Quoted on SEO and content by the Shopify blog, MarTech, and other industry-leading publications 
Showing up in search engines doesn’t automatically mean you’ll sell more. A lot of ecommerce businesses learn this the hard way.
This ecommerce SEO guide covers how to turn organic traffic into a real growth channel, based on the actual strategies we’ve built for businesses like JS Dental Lab, APEX Ski Boots, and Cierto Tequila.
Ecommerce SEO Updates That Actually Drive Sales
Search engine optimization is a system with many moving parts. Content, backlinks, site structure, and technical health all work together to make your site visible in search. No single piece operates in isolation.
That said, some updates have a faster impact than others. The items below are some of the ones we prioritize in our clients’ ecommerce SEO strategies because they have the most direct line to revenue:
- Make sure your site is indexable
- Make sure your products are indexable
- Identify and build missing category pages
- Focus on keywords that bring buyers (not just browsers)
- Audit your internal linking structure
- Write original product descriptions
- Add schema markup to product pages
- Recover broken backlinks
- Publish product- and problem-focused blog posts
Make Sure Your Site Is Indexable
Google has to be able to find your pages.
If a page isn’t indexed, it doesn’t show up on any search engine results pages (SERPs). It won’t drive organic traffic. It won’t sell anything. And you won’t see any of the benefits of your ecommerce SEO efforts.
Go to Google and type the following:
site:[yourwebsiteURL].com
The results show every page Google has indexed from your site. If your homepage doesn’t appear, or if certain product or category pages are missing, you have an indexability issue.
A few things can cause this: noindex tags, misconfigured robots.txt files, or accidental 404s.
You can find these pages by checking Google Search Console for crawl errors and indexing issues. GSC is free, and it’s a really helpful tool for ecommerce SEO.
Make Sure Your Products Are Indexable
Google needs to be able to find your individual products, too. And there’s a separate step that many stores miss: setting up Google Merchant Center.
Google Merchant Center is a free tool that lets you submit your product catalog directly to Google. When your products are approved, they’re eligible to appear in Google Shopping results (the listing with images, prices, and star ratings that show up in increasingly more product-related searches).
Setting it up requires connecting your online store to a product feed, which is a file that syncs your product names, prices, images, and availability with Google. Shopify and most other ecommerce platforms generate it automatically, but here’s a walkthrough on how to get your store set up.
Once you’re set up, confirm all of your listings are approved. Products can get rejected for many reasons (missing product images, incomplete descriptions, etc.), and disapproved listings won’t show up in search.
Related: Ecommerce SEO vs. SEO (and How AI Is Changing Them Both)
Identify and Build Missing Category Pages
Your site might be indexed perfectly and still be invisible for the searches that matter most.
Category pages, sometimes called collections or product listing pages (PLPs) in the ecommerce industry, are how search engines connect shoppers with groups of products.
A shopper searching “midcentury modern office chairs” isn’t searching for your homepage. They’re looking for a page that shows them midcentury modern office chairs. If that page doesn’t exist, you won’t rank for that search, but your competitors will.
This is one of the most common gaps we find with new ecommerce clients. The products exist. The demand exists. But the page connecting the two doesn’t.
Your category pages don’t need to be complicated. They need to exist, be indexed, and be built around the terms buyers actually use.
Read more: What People Get Wrong About SEO for Ecommerce Category Pages
Focus on Keywords That Bring Buyers, Not Just Browsers
The keywords on your product and category pages determine who finds them. We want to get those pages right first because that’s where the purchases happen.
A parent searching “best car seat for newborns” is ready to buy. A parent searching “when can babies face forward in a car seat” is not.
Both searches are relevant to a baby gear store. But only one of them belongs on a product or category page.
Your product and category pages should target the types of terms people search right before making a purchase. These tend to be specific: materials, use cases, sizes, etc. Things like “solid oak dining table” or “convertible crib under $400.”
You don’t need expensive keyword research tools to find target terms. That’s helpful for finding the keywords with the highest search volume later on, here’s how you can do it for free right now:
Just search the words you think buyers use if they want your products but don’t know about your brand.
If the top results are category pages from competitors, that’s a buying keyword worth targeting. If the top results are blog posts and guides, you’ll want a blog post or guide instead of a category page.
Audit Your Internal Linking Structure
Internal links are the connections between pages on your site. They do two things: help visitors navigate and tell search engines which pages matter most.
A page with no internal links pointing to it is hard for Google to find and hard for shoppers to reach. Pages that are buried three or four clicks from your homepage tend to rank lower because Google assumes they’re unimportant.
For ecommerce sites, the most common problems are category pages that exist on your site but aren’t linked from your main navigation or collections menus. You built the page but Google can’t find it, and neither can your shoppers.
