Whatever your sector or niche, the aim of every ecommerce brand is simple – to increase sales, conversions, and growth. Creating a great online shopping experience and building customer loyalty are the bedrock of this, but they’re not the only thing you need to consider. After all, what’s the use of a flawless, friction-free shopping experience if users can’t find your ecommerce site in the first place?

An effective ecommerce SEO strategy helps boost your brand’s online visibility and attract potential customers. Despite a rise in agentic commerce, where AI agents increasingly find products for customers, moving some shoppers away from traditional search habits, a strong SEO strategy remains essential for ecommerce brands.

Let’s explore some expert tips to help create and refine your ecommerce SEO plan to improve performance.

What is ecommerce SEO?

Ecommerce SEO, sometimes referred to as retail SEO, is a strategy that helps improve your organic visibility in search results to drive targeted traffic to your online store. It primarily focuses on attracting non-paid traffic to product and category pages across your ecommerce website.

This involves enhancing your online presence through various methods and optimisation techniques to improve your ranking position and drive traffic.

Why is SEO important for ecommerce?

Optimising your ecommerce site helps improve visibility in search results for your core keywords – the keywords your customers use when shopping online. This improvement in visibility can attract customers, increase organic traffic, and ultimately drive conversions and revenue growth.

How do you develop an ecommerce SEO strategy?

An effective ecommerce SEO strategy focuses on optimising your website for search, providing your customers with what they’re looking for, and ensuring a positive user experience when they do come to your online store. Let’s take a look at how to develop a strategy that works, with our ecommerce SEO tips and best practices, alongside other effective techniques to optimise your online store.

SEO keyword strategy for ecommerce

Keyword intent

Intent is vital for your keyword targeting. For the commercial areas of your ecommerce site, ensure your core keywords focus on transactional intent. Any informational or research terms should be secondary or mapped to your blog or advice section.

Check the SERPs when choosing your keywords. If you see various informational articles in the results, chances are Google sees that keyword as a ‘research’ term and not a transactional query. This may reduce the likelihood of your commercial page appearing in the top search results.

Don’t discount informational terms entirely, though. Product FAQs and advice-led articles are great for ecommerce too, as they provide valuable information for your customers and can link logically to your products.

When carrying out your keyword research, as well as common metrics such as search volumes and ranking positions, note search intent to ensure you’re mapping the right queries with the most relevant pages on your site.

Long-tail keywords

There are various types of keywords you could target for ecommerce. Alongside core commercial terms (often ones with a high search volume (SV)), you should also consider long-tail keywords with a lower SV.

These keywords often come with higher conversion rates, as customers using these terms know exactly what they want, and their likelihood of purchasing is higher.

Don’t be put off by the low search volume. Being more specific with some of your search terms could help attract more customers who are on the verge of making a purchase.

Adding ‘buy’ to page titles

When optimising page titles on an ecommerce site, you may be tempted to add ‘buy’ or ‘for sale’ alongside the keywords you’re targeting. Some SEO experts consider this a best practice – others disagree.

So, is this something you should do? The truth is, it depends.

If the main part of the query has a varied intent or is quite broad, then it may be worth adding ‘buy’, so searchers know the page is primarily commercial, not informational.

Check the SERPs to assess the other pages that rank for the term. Also, assess your conversion rates. If you receive lots of traffic without transactions, it might be worth adding ‘buy’ as a trial to help target the right people.

Use your internal search data

When carrying out keyword research, you’ll likely use various tools to decide which terms to target. Using your internal search may provide some valuable queries, too.

Look at what your customers type into your on-site search box. This could provide keywords you may not have previously considered, and keywords you know your customers use with the intent to purchase.

Assessing your on-site search also helps locate niche, industry-specific queries. External keyword tools are great for finding high search volume terms, but those low SV keywords can often bring in the conversions you’re aiming for.

Mine your PPC data

When you’re searching for target keywords, don’t just focus on high search volumes. If you’re running PPC ads, assessing your paid search queries is another avenue to explore for valuable keywords.

Assess the clicks and revenue your paid search queries drive. These could provide you with some high-conversion keywords to use for your ecommerce SEO strategy. If you have keywords that are working well within PPC, chances are they could also have a positive impact on your organic performance.

Optimise for seasonal trends

Certain products are more popular at specific times of the year, so ensuring your optimisations are in place before seasonal trends start is key. Review product performance from previous years to identify which products were most sought after and when, then optimise these areas ahead of the seasonal uplift.

Alongside seasonality, check trend reports for the coming year. What’s predicted to be popular over the next 12 months? Do you have related products you could push to align with this? Use this to anticipate an increase in searches for items related to these trends and ensure these areas are optimised and ready for an increase in searches.

