How to Get Your Online Store Driving Organic Traffic
You've launched your online store. The design looks stunning, your products are brilliant, and you've even tackled some basic SEO- added keywords, written meta descriptions, optimised a few images. But when you check Google, your store is buried on page five. Your competitors are showing up, taking the sales that should be yours.
Here's what's really happening: e-commerce SEO works completely differently from regular website SEO, and most store owners don't realise it until they've wasted months going in the wrong direction.The good news? Once you understand what actually moves the needle for online stores, the path forward becomes clear. Let me show you what's holding you back and exactly how to fix it.
Most people approach e-commerce SEO like they would a blog or company website. Write some content, sprinkle in keywords, and maybe build a few links. Then they wonder why nothing is working.
The problem is this: you're not trying to rank informational content, you're trying to rank pages that need to convert browsers into buyers.
Think about the difference:
That second search is your money search. The person is ready to buy right now. They just need to find you first. Most e-commerce sites optimise for the wrong keywords, have technical issues they don't know exist, or simply don't give Google what it needs to rank transactional pages. Let's fix that.
After working on some well-known UK-based e-commerce sites, I've seen what separates stores that rank from stores that don't. It comes down to four core elements:
Here's a mistake I see constantly: stores optimise for broad terms like "shoes" or "bracelets" because they have high search volume. But these keywords are useless for e-commerce.
You need keywords that scream "I want to buy this now":
These searchers aren't browsing- they're buying. They just need to find the right store.
What to do: Open Google Search Console and look at your actual search queries. Filter for terms with "buy," "best," "cheap," "near me," or specific product models. These are your money keywords. If you're not ranking for them, that's problem number one.
I've seen gorgeous websites that couldn't rank because of technical SEO issues the owner had no idea existed. The most common problems:
Site speed is killing your website - If your pages take longer than 3 seconds to load, you're losing both rankings and sales. Google PageSpeed Insights will tell you exactly what's slowing you down. Fix it.
Duplicate content everywhere - This is huge for e-commerce. When you sell the same product in five colours, you often create five nearly-identical pages. Google doesn't know which one to rank, so it ranks none of them well. Canonical tags tell Google "this is the main version- ignore the others."
Mobile experience issues - Most of your shoppers are on mobile. If your site doesn't work flawlessly on phones, Google will suppress your rankings. This isn't a nice-to-have anymore- it's essential.
Wasting your crawl budget – Large stores have thousands of pages. Google won't crawl all of them. If it's crawling filter combinations, old sale pages, and pagination instead of your best-selling products, you're in trouble.
Here's where most stores fail: they copy manufacturer descriptions word-for-word. Google sees that same text on 50 other sites and essentially ignores everyone using it. Every product page needs unique content that answers real customer questions:
Aim for at least 300 words on your main product pages. Yes, it's time-consuming. Yes, it's absolutely worth it.
Category pages matter even more. These pages often have higher search volume than individual products and are easier to rank. Write 500+ words for each main category explaining what's in it and why someone should buy from this collection. This is where you win the ranking battle.
Most SEO advice talks about building links to blog posts. That's fine for content sites, but you're running a store. You need links pointing directly to your products and categories.
This is harder than blog link building, but infinitely more valuable:
Here's the exact process to follow. Don't skip steps- they build on each other.
Before changing anything, diagnose the problem:
Open Google Search Console and review the last 3 months:
This data shows you exactly where the opportunities are.
You can't build rankings on a broken foundation. Run these checks:
Google Search Console - Look for crawl errors, mobile usability issues, manual penalties
Google PageSpeed Insights – diagnosing your website performance
Screaming Frog (or any other crawler) – find duplicate content, broken links, and missing metadata
For each main product category, identify:
Try to assign each keyword to one specific page. Don't target the same keyword on multiple pages- you'll just compete with yourself and both pages will rank worse.
Start with your 5 highest-traffic categories. For each one:
This is tedious work. It's also the difference between ranking and staying invisible.
You can't rewrite every product page immediately. Prioritise:
For each priority product:
Build blog content targeting early-stage searchers, then funnel them to your products:
This captures people at the research phase and guides them toward purchase.
Reach out systematically:
Quality beats quantity every time. One link from a respected website outperforms 100 directory listings.
Mistake #1: Optimising for search volume instead of buying intent "Silver bracelet" gets 10,000 searches. "Buy silver anniversary bracelet UK delivery" gets 200. The second one actually converts. Always choose intent over volume.
Mistake #2: Ignoring internal linking. Your category pages should link to top products. Your blog should link to relevant categories. Your products should link to related items. This helps Google understand your site structure and distribute ranking power where it matters.
Mistake #3: Treating every page as equally important. Focus your effort on pages that drive revenue. Your main category pages and bestsellers deserve 80% of your attention. Low-value filter pages and sort combinations should be noindexed.
Mistake #4: Giving up too early. Real e-commerce SEO takes 3-6 months to show meaningful results. I've seen stores give up at month 2, right before they would have started ranking. Stick with it.
Set up proper measurement from day one:
In Google Analytics:
In Google Search Console:
Review monthly. If you're not seeing improvement by month 4, something's wrong with execution - revisit your strategy.
E-commerce SEO isn't mysterious, but it is specific. You can't treat product pages like blog posts or category pages like service pages. They have different goals, different ranking factors, and different optimisation strategies. The stores that win consistently do these things:
Start with technical fixes. Get that foundation solid. Then tackle content. Then links. In that order.Your customers are searching for exactly what you sell. The only question is whether they'll find your store or your competitor's.
What is On-Page SEO and how to optimise it for better rankings.
Importance of technical SEO for improved rankings.
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