What is SEO? A beginner’s guide to ecommerce SEO [2022]

Ecommerce is an exciting space for any business to grow in - full of opportunities, and the ability to reach new customers no matter where they are around the world. It’s also just one space within a larger internet and digital culture, alongside social media, news sites, blogs, resources, forums, and our topic today - search engines. Those search engines are one of the primary ways in which we discover not just content, but also brands - more than half of shoppers say they use Google to find new brands. 

However, there are hundreds and thousands of brands online - so how do you ensure that your target audience actually discovers your brand over your competitors? The answer is through search engine optimization or SEO. 

What is SEO?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of making improvements to your site to increase the amount of high quality traffic coming through organic search. In other words, you make changes to your store to improve different factors that matter to search engines to climb up the ranking on search engines results pages (SERPs). The higher up the SERP, the better. The changes you can make most often reflect aspects of your store’s experience that matter to search users. For example, users don’t like slow loading sites or content that doesn’t match their search term, so search engines won’t prioritize those sites on results pages as they won’t provide their users with a good experience. What matters to search users, matters to search engines. They see success and retain market share by giving users the best, most relevant experience possible.

What we want to do then with SEO, in short, is to create the best user experience through content, local SEO, functionality, and more, that will gain favor with search engines and attract more customers. 

Why is SEO important for ecommerce?

Search engines are a major source of brand discovery for consumers. More than 50% say they’ve specifically used Google to discover new brands, and 85% will take an action within 24 hours of discovering a new product whether that’s comparing prices or even making a purchase. Consider how you yourself sometimes use search to find gift ideas, or research a product you’re looking to buy. You may not always know the specific brand, or even the type of product you’re looking for. For example you might search for “best hiking boots” or “gift ideas for moms”, and you’re actively asking search engines to show you brands you may be interested in. That’s exactly how your potential customers are also using search.

Beyond brand discovery, by optimizing your store for search you’re also optimizing it for its largest source of traffic. On average around 43% of ecommerce traffic comes from organic search, therefore you want to maximize the quality of traffic you get through this source. The pay-off for doing so is also seen over the long-term, especially when compared to shorter term strategies such as email or social media campaigns. The content you create with a view to improving SEO can serve your store years after it was first published if it has all the right keywords and engages the right audience.

Finally, by climbing up the rankings for those more vague search terms, you’re going to get ahead of your competition. When someone searches your brand name or the specific name of your product, of course your store should come on top. However when it’s a term like “socks for ski boots” or “what tools do you need to start crocheting”, there’s going to be a lot more scope for competitors to rank higher as it isn’t brand specific. The more you do with your store’s SEO, the more likely you’ll be to get that edge on the competition in SERPs. 

How do I improve my store’s SEO?

So we understand what it is and why it’s important to ecommerce, but how do you actually get started? SEO covers a wide range of topics and areas, so knowing which of those is best to focus on can be tricky especially if you’re busy running your store. Your journey to an optimized ecommerce store starts with understanding what elements you need to optimize, the role they play, and what you can do in-house. That’s what we’re going to cover in the next section. 

Once you have that foundation of knowledge, you can start to implement changes. Some may be easily done in-house, others may require the help of an expert; some may be implemented immediately, and others will take time to see results. With patience, knowledge, and planning, improving your store’s SEO doesn’t need to be complicated or confusing. It’s also hugely beneficial to utilize the help of tools that can help to automate certain aspects of SEO and keep track of the overall health and performance of your site. 

#1 - Keyword Research & User Intent

The search engine journey for any user begins with keywords. Keywords are the terms that people use when conducting a search, they can be a simple, single word like “SEO” or more complex i.e. what we call a long-tail keyword like “How do I improve my Shopify store’s SEO?”. The keywords people use can tell you a lot about what they’re looking for, and therefore the content you should create in order to rank for those keywords. If we want to rank for a particular keyword, we need to include it on a relevant page - Google crawls websites to find content, so it’ll find that keyword on the page, index the content, and present it to users on SERPs when they search for that term. The more people engage with the content and it satisfies their search, the higher it’ll rank for that keyword.