Here’s a quick way to identify issues in your internal linking structure:
Start at your homepage and click toward your most important category pages. Count the clicks it takes to get there. Any category page you want to appear in search should be reachable within two clicks or fewer.
If a page takes more than two clicks to find, add it to your navigation or link it from a page that’s already linked to your homepage.
Also: Your blog posts should link to relevant product and category pages. A post about choosing a coffee table should link to your coffee table collection. That connection makes it easier for shoppers to buy a table and for search engines to understand the page’s value.
Write Original Product Descriptions
Many ecommerce stores use the manufacturer’s product description. It’s the fastest way to get one live. But it’s also the same copy that appears on every other site selling the same product.
Google notices that. When duplicate content appears across multiple sites, search engines have a hard time figuring out which page to rank. There’s a good chance they won’t choose yours (why would they if they can just send searchers to the manufacturer’s page)?
Original product descriptions fix that. They also give you the chance to speak directly to a customer who’s about to buy.
A parent shopping for a convertible crib doesn’t need a spec sheet. They want to know if it’s easy to assemble, how long it lasts, and whether it fits comfortably in a 10×10 room. That’s the kind of copy that comes from knowing your customer, and it’s the kind of copy that tends to rank.
You don’t need to write unique content for every product today. Start with your highest-traffic product pages and best sellers. Write descriptions that answer the types of questions someone might have, and avoid copying anything from the manufacturer.
Add Schema Markup to Product Pages
Schema markup is code that tells Google exactly what type of content is on a page. For ecommerce, the most valuable type is product schema, or structured data that allows Google to display your product’s price, availability, and shipping info on the search results page.
Review schema is worth adding, too, if your products collect customer reviews. Star ratings in search results are one of the more visible trust signals available to an ecommerce business, and they cost nothing beyond the setup time.
Most ecommerce platforms have built-in tools that make adding schema markup straightforward without a developer. But it’s worth verifying that your schema is actually working once it’s in place. You can use the schema validator at Schema.org to find any errors on your markup.
Recover Broken Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites pointing to yours. Google uses them to determine how trustworthy your site is. A page with a lot of backlinks from other trusted sites tends to rank higher than a similar page without them.
Backlinks break when links point to pages on your site that no longer exist. The linking site still sends credibility toward you, but you don’t receive it because the destination is a dead end.
Recovering them is one of the faster wins in ecommerce SEO. The authority is already earned, but you need to redirect the broken URL to the right live page. As those get recovered, they’ll help your site gain visibility in search engines.
Use a tool like Ahrefs’ free broken link checker to find them. For each link identified, you’ll want to set up a 301 redirect from the broken URL to the most relevant live page on your site.
Publish Product- and Problem-Focused Blog Posts
Blog content is the longest play in this section. It may not drive revenue this week, but it compounds in a way most other ecommerce marketing channels don’t.
There are two types of posts worth prioritizing:
- Posts about products: Comparisons, buying guides, and “best x” articles targeting people close to a purchase decision. A post comparing memory foam and hybrid mattresses will connect you with people who are almost ready to buy a bed and want help understanding their options.
- Posts about problems (and solutions): Articles that introduce your product as a possible solution. Someone searching “how to fix lower back pain from sitting at a desk” might not be ready to buy a chair yet, but they’re starting to think about it. It’s a good opportunity to talk about how your chairs can help.
Both types of posts help you build topical authority over time, which tells search engines your site is a credible source of information about your product category. That authority supports keyword rankings for your entire site, including your product and category pages.
The key is publishing consistently and writing for the human reader first (that’s always the target audience, not search engines). A post that genuinely helps someone is also the post that ranks.
For a more in-depth look at how blogging drives sales, read our ecommerce content strategy guide.
More Ecommerce SEO Best Practices
The updates we discussed in the section above will have the most immediate impact on revenue. But they only work when the rest of your SEO foundation is solid.
Below, we’ll cover some additional elements that are necessary to have in place if you want to stay visible in search engines. We’ll divide these elements into three categories:
- On-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Off-page SEO
Think of these as your infrastructure. The revenue-focused updates above are only as strong as the foundation supporting them.
On-Page SEO for Ecommerce Websites
On-page optimization refers to the visible updates you make to help search engines and potential customers understand what those pages are about. The most important items for ecommerce stores:
- Title tags
- Heading structure
- URL structure
- Alt text
- Category page FAQ sections
- Author bios
- No thin pages
- No keyword cannibalization
Here’s what each of these means (and why you’ll want to check for them in any ecommerce SEO site audit):
Title tags
Title tags are the clickable headlines that appear in search results. Every product and category page needs a unique title tag that includes its target keyword (and ideally stays under 60 characters because anything longer gets cut off).
