Ecommerce SEO vs. SEO (and How AI Is Changing Them Both)

1. Are they Different?
2. The Differences
3. The Similarities
4. The Impact of AI

If you’ve ever paid for SEO services and felt like the strategy could have been built for any business in any industry, you’re probably right.

Most SEO playbooks weren’t designed with ecommerce in mind. They were designed to drive traffic to SaaS and service-based businesses, and ecommerce stores got lumped in with everyone else.

Ecommerce SEO and traditional SEO aren’t the same thing. Here’s what’s different, where the two overlap, and what AI is changing for both.

Are Ecommerce SEO and Traditional SEO Actually Different?

Yes, and here’s why:

Many SEOs who came up in the 2010’s (myself included) learned the principles of search engine optimization from sites like HubSpot. The HubSpot blog was so helpful that it gave every SEO the idea that if you publish enough helpful articles, you’d build a huge audience, and sales would naturally follow.

The problem is that HubSpot’s product is a CRM designed for B2B businesses. HubSpot’s customers spend four, five, or even six figures on the software during their contract. Their customers spend a lot of time researching competitors and comparing options, so HubSpot gets a lot of time to educate before selling.

Most ecommerce businesses don’t have that luxury.

Ecommerce SEO has to meet buyers where they are, often when they’re about to make a purchase. The strategy has to look different when our goal is transactions rather than demo requests.

Ecommerce SEO vs. Traditional SEO: The Biggest Differences

The key differences between ecommerce SEO and traditional SEO start at the most basic level: the keywords you’re optimizing for.

From there, the differences ripple out into every part of the strategy.

1. Ecommerce keywords are closer to the point of purchase.

In traditional SEO, there’s a gap between ranking and revenue. A SaaS company ranks for a keyword, captures a lead, and brings in the sales team to spend weeks nurturing that person through demos and trials.

Ecommerce doesn’t work that way. A potential customer searching “best portable water filter for hiking” has a commercial search intent. They want a specific product and are exploring their options.

The entire job of your product and category pages is to connect with that customer at that moment to make their purchase easy. Those pages need to show up in the types of searches someone runs when they’re about to buy something.

Your keyword strategy needs to prioritize transactional keywords in order to connect people with the products that will best help them.

2. Ecommerce sites usually have way more pages to optimize.

Service-based business websites are usually built around a handful of core pages. Look at the website of a law firm or a construction company, for example, and you’re likely to see a homepage, some service pages, and maybe a blog or portfolio.

An online store needs all of that plus product pages, category pages, filtered collection pages, and more. Sometimes thousands of them.

A company selling t-shirts might have separate pages for every fit, material, neckline, and style a shopper could search for, plus product pages for every individual SKU on top of that. Each page needs indexing, optimization, and maintenance to appear in the search results pages (SERPs).

That’s a completely different SEO challenge than optimizing a ten-page website with a few dozen blog articles.

3. Site architecture is more complex for ecommerce.

All of those pages have to be organized in a way that both shoppers and search engines can navigate.

Ecommerce businesses usually manage this problem through savvy internal linking tactics. Faceted navigation (filters) helps human shoppers find what they need, while breadcrumbs create a “trail” that helps users find their way back to previously visited pages.

However, these sites often run into challenges with duplicate content, as filters tend to generate new pages that contain the same content and can end up competing against each other for keywords.

4. On-page optimization looks a lot different.

On-page SEO for a blog post is pretty forgiving. There’s a lot of space to include relevant keywords without ruining the user experience.

Product and category pages have less room. Stuffing keywords into a product description will ruin the shopping experience and hurt the page’s credibility with search engines.

The optimization has to fit the format. FAQ sections can fit long-tail keywords naturally. Rich snippets like customer reviews, star ratings, and return policies are necessary to have on the page if you want products to rank.

None of that applies to a standard blog post, or even a feature or service page.

5. Attribution looks a lot different, too.

Every business wants SEO to drive revenue. The difference with ecommerce is that you can actually measure whether it did.

When someone lands on a product page and buys a package of pencils, that sale is directly attributable to organic search. There’s no sales cycle, no demo request, no gap between click and conversion.

Yes, there can be a delay for high-priced items like a car or even a sofa. But there’s usually more clarity in our attribution that changes how we evaluate SEO. We have a much easier time identifying pages that don’t convert well, so we know when to fix them.

6. Content strategy centers around products over topics.

A SaaS company’s blog is often its primary SEO asset. The whole strategy is built around publishing blogs and answering questions to drive leads.

For ecommerce, the most valuable SEO assets are your product and category pages. Blog content plays a supporting role. A post titled “How to Choose a Water Filter” can help you build backlinks and brand awareness, but it won’t sell filters the way a well-optimized category page will.

7. The technical challenges are bigger and more complex.

Having more pages means more things can go wrong.

A service website with ten pages has a manageable set of technical SEO concerns, but an ecommerce store with thousands of product pages has a much bigger to-do list.

Products go out of stock. Inventory changes. Pages get added, removed, and reorganized. Every one of those changes is an opportunity for something to break.

The technical side of ecommerce SEO isn’t a one-time fix; it’s ongoing maintenance.

8. Product images play a much larger role.

A software company’s website can rank with just a few images. An ecommerce store can’t.

