First, ecommerce SEO and general website SEO are not the same, as ecommerce sites tend to have dynamic content. Also, e-commerce websites have 80% similar content because you can’t change the product specifications.
Hi, I am Tarun, and I have working as Digital Marketing Executive at Waffle Bytes since 2 years. I have done SEO for e-commerce sites many times for different clients.
I have done the latest E-commerce SEO for my client called Robotools. This site has no backlinks or domain authority, yet its products rank in the top 10 results of Google. You can see the GSC report in the image below.
We will not share tips or techniques in this article because the internet is full of such articles. Rather than sharing tips, we are sharing with you how we do E-commerce SEO for our clients and the processes we follow.
Technical Seo Audit
Generally, we do a technical SEO audit before publishing any website, and a technical SEO audit is our priority for e-commerce websites. Below is the list, which includes the details on what to remember while doing technical SEO for e-commerce websites.
Ecommerce Site Structure
Site structure is the primary thing while doing SEO for e-commerce sites, not only for users but also for crawlers like Googlebot. When I say structure, that means website navigation. So think from your intelligence which is the best navbar format for users to navigate, category page, sub-category page and product page.
For instance, see Flipkart navigation structure:
Sitemap
The sitemap is an XML file which contains URLs of the entire website such as image URLs, video URLs, page URLs, category page URLs and blog post URLs. The purpose of this file is to provide crawlers with information about the website.
So always check the website sitemap and its structure, and If your website is on a cms platform like wordpress, generating an XML file is not rocket science for you. Just install the seo plugin.
Robots.txt File
Basically, the robots.txt file tells crawlers which pages on your site to crawl or not to crawl. The purpose of this file is not to overload your site with a request and response system. In e-commerce, there are many pages that do not need to be indexed on SERP like: My Account, Orders, Invoices etc. So while creating robots.txt file, think about which pages do not need to be indexed on google.
Mobile-Friendly Test
According to Baclinko, there are over 200 ranking factor of google. I don’t know if this is true or not but one thing is certain that mobile friendliness is the second most prominent ranking factor of google. Because 80% of searches are by smartphones and 20% from desktop.
Firstly, test your website mobile friendliness on Google Mobile Friendly Test. If this tests outputs: Page is usable on mobile and if not, then contact your developer to make some changes with layout.
On Page SEO Audit
Generally, when I do an SEO audit my focus is on checking on page seo properly. Because the latest update by Google is “Helpful Content Update“, which means creating content for users, not for search engines.
There are many actives while doing an on page seo for ecommerce website But These are are the things i definitely remember during seo process:
Category Pages Seo
Category pages are the pages that contain products from a specific location. For example, if an online clothing store carries clothing for both men and women, they would need to create separate categories or sub-categories for both genders.
Along with category pages, you have to optimize these pages with keeping 3 things in mind:
- Title – Give your category pages a unique and compelling title that matches the product range on that page.
- Meta Description – In this section you have to tell the user and search engine what your page is about with maximum 160 characters and don’t copy and paste.
- URL slug – The slug is the address of your page for the crawlers and has the ability to determine at what position the page will rank on Google. So, always put short keywords in the slug.
Product Seo
The purpose of all activities is to rank your product on Google. And many marketers say product SEO is hard. But in my opinion, if you keep these 6 things in mind while doing Product SEO, then Product SEO becomes effortless.
Title
In SEO, the H1 tag is the first tag that tells search engines the objective of a web page. Your product title should include brand name, product name, color, latest version or technology, etc.
For example let’s look at the title of any product on amazon:
Description
The description also has an html markup tag called H2, it contains a complete details about the product like:
- Feature
- Specification
- Package Includes
- Additional Information
Structure Data Markup
If you ask me what is the most important thing in e-commerce SEO, I will always say it is structured data markup. Why is structured data important for e-commerce?
There are many misconceptions about structured data, some say it is useless, but I would say that you cannot rank your products on Google without structured data markup. And there are two purpose of product structure data makeup:
Firstly, structured data is to show justification about the product to the users when they are scanning (searching for something) on the Google search result page. It will show some justifications like: product out of stock or in stock, price, review, rating, shipping etc.
Secondly, As I said, all e-commerce have the same content as you can’t change product description and specification. So how Google will decide which page will be first and which second?
Let me explain with a real example: As you see, both Amazon and Flipkart are selling iPhone 14, and both are good brands in the e-commerce industry. Amazon ranks second in “iPhone 14” keyboards and Flipkart is one spot above Amazon. So how Google decides on these kinds of conflicts, Google won’t tell you but I will.
The algorithm compares a product’s ratings (AggregateRating) and reviews with that of competitors and decides which will go first on SERP.
Internal Linking
Instead of external linking, internal linking is the best way to build page-to-page relationships, said John Mueller, search advocate at Google.
Off Page Seo Audit
Backlinks
I’m not sure if backlinks work or not, but one thing is certain: backlinks are the most controversial ranking factor in the Google algorithm. So, you can try or deny but I have never approached anyone to get backlinks in my life.
Final Words
In conclusion, I would like to give you a piece of advice that always thinks from the user’s perspective and makes sure that your website never disappoints the customers. I will update this article from time to time when I get to know some more about eccomerce seo. And if you want to know alll seo activites then chekcout our latest article : SEO Checklist 2023.
