SEO for Fashion E-commerce: A Definitive Guide

The market size for global fashion e-commerce will reach $1,222.32 billion in the next few years. Do you want to grab your share? Sure you do. 

However, you’ll have to put in the work to make it happen. By that, I mean introducing a killer SEO fashion e-commerce strategy that gets your business noticed on the internet. 

SEO is important for all businesses that want to succeed online, but fashion e-commerce has some unique challenges like quickly-changing trends and more product pages than average.

In this article, I’ll explain everything you need to know about SEO for fashion e-commerce. 

Key Takeaways

• The global fashion e-commerce market is on course to reach $1,222.32 billion in the next few years. 
• SEO is crucial for fashion e-commerce due to the industry’s competitiveness and rapidly changing trends. 
• Fashion customers often use specific and long-tail keywords when searching for products, like brand names or particular styles. 
• Optimizing for images and text-based searches is essential in the image-heavy fashion industry.
• Fashion e-commerce store owners need to swiftly adapt to newer technologies like augmented reality, and respond to customer concerns like sustainability.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Makes Fashion E-Commerce Unique?
• Best Practices for Fashion E-Commerce SEO
  • Build a User-Friendly & Mobile-Friendly Website
  • Optimize Your Product Pages for SEO
  • Use Schema Markup to Stand Out in Search Results
  • Use High-Quality Images
  • Pay Attention to Your Site’s Speed
  • Don’t Forget About Local SEO
  • Practice Fashion E-Commerce Link Building
  • Keep an Eye on Your Competition
• AI Overviews and Fashion E-Commerce SEO
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Makes Fashion E-Commerce Unique?

There are a few things that make fashion e-commerce unique that you need to consider when optimizing a store for SEO:

• The fashion industry is image-heavy, so your store needs to be optimized for image and traditional text-based searches.
• Fashion customers are often looking for specific items, meaning you need to be able to target long-tail keywords effectively.
• There is a lot of competition in the fashion industry. This means being 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.
• New technology, such as augmented reality, also significantly impacts the fashion industry. AI virtual stylists and virtual dressing rooms are just some of the fresh developments we’re seeing.

• Buyer preferences mean sustainability is a big deal; 67 percent say it is a purchasing factor. Fashion buyers may also prefer eco-friendly materials, ethical production methods, and low-maintenance, quality clothing. Shipping methods and packaging materials may also be a consideration for consumers. For SEO, this means potentially working some of these keywords into your strategy, even if they aren’t directly product-related.

These are just a few of the differences that make fashion e-commerce stand out. If you’re optimizing a store for clothing brands, you’ve got to understand these challenges, find ways to tackle them, and emphasize what sets your store apart

Best Practices for Fashion E-Commerce SEO

Before you get to work on your SEO for fashion brands’ strategy, there are some best practices you should have on your radar. We’ll talk you through them next.

Build a User-Friendly & Mobile-Friendly Website

75% of customers shop from mobile devices. That makes creating a website that runs well on mobile one of the top priorities in your plan.

Mobile-friendliness makes your page appear clear, concise, and easy to read from a small screen. 

That means: 

• Pages should load quickly and have clear navigation. Loading speeds are also a Core Web Vitals factor, and when you meet these, you can get higher search rankings.
• Using a responsive design, optimized images and videos to support quicker loading. 
• Steering clear of pop-ups that are difficult to close. 
• Ensuring your copy isn’t cut off or moved onto a separate line due to the smaller screen size.
• Easy-to-read text and high-quality images also make your site easier to navigate on mobile.

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 essential 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. 

When you pair this with a smooth checkout experience (think mobile payment options), user-friendly search functionality, personalized recommendations, and customer support options like live chat, it all comes together for an awesome customer experience (CX).

Optimize Your Product Pages for SEO

The next step is to ensure you optimize your product pages for SEO. This means using the right keywords and including all the relevant information potential customers might seek.

Also, include product titles, descriptions, customer reviews, and ratings. 

You should also use descriptive filenames and alt text to help improve accessibility and your results in image searches.

In addition, you’ll want to canonicalize your product pages properly. If you have the same product in multiple colors or sizes, Google treats each page as unique. The canonicalization helps prevent duplicate content issues and makes it easier for search engines to index your pages.

Here’s an example from Nordstrom:

Use Schema Markup to Stand Out in Search Results

Another way to optimize your SEO for fashion e-commerce is to add schema markup (bits of code you can add to your pages). Schema markup improves your visibility in search results as it can trigger rich snippets like this:

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

If you type almost any product description into Google search, at least one type of rich snippet will appear.

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

Use High-Quality Images

In the fashion industry, images are everything. High-quality product photos can make a big difference in whether or not someone decides to buy from your store.

Ensure your product photos are clear and well-lit, and show your products from multiple angles. 

Pay attention to image size, too. Large images can take a long time to load and hurt your SEO, so optimize your images for the web and resize them before uploading them to your site.

Source: Abercrombie

Pay Attention to Your Site’s Speed

Site speed is an important ranking factor for all websites, but it is vital in the fashion industry. In this industry, shoppers are often looking for fast results and are unwilling to wait for a slow website. 

In fact, 53 percent of mobile site visitors will leave a page if it doesn’t load within three seconds. If it takes as long as ten seconds to load, the bounce rate will increase by 123 percent compared to a loading speed of one second.

