E-commerce and Covid-19: how to keep your head above water with SEO?

The first half of 2020 will leave its mark on our collective memory and in the history books! At the root of a pandemic of global scale, Covid-19 reshuffled the deck for every company on the world chessboard of commerce. But above all, it brought many brands to their knees, with their activity slowed down or even at a complete standstill for several consecutive weeks.

It is often said that one person’s misfortune is another’s fortune, and this saying proved true once again. While non-essential brick-and-mortar stores all kept their doors closed, online activity had never been in better shape in certain sectors. Since, until proven otherwise, there is no health risk in doing your shopping from behind a screen, most people modified or amplified their buying behavior in that direction. Forced to limit their movements, they turned massively to online purchasing. The numbers speak for themselves: Salesforce’s barometer reveals a 40% increase in the number of unique online shoppers in the first quarter of 2020, driven in particular by seniors who adapted quickly. As for online revenue, it grew by 20% compared to the previous year worldwide and by 24% in France.

Let’s be honest, no one can currently claim to know how the global situation will evolve over the coming months. So we might as well anticipate right now! E-commerce players, how can you keep your ship afloat in these uncertain times and harness the power of the wave to surf at the top of the SERP?

In this article, the Semji team shares a few valuable tips to put SEO to work for your growth. We will explain how to:

• prioritize high-potential pages,
• optimize head tags,
• improve the visibility of your product themes,
• strengthen your internal linking,
• optimize your priority product pages,
• make the mobile experience more pleasant,
• optimize the crawl budget,
• create topic clusters for your semantic cocoon.

Let’s go!

The impact of Covid-19 on e-commerce in a few figures

While Covid-19 had a significant impact on e-commerce at large during the lockdown period in France, not all sectors are equal in the face of the crisis. While some are doing surprisingly well, others are facing almost negligible traffic gains, or even astronomical losses. And to everyone’s surprise, the sectors that are coming out best are not necessarily the ones we would have bet on at first glance!

Here is a quick overview that speaks for itself: https://contentsquare.com/blog/impact-of-coronavirus-on-ecommerce-consumers-settle-into-quarantine/

In any case, every company that had not yet developed its online activity found itself in a very awkward position. And those that had not invested enough in it kicked themselves. The good news is that it is never too late to change your mind and follow the path to success on the web. The year 2020 is far from over, and it is entirely possible to double down. So how about putting SEO to work for your e-commerce today in order to get back on the path to growth? To help you reach your goals, the Semji team shares a few valuable tips to maximize the ROI of your e-commerce site in the short, medium and long term! That way, everyone can pick out ideas based on the current state of their strategy and their maturity.

Prioritize high-potential pages

As an e-commerce owner, you inevitably have some pages that hold more potential than others. These high-potential pages, such as a product category, already generate revenue and enjoy a Google position that lets them attract significant qualified SEO traffic. If these pages are transactional in nature, the goal would be to help them gain positions on the SERP so that they reach the top 3. That way, traffic could easily be multiplied by 2, 3 or even more… And revenue too!

To identify these pages, the idea is to combine data from two tools: Google Analytics and Search Console.

For example, you can use the following technique to export the SEO landing pages that generate the most revenue from Analytics:

• step 1: go to the landing pages,
• step 2: segment SEO traffic, i.e. traffic generated by organic results,
• step 3: define a period, which could for example be the lockdown period,
• step 4: sort by revenue,
• step 5: export the results.

On the Search Console side, a similar operation is needed to retrieve the positions on Google.fr:

• step 1: enter the same period as in Analytics and filter only on the country “France”,
• step 2: export the data.

Once this work is done, all that’s left is to compare the different URLs to identify traffic-gain opportunities. To get a forecast of the revenue you could achieve by positioning your page in the top 3 and obtaining, for example, a 10% CTR.

