A guide to on-page SEO for e-commerce: how to ensure your site ranks highly 

What is on-page SEO? 

On-page SEO involves optimising web pages to improve your website’s search engine rankings and earn organic traffic. This includes optimising your headings, title tags, meta descriptions and images. It also means ensuring your website has authority, relevance and trustworthiness. 

1. Optimise your meta titles and descriptions 

Your website’s title tags and meta descriptions are essential for SEO. They provide search engines and users with a quick insight into the content’s context. Here’s how to optimise them:  

• Meta Titles: Keep your titles under 60 characters to ensure they display properly on SERPs. Include target keywords at the beginning and your brand at the end.
• Meta Descriptions: These should be under 160 characters and provide a concise summary of the page content. Use action-oriented language and include target keywords naturally.

2. Use SEO-friendly URLs 

Ensure your URLs are clear, logical, and keyword-rich. Shorter URLs tend to perform better in search engine results. For example, use www.example.com /men-shoes instead of www.example.com/12345/xproduct=98765. 

3. Prioritise high-quality content 

Content is king when it comes to your SEO strategy. Ensure that your product descriptions, blog posts, and other page texts are detailed, keyword-rich, and provide value to your audience. Use natural language that helps potential customers while keeping keywords contextually relevant. 

4. Optimise your images 

Images are crucial for e-commerce sites but can be detrimental to your site’s loading time if they’re not properly optimised. Use high-quality images and compress them. In addition, make sure you use descriptive, keyword-rich file names and alt tags to improve SEO and accessibility.

5. Structure content with header tags 

Using header tags (H1,H2,H3) helps Google understand the structure of your content. Your H1 tag should include your primary keyword and only be used once per page, ideally for your page title. Subsequent headers can guide users through your content, improving engagement. 

6. Leverage internal linking 

Internal linking helps search engines discover new pages on your site and understand your site’s architecture. Link to important pages using natural anchor texts and consider linking back to category pages or related products to boost the depth of interconnectivity. 

7. Create blog content 

Creating helpful or informative content in the form of blogs can really help to boost your SEO strategy and visibility in the search results. Evergreen content that answers your customer’s frequently asked questions or solves their problems and which is optimised for keywords can help you to appear in the search results at the top of the funnel. This allows you to direct traffic to your website, answer user’s questions and hopefully persuade them to buy from you. 

8. Manage out-of-stock items properly 

Handling out-of-stock items correctly is crucial for maintaining SEO. Instead of removing the page or showing a 404 error, keep the page alive and suggest similar products or allow users to pre-order. 

9. Collect and showcase customer reviews 

Customer reviews not only build trust and influence purchasing decisions but also help with SEO. Reviews can generate fresh, unique content for your product pages, which search engines love. 

10. Focus on user engagement 

Enhance user engagement by designing your website for usability. Simple navigation, search functionality and clear calls to action all contribute to a lower bounce rate and higher conversions, which positively impact your SEO. 

Key takeaways 

On-page SEO is a fundamental part of your e-commerce digital marketing strategy. By focusing on optimising each page’s structural and content elements, you can significantly improve your site’s visibility and user experience. Regular audits and updates to your SEO strategy will ensure your site adapts to algorithm changes and remains competitive in the dynamic e-commerce landscape. 

If you’d like to know more about optimising your e-commerce SEO strategy, book a free 30-minute consultation call with one of our experts.