You must know how Google and consumers’ search methods keep evolving constantly. Therefore, businesses must monitor digital marketing closely to get the most out of any robust, up-to-date strategy. Although new trends will keep coming up in 2024, I assure you that SEO isn’t going anywhere.
Important SEO priorities in 2023 include AI and natural language processing advancements and a strong emphasis on a content publication based on E-A-T (expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) signals. Also, search intent is vital in performing keyword research and producing high-quality content that moves customers down the sales funnel.
Before I discuss the top 10 eCommerce SEO trends in 2023, I will explain the current significance of SEO for eCommerce.
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How is SEO relevant to eCommerce today?
Don’t fall for the misconception that SEO is irrelevant because its trends don’t change. Instead, SEO is the foundation of eCommerce digital marketing efforts and remains an excellent investment for all eCommerce brands. It can boost your Google Ads’ quality score, attract a lot of organic traffic, and help your online business understand its target audience.
Since your SEO strategy is open to change, you must remember to constantly evaluate current tactics and update them appropriately to maximize search engine ranking potential.
Top eCommerce SEO trends
In the following section, I will expand on the top 10 SEO trends in 2023 that will augment conversion rates and website visibility.
1. Page speed and technical SEO are crucial
By perfecting technical SEO, you can make your eCommerce website easy to navigate and free of any annoying glitches that prevent search engines from understanding and ranking it.
Page speed
Fast web pages provide a smooth user experience that increases customer engagement and convinces visitors to spend more time exploring your web page content. Therefore, your online store will rank higher if your pages load quickly. Consequently, you should always aim to have fast-loading pages across all devices—ideally less than two seconds.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals (CWV), or simply Web Vitals, is a collection of three distinct interaction metrics that score a user’s experience loading a web page:
- Cumulative layout shift
- First input delay
- Largest contentful paint
Although CWV doesn’t directly improve organic rankings, it does give your target audience a better user experience, and further translates into higher conversion rates.
Optimizing your website’s Core Web Vitals by improving the loading time of third-party scripts on your website, stabilizing loading, and optimizing server loading times is a crucial component of SEO in 2023.
2. Have a mobile-first website
According to experts, 79% of smartphone users have made online purchases using their mobile devices in the past six months. Also, remember that Google also indexes every website’s mobile version. So your website isn’t going to rank very high if its design isn’t responsive.
A mobile-friendly website is optimized to work across various devices and give customers a pleasant user experience whether they use a desktop or mobile. Online stores that do not strive hard enough to deliver a positive online shopping experience on mobile are likely to be overtaken by their competitors.
3. Produce content that impacts SEO positively
By prioritizing quality content – articles, blogs, images, or videos— you can attract more traffic to your online store and set your business apart from your rivals.
Always produce high-quality content
When I speak of “quality”, I’m referring to essential things such as captivating images, error-free copy, and helpful information that your target audience enjoys engaging with. In addition, you must ensure that your content is unique, worthy, and professional-looking.
A general rule is that you should always write for people, not search engines. It may not be easy to weave appropriate keywords into web copy with high readability, but doing so is crucial for achieving on-page SEO success.
You must also consider E-A-T when producing content because it is an integral part of the search engine’s algorithm and Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.
Work hard on video content
Over 82% of all consumer internet traffic consists of video content. By incorporating relevant videos into your content, you can increase user engagement on digital and social channels and educate your audience in an easily digestible medium.
According to experts, both existing and potential customers prefer to watch the following types of video content:
- Explainers that describe the workings and benefits of a product or service
- Interviews featuring conversations relevant to a brand or its services/products
- Product reviews and demo videos that have more to offer than instruction manuals
Avoid using stock images
Modern consumers are savvy and can quickly identify stock images right away. Unfortunately, multiple companies often use these images on their eCommerce stores’ websites; as a result, they will just make your brand look cheap and unoriginal.
You must always use your own photographs and images and ensure they are relevant and supportive of the accompanying text. It may feel cheaper to purchase stock photos, but these costs keep adding up if you buy new images for every new social media post and website page.
Creating your own images is far more cost-effective and better for your brand in the long run if you factor in the time and energy required to find the best picture for each project.
Research eCommerce keywords
Keyword research heralds every eCommerce SEO strategy. It ensures that you maximize your eCommerce SEO efforts and target the right words in your on-page SEO strategy.
