E-Commerce SEO – a Guide for Singapore Businesses

E-commerce in Singapore is booming. It is also highly competitive between platforms such as Shopee, Carousell, Lazada and many other small to medium businesses vying for digital real estate on search engines, making E Commerce SEO an invaluable part of their online operations.

This is especially true for small to medium enterprises using E Commerce as a main channel of sales. SEO traffic is invaluable. SEO drives organic traffic, boosts online visibility and sales. Unlike pay per click advertising, SEO offers long-term benefits, ensuring continuous traffic growth and cost-effective marketing.

What is E-Commerce SEO?

E-commerce SEO involves optimizing an online store to improve its visibility in search engine results. The end goal is to increase sales, conversions and revenue online.

It includes keyword research, on-page and off-page SEO, and technical SEO, focusing on product pages, category pages, and site architecture.

• Keyword Research: Identifying commercial search terms that potential customers use.
• Content Marketing: Mapping keywords to SEO optimized content/ pages. Ensuring content is helpful and beneficial. Secondly, answering keyword and user queries.
• On-Page SEO: Optimizing product pages, meta descriptions, and internal linking.
• Off-Page SEO: Managing an outreach team and building backlinks.
• Technical SEO: Enhancing user experience on product pages: site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability.

I can’t go in-depth into all sections on all pointers in one article. However, this article shall delve into actionable steps you can take today for your online store.

Singapore’s E-Commerce Market Statistics

Singapore’s E-commerce Market is is expected to continue its upward trajectory with increasing internet penetration and smartphone adoption. 

• Market Growth

The E-Commerce market in Singapore was valued at approximately USD 16.38 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to USD 23.52 billion by 2027, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4%​ (GlobeNewswire)​. This growth is fuelled by a advanced digital infrastructure, a tech-savvy population and high disposable incomes.

• Mobile Usage

Singapore boasts one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world, estimated at around 88%​.

Singaporean consumers are highly engaged with mobile technology, spending an average of 45 hours per week online. This extensive mobile usage supports a thriving mobile commerce sector, which generated $4 billion in revenue in 2021 and is projected to grow to $11 billion by 2025​.

Source: Commission Factory Blog.

• Consumer Preferences

In addition to high mobile penetration, Singaporean consumers show a strong preference for purchasing electronics and fashion items online.

This is complemented by a growing trend of live streaming on e-commerce platforms like Tiktok where users can engage in real-time online shopping experiences​.

E commerce is a multi billion dollar market and growing. You should NOT ignore it!

Here is Why You You Care about E-Commerce SEO as a Business Owner

Our team made comparisons between SEM and SEO. Yes, pay per click advertising itself can give you enormous results.

However, E Commerce SEO is definitely an invaluable long term investment for your business. Here’s why:

• Long-term Traffic Growth: SEO ensures continuous traffic growth, essential for building a sustainable e-commerce business.
• Cost-effective Marketing: SEO reduces dependency on paid ads, giving you diversification of traffic. Imagine dominating the top of organic and paid traffic. Organic traffic can also reduce the financial reliance on pay per click advertising in the long run.
• Building Brand Credibility: Top ranked sites on Google are perceived as more credible. 
• Competitive Advantage: Highly relevant organic traffic gives you an advantage to outperform competitors. SEO allows you to capture more market share.

How to Improve Your Product Pages for E-Commerce SEO

• Keyword Research

Identify relevant keywords, including long-tail and commercial intent keywords. Tools like SEMrush can help analyze competitor keywords, giving you insights into which terms are driving traffic to similar sites.

Here I analyze the Singapore’s bird nest by popping to top search result of “bird nest Singapore” into SEMrush.

Clearly, there is clearly search volume from local Singapore search engine on bird nests.

• Use Title Modifiers

Enhance CTR with modifiers like “Best,” “Cheapest,” and “Top-rated.” These modifiers can make your titles more compelling and clickable, which can improve your search engine rankings.

• Using Social Proof

Insert customer reviews, ratings, and testimonials in your landing page. Social proof helps build trust and credibility with potential customers, making them more likely to make a purchase. You can reach out the social media influencers and get them to endorse your product.

• User Experience/Interface

Use high-quality images. If you’re selling products online, high quality visuals are non negotiable. Your page’s user purchasing experience, general flow, spacing, UI/UX, payment systems must signal trust to the consumer.

