Technical SEO for Ecommerce
Make changes to the design of your ecommerce site to rank higher and provide a better shopping experience.
Most potential customers use search engines to find and research products that they are looking to buy. By committing time to search engine optimization and making some technical changes to your ecommerce site, you’ll increase your chances of these potential buyers finding and purchasing your products. Since search engines are trying to mimic actual users, by making improvements to your website you’ll also be creating a better experience for your customers.
Optimize Headings
Headings and page titles serve to give customers an idea of what each page is about, so you need to write them with comprehension in mind. Use them as an opportunity to incorporate important keywords and position them towards beginning of the title. From a design perspective, headings should be attractive and eye-catching. Also use a unique title for each webpage as search engines will penalize you for any duplicate content. If you have a bigger site with lots of products, it might be helpful to create a title template to stay consistent.
Use Meta Descriptions
Before you publish a page, make sure you’re optimizing the information that will show up on SERPs. This includes meta descriptions, or the small blocks of text that display underneath the page title and URL on result pages. These function to describe the page to the user and hopefully attract them to click on it. Meta descriptions must be unique and should be clearly written and easy to understand. Keep them between 150-160 characters. They are also a good opportunity to include any targeted keywords. By helping new visitors understand what you’re offering on your page, they are more likely to click the link, and click-throughs increase rankings.
Provide Easy Navigation
Search engines follow internal links from page to page, gathering information about your website and its content along the way. When you have a website that is easy to navigate not only are you improving your customer’s experience, but you’re also improving your ranking for search engines. We recommend having fixed navigational links at the top, bottom, or side of every page that link to the rest of your site and are always visible (this is called persistent navigation). To further improve navigation, make sure you have an XML sitemap. A well-linked site encourages customers to explore and stay on the site longer, while also increasing your search engine ranking.
Increase Your Speed
Slow loading speeds can discourage potential customers from exploring your site. When a customer encounters pages that load slowly, they’ll click away from your site, hurting your rankings. You can increase your page speed by optimizing all of your images and videos and using a quality hosting service. Minifying code, which is the process of taking out all of the unnecessary spaces, breaks and characters within your site code, can also facilitate faster speeds.
Make it Mobile Friendly
Mobile search is on the rise and if your site isn’t mobile friendly, you’re definitely hurting your rankings. Always test your website on different devices to see how it displays. When making design decisions for you site, use a responsive or adaptive site design to ensure that your content can be displayed on mobile screens. Keep the mobile user in mind with larger text and bigger buttons that are finger friendly. You must make sure that a customer’s shopping experience is the same regardless of the device they’re using.
SEO for ecommerce is not simple, but hopefully we’ve demystified the process a bit. Making design choices that improve your customer’s experience while shopping on your site will always help with SEO. Think about the needs of your customers, then design your site with these things in mind. By making these simple tweaks to your website and following our guide for ecommerce content generation, you can easily attract more visitors and earn higher spots on search engine result pages.