15 Ecommerce SEO Experts Reveal Top Insights for 2023

Are you wondering how to do SEO for e-commerce?

Looking for expert insights on eCommerce SEO?

Not sure how to make your online store more successful?

From admitting that the traditional customer journey is dead, to quickly pivoting due to Google’s constant updates, to reassessing benchmarks in the wake of the pandemic digital boom and subsequent collapse, experts from award-winning agencies assess what upcoming in ecommerce SEO.

We wanted to go beyond unpredictability, so we interviewed 15 digital growth and SEO experts for their insights, tips and lessons learned as part of our Ecommerce SEO Deep Dive.

In this article, e-commerce experts talk about search behaviors, contact clients, predictions to align with current trends, and more.

We’ll see what they have to say.

Implement Multi-Touchpoint Customer Journeys As Search Behaviors Change

James Finlayson, Senior Leader at the7stars: “Google search volumes aren’t just stagnant – in many cases, they’re declining. Despite this, consumers are doing more research before purchases than ever – on Amazon and other ‘super retailers’, on TikTok, big publishers with loyal audiences, Pinterest, YouTube, and Reddit. We recently looked at one market where we think less than 10% of the search activity was happening on Google.” Read Finlayson on digital and in-store buying, pushing for bigger budgets, and his Sofology success story.

Sara Povoas, Content and Senior Manager at iProspect in Portugal:  “We noticed a huge increase in shopping, not only for the younger audience but also for the elderly, which is new. I think users are getting more demanding and more knowledgeable – if you have a lot of offers, you need to make smart decisions. So people are looking for more. Reviews, opinions, video demos and price comparisons are becoming increasingly popular as people make these purchasing decision searches.” Povoas read up on volatile stocks, health and cosmetics trends, and communicating with clients.

Luke Carthy, Senior E-Commerce & CRO Advisor: “What I’m seeing across my consumer-based clients is that the Average Order Value is up, but the number of transactions is probably similar or falling. By that I mean they are spending more per transaction. Rather than someone going to a clothing retailer, maybe once a month or once every few weeks, depending on their previous shopping habits, they will shop less often. And when they shop, they will spend more money. I think that happens for a couple of reasons: One is to ease the delivery fees and, second, to try to find thresholds to claim rewards, whatever those are.” Read Carthy on buy-in, transition strategies, and B2B clients.

Jen Cornwell, Senior Director of Digital Strategy at Ignite Visibility: “The way people shop has changed, as they’ve switched to online and they’re back in this hybrid style. I think it all comes down to setting expectations: Can we get back to those traffic levels or conversion levels online again? What are some creative ways we can do if we think that is the case? User behavior has changed dramatically.

For example, we had an electronics client that sold computers, both online and brick-and-mortar. We started to change at the beginning of 2022 because they had more foot traffic to their stores – which they are happy about, but they don’t see as many online purchases anymore. Even in cases where there is no brick-and-mortar component or the product is only available online, the opportunity for someone to buy it in person is just as appealing to them as the Internet. .” Read Cornwell on video content, white papers, and creative page optimization.

Get Creative With Product Reviews, Long-Tail Keywords & Specificity, As Google Algorithm Updates Intensify

James Euinton, Account Director at The SEO Works: “Over the years, as Google has improved its language handling, it has become more important to focus on the more specific, longer phrases. Sometimes this may mean catering to specific queries and keywords that fall outside the standard product and category pages. It is important that we tailor additional content to these to target the customer at different points of the journey or funnel.” Read Euinton on moving the needle quickly, Core Web Vitals, and business contexts.

Radu Marcusu, CEO of Upswing: “The biggest challenge this year for marketing managers was to explain the sensations in the market and how to go about it. That’s why I would say it was more about us being proactive in communicating these changes to our clients. They needed support to understand the overall market trends and that it was a general shift in demand – and, of course, to adapt to it. That also meant new tactics or focusing on specific actions. For example, if Google now recommends filtered searches, we’ll make sure our clients have filters or categories that target those searches. We also focus on having the right content to answer those searches. Or keep their Google My Business profiles optimized. In short, we were proactive in adapting specific strategies, budgets and activities that Google’s changes implied.” Read Marcusu about differentiating through scenting, video search, and developing internal tools.

Eli Schwartz, Growth Consultant and Senior Strategic Advisor: “Google and other search engines use deep learning to continuously improve search results for their users. Last year, I noticed that local results are triggered more often when Google detects local intent. At the same time, on results where there shouldn’t be local resolution, I’ve seen the local results disappear.”

Forecasts, SEO ROI & Data-Led Decisions Should Be At The Forefront For Ecommerce Businesses

Marc Swann, Director of Search at Glass Digital: “There’s no doubt that retailers are feeling the pinch as consumers tighten their belts, and this poses risks for most marketing agencies when it comes to value protect their services. SEO is a channel that is often at greater risk when times are tough, and marketing budgets are scrutinized. SEO performance can finally be maintained in the short and even medium term without any recurring spending associated with it, unlike something like paid search when ad spending stops, performance disappears. So definitely, spending in SEO is justified which we have seen asked for more and is not seen as a luxury in more difficult times. Ultimately, those who are able to execute their SEO strategies through the tough times will be in much stronger positions when the economy finally turns positive.” Swan read on multilingual sites, sports retailers, and “luxury” channels.

