E-Commerce, or electronic commerce, is the process of buying and selling goods or services over the internet. It allows individuals and businesses to conduct transactions online without the need for a physical store. From shopping for clothes and gadgets to booking flights and paying bills, e-commerce makes everyday tasks faster, easier, and more convenient. With just a few clicks, customers can browse products, place orders, and have items delivered right to their doorstep. E-commerce continues to grow as technology evolves, offering new opportunities for both consumers and entrepreneurs in the digital age.
The State of Ecommerce SEO in 2025
Search engines have evolved. Google is no longer just matching keywords; its algorithms now prioritise relevance, authority, user experience, and structured content. E-commerce brands must now consider:
Mobile-first indexing
AI-driven search results (via Google SGE and voice assistants)
Page speed and user experience
Topical authority and high-quality backlinks
Simply stuffing product pages with keywords is no longer enough. Whether you’re a solo founder managing your store, a digital marketer scaling an e-commerce brand, or an SEO consultant working with clients, these strategies are crafted to deliver real, long-term results. You need a strategic, multi-layered approach to SEO that adapts to modern user behaviour and Google’s ever-changing algorithm.
Why SEO is Essential for E-commerce Success?
E-commerce competition is fiercer than ever. With millions of online stores globally and thousands of new listings appearing daily, getting your products in front of the right audience depends on visibility. And in the digital age, visibility starts with search engines.
Research shows that over 50% of online shopping journeys begin on Google. If your e-commerce site isn’t optimised for search, you’re leaving a huge amount of potential revenue on the table. Whether you’re a solo business owner running a Shopify store, a digital marketer at a scaling brand, or an SEO freelancer working with multiple ecommerce clients, this guide is tailored for you.
You might be wondering:
How do I compete with big ecommerce brands like Amazon or ASOS?
What SEO changes will deliver the quickest wins for my business?
Is SEO more sustainable than increasing my paid ad budget?
This guide addresses those concerns head-on, providing practical, real-world examples, proven strategies, and a flexible roadmap that works for businesses at any stage.
Common Mistakes That Hurt E-commerce Rankings
Before you can rank, it’s crucial to avoid the common pitfalls that harm e-commerce SEO performance:
Duplicate content across product listings
Thin product descriptions copied from suppliers
Slow website load times, especially on mobile
Missing metadata or schema markup
Lack of internal linking and site structure
Relying solely on paid ads without an organic strategy
If any of these challenges resonate with your current e-commerce setup, rest assured that you are not alone. The encouraging news is that each of these issues can be addressed and often significantly improved by implementing the proven SEO strategies outlined below.
How to Rank: 7 Proven Ecommerce SEO Strategies
Let’s explore seven actionable strategies that will help your e-commerce site climb the rankings and convert browsers into buyers.
1. Target Long-tail, Transactional Keywords
2. Optimise Product and Category Pages for Search and Conversion
3. Strengthen Your Technical SEO
4. Create Buyer-Focused, Value-Driven Content
5. Earn High-Quality Backlinks to Boost Domain Authority
6. Optimise for AI, Voice Search and Generative Tools
7. Track, Analyse and Continuously Improve
Let’s get started!
1. Target Long-tail, Transactional Keywords
If you’re struggling to get noticed in search results dominated by Amazon or big brands? This strategy will help you compete where it matters, by targeting highly specific keywords your ideal customers are searching for.
Generic keywords like “trainers” or “men’s shoes” are dominated by large retailers like Nike or Amazon. Your competitive edge lies in long-tail keywords, more specific phrases that signal buying intent.
Instead of “jewellery”, try “handmade silver necklace for a wedding gift”.
These attract visitors ready to purchase, not just browsing.
Real-Life Example
REI, a well-known outdoor retail brand in the United States, adopted a content-centric SEO strategy that leaned heavily on long-tail, high-intent search phrases. They crafted detailed informational guides, such as “how to choose the right backpacking tent for desert camping,” to attract shoppers with a specific purchase need.