Heading structure
Start every page with a single H1 header to describe the page’s main purpose, then use H2s and H3s to organize everything beneath it. Consistent heading structure makes it easier for search engines to understand how your content is organized.
URL structure
URLs should be short, readable, and include your target keyword (with filler words removed).
For example, our article titled How to Choose an SEO Agency has the URL intergrowth.com/seo/how-choose-seo-agency/.
Shoppers and search engines should be able to tell what a page is about from the URL alone.
Alt text
Add short, descriptive labels to every product image on your site. It helps search engines understand your images and makes your products eligible to appear in image search results.
Category page FAQs
An FAQ section at the bottom of your category pages gives you space to answer common pre-purchase questions. It also gives you space to include relevant keywords in a way that doesn’t clutter the page.
Author bios on blog posts
Google uses a metric called Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) to evaluate the people behind your content and assess your overall site quality.
Adding author bios to your log posts with credentials, experience, and links to social profiles gives Google and readers a clearer picture of who’s creating your content and why they’re worth listening to.
No thin pages
Every product page should give Google and your shoppers enough to work with. A name and price aren’t enough. Consider expanding pages that are light on content before spending time on new ones.
No keyword cannibalization
Each page on your site should target a distinct set of search queries. When two web pages compete for the same search terms, Google has to pick one, and the one it picks may not be the one you want.
Technical SEO for Ecommerce Websites
Technical SEO is about optimizing your site’s functionality so search engines can find, access, and understand it. Most technical SEO issues are invisible to visitors (which is why they often go unnoticed), but they can drive your search visibility down over time.
Key areas to address:
- Site speed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Canonical tags
- Redirect chains
- Robots.txt
- HTTPS/SSL
Here’s why we care about those items:
Site speed
Google measures loading speed as a ranking factor through a set of metrics called Core Web Vitals.
Run your key pages through Google’s Page Speed Insights to see where you stand. You’ll want to work with your developers to address any red flags, as slow pages can cost you search rankings (and sales).
Mobile-friendliness
Google indexes the mobile version of your site first. If your store has a poor user experience on a phone screen, your rankings will reflect that.
Canonical tags
Ecommerce sites are prone to generating duplicate pages through product variants, filtered URLs, and pagination. Canonical tags can tell Google which version of each page you want it to show in search results.
Redirect chains
A redirect that points to another redirect creates a chain. Each one adds load time and dilutes the authority passing through the link. You can fix these by pointing the original URL directly to the final location.
Robots.txt
This file tells search engine crawlers which pages they can access and which they should skip.
Checkout and account pages should be blocked because you don’t want them appearing in search results. Product, category, and blog pages should not be blocked.
HTTPS/SSL
Your site should load on https://, not http://.
Having https:// at the beginning of your URL means your site is a secure one where users can feel confident submitting their credit card information.
Google uses SSL certificates as a ranking signal, and browsers flag non-secure sites with a warning that’s likely to drive shoppers away from your site.
Off-Page SEO for Ecommerce Websites
Off-page SEO covers all of the factors that affect your search visibility from outside your website. It’s primarily about improving your site’s reputation in the eyes of search engines.
Search engine algorithms place the most emphasis on the quality and relevance of the sites linking to yours. A link from a trusted industry publication carries more weight than dozens of links from low-quality websites.
Related: Expert Commentary PR: A Better Approach to Link Building
How Is AI Changing Ecommerce SEO?
Search behaviors are changing. More shoppers are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT to research products before they buy, and the brands that show up in those results aren’t always the ones with the biggest budgets or the most backlinks.
The good news is that most of what makes a site rank well in Google also makes it more likely to be cited by AI search tools: high-quality content and a clean technical foundation.
That said, there are a few things we’re paying much closer attention to as we work to build AI visibility for our clients:
- Additional structured data to help AI tools better understand product and category pages.
- More comprehensive FAQ sections on category pages to provide more context into our clients’ products (and who AI tools should recommend them to).
- Shortening the buyer journey to help shoppers and LLMs find products faster.
We wrote a more in-depth breakdown of how SEO and AI search overlap, and what it means for your customer acquisition strategy, here: AEO Means Doing SEO Better.
You might also be interested in this article: The ROI of SEO in the AI Era
Ecommerce SEO isn’t a one-time project. It’s a system you build and improve over time, and the results compound in a way that most other marketing channels don’t.
The stores that grow through SEO aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones that get the fundamentals right, stay consistent, and treat organic search as a long-term asset rather than a short-term tactic.
If you’ve worked through this guide and come away with more to fix than you have time for, that’s completely understandable. Prioritize those steps most likely to drive revenue and work from there.
And if you’d rather have an experienced team handle it, we’d love to talk.
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.
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