimise your product images

Another SEO and product page best practice concerns image optimisation.

As with your product descriptions, use your own, original photographs and videos (not ones lifted from the manufacturer’s site). This is better for SEO and for your brand.

You should also write descriptive alt text for every image. Alt text tells search engines and visually impaired website users what an image contains. It’s specific and descriptive, but you can include your keywords here, too.

This helps your images to show up in Google Images, which can be a useful source of traffic for visual product categories.

Lastly, be sure to compress your images. Large files slow your site down, which affects both user experience and rankings. (Our post on quick SEO wins covers image compression in more detail.)

7. Optimise your metadata

Every product page, category page and content page on your site should have a unique, keyword-optimised page title and meta description.

These are the lines of text that appear in search results. They don’t directly determine rankings, but they have a significant impact on click-through rates, which do help to determine rankings.

Page titles should include your primary keyword. Meta descriptions should summarise what’s on the page and give users a reason to click — maybe a trust signal, a USP or the offer of something like free delivery.

8. Use structured data

Structured data — also called schema markup — is code added to your pages in order to give search engines easy-to-understand information about your content.

For an ecommerce website, you can highlight information like:

• Product schema (name, price, availability, reviews)
• BreadcrumbList schema (which powers the breadcrumb trails that appear in search results)
• FAQ schema (to present and answer customers’ frequently asked questions)

When implemented correctly, structured data can produce rich results in Google. You may see star ratings, price information or a dropdown of FAQs alongside your page result in SERPs. This makes your listings more visible and clickable than standard results.

9. Handle out-of-stock products correctly

When a product goes out of stock, you may be tempted to delete the page. But this is bad for e-commerce SEO.

Instead, if the product is temporarily unavailable, keep the page live, mark it as out of stock and (if possible) offer an “email me when back in stock” option. This page has built up SEO value. Deleting it throws that value away (and creates a broken link or 404 error that you then need to fix).

If a product is being permanently discontinued, don’t leave the page live indefinitely. You can set up a 301 redirect to the closest relevant product or category page. This transfers the ranking equity to a page that still serves the customer, rather than leaving a dead end.

10. Add internal links

Done well, internal links pass authority around your site. They help search engines understand the relationship between your pages, and keep customers browsing for longer.

A customer who lands on a product page and sees genuinely relevant suggestions — complementary products, alternatives in a different price range, a buying guide that helps them make a decision — is more likely to convert and less likely to leave.

To improve ecommerce SEO, try to build internal links systematically. Every product page should link back to its main category. Related products should link to each other. Blog posts should link to relevant product and category pages. Breadcrumbs should be enabled and properly structured.

11. Create content that builds authority

Category and product pages target customers who are ready to buy. But, with SEO website content, you can build a connection with customers who aren’t quite at that stage yet.

Content like blog posts, buying guides (“choosing the right wedding bouquet”), comparisons (“fresh flowers vs dried flowers”) and how-to articles (“how to preserve your wedding flowers”) target people who are in the research phase. And this content does several things for your ecommerce SEO:

• It targets informational keywords that product pages can’t rank for, so you can claim more space in search engine result pages
• It signals to search engines that your site is a credible source on the subjects relevant to your products, so they send more people your way
• It creates natural opportunities for internal links back to your product and category pages

Beyond the content types we’ve mentioned above, you can also work with a web designer to create interactive content.

Product quizzes, calculators and gift guides that engage users and guide them toward the right products can also benefit SEO, as long as site speeds and user experience remain a top consideration.

12. Earn backlinks

The best ecommerce SEO strategy also takes backlinks into account. Backlinks — links from other high-quality websites to yours — remain a powerful ranking signal.

The most reliable way to earn backlinks is to publish content worth linking to: original research, genuinely useful guides, tools, data visualisations.

Actively pitching to journalists, bloggers and publications can also get you links. Supplier relationships are also worth exploring. If you’re an authorised stockist of a brand, ask whether they link to their retail partners.

To get the most from this SEO strategy, aim for quality over quantity. A small number of links from trusted websites that have a clear connection to yours carry more weight than lots of links from spammy, unrelated sites.

13. Use canonical tags to manage duplicate content

Ecommerce sites can easily end up with duplicate content issues. Filtered category URLs, product variants and paginated pages can all create situations where multiple URLs show very similar or identical content — and this can hamper your SEO efforts.

Canonical tags are an HTML element that tells search engines which version of a page you want them to treat as the main one. This reduces confusion and helps ensure your preferred pages are the ones that receive the SEO value.

For example, if the same camera can be reached through several different category or filter URLs (brand, new arrivals, cameras under £500), you can use a canonical tag to tell search engines which URL should be considered the main version. This is something your web developer can help with.

14. Conduct regular SEO audits

Last on our list of ecommerce SEO tips, we have audits.

Sites inevitably accumulate technical issues over time: broken links, duplicate content, images that haven’t been optimised. A regular audit helps you identify and fix these issues before they become major problems for your site.

You can also find pages that are experiencing declining impressions or click-through rates. This is an early warning sign that changes need to be made. Look at your top-performing pages, too. When you understand what works well, you can do more of the same.

Finally, make a note of how your SEO performance links to your ecommerce conversion rate and revenue. If traffic is increasing but your revenue isn’t, your SEO strategy (who you’re attracting) or page content (what you’re saying) may need revisiting.

Ecommerce web design from Radical

When you start with effective web design and development, you create the conditions for good ecommerce SEO.

Site structure, page speed, mobile performance, breadcrumb navigation, schema markup, internal architecture — all these things are built correctly from the start rather than patched up after your site has already gone live.

At Radical, we build bespoke WooCommerce ecommerce websites. Following ecommerce web design best practices, we build a site around your business, ensuring a top user experience and SEO performance.

If your current store isn’t generating the organic traffic it should, and you feel you’ve tried every SEO trick in the book, it may be time to build something better.

Get in touch with the Radical team to chat about your online store and how we can improve it.

FAQs

What is SEO for ecommerce?

Ecommerce search engine optimisation is the process of optimising an online store to appear higher in search engine results. This drives more organic traffic and, as a result, more sales.

SEO for ecommerce websites covers everything from keyword research and product page optimisation to technical SEO, site structure, content strategy and link building. Unlike paid advertising, good ecommerce SEO produces more sustained results over time.

Why is online shop SEO so important?

When you optimise your online shop for search engines, you put your products in front of new customers and those actively seeking out your brand, too. SEO for online shops helps you drive traffic and conversions in a sustainable way.

What ecommerce SEO tools work with WooCommerce?

We specialise in building WooCommerce websites. And we recommend a range of useful WordPress-compatible ecommerce tools and software. These include RankMath and Yoast plugins for SEO.

You can also use Google Search Console for monitoring performance and catching technical issues and Google PageSpeed Insights to identify speed problems.

For more advanced auditing, tools like Ahrefs, Semrush and Screaming Frog provide a detailed view of technical SEO across large ecommerce websites.

How long does an ecommerce website SEO strategy take to show results?

SEO for an ecommerce site is a long game. Technical fixes and on-page optimisation can show improvements within weeks, once search engines recrawl your site.

But it can take three to six months before you see meaningful ranking improvements from changes like content and link building.

To see real benefits from SEO efforts, you need to keep at it, working consistently to improve ecommerce SEO over the long term.