In this blog post about one of our ecommerce SEO case study, I will share how we built an e-commerce site from 0 to 30K, improved UX, creating a visitor experience and how the work made a huge impact in the right direction for this business.
The Client
This is not the typical case of a huge client with a huge amount of money to spend on search engine optimization. This client started with this new eCommerce site from scratch, with 0 monthly visits!
Starting an e-commerce site with a limited budget, we had to be creative with our eCommerce SEO strategy and onsite optimization.
I decided to start by doing basic things, such as installing the Google Search Console, Google Analytics, creating and submitting the sitemaps, and creating the robots.txt files on the client’s site.
Marketing Research
No matter the marketing project you are facing, the first step you should do is to make a marketing research.
After all, if you don’t know who your target audience is, what they want, or what are their needs, then it will be very difficult to satisfy them with your products or services. Commerce websites might seem difficult to rank online but in fact is, once you have experience like I do, when you have the perfect formula, you can help any ecommerce brands in an upward trend.
This eCommerce site was no different: we had to do a lot of research on our target market, while analyzing specific keywords, making a plan on keyword ranking, new or existing backlinks, competitors, anchor texts, and other related data to get a good understanding of the eCommerce landscape in that specific location.
After completing our research, it was time for us to start working on a plan
Defining the SEO Strategy
Working on the SEO strategy for ecommerce websites can be challenging, but nothing that can’t be surpassed. An e-commerce store might have a lot of products, which can make the search engine optimization process very difficult and time-consuming. If you want to improve traffic to your e-commerce site, here are the steps to follow:
- Research to find the types of keywords customers are searching for;
- Site architecture based on the keyword ranking research you’ve done;
- On-Page SEO through strategic keyword optimization in meta tags and content of topical relevance;
- Technical SEO to help ensure Google can crawl your site efficiently;
- Local SEO to help drive local organic traffic (if you have a brick and mortar);
- Content marketing to drive additional organic visitors traffic;
- Link Building to help improve the authority of your website with many links and guest posts;
- Measuring SEO Success with tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs.
Keyword research
Making keyword rankings research is one of the biggest steps in any eCommerce SEO strategy, and in an eCommerce store is no different. You need to find the right keywords that your customers are searching for, so you can target them with your content and product pages.
One of the best tools to help us do this is Ahrefs. This tool will show you how many people are searching for a particular keyword each month, as well as other related data like competition level and suggested bid price.
Once we had a list of valuable keywords, it’s time to start targeting them in your website architecture, on-site optimization, and content marketing efforts will send any website ranking in no time.
Site architecture
Site architecture is crucial to get your site indexed and ranked by search engines. If your website is not well-structured, it will be difficult for Google to understand what your pages are about and how they are related.
A good eCommerce site architecture should:
- Be easy for users to navigate;
- Be easy for search engines to crawl and index;
- Include keyword-rich URLs;
- Use breadcrumbs;
- Have a clear hierarchy for every category page.
For this eCommerce store, we decided to structure the website in a way that each product category would be its own main page. This would be easier for users to find what they were looking for, and it also helped us target our keywords more effectively in the URL structure and on-page SEO.
On-Page
On-page SEO is important because it helps to a search engine understand your website and its content, as well as identify whether it is relevant to a searcher’s query.
There are many on-page factors that you can optimize to improve your eCommerce site’s page SEO, but some of the most important include:
- Page Titles tags
- Meta descriptions
- Alt Image
- Product Description
- Internal links
- Featured snippet
When you have great product pages or category pages, people can tell just by looking at it how much value there is in owning that specific item. You get to show off all of those features and make sure potential customers know they needn’t look any further!
Technical SEO
SEO Technical Audit is the process of optimizing your ecommerce website for the technical aspects that search engines use to crawl and index your site. This includes things like sitemaps, robots.txt, redirects, canonical, and more.
While these may seem like small details, they can have a big impact on your ecommerce store.
Local SEO
If you have a physical eCommerce store, it’s important to optimize your Google My Business listing. This will ensure that your store appears in the local search results when someone searches for keywords related to your business. Make sure to include all the relevant information about your site, such as your address, hours, and contact information.
Paid Traffic
Let’s be real: if you want to rank for relevant keywords, SEO is a time-consuming process. There are many strategies and techniques out there that can help with this task, but in the end, it all comes down to how much effort one wants to put into their campaign of rankings
However, time is an invaluable resource, and it might be the case that SEO is not enough for a website.
The results
The success of Cocco Cosmetics can be attributed to several tactics and a clear strategy. The company went from 0-400K+ organic visits per month after it launched, and this has allowed them to grow exponentially as a business!
And this is not even the most important result! In any business, the most important result is not valuable content, internal linking, relevant links, or any other fancy word.
The most important result on any eCommerce site is: sales!
Keyword Ranking on the First Page for Over 2000 speak for himself
The best way to rank on search engines for over 2000 keywords is by having an idea about what people are searching for. It’s important that you know your audience because SEO isn’t just about ranking high – it also needs to be personalized with content tailored towards them!