Common reasons for slow speeds include:

• Large image files: High-resolution images can slow loading times, so use a compression tool, like TinyPNG.
• Too many plugins or scripts: Sometimes, there’s just too much going on. Check your plugins and scripts and remove any unnecessary plugins/scripts.
• Lack of regular updates or maintenance: Neglecting regular updates can lead to compatibility issues and slow things down. Introduce a maintenance schedule to ensure a top-notch performance. 
• Not using caching: To improve your website performance, you can introduce browser caching or server-side caching, or use a content delivery network.

You should also build your e-commerce platform with a fast and reliable hosting solution so your store can load quickly and reliably. Check out my list of the best e-commerce platforms to ensure you’ve set your website up for success.

Additionally, keep your pages as lean as possible. This means removing any unnecessary code and minimizing the number of HTTP requests. You can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test your page speed and find ways to improve it.

Below is an example of what Google’s Page Insights can show you in seconds.

Don’t Forget About Local SEO

I can guess what some of you are thinking: “Local SEO doesn’t fit with my fashion e-commerce marketing plan.” Oh, but it does.

If you have a brick-and-mortar store or sell to customers in a specific geographic area, you must optimize your website for local SEO. By targeting folks in specific locations, you can attract customers who are looking to buy locally.

And let’s not forget trust and credibility. Your positive reviews and local presence fuel consumer trust and can turn browsers into buyers.

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 to boost your visibility and help you gain more traffic.
• 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

Practice Fashion E-Commerce Link Building

A healthy backlink profile is one of the best things you can do to increase your SEO for fashion e-commerce. What makes a healthy profile? High-quality, authoritative sites linking back to your content.

Because we are focusing on the fashion niche, you must concentrate on sites relevant to your audience. 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 of constantly trying to equal one top-quality backlink with a dozen lower-quality ones. Those smaller backlinks can be helpful if it’s a relevant niche and a legitimate site. But you still want to try and land those big fish.
• Ensure the site’s tone matches: This isn’t necessarily as important if we’re talking purely SEO. 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 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, getting a backlink from a fashion blogger who also blogs about supplements will dilute the message.

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

Keep an Eye on Your Competition

Sounds super complicated, doesn’t it? But you can use Ubersuggest to perform a competitive analysis.

Just follow these directions: 

Go to the Ubersuggest dashboard and start a new project for each competitor website you want to analyze. This will allow you to track and compare their performance.

Using competitor tracking, you can see common keywords, keyword gaps, estimated traffic, and backlinks. 

You can also use Ubersuggest for:

• Competitor backlink profile analysis: This is where you can find information like the number of backlinks, referring domains, and their authority scores.
• Site audits: Ubersuggest’s Site Audit feature lets you analyze your competitor’s website. This feature runs an SEO audit of the website and provides recommendations for improvement. It assesses factors like site speed, top SEO issues, and the potential SEO impact of fixing them.
• Content analysis: Use the tool to analyze your competitor’s content and find topics that you aren’t covering or you need to refresh (content gaps).
• Keyword research: See which keywords competitors are ranking for, search volume, keyword difficulty, and more to help spot identity gaps and improve your SEO strategy.

For more details, see my piece on how to use Ubersuggest for competitor research.

AI Overviews and Fashion E-Commerce SEO

Google rolled out AI overviews (AIOs) in the States and is trialing it in the UK. Although it’s in its early days and seeing some early scaling back, this feature has the potential to shake up search rankings.

Should you consider this when working on the SEO for your fashion brand? Probably. 

Research from Onely shows that 16 percent of e-commerce search queries now deliver an AI overview in the results. And 80 percent of the sources don’t rank organically for the original search term.

Bartosz Góralewicz, Onely’s founder notes on X that “Ranking #1-3 gives you only an 8% chance of being a source in AI overviews.”

That doesn’t sound like great news for your online visibility, does it? Ultimately, this could lead to less traffic.

There’s no need to go into panic mode, though.

SEO consultant Aleyda Solis has a Google AI Overviews Traffic Risk Impact Assessment. 

You can use it to understand your before-and-after AIO click-through rates, traffic gaps, and the results/pages appearing in AIO.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) may be more important than ever. Google uses E-E-A-T to determine website quality and it’s part of Google’s page quality ranking. 

Emphasizing E-E-A-T in your content can establish your brand as a reliable source of information; you can improve E-E-A-T by adding expert comments, filling content gaps, building authoritative links, and keeping content updated.

FAQs

Here are a few frequently asked questions about SEO for fashion e-commerce:

Why is SEO important for fashion e-commerce websites?

SEO for fashion brands is crucial for driving organic traffic and improving the website’s visibility in search engine results. By optimizing for relevant keywords, you can attract more of your ideal customers and stay competitive.

How does SEO differ for fashion e-commerce compared to other industries?

SEO for fashion e-commerce differs from other industries because it’s highly visual, making optimizing images and creating visual content essential for SEO.

Keyword research also requires a different approach, as shoppers are looking for specific terms, Therefore, you’ll want to include long-tail keywords in your strategy.

Conclusion

SEO for your clothing brand is essential for businesses, but remember, it has quirks and needs. 

You won’t always know what e-commerce customers want, but you optimize your site to improve its visibility and ensure customers are happy shopping on it. 

Baseline SEO practices, like keyword and competitor research, optimization, and targeting long-tail keywords, can still help you achieve online success. As this article details, optimizing SEO for fashion brands is a unique challenge you can overcome with the right approach. Learn how to optimize your website even more with these helpful e-commerce traffic tips.