Difference between a Local SEO and an eCommerce Website SEO

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) uses geo-targeting and focuses on optimizing web pages for local searches for a single location or region. Google Maps Live Location plays a vital role in helping a user find what they are looking for along with the store’s address, real-time status, contact number, etc.

It is the process of optimizing your website by location, so that people from the same city, area or region can easily find you in search.

Your business will be in front of the people that are most likely to buy your product or services. This is how your services, as well as products, will get good exposure and people will get to know about your product in a short span of time.

So if you have local businesses that you want to take online. You will only be selling to customers in your city or region. Additionally, local SEO has been proved very effective for all the companies that are having their representative offices spread over the country. 

If you are using the local SEO, you will be in a better position than your competitors who are not using the local SEO, regardless of the fact that they are localized in the same place as you. In this way, the services and products you offer will be more easily found by consumers living in or visiting the specific location.

What is eCommerce SEO?

eCommerce SEO is an attempt to attract potential customers towards your website from all around the world. eCommerce sites don’t have any location constraints. eCommerce SEO works on the concept of using general keywords that help connect any user from any corner of the world. 

eCommerce websites are always going through numerous changes, ranging from modifications in the product listing to content updates. However, frequent updates in the product pages and inserting the best quality images with low load times are essential for the conversion of customers. 

Also, removing duplicate content, usage of the best-in-class keywords, and attractive product description, a strict no to broken links, matters a lot in the case of eCommerce SEO.

Difference between a Local SEO and an eCommerce Website SEO

1. Local SEO is based on a single location whereas eCommerce SEO is based on multiple locations. In short, Local SEO focuses on the optimization of web pages for specific locations. eCommerce SEO focuses on the optimization of web pages worldwide. 
2. Local SEO can improve rankings of location-based keywords in less time as compared to eCommerce websites having keywords targeting worldwide. 
3. Local SEO is less competitive as compared to eCommerce SEO.
4. Due to static web pages of local SEO sites, the optimization of content is less. Whereas in order to sell online, eCommerce SEO includes strategies for optimizing a lot of content of the website.
5. When people are searching for local businesses, they want to see photos. Local SEO includes optimization of a small number of business-related images. When it comes to eCommerce SEO, you need to optimize a large number of images related to each product in all the positions.
6. Create a Geo Sitemap for local SEO which adds your small or large business details in the normal XML sitemap. This will help Google where to find geographical details to your location. Example: Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap-location.xml. eCommerce sites use XML sitemaps which are highly beneficial if the business website has many dynamic pages. Search engines find XML sitemaps very useful for eCommerce sites that keep updating web pages or keep on adding new ones. Example: Sitemap: http://example.com/sitemap.xml
7. A local business will be focusing on fewer services pages for a specific region whereas eCommerce sites include optimization of more category pages & structure.
8. Internal Linking & Cross-Linking techniques are less complex in local SEO as compared to eCommerce business site SEO. With so many people making changes, large eCommerce websites often have inconsistent internal linking. If your canonical tags are set up properly, have them pull the canonical rather than the front-facing link.
9. Local SEO of the website is highly focused on location-based keywords and therefore local sites have simple HTML pages with static URL. Compared to eCommerce sites can contain thousands of product pages with dynamically generated URLs based on user queries which could create handfuls of duplicate content without you even realizing it. URL cleanliness is an overarching problem with eCommerce sites, as most have dynamically generated URLs so make sure you’re configuring these parameters correctly by telling Google which parameters they need to crawl and which to ignore.
10. An eCommerce site should be 100% safe as customers put their identity and financial data in your hands. Adding SSL/Visa/other security and encryption standards or certificates can reassure them that it’s safe. While Google is still in talks about adding an “https” as a ranking factor, currently it is not of any importance for Local SEO.
11. For an eCommerce site, an easy way to stand out on Google’s first page is rich snippets. eCommerce sites have the opportunity to get one of the most eye-catching rich snippets out there: reviews. However, local sites are more concerned about nearby locations. 
12. Adding “modifiers” like “Buy”, “Cheap” and “Deals” to your title tag can help you show up for more long-tail searches for eCommerce sites. Whereas Local SEO requires location-based title tag. 
13. Since eCommerce sites usually have a very large number of products, it’s common for product descriptions to be short, automated with little or no unique content as some products are almost identical but exist in different colors or sizes while handling an eCommerce site. Eliminating duplicate product descriptions and replacing them with unique descriptions can help resolve this issue. Whereas, Local SEO is highly optimized for local-based keywords with the proper length of the content.

Author: SEO Services Consultants