To give you an example that speaks for itself, let’s take the case of the e-commerce site of one of our clients. This merchant site has 3,000 pages and had around thirty high-potential pages positioned at the bottom of Google’s first page and considered priorities. Once these 30 pages were optimized to reach the top 3, the e-commerce site’s revenue doubled. In conclusion: by optimizing 1% of the site’s pages, revenue was doubled: a great performance!

Optimize head tags

Once the pages are prioritized, it’s time to optimize the head tags (title and meta description) to make them more attractive and improve their ranking. The way these tags are written is decisive for how users behave on the SERP.

A visibility study conducted on 500 users highlights the elements that most influence organic search. And clearly, it is the meta description that most encourages clicks!

Influence the click with the meta description

The impact sought with the meta tag is an increase in CTR. This tag must describe the content of the target page so as to give the user an honest preview of what they will find when they arrive on the page. If that’s not the case, watch out for the bounce rate, which is likely to skyrocket!

The size of this tag is currently limited to 156 characters; it is advisable not to exceed this limit to avoid cutting off words. Also, feel free to use action verbs to encourage clicks.

If you don’t write this meta description, Google automatically picks up information, and it is very likely you will end up with text that doesn’t really make sense, and that is therefore not attractive!

Take care with the wording of the <title> tag

The main objective of the <title> tag is to aim for a good ranking on the SERP. To write an optimized tag, two questions are essential:

• what is the page about?
• what type of search is performed to access this information?

Sometimes Google does not display the title you have entered. If you are in a case of over-optimization, don’t hesitate to rewrite it. Another hypothesis: the search engine has decided that the proposed title was not necessarily consistent with the content and therefore chose to rewrite it.

To make sure you have a well-optimized <title> tag, a few points must be respected:

• do not exceed 60 to 65 characters,
• write unique and catchy titles,
• target keywords with high search volume,
• use synonyms,
• do not overuse capital letters,
• avoid keyword stuffing, which is to be banned in 2020.

To make adjustments if necessary, you can track your page’s performance with a “test and learn” mindset.

Extend the visibility of product themes from a top keyword

To tap into the potential of new themes you are not yet positioned on and detect new opportunities, the first step is to carry out a keyword audit. Starting from your top keyword, study the peripheral or secondary keywords that show strong traffic potential and on which you are not yet positioned on the first page. Your choice will also depend on the keyword’s relevance to your business and the existing competition, which will determine how difficult it is to rank for that keyword.

Next, you can move on to reorganizing your website. The idea is to associate one keyword per page, rethink the tree structure and create new pages. You have the choice between faceted navigation and the creation of dedicated landing pages. The second solution remains the most appropriate for this situation. Through landing pages, the optimizations to be made will be easier and the weight of the menu links will carry more importance in Google’s eyes.

Thanks to these new opportunities, you can expect several benefits:

• a significant gain in visibility on long-tail queries, which are generally less competitive,
• pages that are more optimizable than those presented in faceted navigation,
• internal linking built between pages within the same theme,
• a better perception of your domain name by Google through the creation of new pages that meet a need,
• more specific pages aligned with search intent,
• an increase in traffic and conversions.

Launch an internal linking operation

Once the new pages are created, it’s time to launch an internal linking operation to push them forward. It should be quick (a few hours) and deliver significant gains. The idea is to capitalize on existing editorial content such as blog articles or advice guides to promote the high-potential content you want to rank.

First, you must draw up the list of the best-performing content on Google. Then, the mission consists of placing semantic links within it, i.e. links surrounded by keywords belonging to the same lexical field. They redirect to the product categories, brand pages or priority product pages you want to highlight. Once these links are created, you can obtain gains very quickly.

With the help of Search Console, you can quickly list your best-performing editorial content over a given period.

Beyond the links placed in the text itself, feel free to also suggest related products within your content to showcase them, for example in a visual banner on the side of the content with CTAs. This technique helps improve your conversion rate and generate more revenue.

Optimize the content of priority product pages

Among your various product pages, some have strong traffic potential, and those are precisely the ones to target. Beyond search volume and traffic, the criterion to take into account is the conversion rate. Select a small number of pages on which you will focus your efforts.