Keywords also have differing levels of competition; this simply means that other sites are also looking to rank for that keyword to appear higher on the results page. If you sell sneakers, for example, a high competition keyword would likely be “buy sneakers”, whereas a low competition keyword will be more specific such as “buy running sneakers for wet weather”. Striking a balance between high and low competition keywords will give your pages the best chance at ranking. 

User Search Intent

Keywords are a major piece of the SEO puzzle, but to really understand them you also need to know about user search intent. Search intent indicates the goal behind a user’s search; in other words, it tells you what they’re aiming to do next with that search. More often than not, people use these long-tail keywords to indicate what their intent is to a search engine so they get more relevant results. Let’s say someone searches for just “cookies”, that single word is pretty vague and tells us little about what they’re looking for - information about cookies? Do they want to buy some? What kind of cookies are they interested in? Are they looking for recipes? Whereas “buy cookies online” or “chocolate chip cookie recipes” gives a lot more insight into what the user is hoping to find.

Search intent can generally be grouped into four categories - informational, navigational, transactional, and commercial research. Intent may be one or a combination of these, and you can usually find modifiers within a search term to indicate intent. Modifiers are words which change the meaning of a keyword, for example “buy cookies” vs “cookie recipe”.

How do you find keywords?

It’s all well and good knowing what a keyword is in general, but actually finding which you should use is a lot more difficult.  There are tools you can use to help identify keywords and it may be helpful to consult with SEO experts, however you can get started in-house using a few easy steps.

Step #1 - Brainstorm

Start by brainstorming which keywords you ideally want to rank for. This will start with your branded keywords - your business name and any variations on it, any products with names unique to your business, etc. Then look at which keywords related to your brand’s USP and products that you want users to find you through. For example if you sell coffee that might be the bean varieties, the location of your roastery, the different grind types you offer etc, and a combination of those. Consider also which terms you think users might use to find your brand or products. You should end up with a strong list of keywords to get started on.

Step #2 - Look at current traffic 

It also helps to understand which keywords are already bringing users to your store and to which pages. You can do this using Google Analytics, or other keyword tools. This will help you identify those keywords, and from there you can look at the content on landing pages common to those terms and which audiences your store content targets.

Step #3 - Explore list of keywords

Between the two lists you have from brainstorming and current traffic, you can make a start on plugging them into Google and other sites to find related keywords and understand the content that typically ranks for those terms - we’ll come back to content marketing later. Type in the terms you came up with, and look at what suggestions search engines offer through different features like “People Also Ask” and related searches. This will help you understand the kind of questions and keywords people are actually using when they conduct a search within your niche. You can then add these more complex and long-tail keywords to your list, and start to assess the level of competition to determine which you want to target.

#2 - Website architecture 

When users find your store, they want to be able to navigate around with ease especially if it’s their first time interacting with it. That’s where website architecture comes into play. 

Website architecture is how pages on a site are organized and how they connect to one another. A good site architecture will be simple, and follow a logical hierarchy. That hierarchy usually starts with your homepage, then categories, followed by subcategories and individual pages. When we say logical, it simply means that your navigation makes sense to a user, for example your primary navigation has all the categories a customer may expect.

  

Those categories should follow that same expectation, that the category will expand to display the kind of sub-categories you might expect from that navigation menu item. 

If an irrelevant category or page is displayed, that’s a poor user experience. For example if you click on the “Men’s” category and want to browse specifically men’s running shoes, you wouldn’t want to see women’s running shoes mixed in or t-shirts as those are irrelevant to your intent in clicking that menu item.

Why is website architecture important?

There are two major reasons why you need to have a logical, optimized site architecture: user experience (UX), and search engine crawlability. 

