Getting your ecommerce site to perform well in organic search (Google, Bing, Yahoo) is not as complicated as it may first seem, as long as you’re doing the right things. This however should not be confused as being easy, as without assigning the necessary resources in a precision manner, it will be harder to get the results required.
When it comes to ecommerce SEO the overall aim is to show the search engines that your enterprise ecommerce site is authoritative, trustworthy, products are categorised/ structured well, and that the overall website experience is focused on providing the user with a great experience. In short, a website works for the user, and not the other way around.
From a technical SEO point of view, there can be hundreds of factors which can affect the performance of an ecommerce website. From basic things such as are the pages indexed, to more complex issues such as how a search engine robot crawls the site to discover those pages. Note: For this I offer a specific server log file analysis report if you have access to your server log files. If you’re on a cloud solution such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud unfortunately you won’t have access to this.
Regardless of what platform your enterprise ecommerce website has been built on, the key principles of an ethical (white hat) and holistic SEO campaign remain the same. Through a thorough technical SEO audit (mine consisting of over 250 individual items) and reviewing the site’s back link profile, I can ascertain areas of improvement. I can work with you to devise and implement a strategy that helps your website perform better within organic search, help achieve your business goals, and even provide greater business intelligence.
For example, several years ago while doing keyword research, I discovered a new product being searched for by tens of thousands of people in the UK every month, which could easily be produced, adding several millions in revenue to a business each year!!!
Ecommerce SEO Issues
Ecommerce and enterprise ecommerce websites face different SEO challenges to brochure websites. One of the most common issues I come across with ecommerce sites is how products are categorised and structured. Google rewards websites that have good structure and categorisation of pages, products and supporting information.
On the other hand, Google penalises websites for having ‘tonnes’ of low quality thin pages, often with duplicated content.
When Google released its Search Quality Guidelines towards the end of 2015, we were able to gain insight into some considerations that can impact all sites, but specifically ecommerce websites – such as YMYL pages.
Having gained over ten years’ experience working on ecommerce stores as an SEO stakeholder, I’ve seen all the problems when it comes to Ecommerce SEO. Some easier than others to fix. Whether you’re using a custom built ecommerce website, or a platform, I can help you get the most from your website using SEO.