The complete guide for Search/SEO analysis for eCommerce (Template and Strategies included)

I have worked in many markets for several years.

This organic analysis that I am presenting is skipped by numerous professionals.

Skipping this analysis can be a problem because this phase is where you listen to the client, make the analysis, and provide your vision.

I am not speaking only about SEO, but the organic (Marketplace, price comparisons, social, etc.)

When we speak of organic, we immediately think about SEO, but that is wrong. 

Organic analysis permits you to fully understand the referenced market.

This helps you to understand where to positioning, how much budget to allocate, which channels to dominate, and/or what content to create. 

This analysis often assists many marketing channels, like ADV.

In this article, I explain my approach to organic analysis.

If you pay close attention, you may take home new tactics and valuable methods for reasoning.

Preliminary phase

The preliminary phase means understanding the market context.

Is your market more oriented toward social media?
Is there a stronger trend toward positioning on other channels?

The world of e-commerce is constantly evolving, and with it, the challenges faced by those working in the field.

Think about how many times you’ve asked yourself how to stand out in an increasingly crowded market.

Or those sleepless nights spent trying to figure out why your eCommerce isn’t converting the way you hoped.

And what about the frustration of seeing your competitors rise in organic rankings while you feel stuck?

You’re not alone in this struggle.

Many find themselves navigating blindly through a sea of data, without really knowing how to interpret it to make effective decisions.

Others feel overwhelmed by the speed at which new trends and platforms emerge, fearing they’re missing out on crucial opportunities.

eCommerce and Marketplaces are not the same

Understanding this distinction is crucial, as many professionals and entrepreneurs don’t fully grasp the difference.

While marketplaces and e-commerce stores may seem similar, they differ significantly in terms of structure, management, and offering.

↪ Marketplace

A marketplace is an online platform that allows multiple sellers to offer their products or services.

The focus is on connecting supply and demand.

It acts as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, handling payment processing and providing support.

Well-known examples include Amazon and eBay.

↪ eCommerce

An e-commerce site is an online store managed by a single seller, offering their own products directly to buyers.

The focus here is on product sales from business to consumer.

In this case, the seller is responsible for every aspect of the transaction—from managing the website to handling logistics.

Key Characteristics

Characteristic	Marketplace	eCommerce
Number of Sellers	Multi-vendor	Single-vendor
Transaction Management	Shared between the platform and sellers	Fully managed by the seller
Product Variety	Wide range of products from various sellers	Specific offering from a single seller
Branding	Less focus on individual brands	Strong brand identity

First call with the client

I usually keep it under 30 minutes—just enough time to gather the key information needed to kick off a project.

Here’s how I structure it:

1. Client introduction (personal background)
2. My introduction (if needed)
3. eCommerce presentation
4. Open conversation
5. Open-ended questions
6. I state my price (to avoid working in the dark)

I’ve been part of many client calls, both within companies and independently.

Over time, I’ve realized this is the most important phase—if you understand the client’s business, 80% of the work is already done.

If you build a connection with your potential client, you’ll gain a huge advantage.

Relationships always pay off. They’re the foundation of good leadership.

During the call, don’t just jot down keywords or surface-level info—go deeper.

👉 Understand their business
👉 Note the key commercial pages
👉 Create a genuine conversation—don’t focus on selling
👉 Write down the potential main keywords to start working on (the ones that bring or could bring sales)

Here’s a template that might help you, written by Ryan Stewart

Business-Side Analysis & Mapping (KW research not traditional)

From the initial client brief, you should already have a few terms or pages that the client considers important.

On the organic side, you can begin with a simple search on Google and other search-based platforms.

Let me show you an example from a market I’ve worked in.

The market is pet food and related accessories, specifically for dogs, cats, and other animals.

If you know the client wants to focus on 2–3 product categories, you can approach it using the structure below.

Let’s say the client wants to push the “Dog Food” category.

Through organic analysis, you’ll see there are multiple angles.

The main intent appears to be shopping-focused, via ads, etc.

Doing this type of initial business analysis helps you:

👉 Understand the brand’s strengths
👉 Identify weaknesses
👉 See where to invest time and budget
👉 Understand how competitors are positioned
👉 Identify which angle to focus on

Not all of these angles are well-covered by competitors.

From an SEO perspective, jot everything down in a Google Sheet.

