Ecommerce marketers know that the higher your keyword rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), the more qualified traffic you’ll get. Unlike paid traffic strategies, an ecommerce SEO agency can help you generate long-term traffic to your store. 

Choose the right agency, and you’ll be able to develop an SEO-driven content strategy, a robust backlinking program, and/or the tools you need to prevent and fix any technical issues with your website.

If you’re considering working with an ecommerce SEO agency, it’s crucial to understand the broad scope of issues they’ll assist your team with and whether or not a collaboration could benefit your brand. Let’s dive into what to expect from an ecommerce SEO agency.

1. Identifying And Targeting High-Volume Keywords

One of the first things your ecommerce SEO agency does is keyword research. The main goal of keyword research is to provide a direction for your campaign. 

Keyword research is all about identifying and targeting relevant high-volume keywords. High-volume keywords are search queries that have a huge search volume. That means many people enter these queries on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. 

To do this, ecommerce SEO agencies use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and Semrush. 

Check out the example featured in the image below.

To do keyword research effectively, ecommerce SEO agencies must consider the following factors.

•  Your ideal customers
•  Your competitors and the keywords they're targeting
• The keywords that will give your store the best ROI
•  Find keywords to optimize your current web pages
• The number of keywords to target to help you turn a profit
• The types of keywords to target, i.e., primary, secondary, or long-tail keywords

By doing this, your ecommerce SEO agency can get a bird's eye view of your market's landscape. That includes the search terms potential customers use to find your store online. And which keywords can help you get to the top of SERPs to increase traffic, improve online visibility, and boost conversions.

Moreover, proper keyword research will tell the agency the level of competition to expect. Therefore, depending on your budget and goals, they’ll pick the right fights to achieve the desired results. 

For example, they may go after cheaper low to medium-volume keywords if you have a lower budget and want quick results. On the other hand, if you have a bigger budget and a bit of patience, they can go after the more competitive keywords that are likely to drive the most traffic in the future.

As you’re considering which agency, if any, will be right for your ecommerce brand, it’s helpful to have an idea of the most important keywords your website should be ranking for. One way to discover long-tail keywords, especially, is through your customers’ Ratings & Reviews.

These keywords are often longer and more specific phrases used regularly by customers when they’re talking about your brand or product. For example, focusing on “women’s running shoes with arch support” may help you reach customers further down the funnel than simply optimizing your site content for “running shoes.”

Bring a list of a few keywords you’re interested in ranking for to the SEO agencies you ultimately meet with to provide context and ensure a good fit for your brand.

2. Creating Useful And Memorable Content

Good content is to SEO what good ads are to paid campaigns. As a result, creating useful and memorable text content is the key to maximizing organic (SEO) reach and building profitable relationships with potential customers.

And the best part about content creation is that it can be inexpensive and sustainable compared to using pay-per-click advertisements to generate traffic. Using the keywords from the previous step, your ecommerce SEO agency can generate content ideas and create a suitable content marketing plan. Of course, these ideas must be relevant to your niche to give your store that initial bump in traffic.

The agency will then create engaging content, adding the target keyword throughout the content. And the best part about it is that the content can be repurposed or repackaged and shared on social media or emails through email marketing solutions like GetResponse.

Before publishing the content on your online store, they'll use SEO software solutions like Surfer (featured above) to optimize and format it to rank on SERPs. To create engaging content, your ecommerce SEO agency pays attention to tone and style. 

The content and product descriptions must be easily digestible without technical terms or jargon. It’s also valuable to be consistently sharing content on your website. Featuring user-generated content (UGC) in on-site displays is a great way to keep your site updated with the freshest content. UGC widgets optimized for SEO like Pixlee TurnTo’s automatically populate website galleries with content as it’s collected and approved in real-time.

3. Optimizing Site Speed

Page speed is a major factor that helps determine how well your pages will rank on SERPs. Survey after survey has shown that more than 50% of your prospects will not wait for a slow page. 

When your ecommerce SEO agency talks about page speed, they're referring to the time it takes for a product page to load. It's calculated by summing up the time it takes for your browser to download visible assets, i.e., stylesheets, scripts, and images.

The general consensus among SEOs and Google is that the ideal page load speed is under two seconds. A second more or a 3-second delay is a turn-off for most web users. In fact, research shows that the first 5 seconds of a page loading can affect your conversion rates significantly. 

That's why a major goal of your ecommerce SEO agency is to optimize your store to load in three seconds or less. 

The first thing your ecommerce SEO agency will do is test your current page load speeds. To do this, they use tools like Google's PageSpeed Insights, which provides a report like the one shown below.

If your store takes longer than three seconds to load, they'll find out why. Some of the reasons your site load speed may be slow include having too many unoptimized images, scripts, and content in your online store. 