Many companies make the common mistake of concentrating on short keywords. However, experts have noticed that long-tail keywords give you a better idea of customers’ search intent. After all, a person looking for something specific is more likely to buy it.
4. Highlight your strengths
You can boost SEO and improve consumer trust in your brand by setting up structured data and showcasing testimonials and reviews.
Request customer testimonials
Consumers pay close attention to testimonials and use them to decide whether they should do business with you or not. Thus, after a customer makes a purchase, you can ask them for testimonials via email or through your app (if you have one).
Set up structured data
Using structured data, search engines can understand your web page content better and faster, thus improving visibility in search results. This way, you have higher chances of turning up in rich snippets that display extra data, unlike typical Google search results.
Because rich snippets rank higher than organic results and have a higher click-through rate, they generate more traffic to your website.
Showcase product reviews
Like testimonials, individual product reviews effectively show customers that you are trustworthy. They also send a positive signal to search engines and boost the credibility of your online store.
Since 90% of consumers read reviews before purchasing products, requesting and showcasing them as much as possible is worthwhile.
Diversify your marketing channels
Search engines like to see organic traffic coming to your online store from multiple sources, such as email addresses, social media channels, etc. Also, you won’t generate enough revenue unless you use multiple marketing channels.
By marketing on multiple channels – the ones your target audience uses – you can drive demand for your product or service and build brand awareness, and conversions from the top to the bottom of the sales funnel.
Moreover, channel diversification helps your brand gain greater reach and makes your products or services easier to find.
5. Work hard on user intent optimization
User intent helps you identify the reasons behind your target audience’s keywords and phrases. As a result, you can create more informative and engaging content. However, recent SEO trends show that regardless of how great your content or backlink profile is, you won’t drive organic traffic unless you cater to user intent.
User intent is of three types:
- Informational—The user wants to learn something
- Navigational—The user wishes to visit a particular website
- Transactional—The user intends to buy something or perform a particular online activity
By having a thorough understanding of user intent, you can maximize the traffic potential of your content.
6. Optimize for voice search
In the past few years, 58% of consumers have used voice search to find local businesses, and 71% of consumers claim that they prefer to conduct search queries via voice. As a result, it has had a notable impact on SEO trends.
According to experts, voice search customers use an average of 29 words, primarily composed of long-tail keywords. Since Google mainly utilizes featured snippets and knowledge graphs to answer voices, you should try to optimize them.
By gaining a high domain rating and optimizing your eCommerce site for local searches, you will also be able to attract voice search customers.
7. Secure your eCommerce website
Cybercrime is an omnipresent issue for the eCommerce industry and regularly costs businesses millions of dollars. In addition, identity theft and fraudulent transactions bring down customer trust and can even shut businesses down permanently.
Therefore, website security is a prerequisite, and you need to get an SSL certificate, use anti-malware software, and choose safe payment gateways to protect your business from cybercriminals. In addition, doing your best to protect your business and consumers’ data is crucial in building trust and credibility.
8. Improve the user experience
You shouldn’t get so caught up in ranking high on Google’s search results that you fail to provide customers with the choicest shopping experience. Instead, I recommend you periodically perform a user experience audit (UX audit) to identify promising areas of your eCommerce store that require optimization.
Regular auditing enables you to align your eCommerce business with visitors better. It helps you assess existing user flows and pinpoint problems or bottlenecks that prevent potential customers from doing what you want them to.
9. Refresh existing content
It is difficult to keep up with the fast-paced nature of content marketing, primarily because search engines are mainly intended for finding and prioritizing fresh and relevant content. As a result, older pieces slowly drop in traffic and rankings.
Fortunately, you can update and refresh most of your existing content. It is easier than creating something from scratch and simultaneously increases your ranking potential in search results.
10. Create a powerful brand
Strong brands hold customers’ attention, deliver quality, and provide exceptional service. Branding isn’t just about advertising and graphic design; it also includes the entire curated experience customers have with your businesses.
You can build a powerful brand by understanding your target audience, creating an engaging website, and implementing a digital marketing strategy.
It is essential to regularly discard outdated SEO practices and replace them with content-focused and strategic tactics that keep your business and eCommerce site relevant and competitive. In this article, I have mainly focused on showing you how to improve customer experience and search engine rankings. I hope it helps you stay on top of eCommerce trends in 2023.