To further strengthen your SEO strategy, you can try to build content clusters around key product themes. For example, if you sell camping gear, create interconnected blog posts, guides, and comparison pages around tents, sleeping bags, and backpacking tips. Internal linking among these pages helps search engines understand your site’s depth and expertise, boosting rankings through topical authority.
Strategy Highlights
Created comprehensive, buyer-focused guides and blog content targeting narrow, intent-rich keywords (e.g., “tent for desert camping under £300” rather than just “camping tent”).
Established topical authority through deep coverage of camping topics and related product recommendations.
Ensured internal linking from guides to product and category pages, helping funnel readers toward conversions.
A 25% higher conversion rate from visitors who found their way through specific long-tail pages compared to broader keyword traffic
2. Optimise Product and Category Pages for Search and Conversion
Not getting clicks or conversions on your product listings? Let’s make them more search- and user-friendly. Your product and category pages are often the first impression for new visitors. Optimise them with:
Clear H1 and subheadings using relevant keywords
Engaging meta descriptions that entice clicks
Unique, benefit-led product descriptions
High-quality images with alt text
Structured data (e.g., price, availability, rating)
Real-Life Example
When UK-based furniture retailer Swoon sought to enhance its search visibility, it identified that its product and category pages were under-optimised, lacking unique descriptions, useful internal linking, and conversion-focused layout.
Strategy Highlights
Revamped product pages with benefit-led, keyword-rich descriptions that emphasised features, materials, and lifestyle appeal.
Improved category pages by incorporating SEO-friendly headings, descriptive texts, and prominent calls-to-action.
Strengthened internal linking, guiding users from category pages into relevant product listings.
Enhanced site structure and metadata to align with core buyer keywords (e.g., “modern sofas UK”, “upholstered bed frames”).
Results
Within 18 months:
A 300% increase in organic traffic to product and category pages.
Noticeably higher conversion rates from SEO-optimised content.
Stronger rankings for key product-related search terms in competitive niches.
3. Strengthen Your Technical SEO
Ever wonder why your rankings aren’t improving despite good content? Your site’s technical health might be the reason. No matter how great your content is, if Google can’t access it properly, it won’t rank.
Selfridges, a leading UK retailer, needed to improve site performance across speed, mobile usability, and technical infrastructure to regain search visibility and user engagement.
Strategy Highlights
Enhanced Core Web Vitals by optimising page speed, reducing cumulative layout shift, and improving time-to-interactive.
Fully implemented mobile-first design, ensuring consistent content, schema markup, and navigation across devices.
Resolved broken internal links, fixed canonicalisation issues, and cleaned up site architecture to enhance crawlability and indexing efficiency.
These gains demonstrate how technical SEO improvements, independent of new content or link-building campaigns, can substantially improve an e-commerce site’s performance.
4. Create Buyer-Focused, Value-Driven Content
Do your visitors leave before buying? Educational content can bridge the gap and guide them to purchase. Go beyond sales pages. E-commerce sites that win today create informational content to support their products and educate their audience:
Buying guides (“Best Gifts for Dads Who Love Coffee”)
Tutorials (“How to Style a Minimalist Living Room”
Product comparisons
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Videos and how-tos
Real-Life Example
Bleuet, an e-commerce lingerie brand, faced limited organic visibility and low engagement across category and product pages.
Strategy & Execution
Developed multiple in-depth content pieces per month, like educational blog posts targeting topics such as “how to buy a training bra” and specific category pages such as “Sustainable Gray Bras.”
Each content asset was tailored to address real customer questions and needs, blending product relevance with informational value.
Ensured strong internal linking between educational content and relevant product listings, guiding readers naturally toward purchase options.
Maintained consistent SEO messaging, targeting both broad and niche queries related to their product range.
