Filters for Online Stores – Why They Matter

The popularity of online shopping has given rise to thousands of online stores that offer a variety of products and a wide range of assortments. However, in this competition, the one who takes care of the comfort and convenience of users while searching and selecting products has an advantage. The filter system is one of the key tools that helps to achieve this goal.

Filters make it easier for users to search for products based on selected parameters and are a must-have for large online stores. Without filtering, they become heavy and inconvenient.

Below, we will tell you more about why you need filters in your online store, what types of filters are available on your website, and how important and useful they can be.

Types of filters

Filters can sort online store offers by price, size, category, brand, color, and other characteristics and have different implementations: checkboxes, radio buttons, drop-down lists. For example, here is the filtering of products on the famous Amazon:

What types of filters you can implement on your website today:

• By product category. Allows users to select products by category, such as clothing, footwear, electronics, cosmetics, and more.
• By brand. Users can select products from specific manufacturers or brands.
• By price. Allows you to set a price range to find products within a specific budget.
• By size and color. Particularly important for clothing and footwear, where users can choose products that match their preferences.
• By product availability. Users can only search for products that are currently in stock.
• By rating and reviews. Allows users to filter products by rating and read reviews from other customers.
• By product type. For example, in the case of electronics, you can filter by device type (smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.).
• By characteristics. Allows you to select products based on their technical characteristics, such as screen resolution, processor, memory, and more.
• Geo-filter. Used to search for products in a specific region or country.
• Special offers. Users can search for products that participate in promotions, sales, or discounts.
• By the date, the product was added. Allows the user to see the most recent product additions.
• By material and composition. Useful for products such as furniture, clothing, and household goods.

Filters can be either single (for example, Samsung is selected in the "brand" filter) or multiple (for example, not only the brand but also the color is selected, in which case we get the combination "Samsung+black").

Along with filtering, online stores usually implement sorting. The difference between filtering and sorting is that filtering organizes products by selected categories while sorting organizes them in a certain order. For example, from the lowest price to the highest or from the lowest rating to the highest. This is how sorting is implemented on Amazon:

Do I need to optimize my filter pages for search?

Optimizing filters is a step that is sometimes overlooked when working with SEO for online stores. However, it can be an important part of the SEO process, as a huge number of filters can serve as a source of additional semantics.

Each filter creates a unique set of content on the website. This increases the number of indexed pages in search engines, covering a wider range of different keywords and search queries.

Filter pages can be optimized by using keywords that may be relevant to users looking for specific information. For example, related to brands, models, colors, sizes, prices, and other parameters.

This is what the filter page looks like in Google search:

The convenience of using filters is obvious: when a user clicks on a link from the search, they are immediately taken to a page where they can conveniently filter dumbbells with the exact weight they are interested in. This way, users find the right product faster, and you get a new page on your website that attracts organic traffic.

Optimized filter pages have several distinctive features:

• each optimized filter has its own unique URL;
• each filter page has its own title, description, and H1 heading;
• each optimized filter page is open for indexing.

Recommendation. Is it worth optimizing filter combinations? Judge for yourself. Study the semantics - perhaps the combination of some filters is really interesting to users. However, you shouldn't get too carried away - usually, it's enough to develop filters up to the second level (a combination of two parameters). 

How to optimize your filter pages for Google

1. Collect relevant semantics. When collecting keywords for filters, it's important to consider your target audience and the type of information you want to provide to users.
2. Optimize your filter page titles and meta tags. They should contain relevant keywords that you want to promote to help search engines better understand the content of the page.
3. If necessary, write content for the pages. It should be useful and informative for users. The text can include product descriptions, photos, videos, etc. Text may not be necessary in all cases and not for all types of filters - analyze your competitors and think about whether you have something to describe on each specific filter page.
4. Don't forget about the correct technical implementation: you also need to create permalinks for filters, the pages themselves should be canonical, and if there are many products in the filter, you should set up pagination (it is recommended to open the pages following the first one before indexing, set up changing meta, canonical to itself, and leave the text content you write only on the first page).
5. Add linking. Links to filter pages from other pages of the site will help improve their promotion in search engines.

Search engine optimization of an online store with filter optimization is a good solution for expanding your audience reach. The Idea Digital Agency team has seen this in practice more than once. We have worked with more than one online store that has managed to significantly increase its performance with the help of SEO in general and filter optimization in particular. Well-designed category filters on these sites had a positive impact not only on organic traffic but also on conversions. Check out the case studies of Kondishop and Valliza Book to learn more.

Use low-frequency queries to optimize filters.

Low-frequency queries, also called Long-Tail Keywords, are queries that are rarely used in search engines and have a much lower search volume than high-frequency queries.

For example, a high-frequency query can be "buy a smartphone", which has a large search volume: 

Whereas a low-frequency query may be "smartphone with two SIM cards", which has a much smaller search volume.

They can be complex, long, or specific, and are often used by users with specific needs or interests.

Low-frequency queries are good candidates for filter optimization because they can attract the target audience that is looking for exactly what your site offers.

By using low-frequency queries, small and young online stores can compete for search results with large marketplaces that are often the first for high-frequency queries. And one of the solutions is to optimize your filter pages with such keywords.

How can you get more traffic then? After all, queries with a low frequency, and therefore, they will bring little traffic. The way out is to cover as many of these low-frequency queries as possible. This way, you will be able to reach the TOP and start receiving traffic faster than spending a huge amount of time, effort, and money to compete with mastodons for high-frequency keys with a high probability of losing.

Conclusions.

Placing filters on your website makes it user-friendly and opens up new opportunities for search engine optimization. Filtering can improve the user experience on your website, increase organic traffic, and increase your site's visibility in search engines.

Users find the desired information faster, which can have a positive impact on conversion rates. Also, with the right approach, you will improve the performance of your site.

Useful recommendations:

• Test filters before implementation, first of all, on mobile phones - most purchases today are made from smartphones, take care of the convenience of such users;
• Avoid duplication of pages and content, and make sure that every single filter page you create and optimize is unique;
• Do not overload the site with filters and new pages - approach the issue of implementing filters and optimizing them wisely, the best solution is to seek help from professionals, for example, from Idea Digital Agency.