Ecommerce is a specialized type of digital marketing whose goal is the sale of goods and/or services online.
Ecommerce presents unique challenges. The first one is architecture. A poorly designed commerce site can destroy your SEO efforts since there are so many pages, links, categories and variations.
Another major challenge with ecommerce is CRO (conversion rate optimization) or landing page optimization as its commonly referred to in the context of ecommerce.
I sold products on Etsy for many years and one thing that I could always count on was not knowing what my landing pages were going to look like on any given day. Etsy was constantly testing new iterations of their landing pages and trying to find something that converts better. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it was terrible. But its exactly what they should be doing. Amazon does the same thing. Their changes aren’t always as noticeable and extreme, but they are constantly tweaking their pages to produce better conversion rates.
Another challenge with ecommerce is content. Besides the description of the product, there’s not a lot of typical content. So, SEO relies heavily on more meta-driven factors to define what the page is about. Its paramount that you include as much meta data about your product as possible and make sure that its unique to your other products.
The other thing that drives ecommerce SEO is domain authority and backlinks. Which makes selling against someone like Amazon very difficult.
Are people willing to give you their credit card number? Do you have verified reviews? Are people engaging with your site in important ways, like sending you messages, checking out lots of different pages or subscribing to your email list? Google factors these things in. So be sure you have well groomed Google Analytics that google can understand your goals.
Ecommerce is very hard and needs lots of work over a long time to compete with the likes of Amazon, Etsy and Ebay. It won’t happen fast, so just put in the work and be patient.
