E-commerce SEO is a complicated creature. There are many examples of e-commerce SEO done right but you can also find a lot of mistakes online when checking out your competitors. Unfortunately, even some of the largest and most successful e-commerce sites are doing things wrong. Luckily for them, they can make up for these errors with huge budgets that enable strong brand signals and strong backlinks.
Today we’re sharing a few errors that can be fixed or avoided that can provide you with an edge over your competitors.
Poorly Structured URLs
There are countless e-commerce sites that have horrendous URLs that look ugly and provide no benefit for SEO. Going through all the URLs, neatening them up and ensuring they include the keyword or phrase and product will improve the site dramatically. When creating the URL remember that it will show up in the SERPs. Keep them short and accurate to attract shoppers.
Slow Loading Times Hurt SEO
Just one or two extra seconds waiting for a page to load is often enough to make people click away. Slow speed sites are bad for the users of the site and this means the search engines don’t like them either. Search engines want to deliver excellent search results as quickly as possible. If a website has a high bounce rate caused by slow speeds (or any other factor for that matter) the search engines will push them down in the rankings. The speed of the site needs to be improved to make the user experience more enjoyable.
Dependence on XML Sitemap
Don’t make the mistake of uploading your XML sitemap and expecting your entire website to be indexed. The website needs to have a strong crawl path to increase the chances of being ranked for queries that are competitive. You can’t expect your sitemap to take care of the indexing without the improved crawl paths on each page. Discover if you have problems by performing a crawl of your websites and see if your pages are showing up.
Need help with e-commerce SEO strategies? We provide bespoke SEO services in Worcestershire. Reach out and we’ll arrange a suitable time for an informal chat about your requirements.