Use columns like:

• Funnel stage → Is the user looking for information, ready to buy, searching for a tutorial (e.g., YouTube), doing a local search, or comparing prices?
• SERP Features → Note if there are featured snippets, shopping results, etc.
• Keyword Expansion → Starting from a term like “dog food”, explore related searches. Dig into marketplaces, social media, Google suggestions, and document everything.

This phase must be done manually to fully understand what you’re going to do.

Don’t condition by an SEO tool, at least in the first part.

It’s also important to track the main competitors for different main intents.

Don’t go overboard with research.

The preliminary analysis should serve as a starting point, which you will use for future cyclical analyses.

Avoid spending hours and hours on 40,000 irrelevant keywords.

The analysis shown in the previous image can also be used to build your category with various filters, filling it with relevant details.

The filters were identified in the previous phase.

Often, to better target the user, I use this technique to dive deeper and satisfy the potential customer’s needs.

A note: Don’t rely solely on Google like everyone else—look at all organic channels.

With one client, we discovered through social media and forums that there was a demand for a specific category that didn’t exist on Google.

We created it and added it to the eCommerce site, resulting in great outcomes.

You can do the same if you identify potential filters.

Always base your decisions on analysis, data, and your own expertise.

Check where they are debating or commenting

When I work with content, I conduct analysis across Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, forums, and other platforms.

For example, with my client who operates in the psychology field, I built a personalized structure to process content.

They have significant expertise in this sector.

For each article, I created a customized structure.

For the topic “Expat Blues,” I analyzed both social media and search results.

I collected comments from YouTube, Instagram, and other platforms discussing this topic, then used Claude to help me structure the content.

This is just one example.

Analyzing people’s sentiment across the entire search landscape is very important.

It’s essential not to limit yourself to just keyword research with tools and Google.

How can I help your e-commerce

✔️ SEO
✔️ Content Marketing
✔️ Strategy of organic

Distinguish Organic Results

With every client, I identify an organic strategy across various channels.

A well-crafted strategy in terms of format and content can drive both sales and traffic.

In this phase, I propose the strategy to the client and how to approach reels, carousels, and posts.

For example, below, you can see how Bauzaar communicates in a fun and completely different way compared to Arcaplanet.

On Google, for instance, video formats often appear.

If you know that specific products require a video (or several videos) for support, create them instead of just relying on written content.

During the analysis, you need to understand the distinction in organic results.

Get into the mindset of the customer and identify what they may need.

Competitor analysis

In the organic search, you will have different types of competitors, and it’s essential to make this clear to the client.

For example, if you are an SEO specialist, you can have an SEO competitor or a commercial competitor (more market and customer-oriented).

I prefer to manually identify competitors because tools often give misleading information.

Essentially, you need to know:

👉 Where do they rank
👉 How much time and effort do they invest in each channel/activity
👉 How active are they in what they do?

If Competitor 1 (as seen in the image) is creating a massive volume of high-quality content on YouTube and ranking well on Google, it won’t be easy to surpass them.

You also need to calculate the costs and effort involved for each activity/channel.

If the client tells you they don’t have the resources to create content on YouTube, it doesn’t make sense to even start analyzing that channel.

Instead, focus on a few, but highly effective strategies to achieve significant results.

One crucial point is to check how many products you have compared to your competitors in the relevant categories.

If your category has 500 products and your competitors have 10,000, there will be a significant difference

It will be challenging to rank and sell within that category.

If the category doesn’t rank, it won’t be visible, and therefore, it won’t sell.

A good practice, if you have the same products as your competitor, is to apply what’s shown in the image: rotating listings, monitoring margins, and ensuring stock quantity.

If you don’t have many products, you can leverage Marketplaces to position yourself with just a few products, optimizing only those and taking advantage of the Marketplace’s entire catalog to compete with those competitors.

When looking at organic search results, also pay attention to aspects like:

👉 CPC (Cost Per Click)
👉 Competitor’s approximate traffic
👉 Referring domains
👉 Domain trust
👉 Are they using social media?

These are crucial aspects.

But it is also important to run Screaming Frog on the competitor’s site and watch what works and doesn’t work in technical aspects.

Market share organic

I don’t like the estimate because SEO is very risky and is not easy to do.

This phase is difficult to show in a generic way because it is highly personalized.

