8 ways to audit your ecommerce site’s SEO
-Evita Godinho
Recent statistics show that 33% of global e-commerce traffic comes from organic searches. In other words, if your e-commerce site is not optimised for SEO, you will be missing out on a significant portion of potential traffic. Although some SEO components are not entirely within your control, you can still do a lot to improve SEO on your eCommerce site.
In this article, we’ll look at eight ways you can audit and improve your SEO health on your e-commerce site.
In addition, we’ll discuss why it’s more important than ever to optimise your page speed for the algorithm update in the coming months for your ecommerce site.
1. Canonical tags for filtered pageviews
In most e-commerce sites, you can filter product types based on different categories, such as colour, fit and size.
If your ecommerce site has many filtered pages, you want to use canonical tags on your filtered pages to avoid duplicate content.
Having duplicate content on your site may make it difficult for Google to rank your page because your duplicate page will compete for the top spots in the search results.
By placing the canonical tags on your filtered pages, you tell a Google crawler which page is the main page you want to rank.
This lets Google know that the latter URL is the primary URL you want to rank. You will also prevent your site from potentially receiving a duplicate penalty from Google.
2. Optimize a meta description for each page
Does each one of your pages have a unique meta description?
Writing a relevant and unique meta description for each page increases the likelihood of people clicking on your link.
Since the click-through rate (CTR) is an important ranking factor in Google Search Results, your search ranking will be compromised if you fail to optimise the meta description for your page.
That said, you may find it difficult to implement this in practise if you have hundreds and thousands of pages on your e-commerce site.
In such a case, I recommend that you start optimising meta descriptions for pages that currently make you the most revenue and move down in order.
3. Keyword placement
While you’re sure to avoid stuffing your page with your target keywords, it’s a good idea to include them strategically across your page to let Google know what keywords you’re targeting.
You’ll want to include a few keywords in your URL, title, description, and image text to make sure your page is relevant to your target keywords.
4. Breadcrumb trails
Breadcrumb trails help website visitors navigate through your website and help organise your site in a well-structured manner.
Additionally, breadcrumbs make it easier for Google crawlers to understand your page better, which, in turn, can help your page rank better.
In addition, the search results would show breadcrumbs instead of a permalink on your tab, which is another hint that Google emphasises breadcrumbs for SEO.
You don’t need to over-complicate things when you’re applying the breadcrumb navigation. Only make sure that you obey the principles of good technique, such as using breadcrumbs only where it makes sense and progresses from the highest to the lowest level.
5. Optimize your ecommerce site for sitelinks
Google notes that it only shows site links for organised websites that allow their algorithms to identify good site links.
Sitelinks boost click-through rates and help searchers easily see sites that are important to their interests.
In addition, they bring credibility to the pages. Google would not show website connections that are not well optimised and not trustworthy.
If Google trusts your website to allow you enough room on the pages of your search, you can use it as a stamp of approval from Google.
6. Do you have reviews on your product page?
Reviews on the product page have a variety of purposes.
Second, they provide helpful information to people who visit the website and help them make smart buying choices.
Add review snippets and reviews to boost SEO on your e-commerce platform.
In addition, your page will show a star ranking in the search results, which will allow your search result to stand out and boost your CTR.
As a matter of fact, a CXL study showed that review stars would increase CTR by as much as 35%.
You can check out Google documentation to learn how to better organise your website so that you can optimise your site’s ability to highlight comment snippets in the search results.
7. Optimize your site speed
You’ve already read about the importance of speed optimization on the website.
But with Google announcing that page loading speed will become a ranking signal in the coming months, it’s more important than ever to maximise page speed on your website.
According to Moovweb, 87 percent of e-commerce pages do not follow the criteria provided by Google for page experience.
You may also use this as an incentive for the platform to achieve a strategic advantage over others.
8. Does your website have informational content?
Finally, it’s still a smart idea to write blog posts about the keywords the target audience is looking for.
A survey reveals that 61% of online shoppers in the US are more positive about buying from the advice they read in blogs.
Blogging your e-commerce platform will benefit your company in a lot of ways.
Establish faith with your customers by delivering valuable material.
Build your brand as a field expert
Improved search engine ranking with appropriate, high quality content on your blog
A blog entry that you’re writing today isn’t going to bring an amazing outcome tomorrow. But it’s a long-term investment that will help your ecommerce site generate more traffic and build trust and authority with the audience in your niche in the long haul.
Conclusion
Improving SEO for your eCommerce site is rarely a quick, easy process.
This is particularly true if your site has hundreds of pages that need to be optimised.
In such a case, it would be wise to start with pages that generate the most traffic and revenue.
Start optimising from the best-performing pages and move in order as your time and effort allow.
Your SEO results won’t be instantaneous, but you’ll be glad to put extra effort into optimising SEO on the road.