The same can also be done for upcoming events or key dates. For example, if you’re planning to sell fancy dress costumes, ensure your ecommerce site is well optimised before October to meet the increase in searches around ‘fancy dress costumes’ during this period.

screenshot of a graph showing search interest for fancy dress costumes from Google Trends.
Increase in searches for ‘fancy dress costumes’ pre-Halloween

Use tags and subcategories

Most ecommerce platforms generally have a structure of three main levels you can optimise:

  • The homepage
  • Category pages
  • Product pages

If your platform supports indexable tags and subcategories, this is definitely something to consider utilising for optimisation. They’re great pages for targeting long-tail keywords and they also aid customer navigation.

Large ecommerce sites often contain hundreds or thousands of products within each of their main categories. Filtering and scaling down the number of products shown helps the customer find exactly what they want without the hassle of sifting through a mountain of items.

Optimising your site for AI commerce

The global AI ecommerce market is valued at $11.21 billion in 2026 and expected to grow significantly, reaching around $75 billion by 2035, according to Precedence Research. It’s already changing how many ecommerce sites operate, which in turn is leading to changes in SEO strategies.

Optimising ecommerce sites for AI is vital as more consumers browse and buy through large language models (LLMs) such as Google Gemini and ChatGPT. As more shoppers move towards AI and away from traditional search, it’s another sales channel your brand needs to be visible in.

AI search optimisation helps ecommerce sites and their products surface in LLMs. Many traditional techniques that help brands boost SEO performance apply, but there are a few specific areas to focus on that help with AI commerce optimisation:

  • Structured data or schema markup enables rich snippets in search results that include details about product prices, reviews, availability, and images. They also help AI models better understand and process this product information to surface it for relevant prompts and searches by shoppers.
  • Optimised images assist with image search for products but are also helpful for LLMs. The growth of virtual try-ons like Google Doppl is leading to a more personalised online shopping experience. These AI models work by accessing high-quality images from ecommerce sites, and rely on accurate and optimised alt text to understand them.
  • Conversational content could help improve visibility within AI search for ecommerce brands. Exact match for prompts and AI searches is impossible to predict, but covering FAQs and creating supporting content that’s closer to how consumers interact with LLMs may be beneficial.

Agentic commerce

How online shoppers find, compare, and buy products is changing with agentic commerce. This is when AI agents act for both consumers and ecommerce brands to deliver a personalised shopping experience.

The release of Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) by OpenAI and Stripe enables shoppers to browse and buy within ChatGPT. It sets a standard for AI agents to buy products, manage carts, and complete checkouts, so ecommerce brands can integrate and sell across multiple AI platforms.

Core best-practice SEO techniques still apply, but ecommerce SEO strategies must now look beyond traditional search. Ensuring AI agents understand your products by making use of structured data and optimising product feeds via the application programming interface (API) is a good first step. Key elements to optimise include the price, inventory information, any current offers, and product descriptions.

Using clear and concise language that humans and AI agents understand and that answers specific user questions about the product is beneficial. Fluffy language and detailed marketing copy make it harder for AI agents to comprehend.

Leverage ecommerce listing tools

Optimising your products for organic shopping so they appear in Google’s organic product grid is essential for every ecommerce business. This is another sales channel and a great way to get your products in front of millions of potential customers who might not click through to your site otherwise. There are various ecommerce listing tools that help support your SEO strategy.

Google Merchant Center

Every ecommerce business should have a Google Merchant Center (GMC) account and incorporate it into its SEO strategy. It’s free to sign up and add your product information to improve shopping ad visibility across Google.

Add key features for the items you sell using the product highlight attribute within your GMC account. These are two to 100 bullet points (though four to six are recommended) that detail the key highlights of a product. You can add up to 150 characters per highlight.

These bring the most important product elements to the forefront so customers can quickly scan them, and Google can better understand the product. Google advises to only describe the product, not to use duplicate copy, and to avoid using keywords in these attributes.

Utilising GMC helps your products stand out in Google search to improve clicks and sales. If you’ve got a physical shop, you can also use it to add your business within Google Maps.

screenshot of Google Merchant Center results for 'Halloween fancy dress costume' in Google search results.

Channable

The online shopping marketplace is constantly expanding, with more channels than ever for customers to discover and purchase products beyond your ecommerce site. Cross-channel product listing across multiple marketplaces is one tactic to increase exposure and sales.

Channable is a tool that enables product listings on many marketplaces, including Amazon, Meta, Google, and more. This ensures consistent, optimised product descriptions and information across multiple platforms, which can strengthen your SEO strategy.