A well organized architecture makes for a much easier, better user experience. Customers don’t want to spend time trying to figure out which category they should click on to get to the products they want to browse. Equally it shouldn’t be difficult to navigate to a previous page quickly from the page they’re on. You want it so that no matter which page they land on, they can quickly and easily find other pages on your site. If they land on a blog article they found through search, make it easy for them to then explore your products. The added bonus here is that a better user experience is also better for your SEO; Google and other search engines prioritize UX. 

 

When it comes to crawlability, the easier you make your site’s layout the easier it’ll be for search engines to crawl and find content. If your store’s navigational structure isn’t optimized, this will make it difficult for search engines to find the content you want to rank on SERPs. If your site follows that logical hierarchy, it’ll be straightforward for search engine crawlers. Your architecture also helps to demonstrate topical relevance between pages, which can help pass authority from high traffic, high ranking pages to those with lower traffic that you want to rank higher. 

How do you improve your site architecture?

If you’re a Shopify merchant, then good news - a lot of the work of building out a solid site architecture is already taken care of for you. Shopify stores follow a logical hierarchy as standard, and URLs are presented in an easily readable format using standard characters. That being said, there are always best practices that every merchant on any platform should follow to maintain a great approach to optimized site architecture.

#1 - Keep navigation simple and predictable

By simple we mean to avoid adding too many different top level category options to your store’s primary navigation. This can be confusing for the user, and make it more complicated for search engines to crawl. Stick to the most important categories you want users to navigate to, and figure out how all your other pages fit into those categories. For example, rather than having “Women’s Shirts” “Men’s Shirts” “Women’s Sweater” and so on, create a category for “Men” and “Women” with the various products in their own subcategories. This also applies to the predictability element; your navigation should reflect what users would likely expect to find.

#2 - Make use of internal linking

Internal links are those which link to different pages within your site. We’ll cover more when it comes to technical and on-page SEO, but for now what you need to know is that including internal links will help both users and search engine crawlers. For example linking from your product pages to your FAQ helps users find information they want faster, thereby improving their experience. 

#3 - Use sitemaps

Sitemaps help users and bots find content and navigate your store on top of what you already have on your site. For users this is an HTML sitemap; this usually appears at the bottom of every page, and gives additional helpful links that may not be immediately visible in your primary navigation. For bots this is an XML sitemap; this is submitted to Google and helps bots to crawl and index your store, ensuring they find priority content.

#4 - Optimize for mobile

Mobile commerce is big business - more than half of consumers say they wouldn’t consider purchasing from a store with a poorly designed mobile site. Mobile is also a major consideration when it comes to SEO, as mobile friendliness is a ranking factor for Google. It’s important then to optimize your store’s mobile navigation to consider how someone may navigate if they’re on a smartphone. Simplify the options available, and make it easy to skip back and forth between pages. 

#3 - On-page SEO

There’s more to optimizing your content than just plugging in keywords - to make a real impact on your store’s SEO you need to optimize all your on-page content. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing all the content on your site which users can see and interact with as part of their experience. That includes written copy content, site titles, header tags, URLs, navigation, and more. If a user can see and engage with it, then it’s part of their experience, and it’s part of on-page SEO optimization.

It also includes elements of content marketing and technical SEO, which we’ll come to later.

Why is on-page SEO important?

Google is always looking for relevant, useful content for its users. That’s how it maintains its user base, and its position as the number one global search engine. People expect relevant results, if Google were to fall short on that expectation then people wouldn’t use the service. Therefore relevant content is paramount to the success of a search engine. To identify that relevant content, it has to do more than just scan for keywords. To quote Google themselves:

“Just think: when you search for 'dogs', you probably don’t want a page with the word 'dogs' on it hundreds of times. With that in mind, algorithms assess if a page contains other relevant content beyond the keyword 'dogs' – such as pictures of dogs, videos or even a list of breeds.” 

Search engines look for other experience signals that indicate your page is going to be a good fit for their users’ queries.

