SEO for eCommerce: Increase the visibility of your business internationally

If you want to sell your products or services to customers in other countries and take advantage of the potential of global e-commerce, you need to implement an international SEO strategy for your eCommerce.

But how do you do international SEO for your eCommerce? What aspects should you consider? In this article we explain how to organically position your eCommerce in other countries in a successful way.

Why it's important to have an international SEO strategy for your ecommerce

An eCommerce, or electronic commerce, as its name suggests, bases its business model on internet sales. For this reason, your success or failure will depend on the ability of the company to make the website appear in front of the eyes of its target audience. And this is even more important when operating in an international context.

When we talk about SEO for an eCommerce we refer to set of implementations, both technically and in terms of content, which allow you to position your business among the top search results in different countries.

Implementing an SEO strategy focused specifically on international e-commerce will allow you to get ahead of all your competitors and position yourself above them in the results rankings of Google or other search engines.

We are therefore going to see how search engine optimization works in an eCommerce and what are the factors to take into consideration.

How does SEO for international eCommerce work

An SEO strategy aimed at positioning an e-commerce at an international level involves different actions that must be carried out in a meticulous manner to guarantee the expected results. We explain each one to you in detail.

Do keyword research for each country

A fundamental step to optimize the SEO of your website at an international level is to choose the keywords used by users when searching for your services or products.

Although there are dozens of more or less expensive tools for this, before starting any keyword research, you have to understand very well who your buyer persona is and how it can vary in each country you are targeting. Once you have it defined, it's time to think about how and with what terms users search for what you offer in different countries.

One of the most common errors occurs when an eCommerce offers its products to markets that, despite being located in different countries, speak the same language. In these cases, the same keywords and texts are usually used, without taking into account that two countries that speak the same language don't always refer to the same thing with the same word, for example, “car” in Spain is “car” in Latin America.

In addition, when you're doing your keyword research, Take a close look at the type of search intent which is associated with each keyword. Trying to position a product listing with informational keywords is not the same as trying to position a product listing with transactional keywords. The latter are much more suitable.

If you want to know more about this topic, in our blog you will find a post dedicated to how to carry out keyword research for your eCommerce. 

Optimize the structure of your website

An eCommerce usually has dozens (if not hundreds) of different products. Therefore, without a suitable structure, many of these products are likely to be lost and never reach the user's eyes.

Make sure that the The structure of your website is intuitive for your buyer persona: your users should understand how to navigate your online store quickly, if you want to prevent them from leaving without interacting.

The more clicks a user has to make to get to the page they want to visit on your website, the lower the chances of them arriving. And Google takes this into account: each page of your website should be a maximum of 3 clicks away from every other page.

Work on the On-Page SEO of your eCommerce

On Page SEO It is the set of optimizations that are carried out in a specific way on each page of the web. These include improvements related to headers, metadata, content, images, and so on.

Headers structure

The structure of the headers of a page must follow a logical and easily recognizable order. Let's think, for example, of the structure of a newspaper: we have the main headline and hence the different subtitles that will go down in level depending on the importance of each section within the article.

The same thing happens on a website. The main headline, or H1, will be the title of the page and must contain yes or yes the target keyword. In addition, There only has to be one H1 for each page, this will be responsible for informing Google about the topic covered on the page in question. Successively we will have the subtitles H2, H3, H4 and even H6.

Metadata

Metadata is the data of each page on your website that appear as a preview in the search results: the meta title and the meta description.

For the SEO of your eCommerce to be optimized, you have to follow some very important rules:

• Meta-title: It doesn't have to exceed 60 characters if you want it to be displayed in full on the Google results page, it has to include the keyword you want to position and it has to be eye-catching.

• Meta-description: It's not a direct positioning factor like the meta title, the meta description helps you increase your CTR. Therefore, it has to attract the user's attention and include the keyword.

Optimize product descriptions

Often the product pages of an eCommerce only present the product through a photo and a title, but without a description. Other times, they provide the description, but with duplicate text of other products and less than 350 words. This represents a major obstacle when it comes to positioning these pages.

A product page should have the following characteristics:

• An H1 that includes the product keyword
• One or more optimized photos of the product in question
• A description of at least 350 words and including the main and secondary keywords

Implement text with your keyword on category pages

What we just said for product pages also applies to category pages. The presence of H1 and text of at least 350 words, both with the main keyword, is a determining factor when it comes to allowing indexing and improving the SEO positioning of this type of e-commerce pages at an international level.