You can use Channable to optimise structured data for your products and include things like colour, size, style, and other information. This boosts the chances of them appearing across marketplaces for filtered searches.

The If-Then condition can be adapted to align with your SEO strategy. For example, you can use it to filter and remove duplicate product listings that cause cannibalisation issues and negatively affect SEO performance. It’s also useful for seasonality when you want to change product listings based on seasonal trends (such as including ‘winter’ or ‘summer’ with a specific clothing item).

Rithum

Another tool that can support your product listings and SEO strategy is Rithum. This can connect your ecommerce brand with thousands of online marketplaces and retailers to manage product listings and streamline advertising.

It’s similar to Channable but used more by larger brands, high-volume sellers, and ecommerce companies that use drop-shipping. Alongside expanding across sales channels, it can enhance SEO performance.

Product feed management transforms product data to match the required formats of different platforms. This ensures they meet the specific format requirements of marketplaces, which enhances their visibility on both them and within search results.

Ecommerce content strategy

Content creation for ecommerce

Your content’s purpose should match your customer’s search intent. When creating content for ecommerce sites, ensure your copy focuses on how the item will fit into their lifestyle or meet the customer’s needs. Consider:

  • What do your customers want or need to know about the product or category?
  • Does your content provide the information they require about the product?
  • Does it answer their common queries or pain points?

Keep ecommerce content concise and to the point, especially when adding content to category, product, or brand level pages. If you want to create lengthy content, save this for your blog or advice section.

Supporting content

Answering FAQs is a great way to aid your commercial targeting and support AI ecommerce. Expanding on this by producing advice-led content can also positively impact SEO for ecommerce stores.

Having a blog or advice hub on your site that allows you to post supporting content regularly, such as how-to guides, advice, ideas, or news, can aid the efforts you’re putting into the commercial side of your site.

Aim to create supporting content that helps your customer and think about how your products can be incorporated into these guides. For example, if you’re selling cookware, post recipes or cooking tips that your customers can try at home. If you’re selling running shoes, show your audience how your footwear could help them achieve their health and fitness goals.

Consider building interactive tools

Implementing interactive tools such as calculators and size guides can help with SEO for online retailers. Many queries related to these tools have high search volumes, and these calculators and guides help your customers determine exactly how much they need or the size they require.

For example, if you’re selling lingerie, having a bra size calculator can help ensure customers purchase the correct size bra that fits their measurements. Another example is laminate flooring. Providing a calculator that allows customers to enter their room dimensions will ensure they purchase the correct quantity of flooring.

Building these tools and optimising for related keywords could draw in customers carrying out research with the intent to buy. This can increase traffic, and potentially conversion rates, and help to lower returns and prevent shoppers from purchasing incorrect quantities or sizes.

screenshot of flooring coverage calculator from Bath Shack.
Source: Bath Shack

Technical SEO for ecommerce

No-indexing filters

Most online retailers have filtering options, such as for price and size. These filters can generate thousands of unwanted pages, leading to bloating of your site, URL conflicts, and crawl inefficiency. You generally don’t want to optimise for any terms related to these URLs either.

As well as using certain filters, you may also want to consider no-indexing some. Consider no-indexing URLs that relate to tags and filtering options you don’t want to use for optimisation.

This is especially relevant to SEO for fashion ecommerce, as these sites generally have a vast number of size, price, and tagging options. No-indexing these pages prevents them from showing up in search results, making it easier for search engines and AI tools to find your main category, brand, and product pages.

Adding products to multiple categories

When categorising your products, it’s common to place them in various locations on your site to increase the chances of customers finding the item. For example, you might add a pair of trainers to the:

  • ‘New arrivals’ department
  • Relevant gender category
  • Main trainers department
  • Relevant brand section.

Although this can help promote your products, it can sometimes generate multiple URLs for the same product, which can lead to conflicts in search results.

To prevent this, make sure there’s only one indexable version of the product URL. For example, when categorising a new pair of trainers, your site may generate the following URLs:

  • /footwear/womens/womens-white-leather-trainers-1234
  • /womens/footwear/womens-white-leather-trainers-1234
  • /new-arrivals/womens-white-leather-trainers-1234
  • /new-arrivals/womens/womens-white-leather-trainers-1234
  • /womens-white-leather-trainers-1234 (preferred URL)

If this occurs on your platform, ensure there’s only one indexable page per product to prevent duplicate listings in search results. Competing URLs can harm performance in the SERPs and make it harder for AI agents to pick out the correct one.

Internal linking for ecommerce

Internal linking is essential when optimising your ecommerce store. Make sure your key categories are linked in the main menu, navigation bar, and within your content.

