What Actually Works for eCommerce in 2025

A lot of brands today are still fighting the wrong SEO battles.

They're pouring time and budget into outdated tactics — cranking out thin content, siloing products from information, and treating SEO like a box-ticking exercise. Meanwhile, the landscape has changed.

Today’s SEO — especially in Your Money Your Life (YMYL) categories and regulated industries — demands a different mindset entirely. It’s no longer about simply publishing more pages or sprinkling in more keywords. It’s about earning trust, authority, and relevance at every level.

And if you're still chasing vanity traffic with outdated tactics, there's a good chance 95% of your site’s content isn’t delivering meaningful results — and your growth depends largely on branded traffic.

Here’s the reality of what it now takes to win for competitive, high-value, non-branded terms.

🧠 Hybrid Pages: Blending Commerce with Value

Most eCommerce sites still separate product grids from helpful content. But hybrid pages are what users — and search engines — now expect.

A hybrid page is a product listing page (PLP) that's built not just to sell, but also to educate.

Instead of throwing up 100 products and calling it a day, a true hybrid page layers in:

• FAQs that answer real buying concerns
• Guides on how to choose the right product
• Safety information, certifications, or standards
• Customer stories or use cases

Example: A "Running Shoes" category page that also explains how to choose the right shoes for different terrains, offers a sizing guide, and answers questions like "How often should you replace running shoes?"

Why it works: You’re aligning commercial intent (ready to buy) with informational intent (seeking advice), which gives you broader keyword coverage and improves time-on-page, engagement, and conversion rates.

📚 Content Pillars: Building Topical Authority the Right Way

Publishing one-off articles isn't a content strategy. Top-performing brands map out content pillars — interconnected ecosystems that dominate a topic from every angle.

A pillar is a heavyweight guide (2,000+ words) covering a broad topic, supported by multiple detailed cluster articles.

Example: If your pillar is "Guide to Home Insurance," your cluster articles could be:

• How to Lower Your Home Insurance Premium
• What Does Home Insurance Cover (and What It Doesn't)
• How Claims Processes Work

Each piece links to each other naturally, creating a web of relevance and signalling to Google that your site is the destination for this topic.

Pro tip: Start by mapping user journeys: what someone needs to know at different stages (awareness, consideration, decision). Build content around those moments, not just high-volume keywords.

🔗 Digital PR and Link Building: Earning Real Authority

Authority isn't just about domain rating or metrics. It's about being recognised outside your website.

Modern link building isn’t spamming directories or buying low-quality placements. It’s about earning citations by doing things worth talking about.

Tactics that work today:

• Data-led content: Original research or surveys that journalists can cite
• Expert commentary: Quick expert quotes or insights for journalist requests (HARO, ResponseSource)
• Interactive tools: Calculators, quizzes, and whitepapers that get organically linked
• Insightful resources: How-to guides and industry reports that build backlinks naturally over time

Example: A sleep product brand commissioning a survey on how screen time affects sleep quality, and turning the results into a PR campaign — securing coverage from health and lifestyle publications.

Takeaway: Focus on being useful to journalists and your audience, not just promoting yourself.

🤖 Technical SEO: Building a Clean, Scalable Foundation

No amount of great content or authority will fix a technically broken site.

Technical SEO today is about creating a frictionless experience for users and search engines. That means:

• Clean site structure with logical, crawlable paths
• Optimised internal linking to surface important pages
• Avoiding hidden blockers like GEOIP redirects or non-canonical pages
• Implementing structured data (Schema.org) across products, articles, videos, events, FAQs

Example: If you sell events or training courses, adding Event Schema can help those listings appear as rich results directly in search.

Pro tip: Treat your technical SEO as an ongoing process, not a one-time audit. Sites grow, break, and change — your technical hygiene needs constant maintenance.

✨ Brand: Now a Non-Negotiable Ranking Factor

Brand is the ultimate authority signal.

It affects everything — from click-through rates to engagement metrics to how search engines perceive your overall trustworthiness.

Today’s reality:

• Strong brands get higher CTRs even if they don’t rank #1
• They earn more backlinks naturally
• They dominate brand searches (and brand + keyword combinations)

Example: In industries like supplements, health tech, or finance, many of the top results are recognisable names even if their individual SEO pages aren't perfect.

Brand building tactics that matter:

• Investing in awareness campaigns (both online and offline)
• Creating exceptional customer experiences
• Proactively managing reviews and reputation
• Showing expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)

Takeaway: If you’re not building a brand, you’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back — no matter how good your SEO fundamentals are.

Where Brands Often Fall Short

Most brands today don’t fail because they’re not "doing SEO." They fail because they’re applying old playbooks to a new game.

Common mistakes:

• Publishing dozens of shallow category pages with thin copy
• Focusing purely on keywords instead of user journeys
• Ignoring off-site authority and Digital PR
• Treating technical SEO as a "one and done" exercise
• Neglecting brand investment, thinking SEO can exist in isolation

What the Leaders Are Doing Differently

The brands that lead organic growth today:

✅ Rebuild their product category pages into hybrid commerce + education hubs

✅ Publish comprehensive pillar guides supported by detailed cluster articles

✅ Run Digital PR campaigns that build real, earned authority

✅ Maintain technical excellence to stay fast, clean, and scalable

✅ Align SEO, Content, Brand, and Paid efforts across the business

✅ Prioritise customer experience and brand building just as much as keyword rankings

Final Thoughts

It’s tempting to chase quick wins in SEO. But if you want to lead — not just survive — your strategy needs to be built on trust, clarity, and value.

Not hacks. Not shortcuts. Real strategy. Real brand investment.