Results
After eight months:
8,181 new organic visitors (~529% increase from baseline)
291,000 individual users (~5,107% increase)
37,000 checkouts (~504% increase)
1 million conversions (~3,361% increase)
Organic revenue soared, with ROI exceeding expectations, all while scaling content volume to 9,000 words monthly
More shoppers are searching for sustainable, ethically sourced, or eco-friendly products. Creating content that highlights these values, like “Our Sustainability Promise” or product guides on “Best Eco-Friendly Gifts,” can boost organic visibility and build deeper trust with your audience. Use schema markup where relevant (e.g., EcoFriendlySpecification) to reinforce this.
5. Earn High-Quality Backlinks to Boost Domain Authority
Want more trust from Google and your customers? Earn it with content others want to link to. Backlinks, links from other sites to yours, are still a strong signal for SEO.
Ways to build backlinks:
Feature in niche blogs or YouTube reviews
Partner with influencers or micro-influencers
Create linkable assets (e.g., data reports or tools)
Offer guest posts on related sites
Use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to respond to journalists’ queries
Real-Life Example
COOK is a UK-based ecommerce brand specialising in frozen ready meals and seasonal food offerings. While their product quality is high, they faced stiff competition in organic search visibility.
Strategy Highlights
Created compelling seasonal and evergreen content like the “Christmas Food to Order” guide and the “COOK Guide to Batch Cooking”.
These pages resonated widely, becoming link-worthy assets that drew coverage from leading UK publications such as The Telegraph, BBC Good Food, The Independent, and Hello! Magazine.
As a result, COOK earned hundreds of backlinks in a short period, especially around peak seasons.
Results
The “Christmas Food to Order 2024” page earned 192 backlinks from 77 referring domains, including major media sites.
Their batch cooking guide secured 93 backlinks, with 40 acquired within just one week of publication.
These high-quality backlinks elevated domain authority, resulting in stronger rankings, improved referral traffic, and enhanced SEO performance across related product pages.
6. Optimise for AI, Voice Search and Generative Tools
Searching habits are changing fast. To stay ahead in the age of AI-powered and voice search, you can use Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE) and tools like ChatGPT and Alexa, brands need to become more “machine-readable”.
To do this:
Use structured data and schema
Write content in simple Q&A formats
Include direct, concise answers
Optimise for voice-friendly phrases (e.g., “what’s the best camera for beginners UK?”)
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are also becoming indispensable for e-commerce SEO teams. These tools can:
Generate SEO-friendly product descriptions, FAQs, and metadata
Suggest long-tail keyword variations based on user search intent
Draft schema markup like Product, FAQ, and Breadcrumb schema
Analyse GA4 and Search Console insights to guide strategy
Real-Life Example
Keyo Agency observed that their e-commerce clients were missing out on voice search and AI-powered answer engine traffic, limiting their reach among consumers using devices like Google Assistant or voice-driven AI tools.
Strategy Highlights
Created structured content optimised for featured snippets, voice search, and conversational queries.
Doing SEO blindly? Track what works, fix what doesn’t, and make every visitor count.SEO is not static; it’s a long-term game. Monitor what’s working and optimise based on real data.
Use tools like:
Google Analytics 4 for traffic, bounce rate, and conversions
Google Search Console to monitor impressions, clicks, and keyword rankings
A/B testing for titles, meta descriptions, and images
Heatmaps (like Hotjar) to analyse user interaction
Real-Life Example
Intertop, a large Ukrainian online shoe retailer, teamed up with UX/CRO agency Turum‑burum to address high bounce rates, poor conversion paths, and confusing filter functionality, especially on mobile devices.
Analytics & Heatmap Insights
Using Google Analytics, Turum-burum identified problematic pages: excessive bounce on checkout, low “Add to Cart” engagement, and short session durations.
They implemented Hotjar heatmaps and session recordings to visually track where users clicked, scrolled, or got stuck, revealing issues like hidden CTAs and unclear filtering menus.
A/B Testing Implementation
Based on these insights, the team ran controlled experiments to test UX changes:
Checkout redesign: Launching a cleaner summary layout and reduced form fields.
Product list adjustments: Moved “Add to cart” above the fold and simplified category filtering.
Session-based CTAs: Rearranged buttons and labels based on scroll/hover behaviour.
