10 eCommerce SEO Trends| Keep You Ahead of Your Competitors
As customers are becoming increasingly immune to ads, search engine optimization (SEO) is essential to eCommerce as it helps brands understand and acquire their target audience, and build credibility in the process.
However, the rules of SEO are constantly evolving. With new ranking parameters, regulations, and technology coming up, it can be challenging to maintain a lead over your competitors.
To stay ahead, you have to keep an eye on the market, recognize the trends, and apply lessons from those to your business.
That could be overwhelming, particularly if you have a small team.
Don’t worry, we did just that for you.
In this article, we have extracted actionable insights from ten eCommerce SEO trends that you can start implementing right now.
1. Focusing on Video Content
Videos help you explain topics better by contextualizing content. They also keep the topic covered interesting and simplify it through graphics and images. Generally, visitors prefer video content over long-form texts.
According to research, 84% of marketers have revealed that videos have helped them increase traffic and 82% said it helped them increase retention time.
Traffic and retention time are two important parameters while measuring the effect of SEO. If both traffic and retention times are high, it is more likely that the website will rank higher on the SERPs.
Actionable takeaway: Create short-form and engaging video content to reinforce your blog.
2. Optimizing Website for Mobile-First
Google has made it clear that the mobile version of the content on your website will be analyzed first for indexing. Earlier it was the desktop version of the website that was considered.
There is another reason.
According to research, global mobile traffic increased from 31.16% in 2015 to 54.4% in 2021. More and more users are browsing the internet through mobile devices and completing transactions.
Making your eCommerce website and content within it mobile-friendly is killing two birds with one stone. You can deliver a great on-site experience to your visitors and Google will index it first.
Actionable takeaway: Make your website mobile-friendly. Leverage AMP technology by Google, if necessary.
3. Considering Voice Search Optimization
Research reveals that 27% of the global population uses the voice search feature on their mobile devices. That is more than a quarter!
Voice search improves the user experience, particularly while looking for products. A better user experience motivates buyers to complete the purchase eCommerce brands have started to capitalize on it.
To ensure that your website shows up first after a voice search, you need to optimize content accordingly.
Actionable takeaway: Optimize your web content for voice search. Keep the tone conversational, content brief, and think about your users’ queries.
4. Improving Load Speed
You might be aware that load speed affects bounce rates and user experience. But, do you know that it also affects conversion rates directly?
Recent research suggests that the conversion rates for eCommerce websites are highest when load times lie between 0 to 2 seconds. Furthermore, the first five seconds have the highest impact on conversion rates.
The faster a page gets loaded, the longer a user dwells on it. Consequently, it also improves the chances of conversion.
The importance of load speed on SEO can never be exaggerated. So, make sure your site loads up fast.
Actionable takeaway: Implement practices like lazy-loading, optimizing images, minifying CSS and JS code, and reducing redirects to make your site faster.
5. Investing in Optimizing for Visual Search
Has it ever happened to you that you saw something you liked but didn’t know what it was? Now, imagine you want that “something”. How can you search for it on the internet?
Enter visual search.
Visual search enables shoppers to simply take the picture of an object and search for it. Visual eCommerce has taken off as more and more users are using apps like Google Lens for shopping.
Websites with high-quality images, proper tags, and correct image titles and descriptions show up first. This leads to increased traffic and higher retention time, as the user has found what they were looking for.
Optimizing your eCommerce site for visual search is an easy way to beat the competition by increasing the impact of your SEO efforts.
Actionable takeaway: Use multiple high-quality images per product from multiple angles. Add alt text, description, and correct tags to make it searchable.
6. Creating Long-Form Content
Isn’t long-form content only useful for SaaS products and blogs?
No.
Whenever your customer has a question related to eCommerce, don’t you wish they end up on your website for the answer?
Your customers are curious by nature. Long-form content helps your audience understand more about your business. It gives them detailed information regarding the processes that get them their product of choice.
By creating content on interesting eCommerce topics like logistics, dropshipping, and micro fulfillment, you can reel your customers in. By making them understand your processes, you can bring them closer to your brand.
Not to mention, it adds a human touch by allowing you to become more transparent.
Actionable takeaway: Write long-form blog posts targeting keywords relevant to your business.
7. Gearing up for Augmented Reality
According to data-backed predictions, the number of mobile AR users is expected to increase to 1.73B by 2024. It presents eCommerce brands with a great opportunity to improve user experience.
Augmented reality helps users “try” products before purchasing them. eCommerce websites are able to increase retention times as these features are extremely engaging. Take a look at the following example from Sephora, a cosmetics company.
(Source)
Sephora lets its potential customers test their catalog out before they purchase it.
Actionable takeaway: Extend the functionality of your website by letting customers “try” your products.
8. Connecting with Influencers
Tapping into the networks of influencers will give a massive boost to your SEO. Content created by influencers is creative, unique, and reaches an engaged audience.
Influencers use social media and their email lists to share their message with their followers. Their personalized message and review will add an air of authenticity to the messaging of the brand.
Take a look at the following example from Moorer Clothing, a luxury clothing brand.
(Source)
Apart from reaching a new audience, the brand was also able to add a human touch to its products. This has increased the retention time for the post, contributing to improved SEO.
Actionable takeaway: Start reaching out to influencers and have them try your brand. Request them to inform their network about their experience.
9. Analyzing social signals
Social signals are the number of likes, comments, and shares a webpage gets. Aiming to improve these will give better SEO results. Social signals are a metric that shows how many visitors have interacted with your website and in which way.
They are a marker of interactivity and engagement. Needless to say, these ensure that your website ranks higher.
eCommerce brands can analyze social signals to improve the quality of content on their website to make it share-worthy. The more your page is shared, liked, and commented upon, the more it is boosted up in the SERPs.
To make sure that your web pages’ social signals are optimal, start with creating quality content that adds value. Allow your audience to interact with your content by providing those options in an eye-catching area.
Actionable takeaway: Add shareable buttons for social media platforms you have a presence on. Use images, infographics, and videos in your web content to make them easily shareable.
10. Improving Core Web Vitals
There are three core web vitals that you should monitor and aim to improve.
- Largest contentful paint (LCP) – It is a measure of page speed. Ideally, LCP should be completed within 2.5 seconds.
- First input delay (FID) – It measures how interactive your website is. Your website should respond to the user’s action within 100ms.
- Cumulative layout shift (CLS) – It is a measure of your website’s visual stability. To provide a good user experience, CLS should be less than 0.1.
Core web vitals are an important ranking factor for your website. Furthermore, they also let you know how “healthy” your website is. If your website is affected by malware or attached by hackers, you will see these vitals dropping off.
Actionable takeaway: Follow the following tips to improve each of the core vitals.
- LCP: Use a content delivery network (CDN), compress images, and remove unused plugins.
- FID: Optimize your JavaScript (JS) code:
- Break up long tasks into multiple smaller ones.
- Remove unused snippets.
- Try to generate content statically from the server.
- Delay execution until the user interacts.
- CLS: Insert size attributes for images, reserve places statically for ads, banners, and embeds, and add font attributes for custom fonts.
Wrapping up
We hope that you have gained meaningful insights from the above trends and will start implementing them on your eCommerce website. Remember, SEO is a continuous process and you should continue to keep an eye on the latest developments to stay ahead.
Good luck!