Published on May 12th, 2020 | by Abhishek Shah

The Two Sides of E-commerce SEO: Visibility + Buyability

For any ecommerce store to maximize organic sales, it is important to consider both aspects of e-commerce SEO: visibility and buyability. Visibility and buyability are two sides of the same coin. One cannot function without the other.

It is pointless to put a ton of effort into getting your products visible to search engines if your website doesn’t make it easy for someone to purchase something. And there is no point having a seamless buying experience if no one can find your site.

In this article, we’re going to look at how you can increase the visibility and buyability of your products to increase sales without paid advertising.

Product visibility + buyability

Visibility is a process of increasing the search presence of individual products through creating informative, educational optimized content. It also involves ensuring your e-commerce site is built for ease of use. And that it is also easy for search engines to crawl and index.

Buyability is best thought of as: the overall conversion rate of a product page. This is calculated by (transactions/page visits) x100. So, if 500 people view an item in a month and 15 people purchase the product, the buyability (conversion rate) of that product is: 3%.

How to Increase Visibility?

One can achieve and increase product visibility by doing:

Keyword research

For keyword research, there are three broad categories of search terms you want to research:

Branded search terms.
Non-branded intend-to-buy search terms.
Non-branded enquiry search terms.

The wider the variety of keywords you rank for the better chance you have of finding no matter what part of the buying journey they are on.

Internal linking

Also, if you have a blog discussing one of your products and the blog links back to the product this makes it easier for the consumer to find what they’re looking. It also helps Google figure out which piece of content is the most important—in this case the product as the blog is linking to it.

Schema markup

This is a piece of code which can added into your website’s HTML to provide context around content for Google and other search engines. Schema markup will help Google see more than just words, it will see a product, a price, a product description and reviews. Making it easier to show consumers the relevant information on the search engine results pages.

The schema markup can be used on product pages and FAQ pages.

Long-form content

This ties in with in with keyword research, internal linking and the next point (meta-data). Long-form content such as blogging or article writing allows you to provide in-depth answers to your customer’s questions.

You can blog on your own site as well as third-party sites like Medium and LinkedIn. The advantage of e-commerce stores creating long-from content is it allows you to reach a wider audience and introduce more consumers to your brand and to your products.

SEO meta-descriptions

Well-written, properly optimized meta-descriptions can impact your click-through-rate (CTR). That short summary you see below a header on the search results is a meta-description. It is a summary of the page a consumer is about to click on.

A well-written, properly optimized meta-description, should be clear, succinct and tell the consumer why they want to click through to your page.

How to Increase Buyability?

Product buyability depends upon a multitude of factors such as:

Product description

Too many marketers list out the features of the product right off the bat. And that’s it. This is wrong. People choose emotionally and then justify their decision logically. What this means is you need to accentuate the benefits over the features of your product.

The benefits of buying a product should be put in a bullet point list next to the image. The actual facts and details of the product can go in the product description section. This section still needs to speak to the consumer’s wants and needs while providing the facts.

Product photoshoot

As more people buy online, they want to be able to see as much of the item or product as possible. This means you may need to have professional photos taken of an item from different angles. This allows consumers to get a good idea of what they’re buying, and it helps to make sure the item is what they’re looking for.

The images need to be in a high resolution as well as a good zoom function, allowing consumers to get a closer look at certain aspects of your products.

Online merchandising

The above two points are key to online merchandising. You must clearly explain the benefits of a product (a car seat doesn’t just look good and protect your seat from sun damage and spillage, it’s also comfortable and will make your daily drive to and from work more enjoyably).

You must also make sure you have high-quality, professional images to entice a consumer to browse through the images.

How the two sides of e-commerce SEO can help improve your sales

By implementing e-commerce SEO, you can dramatically increase your sales over time. With the right e-commerce SEO strategy, you can boost your search engine presence with a wide variety of keywords, and then convert that traffic will well-presented, well-written sales copy.

If you would like to know more about e-commerce SEO, or how we can help you, please contact us today.

Tags: buyability, e-commerce, SEO, two sides, viewability

About the Author

Abhishek Shah Abhishek Shah helps companies increase their revenue via SEO & Content marketing. He is the co-founder of www.allydigitalmedia.com. As a leading voice in Digital Media and Marketing, he is regularly invited to share his views and expertise by Entrepreneur Magazine, Social Media Today, Jeff Bullas, Social Media Examiner and several others. He advocates for evidence-based marketing strategies to fuel the businesses.