Results
55% increase in conversions overall
13.4% reduction in bounce rate (at checkout)
31% increase in product-page-to-cart conversion and 36.6% improvement in cart-to-checkout rates, as verified via A/B results and GA4 tracking
Google’s Search Generative Experience transforms search results by prioritising AI summaries over traditional links. To stay visible, e-commerce websites must produce structured, expert-level content that directly answers user questions.
As more shoppers use voice assistants, optimising for natural, question-based queries and implementing FAQ schema increases the chance of being selected as a spoken answer.
3. Privacy & First-Party Data Focus
With stricter data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR) and the decline of third-party cookies, ecommerce brands must leverage on-site behaviour and email data for SEO-aligned content personalisation.
4. Visual Search Optimisation
Shoppers increasingly use images to find products via tools like Google Lens. Optimising product images with descriptive file names, alt text, and schema boosts visibility in visual search.
5. Mobile-First & Core Web Vitals
Mobile-first indexing is now standard. Performance metrics like site speed, interactivity, and visual stability (Core Web Vitals) directly influence rankings and conversions.
Google prioritises trustworthy content. Strengthen brand authority by adding expert author bios, sourcing quality backlinks, and showcasing real customer reviews.
7. Hyper-Personalised & Localised Experiences
Search engines favour content tailored to users’ locations, behaviour, and preferences. Use GA4 and CRM data to deliver personalised landing pages and product suggestions.
Achieving strong search engine rankings isn’t about chasing quick wins or relying on fleeting “growth hacks.” It’s about building a future-proof SEO strategy that evolves alongside consumer behaviour, technological innovation, and Google’s ever-advancing algorithms.
In today’s fiercely competitive ecommerce landscape, sustainable success comes from consistency, not speed. A strong SEO foundation requires time, effort, and ongoing optimisation, but the returns are compounding. You’re not just ranking higher; you’re creating a lasting asset that brings in high-intent traffic and repeat customers.
By targeting long-tail, transactional keywords, you attract visitors who are ready to buy. Optimising product and category pages improves both visibility and conversions. Publishing content that addresses your audience’s real questions and earning backlinks from authoritative sources builds credibility with both users and search engines.
As AI and voice search continue to shape how consumers discover products, it’s essential to adapt your strategy. Leveraging tools like Google Analytics 4 and Search Console will help you track, refine, and improve your SEO efforts with precision.
So, where should you begin? Start by auditing your site. Identify your most pressing gaps. Don’t try to do everything at once, focus on what matters most right now. Whether that’s reducing load time, rewriting thin product descriptions, or creating helpful FAQs, prioritise, test, improve, and scale.
SEO isn’t just about boosting traffic. It’s about guiding the right customer to the right product at the right time on your site.
Ready to Turn Strategy Into Results?
If you’re serious about leveling up your e-commerce marketing skills and implementing a comprehensive SEO strategy, consider enrolling in the Certified E-Commerce Specialist (CES) Programme. Learn how to drive traffic, convert customers, and build an e-commerce brand that grows sustainably, backed by real-world tools, frameworks, and hands-on guidance.
Kevin Dam
Kevin started in digital marketing, specialising in Search Engine Optimisation after leaving a career in banking and finance. He now has almost 10 years of experience gathering thousands of auditing hours on 300+ websites in all industries such as F&B, finance, insurance, e-commerce, medical and b2b services, serving clients such as MSIG Insurance, Bizcover Insurance, TWG Tea, Aura Group, Merger Markets (Acuris) and dozens of local SME’s, across Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United States and Singapore.
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Kevin Dam
Kevin started in digital marketing, specialising in Search Engine Optimisation after leaving a career in banking and finance. He now has almost 10 years of experience gathering thousands of auditing hours on 300+ websites in all industries such as F&B, finance, insurance, e-commerce, medical and b2b services, serving clients such as MSIG Insurance, Bizcover Insurance, TWG Tea, Aura Group, Merger Markets (Acuris) and dozens of local SME’s, across Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, the United States and Singapore.
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