Ecommerce SEO guide to the holiday season of 2022

The holiday season brings many benefits. Ecommerce revenue is one of these things. Despite the global recession, people will spend during the holiday season 2022. Deloitte economists forecast that ecommerce revenues will reach $262 billion, which is 13.5 percent growth.

How can you grab a piece of the $260 billion ecommerce market? You can improve your ecommerce SEO.

Source: Axios

37.5 percent of traffic to ecommerce websites comes from search engines. And 95 percent of those who use search engines stick with the first SERP. It is important to get your ecommerce search strategy started early enough so that you can rank high in the SERPs and measure effectiveness. You can also test and scale as peak season approaches.

Ecommerce SEO will help you rank higher in search engines and provide a better user experience.

Google, the most popular search engine, updates its ranking elements several times per year in response to users’ changing behaviors. You should update your marketing tools with the most recent SEO techniques before the holidays.

This article will provide you with some proven ecommerce SEO strategies that you can use to help you get started in the holiday season.

Let’s get in there!

These are the eight layers of an effective ecommerce SEO strategy

It is crucial to rank an ecommerce shop in order to win holiday sales. Why? Google is the number one search engine for holiday gifts and essentials.

An ecommerce website that does not rank higher could lose out on holiday shoppers who are willing to spend their money.

Here are key ecommerce SEO strategies to help you rank higher on search engines and interact with holiday shoppers.

1. Focus on keyword research

Keywords are the key to holiday shopping. When they want to purchase something, people type search phrases. This is where you can rank.

A Google search is the first thing that people use to start their online shopping journey. You might use keyword research to find keywords that will help Google and other search engines link these shoppers to your website.

Ecommerce keyword research is slightly different from regular keyword research. Your goal is to find and include search terms with transactional or commercial intent.

Keywords that look commercial could also have an informational purpose and could harm your SEO.

Although it may appear to be a transactional keyword, the phrase “best winter footwear for women US” might not seem that important. It is a dominant informational keyword, as it appears in the first search result.

Let’s discuss how to find these keywords.

Start your keyword research by brainstorming keywords ideas. To find out how your customers would search for the products that you sell, make a list.

Imagine that you own a shoe shop and sell running shoes. Customers may search for your product using keywords such as “running shoes” and “best running shoes span>

Consider all keywords.

Backlinko To find more keyword ideas, you can also dive into Amazon and type these root words in the search bar.

You can use all of the phrases in this image as your root keywords for SEO.

To find out the keywords your competitors rank for, you can also look at their websites.

The image shows that the keyphrase “Best winter shoes for women” could be used in place of “best winter shoes”

Scroll down to the end of the SERPs and you’ll see the related searches section.

During this brainstorming session, make a list keywords.

Before you shortlist a keyword, make sure that the search intent is confirmed. A keyword might appear to be a commercial term, but it could actually be informational.

Next, use a keyword research tool such as Google Adwords to analyze your keywords and determine their search volume and competition.

It is usually recommended to use low search volume keywords with high competition. Long-tail keywords that have low search volume and high competition are often recommended when ranking ecommerce stores. These keywords can convert better and help you rank your website sooner.

2. Concentrate on the content

Google now prioritizes websites that have valuable and descriptive content. Without content, your e-commerce SEO campaign will not produce results.

Find out what is hot this holiday season. What is the topic people are talking about? Then create content that is trending around products or topics.

Optimize all content on your website. Create new and informative content.

Use relevant keywords to optimize your product descriptions. Keyword stuffing is not a good idea. Instead, write product descriptions that provide all information a user may need to purchase a product.

This could include product details or reviews.

You might also consider creating a blog for top-of-the-funnel content such as blogs, case studies, and product reviews. This will not only enrich your website’s content but it could also help you rank faster, drive more traffic to your site, and generate better leads.

Blogs, in particular, get 77% more backlinks that short-form content. Creating unique, informative articles can also increase your backlink profile.

We have already touched upon the topic of backlinks…

3. Yes, backlinks still have relevance

Many believe that backlinks are now lower in the hierarchy of ranking factors. However, this is not true.

Backlinks are just as important as ever. Google considers the quality, quantity, and relevancy of your backlinks when assessing your website’s authority. Don’t let this stop you from acquiring backlinks from relevant websites on the internet.

Building backlink profiles for ecommerce stores may not be as easy as creating a blog profile.