Always link to related areas. Think about your customer’s behaviour flow and how they might navigate your site. When producing content for a particular product or category, consider any similar items they may also be interested in and link to these within the copy.

Linking to supporting content, such as how-to guides and FAQ articles containing relatable information to your products, is also beneficial. Providing your customers with information they need to use the product effectively, or content that answers common problems they may experience, are good examples of internal links to include in your copy.

SEO for ecommerce product pages

Product schema

Product schema is an essential piece of structured data to include in your ecommerce optimisations. This type of schema displays key information about your product within the search results, including price, ratings, availability, and size. These are key elements customers consider when making a purchase.

Displaying this information in search results could improve CTR for your ecommerce site, especially if you have competitive pricing and great reviews.

Optimised product schema also provides clear data and information for LLMs. It uses this to understand the product and provide accurate details and recommend relevant products in AI-generated shopping results and agentic commerce.

Product reviews

Product reviews are essential for SEO. They support product schema (if you’ve got five-star ratings, displaying them in search results helps). Positive reviews also build customer confidence and encourage shoppers to purchase from you instead of a competitor.

This delivers strong trust signals to search engines, which helps satisfy EEAT. If your brand isn’t very well known, reviews are also essential to gain trust and build a name for yourself among consumers.

Product image optimisation

Optimise images of all products, especially those that customers buy due to their appearance, such as fashion or homeware.

Google’s SERPs show more image carousels in search results for ecommerce sites, with page one more visual than ever. Being sandwiched between two rows of images with only a basic link result could lower your CTR, even if you rank highly for your keyword.

screenshot of product image carousels in SERPs for ‘knee high boots’.

Make sure you add relevant, descriptive alt text to your product images and keep it concise yet unique. Even if you sell multiple products that appear the same, try using an adjective specific to that product to differentiate between them.

Product FAQs

Your customers often have questions about your products. Content that answers these questions is valuable and could drive traffic to your site if these queries have significant search volumes. It could also improve conversion rates by answering customer questions on your site, which may prevent them from looking elsewhere.

Product FAQs also support AI search and shopping by providing additional context and addressing common customer questions. Think about common customer queries you receive, or research terms beginning with ‘what’, ‘why’, and ‘how’ that relate to your products.

Check keyword tools, Google Search Console, and your competitors to see if they have product FAQ sections. You could also monitor your social media channels for customer comments with questions about your products.

Advanced ecommerce SEO

Local SEO for ecommerce

If you have one or more physical stores, local SEO should be part of your strategy. Register for a free Google Business Profile to list your business on Google, so it appears in search results and on Google Maps.

Optimising your store pages for localised keywords can help boost visibility. Assess your SERPs regularly for any change in local results.

Screenshot of local SERPs in Google Maps for ‘Running Trainers’.

Also consider adding tracking URLs to your Google Business Profile to monitor how customers interact with your local search results. Keep an eye on the information displayed and the reviews within your local listings.

Post key updates, including changes to opening times, and respond to any negative reviews too. Answer any posted questions and monitor any customer-uploaded imagery.

Out-of-stock strategy

Occasionally, you may experience stock issues or sell out of a high-demand product. Stock levels shouldn’t affect your rankings, but they may reduce conversions and increase bounce rates.

If you experience stock issues, there are ways to tackle them and make those out-of-stock products benefit your ecommerce SEO strategy.

When an item has recently gone out of stock, and you receive a lot of traffic to the page, consider adding a banner to notify customers of the issue and links to related products they can purchase instead. This may encourage shoppers to stay on your site and make an alternative purchase rather than bouncing off and looking elsewhere.

For products you no longer sell but are still available from competitors, a blog post or article listing alternatives may help. Link to this from the out-of-stock product page to direct customers towards this information.

URL identifiers for reporting

Once you’ve planned your ecommerce SEO strategy, ensure that your reporting is streamlined to monitor your performance closely. With many ecommerce websites producing thousands of URLs, there’s a lot to sift through when reporting on sessions and conversions.

Using common identifiers in URLs can significantly improve performance monitoring across your store’s different levels. For example, you might want to evaluate sessions and revenue across your product pages versus your categories. Having a common identifier within the URL allows you to quickly find these URLs and assess the area’s performance.

This enables you to identify any URL conflicts between page levels, for example, if products appear for category terms, or a commercial page ranks for a how-to related query. You can then assess whether you need to re-map or re-optimise these pages.

Boost your ecommerce SEO strategy

Craft an expert SEO strategy for your ecommerce company, whether you’re just starting out, looking to grow, or running an established online retailer. Our services at SALT cover everything you need to build, improve, and develop an effective strategy.

Get in touch today and find out how we can help with your ecommerce SEO needs.