Product images affect SEO in ways that go beyond branding. They:

Show up in Google Image search, a major source of traffic for product discovery.
Feed into Google Shopping search, where a low-quality or missing image can get a product disapproved entirely.
Influence conversions: a shopper who can’t see what they’re buying (or doesn’t like the image) won’t buy it.

That means having unique, high-quality images is an SEO consideration.

9. Seasonality and inventory changes add a concern most websites never deal with.

A law firm’s website doesn’t go out of stock. A SaaS company’s pricing page doesn’t need to be updated every holiday season.

Ecommerce websites do. A product that sells out needs a plan, whether that’s to redirect the URL, keep the page showing “Out of Stock” with alternative recommendations, or something else. Peak seasons like Black Friday require content, category pages, and promotions to be ready weeks in advance.

The SEO strategy has to account for the fact that the store itself is always changing.

10. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) plays a much bigger role in ecommerce SEO.

In traditional SEO, the job is usually done when the visitor arrives. A SaaS company hands off to a sales team. A construction firm gets a quote request. What happens after the click is no longer the SEO team’s concern.

Ecommerce doesn’t have that handoff. The same page that ranks in Google also has to convert the visitor into a buyer. That means ecommerce SEOs have to think about things like page layout and the filter menus that help shoppers narrow to what they need.

Keyword research and link building don’t look as impressive when checkouts are down.

11. Ecommerce stores compete with marketplaces, not just websites.

An accounting firm competing for target keywords like “CPA in Boston” is up against other accounting firms. An ecommerce store competing for “cast iron skillet” is up against trusted online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target.

That changes the strategy. Winning an organic ranking doesn’t guarantee visibility the way it once did. Ecommerce SEOs have to think about how their listings appear in Shopping results and whether their prices are competitive enough to steal clicks from trusted retail giants.

Here are some case studies that show how we’ve helped our clients grow fast in highly competitive markets:
Cierto Tequila | JS Dental Lab | APEX Ski Boots

What Do Ecommerce SEO and Traditional SEO Have in Common?

Differences aside, ecommerce SEO and traditional SEO share some basic principles:

Both start with a strong technical foundation.

The technical requirements look different at scale, but the fundamentals are the same, regardless of the business. Every site needs to be indexed, load quickly, work on mobile, and be structured in a way that search engines can crawl and understand.

A broken technical foundation will hold back any website, no matter what they sell.

Both depend on content to build trust.

Google wants to send searchers to pages that are genuinely helpful and written by people who know what they’re talking about. That’s true for all businesses in any industry.

The businesses that see the best results from SEO are the ones that publish content people read, not content written for algorithms.

Both need outside credibility to compete.

Search engines don’t just evaluate what’s on your site. They also evaluate what other websites think about it.

When reputable publications link to your content, it tells search engines that your site is worth showing to searchers.

Both reward consistency over time.

Even the best SEO efforts won’t produce results overnight. SEO has the best ROI for businesses that publish consistently, address technical issues when they occur, and improve their site’s reputation over months and years.

No amount of shortcuts can change that.

How AI Is Changing SEO as a Whole (Ecommerce Included)

AI isn’t replacing SEO, but it’s making some parts less valuable and others more important than ever.

Here’s how we see AI changing SEO across industries:

A lot of blog content is losing its value.

Between Google’s AI Overviews and platforms like ChatGPT, most informational searches never result in a click. People can just get their answers right on the search results page or through a conversation with their preferred LLM chatbot.

The content holding its value falls into two categories:

Content that sits close to a purchase decision, like buying guides and competitor comparisons.
Content that offers a unique point of view on a topic.

For a long time, an article called “What Is a Frying Pan?” could drive a lot of traffic. Those days are over.

Traffic is a less reliable measure of SEO health.

For most of SEO’s history, traffic was how we measured success. More visitors meant the strategy was working.

That’s no longer safe to assume. A site can lose significant traffic even though SEO is driving more revenue. The metric that matters is whether SEO is driving outcomes, not just sessions.

Original research and proprietary data are becoming more valuable.

Generic answers are everywhere now. AI tools can generate them instantly, and they do. But AI can’t produce data and insights that only you have access to.

Original research, like surveys and customer data, gives readers a reason to visit your website and gives AI tools something worth citing. This type of content continues to drive organic traffic and growth for businesses of all types.

Off-page optimization is about more than backlinks.

AI tools research your brand the way a human shopper would: checking reviews, scanning forums, and reading what third parties have written about you.

A brand with a strong presence across those sources is more likely to be recommended. A brand that only optimizes its own website is likely to get overlooked.

Nobody has fully figured out AI search yet (and that’s good news).

SEO best practices were assembled over twenty-five years of documenting Google’s ranking signals and algorithm updates. AI search has been around for less than four.

Nobody has fully figured out how to rank in AI-generated results. The platforms are evolving weekly, and the playbooks are still being written. It’s a great opportunity for any brand open to experimentation.

Related: AEO Means Doing SEO Better

Conclusion

Ecommerce SEO and general SEO share the same foundation, but a strategy built for a software company (or any other type of company) will miss the things that actually lead to sales.

If you want a team that can help you close the gaps and grow your business, give us a call!

Intergrowth® helps brand-focused B2C companies get more customers from SEO, content marketing, and Meta Ads. We’ve helped dozens of brands grow their revenue, and we can show you exactly what it would look like for your store.

Ecommerce SEO vs. “Regular” SEO (and How AI Is Changing Them Both)

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