To improve page load speed, the agency will take measures such as minifying HTML, Javascript & CSS files, minimizing redirects, compressing images, and caching, among others. They may also suggest that visual content on your product pages like Ratings & Reviews or UGC are optimized for a quick and efficient user experience.

4. Improving Internal Linking & Site Architecture

The next thing your ecommerce SEO agency will focus on is your store's hyperlinks or URLs. 

Internal links are links that point to other pages on your website. They help visitors navigate your store to find the correct information or products. In SEO, internal links help search engines find, crawl, and get an idea of what your store is about.

An ecommerce SEO agency will use internal links to increase page authority for a URL. Page authority is a metric that predicts how well a URL will rank in SERPs. SEO-optimized internal links help convey hierarchy, authority, and meaning to search engines. 

The image below gives an example of internal linking and site architecture. 

Website architecture is all about organizing and prioritizing information in your store. Why is this important? To help people and site engines understand how pages in your store are organized. Your ecommerce SEO agency will optimize your store's URLs, sitemap, and navigation.

The main reason for optimizing website architecture is to improve the user experience and customer satisfaction. Moreover, an optimized architecture helps search engines like Google crawl your store more efficiently. 

Ecommerce SEO agencies rely on specific principles to optimize your store architecture. They include "Don't make people think," unique URLs, fewer clicks, etc.

5. Writing Guest Posts For Credible Sites

Writing guest posts for credible sites is also known as guest posting. It's an SEO process involving creating and publishing relevant content on authority websites. 

Authority sites are reputable websites that publish high-quality content, like Forbes. The majority of ecommerce SEO agencies leverage guest posting as a digital marketing strategy. 

A guest post will often have your name, your store's URL, social media handles, a short bio, and a picture. Some of the reasons why your ecommerce SEO agency uses guest posting is because it helps:

• Generate targeted organic traffic to your store. Publishing a guest post on an authority site allows you to leverage that site’s organic traffic and point it to your store. 
• Boost your store’s rankings on SERPs because search engines view the backlinks guest posts generate as votes of confidence in your store.
•  Boost your online presence by giving your store more opportunities to be featured on other related websites. 
• Boost your domain's authority; the more niche-relevant links you have, the more “link juice” goes to your store. That increases your domain’s authority making it easier for you to rank for your target keywords and generate more leads.

Your ecommerce SEO experts will target ecommerce websites and other reputable sites within your industry, e.g., Shopify and BigCommerce, for guest posting. Depending on the agency you're working with, you might get anywhere from two to a dozen guest posts every month. 

Examples of Ecommerce SEO Agencies

While SEO is still a buzzword in the digital marketing landscape, it's not new. But because Google constantly updates its search algorithm, it's become harder to rank on SERPs. Luckily, some ecommerce SEO agencies specialize in getting ecommerce businesses like yours to the first page. Here are a couple of noteworthy mentions:

1. ‍Disruptive Advertising

With positive reviews all over the web, Disruptive Advertising aspires to be “the last agency you work with.” They offer a wide variety of SEO and marketing services. That includes paid advertising, organic, email marketing, lead nurturing, and creative services. Ecommerce SEO services impact a couple of these areas, but where Disruptive Advertising truly shines is conversion rate optimization.

2. Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

Thrive prides itself on being a full-service digital marketing agency. Since its start in 2005, Thrive has worked with a diverse client and industry portfolio. They offer a wide range of services, from a custom ecommerce SEO strategy, paid advertising, and copywriting to conversion rate optimization.

3. Everstar Ecommerce Marketing Agency

This Florida-based agency helps transform great ideas into profitable realities. They pride themselves on their foundation-based approach to growing ecommerce businesses online. After laying a solid foundation, they start their growth hacking process. That includes social media advertising, Google shopping ads, influencer & email marketing, and ecommerce SEO campaigns.

These are only examples of top ecommerce SEO agencies. Of course, we recommend doing your due diligence before applying to work with either company. 

No two ecommerce SEO agencies are the same. So while the above steps are accurate, don’t expect your agency to match it to a 'T.' But they are the bare minimum for any SEO marketing agency (rather than targeting one or two issues with an independent contractor skilled in SEO).

Lastly, remember it takes time (approximately 6-12 months) to start seeing SEO results, so you have to be patient.

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Michal Leszczyński is immersed in developing, implementing, and coordinating all manner of content marketing projects as the Head Of Content Marketing & Partnerships at GetResponse. He has 10-plus years of expertise in online marketing with a Master of Science Degree in Strategic Marketing and Consulting from the University of Birmingham (UK). Michal is the author of more than 100 articles, ebooks, and courses for both GetResponse and renowned websites like Crazy Egg and Social Media Today.