How to improve your on-page SEO

Improving your on-page SEO all starts with content. Having high quality, relevant, useful content that’s well optimized for keywords and search intent is the best way to improve your on-page SEO. To create great SEO-led content you need to follow some best practices that are rooted in the qualities search engines are looking for:

• Useful - What information and page elements would be most useful to a user? This includes images, videos, graphics, links etc.
  
  
• Relevant - Is the content focussed on the page’s overall topic? For example a product page should focus on that product, rather than having a lot of information about a different product.
  
  
• Reliable - Is the page up-to-date with accurate information? This is important especially for products which may change on an ongoing basis e.g. subscription boxes.

From there you can start looking at page purpose, how the page content can satisfy user intent, and how it plays into the wider customer journey.

What more can be done to improve on-page SEO?

There is of course more to a page than just the main content - from URLs to headers to meta information, there are other on-page SEO elements that merchants can optimize. 

• Navigation - We’ve already talked in detail about site architecture, and this is a key element of on-page SEO. Make it easy for the user to navigate throughout your store - consider implementing a breadcrumb menu on product pages for easy navigation to your catalog.
  
  
• Title tags - Include your primary keyword in your title tag. For a product page that might be related to the product name, for example if you have a range of cold brews rather than just the flavor you may also include “Draft Cold Brew” in the title to rank for that term.
  
  
• URL - As with your title tag, include keywords in the page URL. The way these are named and formatted can affect how search engines crawl them - a string of letters and numbers isn’t helpful, but including important keywords is.
  
  
• Header tags - These are often referred to as H1, H2, H3 and so on. They allow search engines to understand how content on a page is organized and the hierarchy of that content. 

This is on top of including that additional content mentioned above like images, videos, etc that will add extra value to a given page and improve the user experience. With images, make sure to include alt text that includes target keywords.

#4 - Technical SEO

If content is one half of the on-page puzzle, technical SEO is the other. Technical SEO focuses on technical elements which affect the user experience and page crawlability. Those elements include site speed, schema markup, architecture etc. 

Well optimized technical SEO helps to demonstrate user friendliness, and improve the overall experience of your store beyond just the content. After all you could have amazing content, but if your site has a poor technical experience then it’s unlikely people will want to actually use your site and this will hurt its ranking on SERPs.

How to improve your technical SEO

If you’re a Shopify merchant, then you get a lot of technical SEO assets out of the box:

• Inherently good site architecture that follows an easily navigable structure.
• Readable URL structure - URLs are also customizable.
• Level 1 PCI DSS compliance, with automatically generated SSL certificates to ensure top notch security.
• Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) to ensure speedy content delivery around the world.
• Mobile responsive designs as standard from Shopify Theme Store.

There are other elements which merchants can take advantage of to give their technical SEO a boost and improve their experience to attract the attention of search engines.

#1 - Site Speed

Perhaps one of the most important technical factors to your store’s SEO is site speed. If a page doesn’t load quickly, it doesn’t matter how great the content is as 53% of users will leave after just 3 seconds of waiting. Use tools such as PageSpeed Insights to better understand where your site speed is falling short, and use their recommendations alongside some general tips for improvement:

• Optimize content by reducing image file sizes using compression tools, and manually resize any large feature images on key landing pages to ensure quality is retained.
  
  
• Go through the apps you have installed, and remove any that are unused or unnecessary. Ensure the code for these is also removed, to fully clean up your store.
  
  
• Cache static HTML so that browsers don’t waste time loading any elements that remain the same throughout your store. 

#2 - Robots.txt

Your robots.txt is a file that tells search engine bots how to crawl your site and which URLs they can access. If your site has this file, bots will read this file first before crawling your site so they better understand how to do so and content to prioritize. This can also help to prevent them spending time crawling content that isn’t as valuable to your store’s SEO strategy.

