SEO can transform the results an e-commerce site gets, driving consistent traffic to product pages. While paid advertising can be an effective traffic strategy, there will always be a high percentage of people ignoring your ads. It can be confusing, though, attempting to decipher the search algorithm to focus on the factors that get results.

If you are struggling to rank your e-commerce pages in the search engines, the following factors are typically the most important elements to focus on.

1. Page Loading Speed

Page speed has grown in importance over the years. Slow loading times are one of the main reported issues with user experience, adding frustration to visitors, and increasing the bounce rate.

Pages will ideally load in less than two seconds, with additional time typically resulting in bounce rate increases. The dissatisfaction felt by visitors will be replicated by the search engines that will punish consistent offenders.

The Google PageSpeed Insights tool can uncover poor performance, offering solutions to the problems.

2. Relevant Backlinks

Backlinks are still important for SEO, but more focus is now placed on relevancy. Gaining a host of links from irrelevant sites doesn’t make sense to the search engines, potentially leading to penalties.

You can get backlinks from sites in your niche by creating quality content that appeals to your target audience. Lists, guides, and product comparisons can all result in links while developing your social media following adds an additional element.

Guest blogging can also be effective, but it is important to only work with authoritative sites.

3. Internal Linking

Many of the backlinks an e-commerce site receives will be directed at articles on a blog. Content marketing can be used to gain links, but you are ideally hoping to rank product pages. Internal linking will play a big part in spreading authority around the site, ensuring important pages get enough attention.

Internal linking can also help visitors as they direct people to appropriate pages in a straightforward fashion. You can use your analytics data to find important pages, then create some additional internal links directed at these targets. Also, make sure your links actually work and go to the right page by running your site through a broken link checker.

4. Optimized On-Page Elements

On-page elements are the easiest SEO factors to control, but many stores get lazy and don’t optimize correctly. The main elements to focus on are title, description, body content, H1 tags, and image alt tags. You can include your main keyword in the title and description, most commonly the name of the product.

Other tags and body content can also feature the keyword sparingly, along with related terms. Image alt tags should describe the content of the image, often using related terms to the main keyword.

5. Mobile Optimization

The percentage of visitors to websites will vary, but more than 50% typically use mobile devices. While most sites will be set up for mobile visitors, there may be some older examples that have not made the change. Additionally, some sites are optimized for mobile, but the mobile experience is less than adequate.

Make sure you check your site using mobile devices to ensure the experience is exceptional. Any issues like small text or enlarged images, can be enough to drastically reduce the overall conversion rate.

6. Technical SEO

Technical SEO can be a complex subject but using an established product like Shopify will help to avoid most of the issues. You will want to use HTTPS to give your customers security, while also crawling the entire site for issues.

A tool like DeepCrawl can analyze the important elements on each page, identifying potential issues. Behind the graphics and design features, you want to know what Google will see when it visits your site. Elements like the sitemap, page redirects, missing pages, and more can be identified with DeepCrawl.

Conclusion

E-commerce sites need to drive traffic on a consistent basis. Businesses may invest in stock, so they need to be confident about sales figures. If search engine traffic dries up, there can be serious issues for the long-term prospects of the business.

There are, though, a number of key elements that can ensure rankings are positive. Working on these elements, both on new pages and your existing site, will provide the search engines and users with what they are looking for, resulting in continuous traffic growth.