Implement structured data in the SEO of your eCommerce

Structured data is a way of marking the content of a web page so that search engines can better understand your content and present it more effectively in the search results. This data can help you increase your visibility in search engines and improve organic CTR.

A very common example of structured data is the implementation of a FAQ section or frequently asked questions.

Optimize images

The images on a website do not only serve a decorative function in the eyes of the user. Estas they directly affect the final size of your website and, therefore, its loading speed. The faster your website loads, the better your customer experience will be and the more “points” you will receive from Google in the ranking of results.

Generally speaking, an image optimized for SEO It should not exceed 100kb, should be loaded in the new WebP format and should include an alternative text that includes the main keyword.

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Technical SEO for your eCommerce

In addition to OnPage SEO, it's very important to understand what's going on in the”backend“of your website, especially in an international environment.

To optimize the SEO of your international eCommerce as best as possible, it is essential ensure that the technical part is well implemented. Next, let's look at the main factors that come into play.

Domain/Subdomain/Subdirectories

In an international environment, the first thing to make sure is that the web ise present in the correct language depending on the destination country. For this reason, we have to think about how we are going to divide the different language versions of our eCommerce.

The most common are two:

• Subdomains: It's about creating a subdomain for each destination country, making each one independent of the others. This means multiplying SEO efforts in each subdomain so that each one positions itself in its target market.
• Subdirectories: It's about creating a subdirectory for each language version. All subdirectories would depend on the same domain, making it easier to transfer link juice between different versions.

Hosting and CDN

Depending on the type of web design in an international environment (domain, subdomain and subdirectories), you'll have to choose one or another hosting solution. If you decide to keep the different language versions of your website in different subdomains, then the most recommended thing would be choose a hosting capable of offering you the servers in the different countries to which your subdomains are directed. This will reduce the distance, and therefore the time, between the user's request and the server's response.

If, on the other hand, you choose the subdirectory solution, the hosting will have to be the same for each language version. The solution, in this case, is to hire a CDN or Content Delivery Network. These types of hosting have several servers around the world and each of them will host a copy of your website. In this way, depending on where the user is located, the nearest server will be the one that answers the request to reduce load time.

Labels <Hreflang>

An international eCommerce, as you can imagine, will have content translated or sometimes duplicated between one language version and the other. To indicate to Google that we have different URLs with the same content, but adapted or segmented for users from different countries, it is very important Use the label <hreflang>.

This is an HTML tag in which we will indicate to the search engine what are the URLs of the alternative languages of the page being viewed. We will use it whether the content is fully translated or if there are only partial changes, or if it is only the template, the menu and the footer that varies.

Canonicals

It's very important to consider the canonical URL factor. These can be translated as the URL that the search engine has to take as a reference for each page of your website.

It is very common in an eCommerce that there are different versions of the same product and that, obviously, each version has its own URL. However, even though the user is able to understand that each URL is simply a different version of the same main product. For example: red Nike shoes, blue Nike shoes, black Nike shoes are all different versions of the same Nike shoe. Search engines treat each version as a separate product (or rather, each URL as a unique URL). This can cause duplicate content and, consequently, a penalty in organic positioning.

Canonical URLs are the solution to this problem, as they inform the search engine what the main URL is, what should be indexed and what are the secondary URLs which only represent small variations of the same product.

Create relevant content to boost the SEO of your ecommerce

On Page and technical optimizations will never be enough if they are not backed up by the presence of relevant content. It should be kept in mind that Google rewards only those websites that effectively offer the solution to the user's problem. 

For this reason, it is essential to have content that is useful for your users. How to achieve this? Through detailed descriptions of products and categories and with the implementation of a blog. The latter has to be designed independently for each country that eCommerce is aimed at. This is because the searches carried out in Spain may not be the same as those carried out in Ecuador or Bolivia, for example.

Conclusions about SEO for international eCommerce

As we have seen throughout the article, SEO optimizations for an international eCommerce take into account dozens of different factors, each and every one equally important to reach the top positions in the ranking of results.

This is why it is important that Trust an expert in the field to avoid possible penalties from Google and, above all, to reduce the time needed to see the first results.

Do you need help with the international SEO of your eCommerce?

At Novicell we have a team specialized in international SEO that will be more than happy to support you in the internationalization of your eCommerce.