As of 2021, Shopify merchants have the ability to edit their robots.txt file, however Shopify says the default file that comes as standard works for most stores. That being said, if you want to focus crawlers on your most valuable content, keep sections of your store private, or prevent crawling on internal search pages, then editing this file can be worthwhile.  For more information on how to edit and some best practices, check out our article on editing robots.txt for Shopify.

#3 - Structured Data

Occasionally when you search for a product, you’ll see the following type of result:

It has some additional features that you don’t get on a standard result - review rating and number of reviews, the price, and stock availability. The way Google knows this information is through the store implementing structured data/markup. This is a piece of code which tells crawlers more information about a page. They add something more to the result and page beyond just the necessary information like title tags and meta descriptions, and have the potential to increase your brand visibility on SERPs. That’s why they’re so important to implement as part of your technical SEO strategy - if you want to know more about how to do just that, check out our article on structured data.

#5 - Local SEO

When you’re looking for a new restaurant to try, or somewhere to buy a last-minute gift, you’re going to need the help of Google to find out where to go. Local SEO is as it sounds - SEO that targets a local audience and how they engage with search. If your business has a brick-and-mortar store, you offer local delivery or pickup, or your brand is linked to your local area then local SEO is vital.

Local search is growing in importance and popularity, especially with the increase in usage of voice search and omnichannel marketing. 93% of consumers say they’ve used search to find a local business, and 76% of those with smart speakers say they’ve used their device to find out more information on a local business. With that in mind, let’s look at some simple ways you can boost your store’s local SEO.

How to improve your local SEO

As with many other aspects of SEO, your optimization journey will begin by researching and identifying local keywords. We’ve spoken already about search intent, and that definitely comes into play when you’re trying to understand how local audiences may use search to find your store. Consider first how your existing list of keywords may be adapted for a local audience using qualifiers/modifiers e.g. “near me”, “[city name]”, “open now” and so on. Incorporate these into your store’s content; you may want to create a local landing page that targets this audience and local keywords specifically. 

As well as updating your content to reflect local keywords, you should also consider adding extra features to product pages and other key landing pages that speak directly to your local audience. 

This includes:

• Store locator with opening times
• In-store availability information
• Local delivery options
• Buy online, pick-up in store (BOPIS)

As for pages like your FAQ, include a section about your local options and in-store information. 

Once you’ve optimized your on-site content, look beyond to what you can do off-site to improve your local SEO. This includes optimizing your Google My Business profile, checking your NAP (Name Address Phone number) on different third party directories, and encouraging local reviews. 

#6 - Content 

You may have heard the phrase “content is king” before, and it is more definitely true when it comes to SEO. When you’ve optimized your site for speed, you’ve got a great navigational structure, and you’ve perfected and tweaked all the on-page elements, it can all be for nothing if the content on the page isn’t great. It’s also how search engines will index your pages by scanning for good quality content that fits their standards and features keywords their users are looking for. 

Content encompasses everything from written copy, to images, graphics, and more. It acts as a path of discovery for users to find your store via search, whether that’s a product page, your about us, homepage, or a blog article. The better quality content you create, the more likely it will be to rank higher on SERPs and bring in more engaged traffic. 

How to improve your content for SEO

Content is such a huge topic that it would be hard to cover everything you can do in just one section of a larger article, so we’re going to summarize what you can do to improve your product pages and blog content, as well as some tips for how to find evergreen topics. 

Improving your product descriptions for SEO

The key to writing a great product description lies in remembering one of the most important pillars for SEO - usefulness. Product pages are where your customer will get the majority of the information they need to decide whether or not to buy your product, and if they can’t find everything they need then that will take them off-site and decrease the amount of trust they have in your store. If they find other details on an external site, or read reviews and find information they couldn’t find on your product page, that will lead them to be more cautious of making a purchase. Therefore your product pages should be packed with as much relevant, useful information as possible.

Write for your target customer and their search intent.