For example, you might want to have a view of only certain keywords, knowing how much market share each brand covers in the organic results as a percentage.

But you can also use Python scripts or any tool you prefer.

Here is a custom Python script that can give you an idea of how competitors are ranking for specific keywords and how much market share they cover on Google. I’ll share the link.

You may want to know how much organic market share your competitors and you yourself are covering in 4-5 categories of interest.

To find this out, you generally need these tools:

→ GSC (Google Search Console): You can rely on total impressions, cleaning keywords that are irrelevant. You need to have the data here.

→ External tools (Ahrefs, SEMrush, social tools, etc.): You need them to export various keywords.

→ Google Sheets: Here, you will clean the data and draw conclusions.

Here is a practical example to get results:

1. Identify 5-6 categories you are interested in monitoring through your competitors.
2. Paste each URL into a tool like Google Keyword Planner or other SEO tools (Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc.).
3. Extract all the keywords for each URL (category).
4. Insert them into Google Sheets.
5. For each URL, clean the data and keep only the keywords you are interested in.
6. Separate branded and non-branded keywords into different sheets.
7. Calculate the total volume for each query for each URL and report it in a new sheet.

8. Create supporting charts.

Here is a basic example of the total keyword volume for a category without brand search.

Here is a basic example of the total keyword volume for a category with only brand search.

In the second example, you can see how Zooplus dominates in brand search.

If your brand were Arcaplanet, you might ask yourself these questions:

→ Should we invest more in PR and link building to increase brand searches and get more visibility?
→ Can we cover more keywords by adding descriptions in categories?
→ Is our catalog strong or weak? Can we compete?
→ Do we need external support like a newsletter or other channels?
→ Are we fully leveraging reviews? (They often help you rank for more keywords.)

These examples shown are just estimates. To get nearly precise data (which is not always possible), you need to dive into more detail.

Look abroad

I often rely on checking the organic results in foreign markets related to the target sector.

To do this, you can use tools like NordVPN and Nightwatch.

The first things I do are:

• Look at how foreign competitors are performing (social media, marketplaces, etc.)
• Check the CPC (Cost Per Click)
• See if they are using strategies different from mine
• Observe whether they’ve implemented actions with significant impacts
• Check the structure of their eCommerce
• Watch how they move across different channels

There are other things you can do, but always avoid overdoing it.

For example, if you see that a foreign competitor has adopted an unusual technique that works, try applying it to your e-commerce and test it while monitoring everything.

Evaluation phase

This phase involves assessing how free or crowded the market is and how you want to position yourself.

In addition to having a complete overview of your competitors, you must also identify which market shares you are already covering.

Often, it’s more useful to work with what you have, rather than creating additional content or strategies that lead to unnecessary budget waste.

The organic analysis phase is extremely important.

If you see comparison sites in the organic results (like in the example shown), communicate this to the client and highlight the advantages they might gain by entering that market.

You need to leverage the angle that you think is appropriate.

If a competitor is ranking with 3-4 sites and dominating on Google, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are working well on other channels.

Are they covering Instagram, Marketplaces, or comparison sites?

Perhaps having more domains just on Google for that sector doesn’t make sense, but it depends on factors X and Y.

Link building analysis

A strong backlink analysis should focus on these essential elements:

1. Quality Assessment: Examine both linking domains and their relevance to your industry rather than just counting links.
2. Content Context: Evaluate how well the linking page’s topic aligns with your content.
3. Anchor Text Diversity: Analyze the distribution of branded, keyword-rich, generic, and navigational anchor texts.
4. Link Acquisition Patterns: Monitor the velocity and natural growth of your backlink profile over time.
5. Technical Factors: Consider link attributes (nofollow, UGC), placement within content, and potential negative SEO signals.
6. Competitive Intelligence: Study what makes your competitors’ most-linked content successful.
7. Linkable Asset Development: Create content with original research, visual elements, or unique insights that naturally attract links.

For this analysis, I use a Google Sheet template.

In the past, I used this template for a course that presented Alessandro D’Andrea, and now I’m utilizing it again.

So I came up with an idea about my brand and competitors’ work.

If you are competent, also in PR, do this analysis at the same time.

Product analysis

When analyzing a product, the first focus point is to understand the context.