Steve Walker, Technical Director at Journey More: “Measuring ROI has always been important, but it’s no longer nice. Measuring ROI is essential. This is why performance monitoring tools like SEOmonitor are essential for your agency. The number of in-house teams has also increased significantly over the past few months. This is great news for the SEO industry and a testament to the importance of SEO in digital marketing – but it fundamentally changes the way agencies must work. We are no longer just additional resources that do basic SEO work. We need to act in a similar way to provide business consultancy and support at a strategic level.” Read Walker on new user journeys, impact measurement, and funnel optimization.

Check out the Rank Tracker Strategy on SEOmonitor.com, December 2022

Ben Austin, Founder & Absolute Digital Media CEO: “We use forecasting to promote and upsell e-commerce clients to demonstrate our understanding of the industry they compete in and the business. By doing so, we can more effectively drive what is needed to drive continued growth in the business while emphasizing the continued value that our innovative SEO strategies provide. In addition to providing a basic forecast of the brand’s current market position, we provide additional insight into the broader business benefits such as returning customers, revenue, and ROI.” Read Austin on business strategies, operating vertically in e-commerce, and dynamic URLs.

Charlie Norledge, Senior Performance Manager at Impression: “The pitches are a lot more competitive now because there are probably fewer clients going to market as things have started to slow down a bit. We had to make sure we included innovative tactics. Like talking about how to use social media trends organically when we talk about SEO technology, not just putting a list of solutions, making sure we have a priority behind things and only as much data as possible give them

Another important piece is forecasting. When we go to a competitive field, forecasting, I would say, is essential. If we didn’t do it, we could be lost. We were up against other agencies, and because we had forecasts in place, we got the job done.” Read Norledge on GPT-3 effectiveness, reporting, and client expectations.

Kevin Gibbons, Founder and CEO at Re:signal: “For us, it’s important to have strong communication with our clients about where the priorities are and make sure we know not only where the search demand is, but the also supply. It helps us revisit what we’re doing and know what clients are focusing on – in terms of seasonality and where the priorities may and may be shifting because of those issues.

I think everyone is probably a little bit more fit and careful right now about what they’re doing. So, again, that’s why e-commerce is such a strong sector for us. Because you can track organic revenue performance. Everyone wants to make sure they are maximizing their ROI.” Read Gibbons on internationalization and his ASICS success story.

SEO Forecast by SEOmonitor, December 2022

Leverage Integrated Campaigns To Build More Growth Opportunities

It’s not about one channel or one tactic, but digital e-commerce experts are increasingly looking at how they can optimize the overall user experience, coordinate PR and SEO efforts, and make sense of the entire landscape of industries and where the opportunity is:

Petar Jovetic, Organic Director at Impression: “Everything we do has to show value and be targeted. We are introducing more and more innovation into our offer. Leveraging AI to handle higher workloads and then make it more efficient was very powerful. One more thing I’m keen to explore is using our CRO section, especially at the bottom of the funnel where all users are included, to strategically increase acquisition with more A/B testing, multivariate testing, etc . and SEO can complement each other more. I think that is very attractive in the current economic environment. So we’re not just throwing in additional users but nurturing them through the funnel to conversion.” Read Jovetic on SEO maturity frameworks and the State of Retail.

Charlie Clark, Director of Accounts & Founder of Minty Digital: “I’ve noticed that more clients are looking to build their brand through digital PR, and we build their brand name rather than focusing on sales. Some of the big companies we work with used to allocate a separate budget to SEO, and that was it. Now they are allocating separate budgets within their departments, one for SEO and another for PR. They’ll have their traditional public relations, the standard press releases, but then they’ll be doing the digital aspect of that as well, which is quite interesting to find out.” Clark read on entering new markets and campaign KPIs.

Heemesh Vara, Senior Head at Semetrical: “Our keyword research process focuses on exploring the entire industry. That’s something different from other agencies. Where they could take a category-by-category approach and do it month by month, we do it the other way around. It’s a lot of work for us at the beginning, but it provides the client and us with a complete picture of their entire industry. For example, we worked with a vintage furniture client with different types of products and categories, from sofas, stools, chairs, side tables, etc. So we had to research the whole industry at the same time. And this is one of our unique selling propositions that we always put in the proposal as well.” Read Vara on SEO data analysis and securing baselines, stakeholder management, and budgets.

Ultimately, as our 15 interviews showed, e-commerce clients and markets keep changing, so showing sustainable results is key.

With all these challenges faced by SEO experts in mind, we continue to develop an SEO monitor to help you:

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the sponsor.