Techniques For Technical SEO On E-Commerce Sites

November 3, 2022

For ecommerce stores, technical SEO is an essential component. With these SEO tactics, you can increase the visibility of your online store and increase sales.

Due to shifting market conditions during the past two years, many businesses have switched to online business strategies.

Many industries are seeing a rapid increase in competition.

With pre-built themes and ecommerce systems, some firms succeeded. You must,

however, offer the finest user experiences given the intense competition in search.

You will eventually need to get involved with the technical aspects of your website if you want to avoid making mistakes that could harm search performance,

particularly if you want to migrate your site or stop using services that come out of the box.

Even if platforms like Shopify allow you to manage even very large e-commerce sites, you should still take the time to comprehend the technical tasks that these platforms do for you.

Technical SEO for ecommerce companies, which is divided into two categories: technical competency and technical optimization, is a significant component of this.

URL structures and website architecture

I use the term architecture rather than site structure since the latter can cause visitors to only pay attention to URL structure.

When compared to the traditional Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogs from the 19th century, which date back more than 100 years, almost nothing about how we build offline catalogs and even modern e-commerce websites has changed.

Users have been accustomed to this pattern after years of repetition, thus a straightforward site structure comprises:

Getting Started > Categories > Sub-Categories > Products

Users are comfortable with it, and it makes logical sense. Your URL structure should then follow, and it should be consistent and descriptive of the page (for users).

Additionally, products should be placed in their own category-neutral subdirectory so that you can add them to other pertinent categories without having to duplicate the product pages.

For instance:

Category Page: category.example.com
Example.com/category/niche-1 is the subcategory page.
Website: website.com/products/product-name or example.com/p/product-name

Trying to keyword stuff ecommerce URLs isn’t a “needle-moving” strategy, in my experience.

Leading e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud impose URL architectures that contain product SKUs and subfolders on you.

These websites can compete with any other just as effectively.

Installation of Google Search Console and sitemaps (XML and HTML)

Although they may not be absolutely necessary, HTML sitemaps are an excellent idea for e-commerce websites.

Better internal linking to category and subcategory pages may be possible with HTML sitemaps. They aid users in navigating your website by helping you track and categorize your pages.

Additionally, having an XML sitemap is optional but can aid Google in URL discovery.

And you can spot potential problems when you crawl your URLs linked to the Search Console Inspection API (e.g., a category page only being found via XML sitemap and not through internal linking).

You can: To obtain additional information about the caliber of your pages and better (less filtered) data, you can:

Google Search Console should receive structured XML sitemaps.
For each branch of the subfolder on your website, add a Google Search Console property, such as yoursite.com/clothing.
You can use this information to determine whether the value proposition and quality of particular category, subcategory, and product pages need to be improved.

In order to offer a natural crawl path to pass PageRank from the homepage to categories and subcategories without using spams lists of links, you may also embed an XML sitemap into the design of your homepage. Take this example from the homepage of MoneySupermarket.com:

Managing Stock and Soft 404s

Your product page layouts will change to reflect any stock outs of your products.

You could lose traffic and ranking for the associated search terms if Google interprets the page as a soft 404 and removes it from crawling.

Users will have a poor impression of your company if they arrive on your page looking for a certain product only to discover they can’t purchase it.

However, you can also use this as an opportunity to cross-sell additional goods or to offer the consumer a reward for holding off until you restock.

Automation is a viable option.

Consider the scenario when your supply of Brand X HSS 3 mm drill bits runs out. If you have comparable products in stock, add a check that is automated to take the place of the “out of stock” notice.

Your product information management (PIM) system can be used for this.

Modify the template to display comparable brands and goods that satisfy the same or similar requirements, in this case, a 3 mm drill bit.

You can adjust the messaging to “out of stock online” and point consumers to a store locator if you also run physical stores.

Additionally, you can develop templates that use your PIM to find upselling and cross-selling possibilities for additional pages.

Additionally, if you employ custom tagging in your PIM,

you can use several factors to direct buyers toward comparable products (e.g., size, color, shape, release event).

Positive user experiences can also be avoided with the aid of these PIM interfaces with the product pages.

When optimizing your e-commerce shop, it should be common practice to use PIM data to create value for the user. If your competitors have comparable sites or value propositions, the increased usability may assist your product pages stand out from the crowd.

Organized Data

By supplying Rich Snippets in the SERPs, structured data can assist an e-commerce website’s products perform better in the search results. Additionally,

it gives search engines precise information so they can grasp all the essential components of the goods (for comparison with competitor websites).

However, Rich Snippets cannot guarantee an increase in click-through rates from the SERPs to your pages.

Product schema is significant for product sites and can provide review rich snippets.

You can also use the ItemList schema for the category pages. You can include the LocalBusiness schema on the specific store pages if you have neighborhood stores.

The website should also be leveraging other general schema types in addition to Product schema, such as:

Organization.
Breadcrumb.
Website.
website search bar.

A more technically advanced website offers a better user experience and can provide you an advantage over your rivals. Check out this comprehensive ecommerce SEO tutorial or SEJ’s technical SEO category if you want to learn more.

FAQ

What do technical SEO tactics entail?

Technical SEO is the process of improving your website and server so that search engine spiders can more efficiently crawl and index your site.

A technical SEO checklist: what is it?

Any SEO strategy must include technical SEO, thus the website must comply with all search engine recommendations. The technical audit checklist has a number of items on it that can be used to evaluate and rate the technical aspects of the structure and content of a website.

What is an example of technical SEO?

The creation of an XML sitemap for your website is another illustration of technical SEO. Setting up your website correctly so that each page performs as it should be is the first significant step in developing a technical SEO plan. This file is crawled by Google (and other search engines) to better understand your website.