You need to figure out:

👉 Is there awareness of a problem or not?
👉 Where is the product being distributed? -> On TikTok, YouTube, Marketplaces, etc.
👉 Understand the product’s communication method.
👉 Is there market demand, and is it increasing or decreasing?

If you want a broader view, you can use the Helium 10 plugin.

With this plugin, I can enter the keyword of interest on Amazon and get many valuable insights.

For example, you can determine the average price of the product.

You can also identify the major competitors and their volumes.

Trend analysis

I won’t dwell on this part too much, as it’s a well-discussed topic and lacks much personalization.

Trend analysis is done to:

👉 Predict market trends
👉 Evaluate seasonality
👉 Understand the market
👉 Adjust strategy accordingly
👉 Identify threats.

Don’t rely solely on tools like Google Trends.

Today, the average user interacts across multiple channels, so it’s important to analyze trends on external platforms as well.

Use tools like Pinterest Trends, TikTok Trends, and Amazon Best Sellers.

Using them gives you a broader perspective beyond just Google.

Google provides excellent tools, but it’s important to have a view that goes beyond Google alone.

Evaluating sector competitiveness

Every competitor is strong/weak in a specific channel. Nothing is impossible.

Generally, to assess the competitiveness of a sector, I focus on a few key factors such as:

👉 How much do they spend on paid ads and the cost per click on specific keywords
👉 Channels they are present on
👉 Whether they have a lot of brand searches
👉 Domain Rating (DR)
👉 How much content are they creating and how
👉 Whether they have a push, balanced, or slow approach.

If Competitor 1 is focusing on link building and marketplaces, while Competitor 2 is pushing paid ads, you’ll need to differentiate yourself.

Differentiation should also be market-based.

You could position yourself on price comparison sites and by creating content on social media platforms like Instagram.

Meanwhile, you can also invest a small portion of your budget and time into channels they are already dominating.

Generally, my approach varies for each e-commerce; every market has its own personality.

Your SEO competitor has a budget ten times bigger than yours?

That doesn’t mean they’ll win.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the competitive advantage small businesses can have in the SEO landscape.

Size doesn’t necessarily determine the winner.

Your competitors might have massive SEO budgets, but that doesn’t mean you can’t outperform them.

Big companies operate in a completely different environment.

Their slow development cycles are actually opportunities for you.

While they’re bogged down by complex decision-making processes, you can move fast, launching new features and gaining a competitive edge in real time.

Large organizations are often overly cautious, tied up in red tape and multiple layers of approval.

You, on the other hand, have the freedom to experiment.

And the risk of failure is often much lower for a small or mid-sized business.

Speed of decision-making might just be your most powerful asset.

While industry giants need to convince countless stakeholders before making a move, you can adapt and innovate almost instantly.

You don’t have to face your competitors on their own battlefield.

That’s like trying to break down a wall with your head.

Instead, identify and focus on the areas where they’re frustrated or slow to act.

Find the niche, the emerging market, the innovative angle — and make it yours.

In this context, agility becomes your slingshot against the giant.

And as history has taught us, sometimes that’s all it takes to win.

Your approach is everything — don’t overlook it.

And you can rank for long-tail queries

Faceted navigation is an excellent strategy for capturing long-tail keyword traffic, but timing matters.

Two scenarios when you should temporarily postpone implementation:

1. During site launch, first establish your foundation.
   
   Let search engines index primary products before introducing faceted navigation complexity.
   
   Focus on UX, conversions, and technical performance.
   
2. When fixing technical issues, address fundamental problems before optimizing facets.
   
   Even brilliant, faceted navigation underperforms with duplicate content or poor performance.
   
   Once these hurdles are cleared, optimized faceted navigation becomes a powerful strategy to capture valuable long-tail search traffic that often indicates high purchase intent.

I advise you to visit this site https://www.wayfair.com/, they have managed these aspects.

How much do they spend on paid ads, and the cost per click on specific keywords

Advertising spend and CPC are crucial indicators of a sector’s competitiveness.

A high CPC suggests that many companies are competing for the same keywords, making the sector more competitive.

There are competitive sectors where the CPC ranges between €5-10 or more.

This indicates high competition and the need for a significant advertising budget.

Channels they are present on

At this stage, you need to first listen to the client’s needs and understand their objectives.