They are after all, transacting online.

SEO tip: SEO optimize your images with descriptive alt text.

• Implement Schema Markup

Use schema markup for products pages. Search results can enhanced with rich snippets. These snippets can include star ratings, product prices, and availability, making your listings more attractive.

Common Content SEO Problems for E-Commerce Sites

• Duplicate Content

Using content audit tools too suss out duplicate content. Then use canonical tags and noindex tags to handle duplicates.

Canonical tags help you specify the preferred version of a page, while noindex tags prevent search engines from indexing duplicate pages.

• Too Manage Pages/ Thin Content

Manage crawl budget by consolidating pages. Large e-commerce sites can have thousands of pages, which can overwhelm search engine crawlers. Consolidating similar pages can help ensure that all your important content gets indexed.

Secondly, thin content offers little value to users, takes up your crawl budget and doesn’t help your search engine rankings. Make sure all your pages have substantial, informative content that meets the needs of the keyword query.

Helpful, Non Fluff Content Marketing for E Commerce SEO

Helpful, unique, rich content on your product pages is going to help in ranking that product page against other competitors in the SERPs.

There are many fluffy copywriters in the market. That is why content briefs are important. Here are some guidelines that our team follows when hiring.  Ensure your product pages are packed with value and insights that actually help the reader.

• Clear Product Descriptions

Use primary and secondary keywords naturally within the text. Make sure your descriptions are informative, highlighting both benefits and features of your products.

• Detailed Insights and Reader Impact

Offer important details that directly affects the reader. For instance, don’t just describe a product’s features, explain how these features benefit teh reader. Help them make informed decisions and persuade them of the product’s value.

• Expert Opinions/ Evidence Based Information

Includes insights from industry experts. Leverage expert’s extensive knowledge to provide the reader with authoritative opinions.

• Clarification on Complex Topics

Some times, products may be highly technical. Your content has to break down intricate topics into understandable segments. The goal is to demystify the technical jargon and provide clear, concise explanations that average reader can grasp.

• Practical Instructions

Provide expert instructions that show you exactly how to use the product features. You can include step-by-step guides through infographics or text in your product pages.

Technical E-Commerce SEO Strategies

Here are simple technical considerations you can pass to your team today to implement.

• Flat Site Architecture

Ensure easy navigation with minimized clicks to important pages. A flat site architecture means that users can reach any page on your site within a few clicks, which improves usability and helps search engines crawl your site more efficiently.

• Short, Keyword-Rich URL Structure

Use descriptive URLs. Short, descriptive URLs that include your target keywords can improve your search engine rankings and make it easier for users to understand what your pages are about.

• Internal Links

Link strategically to high-priority pages to enhance crawlability. Internal links help search engines discover new content on your site and distribute page authority more effectively.

• User-friendly Design

Ensure a user friendly intuitive design. In simple terms, this means get your basics right: menus, no broken links, easy navigation bars, breadcrumbs. Easily accessiblility in general!

User-friendly designs keeps visitors on your site longer and reduces bounce rates. I mean Google did leak that bounce rates and time spent are ranking signals. 😉

• Mobile Responsive Design/ Friendly Navigation

Singaporeans LOVE using their phones. Hence forth, ensure your site is user friendly on all mobile devices. Ensure that mobile users are able to easily navigate your site. This involves designing menus and navigation bars that are easy to use on smaller screens, ensuring that users can find what they need quickly and easily.

These days, almost every other theme is mobile responsive. However, it’s never late to re-check. Mobile responsive designs automatically adjusts the layout of your site to fit the screen size of the device being used, providing a seamless user experience.

• Site Speed

Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can help you test and offer suggestions to improve site speed. Slow-loading sites frustrate users and negatively impact both user experience in SEO.

Use tools like Google Lighthouse to identify speed issues. Get your web developer to implement technical SEO audits: image optimization and browser caching.

How to Build Backlinks for E Commerce SEO

On page optimisations, helpful content and a smooth user experience is only 20% of inputs that drive results. Ultimately, backlinks are the needle mover for SEO. High-quality backlinks from reputable sites signal to search engines that your site is authoritative and trustworthy.

Yes, and not all links are made equal.

Hiring out a bunch of random SEOs on freelancer sites that promise you blog commenting/ forum backlinks aren’t going to work anymore.

