Dropshipping: Pros & Cons from SEO Perspective

Today, we will share invaluable points about what is dropshipping – in SEO perspective. Make sure to check each point because they are also actionable steps to help you ace the SEO dropshipping game.

Now, before we discuss the pros and cons of SEO for dropshipping, let’s make sure that we are on the same page first:

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping, unlike other e-commerce business models, saves you from doing required intermediary steps such as logistics, warehousing, and others – the process can be as simple as shipping products directly to your customers from or through a third-party supplier.

So, no more buying goods from suppliers just to keep products on hand. No more storing the products until they get bought. No more doing the nitty-gritty work of processing a customer’s order, packaging the products, and shipping them to the customers.

Now, the dropshipping industry might be more profitable due to the little work and logistics it requires. However, we must not forget that due to the low barrier of entry, it can be very competitive. So, having a strategic SEO for dropshipping will set you apart from the competition.

Let’s start with the dropshipping SEO pros.

SEO for Dropshipping Pros

Listed below are ten dropshipping SEO pros that you can apply in your dropshipping business to boost your visibility, organic traffic, and conversions:

Optimising Website for Keywords

• When optimising the product pages, ensure to include keywords in the product titles and descriptions. However, you may need to just optimise for one keyword, especially when you have minimal content on the page.
• When optimising the product categories or collections, make sure to include some keyword-driven content that describes the category because such copy will help you rank organically.
• When optimising your blog posts, add 3 to 7 relevant keywords, depending on the length of the post – make sure to incorporate the keyword in at least 3% of the content but not exceeding 5%. Using SEO tools to hit the right percentage would be a great advantage, too.

Also, updating your older content can be as effective as creating new ones – maintain the freshness of your pages by removing outdated keywords and irrelevant content.

Tweak your old posts by adding new and relevant points to each of your posts – do this every 3 to 4 months. By doing so, your older blog posts will have more chances of ranking better in the search engines.

Most importantly, for website traffic, ensure that your page titles and descriptions are actionable – don’t just optimise them for keywords, ensure that people would want to click on your web pages if they happen to rank in the search engines.

Mastering Product Descriptions

One of the riskiest habits in a dropshipping business is importing product descriptions from suppliers to websites without changing them or making the content unique.

You see, regardless of how well your dropshipper crafted the copy for your meta description, you shouldn’t use the same copy because it is already a duplicate content – chances are, the same thing appears in different websites, and the search engines don’t like duplicate content. Google may penalise you by dropping your page to the bottom rank of the search results.

Remember that maintaining relevant, useful, and unique content on your web pages will set you apart from a sea of competitors. So, consider tweaking your short and long product descriptions when doing SEO for dropshipping, and make sure each of them is unique in every product page.

Talking About the Product Specifications

Displaying or talking about your product’s specs is another way to stand out from your competitors. So, if your product specs come from a data feed, don’t just copy and paste the specifications – find a way to display the information in an engaging manner or talk about the specs in detail or in a helpful and unique way.

Writing Blog Posts Multiple Times a Week

If you’re in the dropshipping business and you’re not publishing any blog posts yet, you should start right now. Writing or publishing ultra-relevant and high-quality blog posts multiple times a week increases your chances at ranking better in the search engines, and people linking to your posts.

You can start by writing product reviews, case studies about people using your product, and how-to guides. By doing so, your target audience will find your content to be bringing more value to the table than your competition.

As your content grows, people will flock to your blog – treating it as one of the authorities in your niche.

Adding Internal Links

Adding internal links is one of the essential steps to improve your dropshipping SEO – it helps your website visitors to click through your site, as well as helping the search engine bots to “crawl” and index your web pages faster.

So, when writing blog posts, make sure to add a few links to your product pages.

When creating product pages, you can add a feature that shows the recommended products, linking to other web pages in your site.

Remember that when doing internal linking, each link should make sense to your website visitors – enticing them to click on your other web pages, lowering your site’s bounce rate.

Also, internal linking helps you send a message to the search engines as to which web pages to rank – internal linking from one page to another is basically granting ranking power from one web page to the next. So, make sure that you are linking strategically.

Creating a Collection of Product Pages

Hampers To Go optimises their online store for searches about gifts for different occasions – besides publishing blog posts for gift ideas or guides for various special occasions, you can create a collection of product pages, too, especially when it comes to products that are highly searched for various categories such as gift ideas.

Hampers To Go keeps their product collection pages active year-round so that they will not lose the authority for the keywords or search terms – their customers can easily find gift ideas for:

• Valentine’s Day
• Easter
• Mother’s Day
• Father’s Day
• Christmas
• Celebrations
• Birthdays
• “For Him”
• “For Her”

The best thing about making a product collection page is that whenever you remove or add a product in the collection, the search engines will recrawl your page, seeing that it has been updated.

Adding Schema Markup

Adding Schema markup to your web pages, especially in your product pages, will be one of the valuable processes when doing SEO for dropshipping. Schema.org is the brainchild of the leading search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex – the purpose of this resource is to help you communicate to the search engines what your web page is all about.

For instance, there is a code that will tell the search engines if there is a featured video or image in your product page. Now, I know what you’re thinking – a code? Do I need to learn to code? The answer is: not necessarily.

