SEO is the main channel for acquiring traffic for online store websites today. Organic searching alone would allow nearly 9 times more clicks to be generated than paid-for advertising, such as those coming from Adwords, for example. Like any online trader, your main challenge involves attracting more traffic to your online store without having to invest millions in SEM or SMO.
This guide offers a review of the specificities of an online store sphere from an SEO point of view. How can you best get to grips with users’ queries? What on-site and off-site optimisation can you do on your online store to benefit from organic searching? What are the main pitfalls to avoid? Focus on the dos and don’ts of online store SEO!
All you need to know about online store SERPs
Identify your SERP classification
Before throwing yourself into hazardous optimisation and keyword studies, you can and absolutely should identify and pin down the main SERPs on which you’re going to position yourself.
A good habit is to systematically take the temperature of the SERPs you wish to gain by analysing the results from page 1 of your target keyword. Don’t hesitate to use the data from tools such as Ahrefs to precisely identify competitors’ strong points and particularly the keywords which bring most organic traffic.
Transactional online store queries
As their name indicates, these queries are generally made by a web user decided to make a purchase (and therefore a financial transaction) in the short or medium term. Most of the time, they include an action verb like “order” or “purchase” followed by the name of the product in question. They can simply arise from an information-gathering phase about a product or service or a comparison of several suppliers or service providers.
Examples of transactional queries:
buy iPhone 10 128 go
price premium SEO netlinking service
and also:
return flight Lyon to Bali
Cheap Nintendo Switch
Navigational online store queries
Most of the time, this type of query is simply web browsing, without there being any purchasing objective behind it. Navigational queries can be used to find a website without having its address or simply include the brand name. They can also simply be the website’s URL.
Examples of navigational queries:
find a hotel in Lyon
book hotel Paris
www.booking.com/
Informational online store queries
The third type of query concerns a search for information and covers the majority of searches carried out on Google. Generally, they arise from a need for advice on a general, technical or specific subject. On the same model as navigational queries, no purchasing intention is hidden behind them. These queries combine the greatest number of keywords and can take a great many forms.
Examples of informative queries:
review Acer PC
best Apple computers
compare MacBook pro and MacBook air
how do you choose a computer?
According to the type of query made, the SERP that displays will not be the same, particularly thanks to RankBrain. This algorhythm, a combination of AI and machine learning, constantly refines its interpretation and the search intention hiding behind each query.
As this is not the case for all markets, it is indispensable to carry out a market study specific to your sector and its mechanisms. Concentrate on your target’s search habits and you might have some surprises!
Obviously, within the context of a transactional search, the Google Adwords results will be displayed before the organic results, but you can still create a synergy between SEO and SEA for even more traffic and sales.
Study, search and keyword classification
Keywords are clearly the basis on which your SEO strategy rests. And for an online store, this stage is even more important. The income you are going to generate is intrinsically dependent on the performance of your online store keyword strategy.
Study your competitors
The first stage is often the same: carry out a benchmark of your competitors. Observe and analyse what competitors do in order to identify what works well and less well for them allows you to build an efficient, differentiating strategy. The idea is to discover what opportunities you could seize. Or, in a more SEO-oriented vocabulary: what are the keywords or key expressions which generate traffic on which you could easily position yourself? In this context, the idea of long tail is also well worth studying.
But studying keywords is not enough. You must analyse competitors’ websites globally: on-site (hierarchy, content, linking, semantics etc.) and off-site (netlinking, press contacts etc.). After having studied both aspects, you will have a better view of the human and financial effort required to overtake your competitors and sustain your position.
There are several methods and tools available to you to get an all-round view of your competitors:
set-up Google Alerts,
full and regular audits of keywords, structure and backlinks thanks to SEMrush, Yooda Insight et al,
subscribe to newsletters and social network accounts etc.
It is indispensable to use tools like Ahrefs to feed this list. Why? Because in spite of having boundless imagination, you will never be able to grasp all the keyword possibilities, combinations and variations referring to your business. The technique is therefore to study the data from competitors by exploring their websites with the tools available.
By using connected keywords, you can easily extend your semantic field and cast a wide net. Your website will therefore be accessible through a wide range of queries and you will therefore be able to attract several classifications of web user.
