On marketplaces, eCommerce businesses partake in fierce and unapologetic competition. They use all their business talents, persuasion skills, and the available tools to gain the upper hand over their rivals.

Marketplace SEO is one such performance-boosting tool. It targets the marketplace’s information processing algorithms and leverages user behavior to rank higher in search results.

It’s not a magic wand that can turn an overtly weak player into a star. Still, it can transform an average, and especially a top-performing seller, into an undisputed leader in a given niche.

Want to know how? Keep reading to find out.

Understanding SEO for Marketplaces

Marketplace SEO is unique in many ways. Compared to traditional website SEO, it is more structured, follows well-defined rules, and employs not all but specific traditional SEO strategies. It is actually more similar to optimization for YouTube and Pinterest search.

Search Algorithms of Marketplaces

Search algorithms of the most popular marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Etsy, and Walmart) are aligned with the local search intent. The latter is characterized by a much higher purchasing desire than a simple quest for information, directions, or entertainment.

For this very reason, marketplaces prioritize factors like sales velocity, customer reviews, and fulfillment speed over domain authority. 

Marketplaces function much like search engines, prioritizing product discovery and relevance. They are a miniature representation of monsters like Google and Bing, utilizing similar algorithms but aligned with different user intents.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a must-have growth tool for marketplace SEO. As the name suggests, it focuses on finding high-impact search terms that align with buyers' queries in marketplace search engines.

Here is why keyword research matters for marketplace sellers’ growth:

• Boosts Product Visibility – Listings with high-intent keywords rank higher in search result pages.

• Increases Conversion Rates – Ranking higher in result pages attracts traffic that is more likely to convert on your store’s pages.

• Enhances Ad Performance – Choosing the right keywords improves the performance of paid ads and PPC campaigns.

Just as the high-impact keywords boost internal user acquisition, link insertions drive referral traffic to your business’s online store from the outside. They are a powerful yet secondary source of leads from sources like websites, social media, and blogs. What is the primary source, then?

The primary source and driver of traffic becomes the internal marketplace optimization. It specifically engages with the marketplace’s visitors via search rankings, optimized product listings, and other techniques that influence purchase decisions.

Product Listing Optimization

Product listing optimization is the process of increasing the performance of different elements on your product pages, including:

• Product titles;

• Product descriptions;

• Images and visuals;

• Pricing plans;

• Customer reviews.

The immediate impact of optimized product listings on your store can be seen in enhanced user experience. Visitors and customers of your store or app will make informed buying decisions, return fewer items, and leave more positive reviews.

The long-term influence converts into increased click-through rates (CTRs) and higher conversions, as clear and engaging copy persuades visitors to purchase, subscribe, and leave contact information.

On-Page eCommerce SEO Strategies

For the growth of an eCommerce business, the things you do on your website or page are absolutely essential. On-page SEO reins in this realm with its strategies focused on product titles, descriptions, and image optimization.

Optimizing Product Titles

In marketplace SEO, product titles are part of listing optimization. Well-optimized product titles increase your product visibility and discoverability, drive targeted traffic to your store’s pages, and increase conversions.  

In light of the marketplaces’ search algorithms, product titles are the number one crawling target. The marketplace search engine would look into your product titles to find keywords that best match specific user queries. 

That brings us to the best product title optimization tactics:

• Include Primary Keywords – Not only is the presence of primary search keywords essential, but also their position at the beginning of the title and a perfect alignment with the buyer’s intent.

• Highlight Key Product Features – Make your product titles speak clearly about your products to your target audience.

• Optimize for Mobile Search – Ensure the titles are mobile-user friendly, i.e., the gist of your proposition appears in the first 50–70 characters since mobile screens have limited viewing space.

Finally, check against your marketplace’s title guidelines and rules. For instance, Amazon requires its sellers to limit their product titles to 200 characters, while eBay strictly forbids promotional text in titles like “100% Authentic” or “Buy Now!”

SEO-Friendly Product Descriptions

Product descriptions should not only be well-crafted to deliver the message effectively but also SEO-friendly. It means they’d be optimized for the highest ranking in the marketplace’s search results.

This is how you can optimize your product descriptions to perform like that:

• Include relevant keywords and place them strategically (e.g., in the first 150 characters).

• Structure your description well (e.g., use bullet points or numbered lists).

• Focus on the key features and benefits for the buyer.

• Leverage user-generated content (e.g., real use-case scenarios & customer reviews).  

A Weje post can make it so much easier to brainstorm product description ideas with your business partners and colleagues. One sharp mind is good, but several minds connected work faster, smarter, and more creatively.

