How to improve your e-commerce SEO?

With over 153,000 e-commerce sites in France¹, standing out from the crowd and attracting customers is a real challenge for any e-business. Competition is fierce, so every visit to your online store counts. By skilfully working your e-commerce SEO strategy, you can attract qualified visitors without relying solely on advertising. You reduce your acquisition costs and build lasting visibility. In fact, SEO isn’t an expense: it’s a strategic investment in the long-term development of your business.

Here’s what you can do today to lay the foundations for your e-commerce SEO.

Why is e-commerce SEO essential?

The term SEO (or search engine optimization) covers all the techniques that enable a site to achieve a sustainable ranking in the search results. For example: a user types in “cushioned men’s running shoes” and lands on your well-optimized online adverts. As an e-merchant, you benefit from a sale with no immediate advertising costs.

E-commerce SEO is therefore vital for :

  • Generate a source of qualified traffic, meaning Internet users who are already in a buying or research phase;
  • Reduce dependence on paid advertising, and thus optimize your acquisition budget;
  • Gain credibility and trust: being among the first results often conveys a strong image of authority and reliability;
  • Benefit from 24-hour visibility: your e-commerce site or marketplace store works around the clock, even when you’re not online.

This logic applies equally to your e-commerce site and to your store on a marketplace like Rakuten. Even if these platforms have dedicated SEO teams, optimizing your ads and your e-shop remains essential: you improve your internal ranking on the platform and boost your external visibility, especially through Google Shopping.

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The 4 pillars of an effective e-commerce SEO strategy

SEO techniques are constantly evolving, and keeping up to date in this field can sometimes seem complex. However, if you lay the solid foundations represented by these four pillars, you’ll build lasting visibility, on which you can then add more fine-tuned optimizations.

Pillar 1: Understand your customers’ search intent (keyword research)

The first step is to identify what your customers are really looking for. To do this, you need to carry out an SEO competitive analysis and well-executed keyword research. These actions are fundamental to attracting the right people at the right time.

Start with simple methods: suggestions from Google, free tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console and, if possible, more advanced tools such as SEMrush or Ahrefs (with limited free versions). These tools enable you to track search volumes, positioning difficulty and the relevance of e-commerce keywords.

It’s essential to distinguish between :

  • General queries (e.g. “shoes”).
  • Long-tail keywords (e.g. “cushioned men’s running shoes”), which are often less competitive and have higher purchase intent.
  • The nature of the query and search intentions can be informational, navigational, transactional or commercial. For an e-commerce store, targeting transactional queries as a priority significantly increases your chances of conversion.

The aim is not just to attract traffic, but to attract qualified visitors who :

  1. Spend a significant amount of time on your site or ad, discover several offers;
  2. And above all, make a purchase.

Pillar 2: Optimize your site’s foundations (technical SEO)

Excellent content is not enough if your site is poorly structured or slow. In fact, a technically sound site is essential if you want to rank well.

To improve your technical SEO, here are the key elements to watch out for:

  • Loading speed: high loading times hinder the user experience and penalize your ranking. You should therefore regularly monitor Google’s Core Web Vitals, which are indicators that measure a page’s speed, responsiveness and visual stability.
  • Site structure and navigation: a logical architecture (categories, sub-categories) that is clear to search engines and users facilitates discovery and indexing. Hn tags (H1, H2, H3…), which structure the titles and subtitles of your pages, should be used consistently.
  • Technical On-Page Optimization: title tags, meta descriptions, canonical tags and clean URLs are essential, as they tell search engines the subject and structure of each page. Your e-commerce CMS or extensions (e.g. Yoast SEO) allow you to set these parameters.
  • Indexing and crawling (the exploration of your pages by search engine robots): an up-to-date XML sitemap, a well-configured robots.txt file and the use of HTTPS enable search engines to correctly locate, explore and index your pages, so that they appear in search results.
  • Redirects (301): automatically send users and Google to the right page when a page on your site is deleted or moved to a new URL. This avoids 404 errors and preserves your SEO.
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Pillar 3: Creating relevant, high-quality content (SEO Content)

Good content (a detailed product page, informative blog post or buying guide, for example) plays a decisive role in your SEO and your ability to convert. Without well-optimized, useful content, your technical optimizations won’t be enough.

Here’s how to improve your results:

  • Produce high-quality, expert content: unique, relevant, informative that answers users’ questions. Blog posts are an effective way of reaching informational queries and demonstrating your expertise.
  • Avoid duplicate content, which represents an SEO risk and can disrupt your visitors’ understanding.
  • Use high-quality images and videos in appropriate formats, optimized for size and with descriptive alt tags (text that describes the image for Google and screen readers) for accessibility and SEO.
  • Integrate target keywords naturally, while avoiding over-optimization (or “keyword stuffing”). Instead, opt for fluid insertion into your content.

Our advice: always put the user first. Content designed with the user’s needs and reading comfort in mind carries as much weight as the best technical optimizations.

Pillar 4: Build your authority and popularity (off-page SEO / link building)

Once your site is technically optimized and has solid SEO content, you need to build up its authority. In other words, a “clean” site that gets no links from other sites remains isolated and will have a much harder time appearing in the first search results.

Domain authority is a strong signal to search engines. So the more quality backlinks you receive, the more reliable and relevant you are perceived to be.

To develop your authority, use the following levers:

  • Produce content exceptional enough to be cited or shared (case studies, infographics, exclusive data);
  • Create partnerships: bloggers, influencers, media;
  • Guest blogging in your niche by publishing articles on other sites in your sector to gain visibility and quality backlinks;
  • Sign up to relevant business directories, local citations (if you have a physical presence) or work on your local SEO; for example: YellowPages, Google Business Profile, customer review sites or specialized directories in your sector.
  • Clean up toxic or irrelevant backlinks (via Google’s Disavow Tool) and monitor external redirects to avoid losing earned traffic.

This pillar plays a key role: without authority, technical optimizations and content are insufficient to reach the top positions.

Good to know: avoid excessive reciprocal linking (where you link to another site in exchange for them linking back to yours). They can be perceived by search engines as an attempt to manipulate the algorithm and therefore penalized

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Future e-commerce SEO trends to watch

To maintain and develop your visibility, it is highly beneficial to go beyond current practices and anticipating SEO trends.

Here are the trends to keep an eye on:

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative search: Google’s AI is changing the way it understands queries and enriching the presentation of results, notably via rich snippets (results displaying additional information such as price, reviews or product availability) or direct answers.
  • Mobile-first and UX: today, over 65% of online purchases in France are made from a mobile phone². Mobile optimization is therefore more essential than ever.
  • The rise of quality content and user experience: the algorithm now favors sites that are genuinely useful and pleasant to navigate.
  • Local SEO and omnichannel strategy: online/offline synergy is on the rise. This can involve the creation of targeted local pages (“buy a phone in Paris”, “in Bordeaux”, “in Rouen”…) to effectively capture local searches. Local SEO is now part of a fully omnichannel approach, where your online actions reinforce your in-store performance, and vice versa.

Make SEO the sustainable engine of your e-commerce success!

Mastering e-commerce SEO means understanding that your business does not rely solely on advertising. It’s built on a system of sustainable visibility, based on keyword research, technical optimization, content creation and link acquisition. Each element plays a specific role and reinforces the whole.

By applying these four pillars, you lay the foundations for a solid strategy. You’ll attract qualified traffic, improve your ability to convert visitors and develop a reliable presence in a constantly evolving environment. Anticipation, rigor and authenticity will remain your best allies for lasting progress

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Sources :

¹²Fevad, Chiffres clés du e-commerce 2025