Scaling long-tail SEO for e-commerce: indexing filters vs searchdexing

Bart Verschueren

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

As an e-commerce business, your goal is clear: more organic traffic that actually converts. But once you’ve optimized your category pages and secured visibility for the most common product searches, what’s next? How do you scale your SEO efforts and tap into the wealth of long-tail traffic that can make all the difference?

The answer lies in long-tail SEO, a strategy focused on capturing highly specific, often less competitive search queries that show strong buying intent. But to truly leverage the potential of long-tail SEO, e-commerce businesses need to deploy the right techniques. Two primary strategies stand out: indexing filters and searchdexing.

In this post, we’ll break down both techniques, their advantages and drawbacks, and explain how you can use them to scale your long-tail SEO strategy.

What is long-tail seo and why does it matter?

Long-tail SEO refers to optimizing your website for highly specific search queries that are typically longer in length (usually 3-5 words or more). These queries are less competitive but often show a higher likelihood of conversion because they address very specific needs or desires. For example, instead of someone searching for “sneakers,” a long-tail search could be “adidas blue shoes for women”

While these queries may have lower search volume, the quality of the traffic is often much higher, as users are looking for exactly what you sell. However, capturing this traffic requires a different approach compared to ranking for general, high-volume keywords.

Two strategies: Index filters vs searchdexing

Strategy 1: Indexing filters

One of the simplest ways to generate long-tail traffic is through indexing filters. This strategy involves creating dedicated, SEO-friendly pages by indexing filtered product pages on your site. For example, if you sell shoes and have a filter for color, such as “red sneakers,” indexing that filter would create a page like yoursite.com/sneakers?color=red.

This technique works by allowing search engines to crawl and rank these filtered pages, enabling them to show up in search results for specific long-tail queries. But while indexing filters can help generate additional organic traffic, there are a few important considerations.

Advantages of indexing filters:

• Easy to implement: Creating filter-specific pages is relatively straightforward and can be implemented quickly on most e-commerce platforms.
• Increased reach: By allowing search engines to crawl filtered pages, you can capture traffic for a wide range of specific searches, increasing your visibility.
• Highly relevant pages: Filtered pages are typically highly relevant to specific user queries, which means they have a good chance of converting.

Drawbacks of indexing filters:

• Manual process: Setting up and maintaining filter-specific pages can be time-consuming and requires ongoing attention, particularly if you have a large inventory with numerous filter options. You also need to carefully choose the relevant filter combinations for each category.
• Duplicate content: If you have several filters that overlap (e.g., “red running shoes” and “burgundy running shoes”), you may encounter duplicate content issues. This can negatively impact SEO if not managed properly.
• Indexing empty pages due to seasonality: Some pages are highly relevant only at specific times of the year (e.g., “red Christmas sweater”). However, once the season ends, it’s crucial to either unindex or redirect these pages to avoid serving empty content to Google crawlers, which could negatively impact your SEO.
• Limitation to filter values: Indexing filters comes with an inherent limitation. It only allows known filter values to be indexed. For example, if you don’t have a “turquoise” filter, you won’t be able to generate a page for “turquoise long-sleeve t-shirt. 
• Manual internal linking: Once you’ve ensured that Google can index the filtered pages, you’ll need to make sure they are properly linked together. However, doing this manually can be a challenge, especially as your site grows.

Strategy 2: Searchdexing

While indexing filters is a good starting point, searchdexing is the next step in truly scaling your long-tail SEO efforts. Searchdexing involves creating dedicated, indexable pages based on real user searches. These pages are generated on-demand, meaning they target specific, high-intent long-tail keywords (e.g., “adidas blue shoes for women”).

What makes searchdexing different is that it leverages advanced technology to automate the creation of these pages without the need for manual intervention. It creates pages dynamically based on actual searches, allowing for much broader coverage and greater scalability.

Advantages of searchdexing:

• Automated scalability: Once implemented, searchdexing technology automatically creates pages based on real user queries, allowing you to scale your SEO efforts without having to manually create new pages.
• High-intent traffic: By targeting real user searches, searchdexing helps you capture highly relevant, high-converting traffic.
• Internal link distribution: Advanced technologies also automate the distribution of internal links to these pages, ensuring they get proper visibility and authority within your site.

Drawbacks of searchdexing:

• Limited to large e-commerce sites: Since searchdexing targets highly specific search queries, it is most effective for large e-commerce sites with thousands of products and significant traffic (at least 100K monthly organic visits). Because each query often has a low monthly search volume (sometimes as little as 100 searches), success relies on ranking thousands of these pages while ensuring enough product availability to match user queries.
• Requires a third-party tool: Implementing searchdexing effectively requires specialized tools. It’s not a process that can be set up manually. Solutions like Vpage enable seamless implementation, allowing businesses to deploy searchdexing quickly and achieve an average organic traffic increase of 30% or more.

How to implement searchdexing and indexing filters for long-tail SEO

So, how can you take advantage of these strategies and use them to drive more organic traffic to your e-commerce site?

1. Start with indexing filters: Begin by creating filtered pages for your most common product categories. Look at filters like size, color, material, and other attributes that are relevant to your products, strategically combining filters to maximize search potential. Ensure that these pages are optimized for SEO by using relevant keywords and providing unique content on each page.
2. Scale with searchdexing: Once you’ve mastered indexing filters, it’s time to scale up with searchdexing. By leveraging technology to automatically generate pages based on real user searches, you can quickly capture thousands of long-tail keyword opportunities without the manual effort involved in indexing filters.
3. Monitor and optimize: Regardless of the technique you use, always track the performance of your pages. Analyze key metrics like organic traffic and conversion rates to identify top-performing pages. Use this data to refine your approach whether by adjusting filter combinations or fine-tuning the searchdexing algorithm.

Conclusion

Long-tail SEO offers one of the best opportunities for e-commerce businesses to increase organic traffic and drive conversions. By using strategies like indexing filters and searchdexing, you can position your site to capture high-intent, specific search queries that bring in targeted visitors who are ready to convert.

While indexing filters offer a simple starting point, searchdexing unlocks the full potential of long-tail SEO by automating the process and targeting a vast number of user searches. With the right tools and strategies in place, you can scale your SEO efforts and grow your e-commerce business faster than ever before.