If your main competitors are present on Instagram and TikTok but less on other channels, there may be an opportunity to differentiate on these latter channels.

Identifying less saturated channels can offer growth opportunities at lower costs, while competing on already saturated channels will require more innovative and potentially expensive strategies.

If they have many brand searches

A high volume of brand searches for an e-commerce indicates that it already has a solid customer base.

In a sector with many brand searches, substantial budgets will be needed for PR and link-building strategies, for example.

This aspect is important to communicate to the client so that a long-term strategy can be created to achieve optimal results.

Organic growth and customer acquisition are much slower compared to paid advertising.

Therefore, it’s crucial to consolidate a long-term strategy if you want to have (almost) constant and lasting customers.

Domain rating (DR)

A sector with many sites having high DR is generally more competitive.

For example, if you want to rank organically on Google through pages or content, you need to consider this factor.

If you have a new domain with a DR of around 10, and your top 6 competitors have a DR of around 60, it will be almost impossible to rank high.

There are exceptional cases.

I work on some lead generation sites in a competitive sector with competitors like IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.

We compete in some services with a very high CPC, and in most cases, we compete more for informational content.

In these sectors, we’ve developed a solid strategy also for link building.

We’ve ranked several articles among the top positions despite competing with big players.

I must say that our sites are vertical in a niche and probably benefit from this, in addition to the excellent work we’re doing.

Content creation

I often see e-commerce sites with poorly executed blogs and social media content.

Content is a powerful tool, and you must know how to handle it with care.

The quantity and quality of content produced by competitors can indicate how intensive the competition for customer attention is.

By content creation, I mean:

👉 Social media content
👉 Google content
👉 Newsletter content
👉 Content on other organic channels.

Many competitors post one content a day, but that content is poor.

It’s better to publish 3-4 pieces a week, but of high quality.

Before creating content, you should evaluate:

• The frequency of publication by your competitors
• How they communicate
• Whether you should hire a content creator and/or an editor
• What differentiates them

Based on this, you can draw conclusions.

How to work on all of this?

With my clients, I use the Pareto principle, an effective and simple method.

Pareto observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by only 20% of the population. He noticed the same situation with the plants in his garden: 20% of the plants produced 80% of the fruit.

Source: Article

This principle suggests that 80% of the results come from 20% of the actions.

I always rely on this fantastic method to avoid excessive strategies and unnecessary activities.

My organic analysis works in two ways:

👉 If I need to determine if I can work with the client and if something can actually be done, I adopt this strategy in a more reductive way.
👉 If I’ve passed the previous phase, I adopt this strategy exhaustively, leveraging the Pareto principle.

Example of the 80-20 Method

👉 Instead of analyzing every single competitor and market niche in detail, focus on the 20% of the most relevant competitors and the most promising niches.

👉 Rather than optimizing every single page of your website, concentrate on the 20% of pages that generate 80% of the traffic.

For example, if you have an e-commerce clothing store, you might find that the “Men’s T-shirts” and “Women’s Jeans” category pages generate most of the visits. By dedicating a few days to optimizing these key pages, you could see a significant increase in traffic in a relatively short amount of time.

👉 Instead of creating content for every possible topic related to your business, focus on a few key pieces of content that are targeted and align with your business objectives.

For instance, if you run an e-commerce store for sports equipment, you might find that tutorial videos on how to properly use fitness equipment are particularly popular. By dedicating one month to creating 10 high-quality videos on this topic, you could achieve better results than producing 50 articles on various subjects.

👉 Rather than reviewing every single element of your website, focus on the 20% of elements that influence 80% of conversions.

For example, you might discover that optimizing the checkout process, product reviews, and main call-to-actions can lead to a significant increase in your conversion rate in just 3-4 weeks, rather than spending months perfecting every tiny detail of your site.

My final thoughts

Everything I’ve written here is based on my personal experience.

I’ve worked with many websites and have seen numerous mistakes and missed opportunities that could have helped eCommerce businesses sell more.

This approach is also useful for internal teams, whether it’s for advertising, marketing, etc.

We don’t work alone—if we can help each other, it’s better. More results, and everyone is happy.

This is my method of working to guarantee results for an e-commerce business.

Often, work starts in a post-phase like this one without achieving results because the strategic part was done poorly.

I hope this content is helpful to you. Feel free to reach out if you need anything.

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