How To Build An E-commerce Store That Outranks Competitors

As an industry, e-commerce offers huge potential, but it’s also an extremely competitive arena to do battle in. As an online business owner, it’s essential to keep your eye on the ball in terms of overall consumer behaviors and most importantly, do everything you can to outperform your competitors if you want to succeed.

Need some help? Here’s how to build an e-commerce store that outranks your competitors.

How to Understand Your Competitors Better

Building an e-commerce store that stands out amidst fierce competition starts with comprehensive research and analysis. Begin by delving into your competitors’ websites; you can use web scraping to pull large amounts of data about product listings and pricing for example, or check out their backlink profiles with tools like Ahrefs. You’ll be surprised just how much information you can unearth!

You might want to look at the following areas:

• Pricing
• Product range
• Backlinks
• Keyword rankings
• Followers and engagement on social media
• Reviews
• Site Usability

Once you’ve gathered this information, it’s time to compare. Which areas are you falling short in? Where are there gaps that you could be filling? This research not only helps you see what your competitors are doing and identify how you can do it better but also provides valuable insights into customer preferences and market trends. Armed with this knowledge, you can craft a tailored approach that goes above and beyond what your competitors are doing.

How Can My E-Commerce Store Outrank Competitors?

Now onto the practical work that can be done. Outranking your competitors requires dedication so you’ll need to be consistently improving, changing, optimizing, and developing your online store to see results. Ready to put the work in?

Here are 5 things you can do to get your online store to outperform your competitors:

Make Website Ux a Priority

If your UX is poor you can almost guarantee that your competitors are doing it better!

A seamless and intuitive browsing experience encourages longer engagement and increases customer conversions. If customers can’t navigate your menu easily or are left waiting minutes for a page to load, this isn’t going to help your rankings or your first impression.

To reduce high bounce rates and increase the likelihood of conversion, ensure your site has a visually appealing layout, easy navigation, and quick load times. Remember — every additional second of loading time triples the user bounce rate, causing it to soar up to 90%. Sluggish load times affect your ranking in the results pages too, so it’s worth keeping your site’s performance in mind when you’re building it.

Implement a Strong SEO Strategy

If you want a store that’s favored by Google’s complex ranking algorithm, a robust SEO strategy is essential. This involves optimizing various aspects of your site, including keyword-rich product descriptions, meta tags, image alt text, landing pages, and more.

This said, optimizing your site can be time-consuming, and if you lack the resources or required knowledge to create an effective strategy the process may prove troublesome. In cases like this, it’s worth seeking help from trained professionals (like the team at Seeker). They’ll identify key areas for improvement, as well as content opportunities you may otherwise have overlooked — and save you heaps of time!

An effective SEO approach also involves building quality backlinks from authoritative sources within your industry. By targeting guest blogging or adding page links to high-traffic pages, your e-commerce store can increase its visibility on search engine results while driving organic traffic and potential customers to your site.

Make Data-Driven Decisions

Creating an e-commerce store that outperforms competitors requires making informed decisions based on data analysis. Use tools like Google Analytics to track user behavior, conversion rates, and popular products — this data can guide you in refining your marketing strategies, identifying areas of improvement, and tailoring your product offerings to match customer preferences. 

Google Trends is also a super helpful tool. Not only can you compare trends over time to evaluate how different regions behave, but it also provides insights as to which products or interests are starting to break out. As an e-commerce store, this can get you one step ahead of your competitors and rank for in-demand items quickly.

Focus on Long-Tail Keywords

While competitive keywords are important, targeting long-tail keywords can provide your e-commerce store with a strategic advantage. Long-tail keywords are more specific and often reflect a user’s intent to make a purchase. For example, instead of using the highly competitive keyword ‘trainers’ why not target ‘running trainers for wide feet’?

Incorporate these keywords into your product descriptions, blog posts, and landing pages. This strategy means your store not only ranks prominently but also creates a positive and valuable experience for your customers, ultimately driving sales and fostering long-term success.

Give these top tips a go today and supercharge your online strategy to outrank your competitors!