Here are some link building strategies you can implement today.

Publish High-Quality Content and Promote It using the Skyscraper

This is commonly known as the skyscraper outreach strategy.

• Skyscraper Research for Topics

Use tools like SEMrush to identify topics relevant to your industry. You can get creative. They can be related niches such as “super foods” is to “bird nest”.

To increase the success of the skyscraper technique. One must ensure that the search results for these topics contain many referring domains.

This means that the articles are heavily “in demand” and linked to! Increasing your likelihood of landing backlinks!

The essence is to look for top search results with lost of potential backlinks so that you can do a skyscraper outreach to outreach, and promote your content.

Here’s an example:

Then pop top results into SEMrush and look at the number or referring domains. The higher the referring domains, the better. I’d say gather as many referring domains that you can outreach as possible and do an outreach campaign!

• Create Skyscraper Content

The skyscraper idea here is to create blog articles that are equally if not better than top Google search results: this can range from reviews, guides, and how-to articles. For skyscraper guides, you can including infographic (use tools like Canva to design professional-looking visuals) and step by step guides.

• Promote Content

Share that “Skyscraper” post on social media and relevant forums. Outreach to bloggers, publishers, influencers and pitch them for a backlink!

HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

• Sign Up for HARO: Create an account on HARO, also now known as Connectively and start pitching! Provide insightful and prompt responses to journalist queries related to your industry.

Partner Links

• List Potential Partners: Identify suppliers, distributors, and other business partners who have websites.
• Request Backlinks: Since you’re already in a commercial relationship, you can approach them with request to add a backlink to your site.
• Offer Reciprocal Links: Highlight mutual benefits of SEO, propose adding their links to your site in exchange. Thus creating a win-win situation.

Resource Pages

• Search for Resource Pages: Use search queries like “best online shops in Singapore” to find relevant resource pages.
• Craft Outreach Emails: Use an outreach software like Mailshake. Craft personalised emails to the editors and pitch to them why your site would be a valuable addition to their resource page.

Creative PR Campaigns

• Identify Unique Angles: Find unique selling points of your business that can attract media attention, such as innovative products or community initiatives.
• Craft and Pitch Press Releases: Craft compelling press releases and pitch your story to local newspapers, TV channels, online publishers and online news portals.

Guest Posting for Backlinks

• Scrape Competitor Backlinks: Use Majestic SEO to identify your competitors backlinks.
• Use Google Search Operators: Look for qualified prospects by search on Google: “Keyword + Write for Us”.
• Filter and Reach Out to Pitch!: Filter out your contact list using metrics such as domain authority and traffic. Then reach out to contact the site owners, pitch them a guest article, and earn backlinks!

Our Singaporean led team of SEO experts are kick butt at reaching out for guest post backlinks. That is because it is the most scalable, and it can be systemized. However it requires a lot of coordination from content creation to prospecting. Nonetheless, this is the link building system that our agency team uses.

The Pros and Cons of Hiring an Agency for E Commerce SEO

E Commerce SEO isn’t simple. It involves many moving parts. There are many factors that can determine success from user experience to search engine traffic.

Hiring out an SEO agency that can offer comprehensive services like SEO audits, keyword research, technical SEO fixes, content strategy, and link-building campaigns can be helpful if you lack resources to build an in house team just yet.

Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) for E-Commerce Solutions

If you’re a Singaporean business owner. Then you may be in luck. The Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) is a government initiative in Singapore designed to support businesses in adopting IT solutions and equipment to enhance business processes.

The PSG offers up to 80% funding support, making it easier for Singaporean businesses to implement e-commerce solutions.

Eligibility Criteria:

• Your business has to be registered and operating in Singapore.
• Annual Sales Turnover: Not more than S$100 million or employment size not exceeding 200 workers.
• Local Shareholding: At least 30% local shareholding.

The Application Process:

Businesses can apply for the PSG through the Business Grants Portal and select pre-approved IT solutions and vendors to assist in their e-commerce journey.

Conclusion

There are huge opportunities for E Commerce SEO in the Singapore market. Evidently, there are many moving parts and SEO-ing an E Commerce site isn’t the simplest of tasks. Nonetheless, for small and medium enterprises that are forward looking, making an investment into E Commerce SEO can be long term competitive business moat.