Many bloggers create seasonal content. This could be an opportunity to include in your ecommerce SEO strategy to gain backlinks for holiday offers and discount pages. Reach out to them and ask if they would write a holiday piece about your product that links back to your site. Or, offer to write a guest blog for you to get a backlink.

There are also many product review sites. They can be reached out to you, ask for your product, and then link back to your site.

Brand mentions such as these can help improve your SEO scores. 52 per cent marketers believe that brand mentions have an impact on organic rankings.

4. Improve the user experience on your website (UX).

The website user experience is a key ranking factor. Do not listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

You can improve the user experience on your website in many ways. Site structure is the first.

It is important that your website is easy to use and crawlable by search engines. To do this, ensure that all pages on your website are easily accessible via three to five clicks. This is the backlinko golden rule for website structure.

This is an example of how a website structure should look:

Here’s an example:

After you have improved your site structure, take a look at the URLs for the pages you just sorted. The URL of your website should include a brief but descriptive keyword that tells the user about the page.

This is an example of good URLs:

shoesforyou.com/athletic/runningshoes

shoesforyou.com/leisure/sneakers

shoesforyou.com/formal

A majority of web designers agree that non-responsive websites are the number one reason visitors leave a site. These are difficult words, but they can be costly if your website isn’t mobile-friendly. A responsive web design is a crucial ranking factor. Mobile optimization is essential to ensure that your website adapts to any screen.

A responsive web design example:

Security is another factor that can impact the user experience of your website. Google is also a firm believer in website security. It works hard to ensure that the websites it links to are secure.

Make sure your TLS certificate is active. A little lock and “HTTPS” appear in the URL bar to let users know that your website is secure.

5. Page load speed

Page load speed is an important part of the website user experience. It is an important aspect of ecommerce stores, so it deserves its own space.

A decrease in page load speed can reduce conversion rates. 75% People tend to change their minds during checkout if the website takes too long to load or is slow.

Your website may experience slowdowns due to holiday season. Make sure your website has enough resources to deal with the holiday rush.

Google considers a page’s loading speed an important ranking factor. So make sure you remove any scripts or ad blocking software, and optimize all things that could slow down your website’s speed.

6. Optimization on-page

On page optimization refers to fine-tuning smaller web pages elements.

36% of SEO professionals believe that the title tag is the most important SEO component. Optimize your title tag to be descriptive, concise, and keyword-optimized.

Use Moz’s Title Tag Checker to check how your title will appear on the SERP.

Meta descriptions are also critical. Meta descriptions are important because they influence SEO indirectly, but can have a significant impact on your CTR. Make sure you write compelling descriptions and crips.

Make sure you include keyword-optimized H2s, and H3s whenever possible. Don’t forget optimizing the images on each web page.

7. Make use of schema markup

Schema Markup can be embedded in the HTML of your webpage to aid Google understand it. This allows the search engine to return more descriptive and informative results (also known as snippets).

This is especially important for ecommerce sites as users want to be sure the website they visit has what they need. Optimized snippets allow them to do this and contribute to higher CTRs.

Google makes the decision about what it will display in the snippets area. However, Schema allows you to specify what you would like to see as a Schema snippet. This could increase the chance that Google will choose what you have selected.

8. Optimizing ecommerce sites for RankBrain

RankBrain, one of Google’s oldest updates, is now one of the top three ranking factors. This algorithm allows Google to rank websites that are contextually relevant for search queries.

Understand your audience and create the content they need.

Also, increase your website engagement rates. Backlinko considers dwell time to be a ranking factor for RankBrain. As mentioned, you should look out for authoritative backlinking opportunities and take advantage of them.

Last words

To help increase business revenue, visibility in search engines is crucial during holiday season. Although it is difficult to win with ecommerce SEO, it is possible. Amazon and other big sharks might be your competitors. You might need to think carefully about your strategies.

Creating a content-first SEO strategy is a good idea. These pages can rank higher and channel traffic to product pages, which may be difficult to rank in a world where Amazon dominates the SERPs.

Focus on creating user-friendly, optimized content. Focus on technical SEO aspects and keep up to date with the latest search engine updates so that you can adapt your SEO toolkit accordingly.

Atul Jindal, a web designer and marketing specialist. His main focus is on conversion optimization and website/app optimization. He creates web experiences to bring people together and convert web traffic into leads or customers.

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Search Engine Watch’s first post, Ecommerce SEO Guide for the Holiday Season 2022 appeared on Search Engine Watch.