E-Commerce SEO

As Ecommerce continues to expand, so does Ecommerce SEO. It is one of the most productive digital marketing tools to help your business grow as it majorly contributes to the acquisition and retention of customers.

This being said, you also need to be careful and vigilant with your SEO practices. You could make mistakes that will not look like mistakes till you start seeing the negative impact on the business. However, these mistakes could be corrected and give your team a thorough checklist to follow and avoid these mistakes in the future.

Our team has compiled a list of common Ecommerce SEO mistakes and given solutions as well so that you can rectify them.

Mistake #1 – Identical/Duplicate Content

You could say that this is a frequent mistake that many Ecommerce websites make – use duplicate content. There could be valid reasons behind using identical content but for Google and other search engines, it is a big no. If your website has duplicate content, these search engines will know it and lower your rankings. If your website has unique content, these search engines will rank you higher in the results.

Fix

When you are offering products and services that similar or same to other websites or have taken them from a vendor who is also selling them online, it could be hard to write unique product descriptions. If you use the same content, your ranking for those particular keywords will go down as Google will avoid your pages.

  • You can be smart with the content and make it work in your favour. You can offer more information about your products such as:
    • Reviews (which is user-generated content)
    • Videos on how to use the product
    • Images of the product showing different uses
    • Comparison chart between your product and similar products
  • On the category pages, add more unique content. You can give an introduction about the whole category, the kind of products you offer in that category, and talk about how they can serve the customers’ requirements.
  • You can “no index” the category pages. This will save you from fretting about identical content problems. The most appropriate thing to do here to make the pages unique by adding information that benefits both, users, and search engines.
  • For Google to recognise the main pages on your Ecommerce store, you should make sure that all pages have the canonical URL

Mistake #2 – Poor Quality of Content

This mistake is kind of associated with the identical content problem we just discussed above. Poor quality or lack of content can negatively affect your Ecommerce website’s SEO just like duplicate content.

When working on your website, you must make certain that your important pages such as category pages or product pages have a decent quantity of content. It means that when search engine crawlers crawl through the page, they should understand what it is about. Using just a few images or videos will not be adequate to rank high in search results.

Your content should also make people buy your products. For this, you need to have good quality content. You can create this by giving more visibility to product reviews. Consumers these days refer to the reviews and also make their purchase decisions based on them. This also acts as fresh and unique information on that page solving the issue of quality and lack of content.

Fix

The only way to incorporate unique content into your web pages is to build the content. Of course, using product reviews for this is an exception. For building content, you should talk about your products and services in detail such as mention the features, benefits, what makes them different, and how they are manufactured, etc. without replicating the content. This content should be different than other websites selling the same or similar products.

Mistake #3 – Bad URLs That Are Not Optimised

A poor URL could be a huge mistake for search. Keywords mentioned in the URL assist search engines in comprehending the page and its contents. Internet users can also understand from the URL what the page is about.

Sometimes you will find Ecommerce websites that do not have explanatory URLs and have random alphabets or product numbers that do not make sense to common users.

E.g. – www.randomwebsite.com/WrFHijy/productcode=9075

The correct way for this URL is: www.randomwebsite/product/men-white-polo-tshirts

Apart from the URLs, you need to make sure that the product titles and descriptions are also distinctive for every page.

Fix

You will have to check with your Ecommerce software provider about this. Ask them how to make the URLs SEO-friendly and alter their structure.

For all the alterations you make to the URLs of various pages, do build 301 redirects. This will inform Google to follow this change, your ranking and incoming links will not get affected.

Mistake #4 – Not Having a Mobile-Friendly Website

People are picking up their phones first when they want to search for something. Search engines are always adapting their algorithms to provide a better and smooth experience to their users. With the high usage of smartphones in online search and shopping, it has become essential to have a mobile-friendly website.

Google can see if you have a mobile-optimised website and show it to users when they look for your or similar products. If your website is not optimised for mobile usage, you will lose customers.

Fix

If your website is responsive, then you won’t have to do anything. If not, you can ask your development team to create a mobile-friendly website and optimise it for SEO.

Mistake #5 – Obtrusive Interstitials and Pop-Ups

Annoying pop-ups and interstitials can obstruct a customer’s browsing experience which could make them leave the website. You would not want this for your website. And if this happens on a mobile website, it becomes more intrusive.

Keeping customers’ smooth experience in mind, Google announced that if users cannot access content easily on a website, it may affect its rankings.

Fix

The good news is that if you adhere to Google’s policy on interstitials, your website’s ranking won’t be affected. For eg, you can use a small banner that does not hide any content and make it inaccessible. These pop-ups should be easy to close as well.

To wrap up, these mistakes are fixable and with some help, you can easily repair them. There are more common SEO mistakes but for now, we limit to these. If you are looking for a solution to a particular problem, feel free to get in touch with us.