Start by considering the customers you want to attract to your store - what information will they need to make a purchase? Think about all the different technical details they may want to know, and how best to present these. Then consider the different details and unique selling points (USPs) of your product when compared to others - what makes your brand or product stand out? Look to your competitors' pages if you’re unsure what details to include; this may highlight info that you’ve perhaps left out, or give you ideas for what they’ve neglected to include which may still be useful to customers.

Consider how much awareness different people will have of your product.

Not every customer who lands on a product page will have familiarity with your product. That awareness will range from a highly knowledgeable customer all the way to someone who didn’t even know it existed before they landed on your site. Therefore you need to write with that range of customers in mind. Avoid using overly technical language and use simple terms to explain your products. Products that are widely understood won’t require as much description as to the product itself, for example a t-shirt, so instead you want to focus on its unique qualities. If it’s a product that is more technical such as skincare or supplements, then focus on explaining how the product is used and what different ingredients do for the customer. 

Create unique content for every product.

Writing unique content is key - duplicate content can be damaging to your store’s SEO. Especially if your brand sells one type of product in different variations, it can be really tricky to come up with a unique description for every product. For example if you only sell socks, how do you make sure every description is unique? Consider rewording basic descriptions, and adding in any unique features such as the size, color, shape, type, etc. of the individual product. Avoid copy-pasting any manufacturer descriptions. 

Include your primary target keywords as well as some that surround individual products.

Each product page should contain your primary target keywords and any branded keywords somewhere on the page. However many products will also have their own unique keywords, for example if you sell sneakers then one pair may be for running and another for everyday wear. In cases such as these, you want the page to rank for the product’s individual niche within the wider context of the category. You want one pair to rank for “sneakers for runners” and “best running shoes”, and not the others as they wouldn’t be relevant to someone searching for those keywords. 

How to write SEO-led blog articles

While your product pages won’t change significantly over a long period of time, you still want to get fresh content on your site that people can discover even if they aren’t looking for a specific product. That’s where your blog becomes an essential element of your SEO strategy. Writing regular blog articles will allow you to create content that satisfies different types of search intent, target long-tail keywords, and also target seasonal search users. Here are some tips for writing a blog that’s not only valuable to your store's SEO, but will also engage your audience.

Write for your audience, not for search crawlers.

While blogs should be optimized and be written with SEO in mind, you should always be writing for your audience. That means writing in a way they find engaging, including content they’ll find interesting, and trying to answer their intent in reading your articles. Write in a way that’s natural for your brand, with SEO and optimization happening behind the scenes.

Length of content should suit the purpose and expectations of your target audience.

There’s always a debate on whether or not long-form content is the only kind of content worth creating if you want to rank. While it’s true that long-form content performs well, the type of content you produce should suit the purpose of the article and what the audience will reasonably expect. For example if you want to target users searching for how to prepare a cold brew coffee, they’ll expect a bit of preamble explaining cold brew, followed by the method for making it. They won’t expect a long article explaining the history of cold brew and the production method behind the beans you use in the recipe - they just want a recipe. 

Have a clear, focused list of keywords and incorporate them in a natural way.

Every blog should target a clear user intent and list of keywords. Those will likely be long-tail, incorporating the kind of questions your audience may be asking. For example if you want to target those looking for house-warming gifts, then your primary keyword might be “best gifts for a new homeowner”; you’ll then incorporate this into your blog title, and weave it throughout the content. It doesn’t always need to appear as the specific phrase, it can be rephrased throughout and this will target users who may search for a variation on that keyword for example “what to buy for a new homeowner” or “housewarming gift ideas”. Including your keywords into content is important, but it needs to be done in a way that comes across as authentic. If done correctly, your keywords will be subtle to readers but stand out to search engines. 

Make use of internal linking.

Internal links help to show topical relevance to the rest of your site, which can be helpful for search engine crawlers in determining how your content relates to other pages on your site. It’s also valuable for the user experience, as if done correctly the internal links will direct them to other pages that they may find useful. An example of this would be in a gift guide where you’re discussing products on your store; it would be helpful for the user if you link to those product pages so they don’t need to dig through your catalog to find them.  