How to select the right keywords for your online store
Several criteria have to be taken into account for selecting and prioritising your keywords:
the search volume: are these keywords potentially generating a large amount of traffic of not?
the relevance of keywords to your products: does your target use these keywords to search for your products? Do they represent your business well?
the presence of competitors using these keywords: What are the keywords on which you can position yourself without too much difficulty? You can weigh up this point according to the opportunity score. If you’ve just launched your website, don’t spend too much energy attempting to win strongly competitive keywords your established competitors have been using for a long time. Concentrate rather on those more easy to implement.
opportunities offered by long tail expressions should not be neglected.
Many people are attempted to privilege keywords which drain a large amount of traffic. This seems logical at first sight, but in reality, it is much more relevant to focus on the keywords that draw qualified leads which are going to generate conversions. If you website registers less traffic but more conversions, you’re a winner!
How to categorise your online store website
The technical architecture and the choice of categories in an online store website are VERY important elements. They will reveal your brand’s ability to respond to users’ expectations. There is nothing better for making visitors run away than a badly organised online store website where you can’t find anything.
Good practice for an optimised merchant website
Whether your online store is developed from a CMS or from scratch, good practice is identical.
The first stage in your thinking for optimising the hierarchy of your online store is to reflect on the most relevant categories and sub-categories. Study the most frequent user clickpaths and don’t hesitate to ask those around you, and if possible a target sample, what would be the best structure to make their browsing easier.
For example, on a website offering goods designed for babies and children, an optimal categorisation would be:
Walking
Pushchairs:
Baby:
0 to 3 months
3 to 6 months
6 months to 1 year
1 to 2 years
2 to 3 years
3 to 4 years
4 years +
Trios and duos
Twin
Pushchair accessories
Baby carriers
Baby sling
In this case, we have a 4-level categorisation which very easily allows you to move around the website and access the chosen products. As far as your most competitive keywords are concerned, they should be placed on your most powerful pages – ie those which benefit from more attention – such as the home and category pages.
Your categories must be truly differentiating and not cannibalise each other.
Here is another illustrative example of categorisation offered by Drujokweb:
Internal linking
An online store website is often extremely dense. Beyond categorisation and siloing, internal linking proves to Google the semantic and thematic coherence of your website.
There are a total of 3 ways to carry out internal linking using netlinking:
basic internal netlinking consists of interconnecting all your website’s pages, never mind their level of importance. This technique favours the browsing of robots and web users through your content. The only downside is that there is no hierarchy between your pages and your website’s structure does not appear clearly to Googlebots.
internal netlinking in the form of a family tree consists of creating ramifications between your various category pages, sub-categories and goods. Here, the main disadvantage concerns the depth of the conversion path which can quickly include too many stages. This means there are too many clicks to access the homepage, which complicates robot crawling on the too-deep pages.
silo netlinking is the most appropriate method for enormous online store websites which have hundreds, even thousands of pages. This is what appears most appropriate because Google makes the thematic and semantic coherence of links a point of honour. This involves a certain amount of discipline in organising linking: pre-defined silos must remain watertight.
Quite specific to online store websites, mega menus have multiplied over latter years. They are used to give the web user a view of all the various sections of the website and to make his browsing easier.
Mega menus generally unfold when the mouse hovers over them and take up a large part of the page, to say the least. Here is an example of the Spartoo website with the “Womens” category:
The presence of a mega menu offers many advantages:
it gives the maximum amount of information to the web user for minimum effort,
it can contain additional information compared with that present on the website, like promotions, pictures and forms, for example,
it allows the internal linking to be strengthened and to easily bring more attention to the deeper pages of the website.
However, these pages should be balanced out, as mega menus also have some disadvantages. Badly constructed, they can damage the watertightness of silo construction and also give an impression of complexity, while it is precisely the inverse which is sought…
The best thing is still to study its setting-up case-by-case according to the type of website and its needs.
Siloing and intelligent linking for online stores
If siloing (or thematic cluster organisation) is a key element in SEO, it is even more so in the world of online stores. Why? Merchandising websites are generally more dense than non-merchandising websites and therefore require a more structured organisation. The method of siloing is used to logically frame contents and categories.
The construction of a semantic cocoon within your online store allows a sort of variation of silos to be created. Laurent Bourelly, a important authority in SEO, was the first to theorise the concept of a cocoon. He regularly offers updates of its definition, according to changes in search engines and Google classification criteria. To contribute to this guide, he accepted to enlighten us more regarding the concept of a semantic cocoon in an online store context:
“The challenge of organising information within a website has taken on a higher dimension since I initiated the idea of a Semantic Cocoon. The aim is to give Google what it wants. This means responding to the only interesting question: why do I merit number 1 for my dear keywords? In this sense, one page must be optimised to respond perfectly to this subject. This means not cramming the keyword into all possible HTML tags, but building an ideal contextual environment. In this way, you have to find the most well-developed group of words to deal with the subject in a relevant way. This is valid on the page and also around the page (and around the website). As well as controlling the “on-page” optimisation as well as possible, the Semantic Cocoon allows you to intelligently put together a group of pages which is going to deal perfectly with the subject. The linking between the pages should be designed surgically. There is no room for chance when interlinking the pages.
At the beginning, I designed Semantic Cocooning as a hardline editorial strategy, based on useful, relevant content.
On the other hand, you can learn lessons from Semantic Cocooning to improve the hierarchy of an online store website. It’s not a question any more of “evergreen” content, but rather product listings. The links between the pages are a lot less complex and the content itself is not high-quality. In the mind, it’s the same. The pages are interconnected with reasoned links. A page selling a laptop will not be linked to another page selling babies’ diapers, as I see in the mega menus present on all online store websites. On the contrary, the laptop page will be linked to other computer and computing pages, without going near babies’ diapers or wheelbarrows. I call Thematic Siloing everything which isn’t an intelligently organised editorial strategy in the form of cocooning, but everything which is conveniently organised in silos in a similar or complementary thematic way.
In addition, semantic cocooning doesn’t necessarily take the form of a silo, properly speaking. There are silos for building the basic architecture, but then silos between the pages can cross over different silos. It’s much more complex than a simple thematic silo.
To finish with, when you learn to do Semantic Cocooning, it’s easy to apply Thematic Siloing to organise a catalogue.”
For it to work well, shorten your buying tunnel to the strict minimum must be one of your priorities. For example, avoid imposing the creation of a customer account when the customer is on the point of following through with his purchase. This step discourages more than one person and consequently drastically reduces your conversion rate!
Calls to action are crucial for an online store. These buttons must be chosen and designed for the web user. CTAs guide the web user throughout his clickpath and lead him on to the following step. Position, colour, shape and wording are elements which must not be left to chance!
Are your pages having difficulty converting? Use Analytics to observe your users’ behaviour throughout the buying tunnel. The purpose of this analysis is to measure the conversion rate at each stage. Then, identify the points where traffic is lost and optimise the ergonomics of these pages.
Configuring objectives and events on Analytics will allow you to see your conversions more clearly.
To ensure you make the best choices (page formats, number of steps, CTA etc.), the setting up an A/B Testing campaign is the best way of knowing what entices your users the most!
For example, an A/B test with two different buttons to see which is the one which obtains the best conversion rate:
On-page technical SEO optimisation
Good practice for on-site online store SEO optimisation
Robots.txt and sitemap.xml files
During the configuration of the robots.txt file, take all necessary measures and list together all the pages you want to see indexed and also those which shouldn’t be. When this file is updated, pay attention too to changes of URL, pre-production versions, encoding of the file (UTF-8) or the order of directive blocks.
Regarding sitemap.xml, this file is particularly useful for improving a website’s ranking, but it is particularly important when a website includes dynamic pages. This is the case for an online store website.
The hierarchy of your online store must be constructed taking into account the main principles of UX in order to simplify the user’s clickpath and to make it as pleasant and immersive as possible. Think about systematically decreasing the number of actions necessary for completing the action of buying.
At URL level of your “brand” pages and product files, you should demonstrate a certain amount of discipline.
HTTPS
You can’t do without HTTPS in the case of an online store! Your website isn’t yet using this protocol? You need to seriously think about it! Even if we don’t have any proof that HTTPS improves SEO, it is crucial to anticipate this technical aspect. It is also beneficial for the trust web users have in your website!
Technical performance
The website loading time is an extremely important criteria for your online store. To measure your website’s performance, Google PageSpeed and GTMetrix are available to you to better pin down the points to correct in the case of poor performance.
Tagging
The optimisation of the title and meta description tags, as well as compliance with Hn tagging to the Schema.org format are, as always, vital for SEO. Explore all our tips for optimising H1, H2 and H3 tags etc.
Images
Optimising the pictures of your product sheets is a great opportunity to generate more traffic. During their searches, many web users consult the search results within the “Images” category. You have to work on your visibility on all levels!
Product pages
The optimisation of product page categories is also a crucial stage for guaranteeing the correct referencing of your website. These pages are very important as they are intermediaries between your homepage and your product sheets. Their role is to direct the web user towards the product they’re looking for.
The SEO objective of these category pages is a positioning on long tail expressions. Their presence must be correctly dosed so as not to lose the web user, in one direction or another.
Just like the other pages of your website, you must pay attention to the optimisation of the H1 tag, meta description and other secondary tags.
If you website is already online, use the data supplied by Analytics to better understand which are the website’s most important pages in the eyes of your users. Also identify which ones offer unused potential and which, once optimised, may drain a large amount of organic traffic.
Anticipate the management of similar products, out of stock and sold out
Monitoring an online store website from day to day is no small task. An online trader, just like a physical shopkeeper, must face the challenges of the profession: out of stock products or ones which no longer exist.
For both of them, several techniques exist, each with their positive and negative points.
Specific to an online store, similar products also need particular attention with the use of canonical tags.
“No-one likes waiting. A slow web page displaying on your smartphone: it’s stressful! Make sure you have rapidly loading and interacting pages. Web performance is a central subject which impacts on your business, especially if it’s an online store. Slow pages are often the cause of a big rebound rate. Optimising pages’ loading speed has a positive impact on this KPI and also on the time spent on the website and the number of pages/sessions. If your site is slow, web users are going to go and look at your competitors because your website no longer comes up to their expectations. Webperf isn’t only about your users, but is also about Google and its bot. Since January 2018, loading speed is one of Google’s SEO positioning factors. The search engine thinks about its users and also thinks about its energy consumption: a quick website is less costly to crawl. Googlebot grants your website limited resources for exploring your site: the crawl budget. If it’s slow, Google will reduce the number of pages crawled and it won’t look at all your content! Shame, isn’t it?
Which tools to measure the web performance of an online store’s website:
Testmysite by Google: Easy to use and allows you to compare yourself with competitors.
It also offers an impact calculator for optimisation performance: useful for estimating ROI a little.
Google Page Speed Insight : this tool gives more technical detail and combines data from the laboratory and the field. It appears to be very useful for developers.
Google Lighthouse (available as a chrome extension) or from the development console. Designed for technical SEOs and developers. The tool gives several interesting recommendations with estimate of potential gain. The tool focusses on performance metrics linked to user experience.
Example of a performance report from the amazon.fr website Google Lighthouse also allows you to carry out tests on PWA, SEO and good web/accessibility practice.
GTmetrix: A simple tool and usable online, it gives Pagespeed and Yslow (Yahoo) scores with some basic recommendations.
Here are my tips for a good web performance for an online store website:
Don’t just think about the homepage; each page type must be rapid (pages listings, product pages, editorial pages etc.).
Concentrate on 1 or 2 metrics and work on them repeatedly.
Think about web performance at each stage of the project.
Postpone the loading of non-visible images (beyond the flotation line).
Talk to your technical team for a perspective on code splitting: load only the resources necessary for each page.
Although we spend a lot of time on good SEO practice for an online store website, it’s just as important to brush aside the most frequent errors in order to avoid them.
A study realised by SEMrush on the online store sector reveals that the main obstacles at technical level concern:
crawlability, particularly with problems at the level of permanent and temporary redirections and also 4XX errors and broken canonical URLs,
internal links which no longer work or with NoFollow attributes,
the configuration of the sitemap file, or even the inexistence of the sitemap file for nearly 40% of commercial websites
and URL structures.
How to check the technical state on-site
To evaluate the quality of on-site optimisations carried out, the best technique is still to carry out a global audit. It will allow you to put your finger on any potential points for improvement to be dealt with to let your traffic take off.
Beyond your products, if you clients are turning to you rather than another website, it’s also for the relevance and quality of your content. Make yourself stick out by offering tips and tricks about your products. Cover the current news in your sector and bounce off any news item that concerns you. Set yourself up as an expert in your field to install trust between your brand and your audience.
Homepage
The central page of your website, the homepage is often the first page visited. It will therefore be a determining factor for following up the conversion tunnel. But although it’s particularly important for your visitors, it’s also important for Googlebot crawls. The structure of your homepage must be designed to facilitate its indexing.
As far as its content is concerned, it should include a certain number of elements, including:
easily accessible contact information. This is essential for any visitor and should be placed in the header and/or footer of your online store. This information is also an important reassuring element for visitors.
an easily accessible and intuitive menu (or mega menu) listing all the website’s product categories.
Category and sub-category page
Your online store’s category pages are of capital importance for converting web users searching for information and for SEO because they are very likely to be positioned on Google.
To optimise them, think about their architecture as though they were individual homepages. For names, prefer simple, expressive words as descriptive as possible. Originality doesn’t really have a place here and it’s not the time to lose your user when they’ve only just arrived on your website!
A product list is not useful: users don’t come here to look for this information. Prefer rather content which makes visitors want to know more and get interested in your products.
It should include a single h1, an introduction to your product category or sub-category, highlight the benefits your brand offers and a little glimpse of the most popular products, trends or bestsellers.
This page is the basis for one of your silos, so take advantage of it to build vertical and semantic internal linking.
Bookmark
Your online store’s bookmark is a sort of “About us” section designed to introduce you. Highlighting your expertise, products and your advantages over your competitors are the main subject to be dealt with on this page.
Product pages
Optimising the SEO of your product pages requires several elements to be taken into consideration. These pages should incite web users to go through with a purchase. Draw up high-selling content, without going over the top. Ignore any content drawn up by suppliers for your competitors and create your own marketing content.
To make a click happen, don’t forget to offer catchy extracts of your goods which will display on your category page.
Within the same website or the same category, it is preferable for your files to retain the same kind of structure.
Your brand is unique and so are your products. Consequently, your product sheets should be unique too! Show some creativity. Here is an example of a product page from Innocent juice.
Reviews page
In the eyes of your users, one of the most important criteria of choice remains the opinion of other web users who have trusted you. Well beyond talking about the brand itself, your audience is interested in feedback from your clients regarding their experience.
Highlight the views of users on your website and also on SERP, thanks to the use of rich snippets.
Contact us page
This page is extremely important: any online trader worth their name must be easily and quickly contactable.
A very fashionable trend at the moment, UGC content (User Generated Content) is an excellent way to stand out. The idea is simple: allow your users to contribute towards creating quality, personalised content.
Videos, images, text: don’t dismiss anything. Whatever it is, for these different content types, the priority should be given to relevance and commitment.
Online store and Netlinking
The use of a solid netlinking strategy can clearly make the difference from your competitors by propelling your website to the top of SERP. The whole challenge lies in regularly acquiring quality backlinks. After having approached the best practice for internal linking or internal netlinking, here are our tips for building relevant external netlinking which will place you in front of your competitors.
Registrations in directories and citation in guides and comparators
To make your name or consolidate your brand’s reputation, you should extend your digital presence to the max. Is your website present and/or cited as a reference in directories, comparators or guides? These are excellent points for you and also great opportunities to multiply your online store website’s organic traffic!
Be meticulous in selecting directories. There’s no point in multiplying registrations on poor quality websites. Rather, this approach will be at the disservice of your SEO.
Register your products on comparators in order to appear in the suggestions of web users who have needs to which you can respond. But be careful to select your products well and take care over their descriptions. In addition, there’s no point in wanting to position yourself on all comparators. Just choose one or two websites: do little, but well!
To appear in guides and comparators, you can publish press articles on news websites. Particularly those which are used to supplying comparative studies. In addition, don’t hesitate to regularly relay information about your products in order to multiply your chances of being noticed.
Appearances on influencers’ blogs
Getting links to influencers’ websites allows you to noticeably increase your domain’s authority score and, by extension, the level of trust granted to you by Google.
The influencers in your sector have a great role to play in netlinking. Being in their good books is clearly beneficial for your natural referencing. Why? Obtaining a backlink from a high-notoriety website gets you more attention. In other words, you benefit from part of this website’s power!
Influencers are by definition followed very closely. These public personalities are also highly sought-out and for a reason: a link to their website or a mention on their social networks can make your traffic lift off in one go!
Here are 3 criteria for evaluating influencers’ potential:
sharp expertise in your domain,
good Google referencing,
quality content.
A guarantee of reliability, links from influential blogs bestow a huge amount of credibility to your brand. Trusting an online trader means:
entrusting him with your personal data (surname, first name, address etc.) and bank data,
counting on the quality of his product rather than that of a competitor’s website.
Discovering a website through an influencer is very reassuring, a bit like it being considered “tested and approved”.
Content Marketing and link baiting of an online store website
Even though we’re in the context of an online store website, there’s nothing to stop you directing your content marketing strategy to creating informative content. Widening your horizons allows you to not only enrich your content, but also satisfy your readers’ curiosity. And above all, stop them going to search for the information they need elsewhere!
For example, you can link a blog to your online store. It will be a support for all the information you think is important to mention, but which doesn’t have its place in a product sheet, category page or bookmark.
Beyond creating a real content marketing strategy, banking on linkbaiting can open up some great opportunities. As long as you master this technique well: choose subjects and create content which will seduce web users, to such a point that they will naturally make links to you. Infographics, video, tutorial, comparators, Top 3, guides and webinars are typically the most popular formats for linkbaiting!
Develop netlinking via sponsored articles
On the same model as a showcase website, netlinking is an extremely important element for merchant websites. This should be an integral part of your strategy.
Turning towards platforms specialising in purchasing links is an easy, quick solution compared with meticulously searching for partners “by hand”. This avoids particularly having to engage in negotiations and searching for reliable partners. Website statistics are also made public so you can easily compare the different opportunities.
PBN: an ecosystem dedicated to promoting your online store
Technically devilishly easy, building a PBN around your online store website (money site) is an excellent way to carry out some self-promotion and make your authority score climb. Yes, it will take some time and requires a certain amount of SEO expertise, but the results are there to be seen.
Thanks to using a PBN, your website will benefit from a large quantity of backlinks over which you will have total control of your anchors.
Our tips for boosting your online store website’s traffic
This guide highlights all the on-site and off-site elements which influence your online store’s SEO. Complying with it guarantees you will get off on a solid basis and get all the luck on your side to make your website perform well.
To develop your traffic even more, here are a few additional tips which will allow you to stand out from your competitors on SERP:
Enrich to the max the descriptions on your product sheets. Don’t be content with a standard description almost identical to that given by your supplier. Firstly, that could bring penalties in relation to duplicate content, but this text is without doubt low added-value for your reader. Allow room for thoroughness: don’t hesitate to give tips for use, compare your product with others and demonstrate why it’s quite simply the best.
Set up a detection tool for duplicated content in order to check the uniqueness of your content on SERP and not to be cannibalised by content stealers. This Negative SEO method, very well-known and used in the Black Hat field, can have disastrous consequences when it’s used against you…
Highlight users’ views. Valid for good ones, as well as bad ones! Obviously, it’s best to have a maximum amount of positive views, but keeping the less good ones shows a certain amount of honesty on your behalf. This transparency also implies that you are open to criticism and inclined to improve in order to satisfy your users more, taking account of their feedback. A rating system is good, but written comments are even better. Don’t hesitate to ask the views of your buyers and to reward them for their feedback.
You are now armed to build a solid SEO for your online store website! Are you developing an online store website? Do you want to consolidate the referencing of your current merchant website? Talk to us about your online store SEO project!