Using High-Quality Images & Videos

In eCommerce, especially in marketplace sales via dedicated stores and apps, visuals play a pivotal role. They appeal to our physiological and psychological sensitivity to visual information and the ability to process images 60,000 faster than any textual information.

Consider these best practices for marketplace product images SEO:

• Use High-Resolution Photos – At least 1000 x 1000 pixels for zoom functionality (recall how zooming helps to admire your favorite product). To make the most of zoom features, it's important to enhance image quality so details remain crisp and clear. This ensures that even close-up views look professional and visually appealing.

• Showcase Multiple Angles – One image is never enough; shoot at least a series of 5–7 images of each of your products from different angles.

• Use Lifestyle & Contextual Images – Images and Videos should include real-life scenarios of using your products (e.g., if you sell raincoats, picture how they protect a person under heavy rain).

• Add Infographics & Text Overlays – Make relevant inscriptions over your images to help viewers understand your product better.

Just as with the other on-page SEO strategies, check your marketplace’s guidelines on images and videos. Oftentimes, severe limitations apply, for example, Amazon requires at least 85% of the image to be occupied by the product with a pure white background, while Etsy sets a limit on the length of videos of 15 seconds max. 

Off-Page SEO for eCommerce

What if you already exhausted your store’s internal (on-page) marketplace optimization potential, and everything is functioning sound and great? What else can you do?

Look into off-page SEO. Although less impactful for marketplace growth, it can still give a strong punch to your business performance.

Boosting SEO with Customer Reviews

Buyers need to feel confident in their purchasing decisions. Customer reviews offer just that – reliable third-person proof and independent opinions.

Take these best practices for generating & managing reviews:

• Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews – Not just sit and wait for someone to write your product a review, but proactively encourage the customer community to leave positive feedback by sending follow-up messages after purchase, politely requesting feedback.

• Respond to Published Reviews – Thank customers for positive feedback and handle negative ones with due diligence and care.

• Monitor & Report Fake Reviews – Watch out for competitors' fraudulent tactics of posting defamation on your product assortment and report them to the marketplace’s administration to block and delete.

User-generated content (UGC) is a new and powerful trend in eCommerce. 93% of marketers leveraging UGC in their strategies find it performs notably better than traditional branded content. Incorporating an Ai brand builder into your strategy can enhance brand consistency while allowing UGC to shine authentically.

As a seller, you should encourage and reward user-made unpacking and review videos and photos of your products. They will promote your product offerings like nothing else.

Leveraging External Traffic

Regardless of how big your marketplace audience is, more potential customers exist outside the marketplace’s space. The question is – how do you leverage them?

Through several eCommerce SEO strategies:

• Social Media Marketing – Reach out to billions of social media users on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest with shoppable posts, giveaways, and trending hashtags.

• Email & SMS Marketing – Capture and manage customer contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers. By segmenting your database and targeting specific audiences, you can achieve outstanding results.

• Content Marketing & Blogging – Engage in guest posting and blogging with expert-level, thematic content featuring your products. Include direct links to your pages. That will help you build brand awareness and drive traffic to your store. 

By purchasing relevant backlinks, marketplace sellers can drive external traffic to their store pages and ensure long-term business growth. These backlinks can be placed on social media, blogs, and websites, including eCommerce within the same niche.

SEO for Mobile Shopping

Optimizing for mobile shopping should not only be a separate, one of many SEO disciplines but the main one. This is because most of the shopping on marketplaces is done via mobile devices these days.

How can you streamline your online store for mobile SEO? Through a series of tweaks and enhancements:

• Improve page load speed.

• Adapt product titles, descriptions & images for mobile screens.

• Optimize your marketplace search strategy for voice queries (common for mobile users).

• Use long-tail keywords that match how mobile users search.

• Space out menus & use large, tappable buttons for “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart.”

Attention should be paid to the availability of mobile-friendly (1-2 minutes long) videos showcasing your products in different life scenarios.

Final Recommendations

Do you hear that sound? That's the sonic boom of voice search of billions of mobile shoppers talking to their mobile assistants to fetch them what they want off marketplaces.

As voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant become ubiquitous, the marketplace SEO has to catch up and take advantage of the latest technological shifts; 

• Target conversational keywords.

• Optimize for Featured Snippets (as voice assistants often pull answers from Google’s Featured Snippets, Knowledge Panels, etc.).

• Use structured data markup.

Moreover, to grow your marketplace business successfully, your SEO has to focus on predictive analytics to foresee and prepare for to-be consumer demands and behavior shifts.

You cannot do this effectively without the help of AI tools like Ahrefs, SurferSEO, Moz Pro, and others. Start learning and implementing these tools now to ride this speeding autonomous train of hyper-personalized mobile shopping.