Write articles which focus on particular seasons and holidays to target seasonal search.

We’ve all been there - it gets to a specific holiday or time of year and you start looking for gift ideas. “Best gifts for mother’s day”, “top gardening gifts for dads”, “Christmas gifts for someone who loves whisky”, and a vast number of examples always come to mind. Creating content which satisfies these seasonal search terms is valuable, as it will target users at those specific times of year when these terms are most popular. 

Create evergreen content to serve your long-term SEO strategy.

Evergreen content refers to content which is relevant and useful year-round, rather than being tied to a specific date or time of year. When it comes to ranking, it can take months or even years for content to start ranking on SERPs so it’s valuable to have content which will continue to be relevant at all times and gather authority as time goes on. If you want to know how to come up with evergreen topics, check out this article we previously published on that exact topic.

#7 - Link Building 

Internal and external links on your site are important, but there’s another type of link that’s crucial to any SEO strategy - backlinks. Backlinks are when another site links to a page on your site, and they’re extremely valuable to your store’s SEO. This is because it demonstrates to Google that your page is trustworthy and worthwhile to its users; if other sites are linking to your store, they think their users will find it useful and this sends the right signals to Google. That being said, it’s about quality over quantity; it’s much better to have a few high authority sites link to your store than lots of backlinks from low authority sites. It’s the difference between someone like Buzzfeed or Shopify linking to your store versus a relatively new and unknown small blog.

The difficulty with backlinks, however, is that they’re part of off-site SEO. As it sounds, these are external to your site, meaning you don’t actually have control of them in the same way you do your content, site speed, and so on. They can’t be guaranteed in the same way you can create an optimized meta description or make improvements to your store’s navigation. That’s why it’s important to have a strategy for link building, to make the most of any opportunity you can find to earn some really high quality backlinks.

How to start link building for your store

Get included in “listicles”, gift guides, and other resources.

When someone is searching for a new brand, there’s a strong chance they’ll look to other resources first. They may find an article online that has the top 10 new aperitif brands to try, or the best coffee gifts, or a resource for local apparel brands. These are articles that you ideally want your brand to be featured in and earn backlinks from, especially if the site authoring the articles in question is popular or has high authority in your niche. 

You likely can’t be retroactively included, so it’s worth doing some research and outreach. This involves searching yourself for the sites and articles that your audience may be interested in using specific keywords around the kind of guides and articles you want to be included in. Identify sites which have previously or regularly feature brands in listicles, and reach out to them via email. Introduce your brand and products succinctly, noting that you’ve seen their articles around your product niche, and simply offer the opportunity for them to either try your product or ask to be kept in mind for future articles. 

Collaborate with influencers and sites your audience frequents.

Collaboration is always valuable, especially when it comes to earning backlinks. This can come in two forms - influencers, and sites which are popular with your audience. Do some research into the influencers within your niche with blogs or their own websites, as well as into which sites your audience trusts for reviews or information. For example if you sell liqueurs, then those influencers may be bartenders with their own blogs, and the sites will be those with cocktail recipes and reviews. You can then reach out to those influencers and sites requesting some kind of collaboration whether that’s working together on an article, sending stock for review, or a combination of the two. To use the same example, it may even simply be that you send stock to a cocktail recipe site, and they use it in a future recipe with a backlink to your product page. 

Reach out to sites who mention your store.

There may also be sites who already make mention of your store and products. Identify these sites and articles, and simply reach out requesting they link to a page on your site from that article. Especially if they already have done so, and the page they’ve linked to is outdated - you want to retain that backlink, so requesting an update is essential.

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The world of Search Engine Optimization is vast and ever-changing; between algorithm tweaks, major ranking factor changes, and more, it can be difficult to know where to even begin. Understanding the basics of SEO and how they play into your store’s overall strategy gives you a solid foundation of knowledge to get started.