So it’s important to keep an eye on what works and what doesn’t, and to continually adapt.
Under these conditions, it’s hard to know exactly what SEO strategy to adopt for your e-commerce business.
However, the state of the art in SEO practices does allow us to identify a number of criteria. Here are a few that are and will be important in 2023.
What SEO criteria will drive e-commerce site positioning in 2023?
A set of criteria that could be described as an “SEO checklist” can be put in place to significantly improve SEO.
Some are well known, such as content quality, which refers to a number of elements such as the relevance of a text or description to the page title, the originality of the content (no plagiarism) or the size of the page (length of text, number of images, etc.).
Other elements are less well known but just as important, if not more so, and must be taken into account for an effective and up-to-date SEO strategy.
Backlinks and the referencing network
Backlinks are an SEO classic that is sometimes underestimated, yet they are essential to an effective SEO strategy (especially if you have an e-commerce blog), and 2023 is no exception to the rule!
Useful in their own right, because they bring additional value to site visitors wishing to find out more about a subject or reinforce their purchasing decision, backlinks are also useful for asserting a status of expertise, but above all for creating a virtuous SEO circle: a well-placed backlink to content/site relevant to one’s own offer or theme will certainly give the latter additional visibility, but will also send a signal to search engine algorithms that one’s e-commerce site is also a reference in the field in question.
So, backlinks are good – keep adding them!
Topical Authority
Literally, the authority possessed by a site on a given subject, this is a metric used by the algorithms to determine the influence of said site on the subject it deals with or the offers it proposes, all among comparable sites.
The algorithms rely in particular on the EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) scale to verify whether a site (e-commerce or not) presents offers and content that are sufficiently relevant, regular and considered non-meaningful to be seen as a serious player on the market in question.
This is also largely due to the backlinks used (always for a blog etc.), which will be beneficial if they themselves link to reference sites.
This authority also depends on the regular use over time of certain keywords related to your offer, etc., and which are found throughout your site (hence the importance of taking care of your semantic cocoons for your descriptions, articles and other categories).
User experience as an SEO criterion
In 2023, SEO trends point to an emphasis on content and stores that are “straight to the point”.
Indeed, search engines increasingly consider that a website relevant to a given offer or topic should enable visitors to reach their goal as quickly and easily as possible.
This goal may be to generate a conversion, or simply to answer the question they have entered on Google.
The methods by which the algorithms know whether a visitor has “reached their goal” may be more abstract than a simple conversion or add-to-cart, but the important thing to remember is to give the visitor what they want, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
For example, you could include a summary of key points in the preamble to an article, write an introduction in the form of an answer or statement on the home page of your e-commerce site, or include a section that asks customers if they’re satisfied with what they’ve found on the site.
The possibilities are endless!
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Taking Google updates into account
While it’s important to take all the above elements into account, you also need to pay attention to timing!
Indeed, it seems that the automatic evaluation of a site, and therefore its referencing on Google, is carried out in particular during Google updates.
So it’s a good idea to find out about the update periods and get your SEO strategy right before they arrive, so you don’t end up on the 2nd page for weeks on end just because you missed the boat by a day or two…
Content and technical audits
A good way to take stock of your SEO strategy before Google’s fateful updates is to carry out a content audit, the aim of which is to list the offers and keywords on which you want to be positioned, then compare them with your actual offers and content (which will help you to know what kind of offers to add, remove, etc.), and a technical audit.
The latter concerns purely SEO and aims to take stock of a number of elements:
- Check that all site pages are accessible both from the site itself and from search engines.
- Check that certain pages are not too difficult to access from the site’s home page (no more than 4 consecutive links).
- Missing titles, subtitles, descriptions or tags on product pages, categories, blogs, etc.
- Check that all pages use the https protocol.
- Correct broken links and duplicate content.
- Check the display and execution speed of the site’s various pages (with a tool like GTmetrix, for example).
Conclusion: SEO strategies on the move in 2023
If you follow these few tips, you should quickly move up the search rankings, but SEO remains a fluid science, determined by Google and its algorithms.
It’s therefore important to optimize the essential elements first, but also to keep a close eye on the main criteria influencing SEO at any given time.
A good way to keep abreast of what’s working and what’s not for SEO is to do a quick analysis of the very first Google results for the offer or query you’re interested in: Which keywords are highlighted?
What structure is used?
How are meta titles and meta descriptions constructed?
Understanding these elements and trying to apply them to your own e-commerce site (but beware of plagiarism!) will ensure that your SEO strategy is as up-to-date as possible.
Finally, a word about Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT.
While I’ve already spoken to you about its dangers and limitations in previous articles, it would be a shame not to take advantage of certain applications of artificial intelligence in terms of SEO: the construction of an SEO-optimized page structure, the creation of SEO titles and subtitles, as well as the research and integration of keywords, are all elements that AI can bring to an effective SEO strategy in 2023.
As an SEO expert and e-commerce site creator for over 15 years, don’t hesitate to contact me so that together we can determine a winning SEO strategy for your e-commerce store!
