SEO for Fashion E-commerce: A Definitive Guide

If you’re a fashion marketer, or an agency working with a new fashion client, then you know that SEO is essential for online success.

But what makes fashion e-commerce SEO unique? And what are the best practices that you need to follow?

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about SEO for fashion e-commerce. I’ll cover the basics of SEO, and explain why it’s so important for fashion businesses. Then I’ll take a look at the unique challenges faced by fashion marketers, and discuss the best ways to overcome them.

Why Does SEO Matter for Fashion E-commerce?

SEO is important for all businesses that want to succeed online, but it’s especially important for fashion e-commerce businesses, for a few reasons:

The fashion industry is extremely competitive. In order to succeed, you need to make sure that your store is visible in search results.
Fashion trends change quickly. This means that you need to be able to adjust your SEO strategy on the fly, in order to keep up with the latest trends.
Fashion customers are often looking for specific items. This means that your store needs to be optimized for relevant keywords, so that customers can find what they’re looking for.

If you want your fashion e-commerce business to succeed, then you need to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to optimize your store for search engines. At the end of the day, if you want more people to find your fashion brand online, SEO for fashion e-commerce is what you need.

What Makes Fashion E-commerce Unique?

There are a few things that make fashion e-commerce unique which need to be taken into account when optimizing a store for search engines:

The fashion industry is image-heavy. This means that your store needs to be optimized for image search, as well as traditional text-based search.
Fashion customers are often looking for specific items. This means that you need to be able to target long-tail keywords effectively.
There is a lot of competition in the fashion industry. This means that you need to be extra-vigilant about monitoring your SEO performance, and constantly looking for ways to improve your results. There is no room for “set it and forget it” when it comes to your SEO strategy.

These are just a few of the things that make fashion e-commerce unique. If you’re optimizing a store for this industry, then you need to be aware of these challenges, and find ways to overcome them.

Best Practices for Fashion E-commerce

So, what are the best practices for fashion e-commerce? Here are a few things that you should keep in mind.

Build a User-Friendly & Mobile Friendly Website

The first step is to make sure that your store is user-friendly and mobile-friendly because 69% of customers are shopping right from their mobile devices.

In the fashion industry, it’s important to make a good first impression. If your store is difficult to navigate, or doesn’t look good on mobile devices, then customers are likely to click away and never come back.

Make sure that your website is designed with the user in mind. Use clear and concise text, easy-to-use navigation, and high-quality product images. And test your site on multiple devices to make sure that it looks good and works well no matter where it’s being viewed.

In general, mobile friendliness means your page should appear clear, concise, and easy to read from a small screen. The page should load quickly, have clear navigation, and avoid popups that are difficult to close. Make sure your copy isn’t cut off or moved onto a separate line due to the smaller screen size. Your customers should have the same experience on your site no matter what type of device they are using.

Want to see this in action? Let’s take a look at Express’s mobile page:

Express does a great job of covering all the key details I mentioned. The text is concise and clear, the user can easily navigate it with a small screen, and any popups are easy to close. Whether they are on desktop or their smartphones, shopping is easy.

Use Rich Snippets to Stand Out in Search Results

Another way to optimize your product pages for SEO is to use rich snippets. Rich snippets are bits of code that you can add to your pages, which help to improve your listings in search results.

For example, you can use rich snippets to display product ratings, customer reviews, and other information. This will help your listings stand out in search results, and can help to increase click-through rates.

Type almost any product description into Google search and you’ll see at least one type of rich snippet appear.

Studies found that having a rich snippet can increase your click through rates by as much as 677% and drive 20-40% more traffic than products without rich snippets.

Don’t Forget About Local SEO

If you have a brick-and-mortar store, or if you sell to customers in a specific geographic area, then you’ll need to make sure that your website is optimized for local SEO.

There are a few things that you can do to improve your local SEO, including:

Creating business listings on directories like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Foursquare
Adding your business address and phone number to your website
Optimizing your website for local keywords
Creating local landing pages
Getting listed in local directories and journals

Fashion E-Commerce Linkbuilding

Having a healthy backlink profile is one of the best things you can do to increase the overall SEO performance of your site. What makes a healthy profile? High-quality, authoritative sites linking back to your content.

Because we are focusing on the fashion niche, it’s important that you focus on sites that are relevant to that audience when it comes to your linkbuilding efforts. But how do you set yourself up for success? Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Quality over quantity: Don’t fall into the trap that you can equal 1 top-quality backlink with a dozen smaller ones. If the niche is relevant and the site is legitimate, those smaller backlinks can be useful. But you still want to try and land those big fish.
Make sure the site’s tone matches: If we’re talking purely SEO, this isn’t necessarily as important. But for e-commerce, you also want sales. Tone matters more here. If the site you are getting a backlink from makes fun of a product that you sell, don’t expect a lot of sales from that link.
Get granular with niches: Like my last point, a site can seem like a good backlink at a glance, but not be as strong when you look closer. For example, if you get a backlink from a fashion blogger who also blogs about supplements, that’s going to dilute the message a bit.

Overall, if you do your due diligence and have high-quality pages on your site to link to, you’re going to see more success with this strategy.

Conclusion

SEO is important for fashion e-commerce businesses, but it can be a bit different than other types of e-commerce businesses. You won’t always know what e-commerce customers want but you can make sure you’re doing whatever is in your control to make sure they find your site and are happy shopping on it.

SEO for fashion e-commerce is a unique challenge, but one that can be overcome with the right approach. Learn how to optimize your website even more with these helpful e-commerce traffic tips.

Cart review

SEO for Fashion E-commerce: A Definitive Guide