To optimize these pages, the technique consists of adding content that is useful for your audience in order to provide precise and comprehensive information. Thanks to the presence of useful content, you will gain SEO ranking but you will also obtain a better conversion rate with the presence of reassurance elements.

To feed this content, use every element at your disposal: technical specifications, user reviews, FAQ, similar products…

Once optimized, these pages will certainly enable you to achieve solid growth.

Optimize the user experience on mobile

Time and again, mobile support must under no circumstances be set aside in your SEO strategy. And the update planned by Google, dubbed Core Web Vitals, reinforces this idea because it will integrate criteria related to user experience into the ranking algorithm.

Generally speaking, mobile conversions are lower than on desktop or tablet. This is explained in particular by the user’s browsing context, the screen format that does not make filling out forms easy, for example, and conversion funnels that are ill-suited to the mobile device. But don’t panic! Solutions exist.

First, you can set about working on the display performance of the mobile version, which is a very important point. How? By reducing the size and weight of images. Simplifying forms is also an excellent technique, by offering larger buttons or increasing the spacing between the different elements to make clicking easier. Running user tests is an excellent way to detect the various barriers to conversion. Via Search Console, you can generate a usability report that will help you pinpoint certain errors.

Optimize the crawl budget toward your strategic pages

The crawl budget is defined as the resource allocated by Google to your site to crawl it. If your site is large (more than 10,000 pages), if it contains many 301 redirects or if you add many pages at once, you must pay attention to your crawl budget!

A few best practices should be adopted to rationalize this famous crawl budget:

• a fast and high-performing website that allows indexing robots to crawl a larger number of pages,
• attach orphan pages to the site’s link structure,
• avoid duplicate content within your site,
• prevent Google from spending time going through filtered pages that hold no interest for your SEO.

Two solutions are available to you to put crawlers on the right track:

• define rules in the robots.txt to allow or forbid access to certain pages,
• configure Search Console via the “URL Parameters”.

Create Topic Clusters with a view to building a semantic cocoon

Without debate, the semantic cocoon is a formidable and absolute weapon to boost your SEO! Creating “topic clusters” in e-commerce proves very effective. But what does this technique consist of?

The first step consists of choosing a pillar page, generally a transactional page, and building, creating and publishing informational content around this subject. The goal is to cover the target theme as comprehensively as possible in order to, on the one hand, multiply the content, which represents as many chances to rank on the SERP, and, on the other hand, establish the legitimacy of the brand in question in the eyes of Google as well as of users. Thanks to the cocoon and internal linking, the website will gain semantic authority.

By creating and optimizing your content within a semantic cocoon context, you can expect significant gains after a few months! To go further with the semantic cocoon approach, we can only recommend our white paper “Succeeding with your semantic cocoon”, which covers the subject in depth.

A few tips to wrap up

To conclude this article, we are going to give you a few little tips aimed at all e-commerce owners chasing Google’s top 3!

First of all, it is essential to focus on the tips that resonate most with you among all the pointers we have just provided. Depending on your situation and context, not everything should be taken literally, nor treated with the same urgency / importance.

Next, a plan for SEO actions and optimizations must be drawn up. This will notably help you know what you’re getting into, what resources are required, but also to follow your action plan in the right order.

Finally, no action plan has any reason to exist without a measurement of performance! After putting in the effort, it is always worthwhile to measure the impact of your work.

Generally speaking, we also recommend concentrating your efforts on certain pages, namely those with the strongest SEO potential, in order to maximize your gains. For even more power, feel free to complement this SEO action plan with a link-building strategy. Immediate takeoff!

Replay of the Webinar “Content & SEO: Various tips to maximize the ROI of your e-commerce”

Julien Gensollen (SEO Project Manager) and Nicolas Nguyen (SEO Expert and Co-founder of Semji) shared, during the SE Ranking 2020 marketing marathon, their advice on ways to adapt to the new reality and keep your business afloat using top-tier search marketing tools. To watch the webinar replay, please fill out the form: