The Importance of SEO for e-commerce websites

With more businesses going digital, competition in the e-commerce landscape is increasingly fierce, drawing attention to the importance of investing in a well-rounded digital marketing strategy. Among the many digital tools available, search engine optimisation (SEO) is commonly included in a company’s digital marketing strategy, particularly for e-commerce businesses. SEO is the optimisation of a website’s content and design to rank your page high on the search engine, thereby improving the quality and quantity of traffic to your site. Aspects of optimisation include weaving keywords with high search volume into your page content and including external links in your page content. In this article, DHL New Zealand explores how SEO benefits e-commerce companies and shares tips on optimising your business’s website.

Why is SEO important for small e-commerce businesses and their websites? 

Web traffic is an essential source of sales leads, especially for e-commerce businesses, and it can be obtained through many ways. However, the bulk still originates from organic traffic on search engines, as demonstrated in a study by Renolon, which showed that traffic from search engines accounts for 93% of total traffic. This makes ranking high on search engines crucial for e-commerce businesses.

There are several ways to improve your search results ranking:

• Quantity of links to your store from other websites.

• Authority of your website.

• Domain name age.

• How well-optimised your website is.

However, the first three factors can be challenging to address, particularly for new or small e-commerce businesses. Thus, SEO becomes vital as it provides the easiest way to gain more traffic.

In addition, having a strong e-commerce SEO can also increase your pool of prospective customers. With increased visibility from a good search engine ranking, brand awareness grows. Over time, this establishes brand credibility, which helps gravitate consumers towards your brand when they require products or services. Lastly, implementing SEO best practices improves user experience and the likelihood that your marketing messages will be heard, which helps increase conversions.

How do I develop an SEO strategy for my e-commerce website?

While you may be tempted to start stuffing popular search terms into your content to improve its search engine ranking, optimisation is more than keyword stuffing. Below are tips to help you implement SEO right for your e-commerce website.

1. Avoid keyword stuffing

When consumers identify that the content on your e-commerce website is written for SEO rankings rather than engaging them, this can create a negative brand image. Your website can also be penalised or removed entirely from the search engine results pages. Thus, a best practice is to first write with users in mind. 

2. Avoid content duplication

Content duplication is a common SEO pitfall for e-commerce businesses, and it can cause search engines to be confused as to which page to rank in the search results. Therefore, it is advised to craft unique content for each product. For pages where repeats are hard to avoid, redirect duplicated content to the canonical URL.

3. Content and design optimisation

An excellent way to kickstart optimisation is first to analyse your website and identify what areas you can improve on through SEO. For e-commerce businesses operating on Shopify, tools in the Shopify app store can be utilised. In terms of content optimisation, you can weave in relevant SEO keywords that fit your customer’s intent and add internal links to different products and services pages. For user interface optimisation, clean and sleek style can also be adopted to increase the ease of site navigation and create a positive online experience for potential customers. This increases the likelihood of future purchases and encourages visitors to stay on your e-commerce website longer.

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