The truth is, adding schema markup to your web pages is easier than you think, so don’t let the process overwhelm you. But if it does, especially when it takes too much of your time, you can always tap the experts in dropshipping SEO

Besides telling the leading search engines what your web page is all about, you also give them the necessary information that they can display in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) such as, a featured image or video, a product rating, and other factors that could entice your target audience to click to your web page in the search results.

Marking your web page with Schema is essential, but it is often an overlooked dropshipping SEO advantage.

If you want to get a higher chance of getting the search engines to display a featured snippet of your product pages in the search results, don’t skip adding a Schema markup.

Take a look at these search results example below for comparison:

I bet you’d click on the first result which shows a featured snippet (thanks to Schema markup) than the second result which is rather bland.

Monitoring Page Load Speed

Frequently monitoring the load speed of your product pages, collection or category pages, and other important web pages in your site can be crucial to your dropshipping business success, especially when it comes to sales or conversions.

One study revealed that 47% of your average website visitors expect your web pages to load in less than 2 seconds. On the other hand, 40% of your potential customers will abandon your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Here’s how you can ensure the fast load speed of your web pages:

• Compress large images in your web pages as they can slow the page down.
• Use image resizing tools that will compress the images without compromising image quality.
• Remove any unnecessary apps or plug-ins in your website that are slowing your site down.
• Be strategic with your website pop-ups, make sure they don’t slow your web pages down.

Also, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insight to help you identify how your web pages are performing in desktop and mobile devices in terms of speed – the online tool also gives recommendations on improving your page load speed.

Submitting a Sitemap to Google

A sitemap showcases all of the pages in your website that Google should crawl and index to show in the search results. Your sitemap should start from the most important web page, which is your homepage, down to your category or collection pages, subcategories, product pages, blog posts, and others.

Submitting a sitemap is essential so that Google can crawl your online store every time there are changes made – the more you update your web pages, the more Google visits. Crawls, and indexes your website.

Having a Backlink Strategy

Getting relevant and high-quality backlinks are fruits of a well-executed dropshipping SEO – this means that related and trustworthy websites or outside sources are linking to your web pages, treating you as a reliable resource.

To achieve such attention and respect in your niche, you have to have an excellent backlink strategy – you can start by writing ultra-helpful and top-notch blog posts multiple times a week because this increases your chances of being more visible online and people linking to your content.

Then you can start networking to relevant dropshipping businesses or websites by commenting on their blog posts, leaving helpful content and tips without snatching the spotlight from their content, and then you can pitch an offer to publish a guest blog post on their site.

SEO for Dropshipping Cons

Listed below are four dropshipping SEO cons that you should avoid applying in your dropshipping business or website at all cost:

Changing the URLs

When doing SEO for dropshipping, it’s best never to change your web pages URLs because changing them can result in broken links from websites that are linking to your site. So, be extra mindful when creating your URL as you create a new product page, collection or category page, and most importantly, when creating superb and evergreen blog posts.

Also, remember to add the focused keyword in your URL.

Now, if you must change the URL due to some unfortunate reasons, make sure to use a 301 redirect so that you can maintain the backlinks and ranking power from the old web page.

Duplicating Content, Especially for Promo Pages

At all costs, avoid duplicating your content. Many online store owners would be tempted to use the same sentence, phrase, or paragraph in every special promotion web page. So, they copy and paste it.

Remember that the search engines, especially Google, hate duplicate content. So, if you just copy and paste the same paragraph on every page, you’re putting them in jeopardy.

So, make sure to add unique content on every page regardless of how similar the aim of the content will be.

Hiding Content at the Bottom of a Page

The search engines, especially Google, prefer useful and lengthy content on websites. However, adding more content on a page may not look so enticing.

Nevertheless, avoid hiding the content in at the bottom of your web page or stuffing it under a menu or any expandable field just to make the blocks of text look natural – this may result in the search engines penalising your page.

So, aim to be intentional with the content that you include in your site – when adding more content in your collection or category pages, for instance, add an introduction to welcome your website visitors.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to add more content to your product pages, try describing each product in detail.

You can answer these following questions and make it as your guide when writing more content to your product pages:

• What is the product all about?
• Who can use it?
• Where should people use it?
• When is the best time to use the product?
• Why should people buy it?
• How do people use it?
• And discuss other competitive advantages of the product

Copying from Your Data Feed

Most dropshipping business owners heavily rely on their data feeds that are given to them by their suppliers, manufacturers, or people from the stores and warehouses. The data feeds are often provided in spreadsheets and XML feeds.

Now, since the images, specs, descriptions, and all other information from the data feed go to all the websites using the same feed, the content for each product page is no longer unique and no longer suitable for SEO dropshipping.

So, make sure to tweak every content that you receive from your data feed for every product, so you can stand out from the rest of the competition.

Final Thoughts

Dropshipping SEO can be a bit overwhelming, but it does pay dividends by helping your dropshipping business stand out in a sea of competitors, as well as helping your web pages rank better and higher in the search results, gain more visibility from your target audience, drive more traffic, and most importantly, increase conversions or sales.

The pros and cons of SEO for dropshipping discussed in this post are just an introduction to the strategic search engine optimisation for e-commerce businesses. If you want to get ahead of your competitors faster, make sure to talk to the SEO dropshipping experts.