The eCommerce SEO Checklist: 20 Things To Do Before You Hit 'Launch'

Stuck with your market growth and are having a very low conversion rate then it is most probably because of the low traffic or number of viewers to your site. And being very honest without having significant traffic to your eCommerce website you can’t really excel neither as an individual nor as an organization.

So sit back and take out time to think and complete the SEO checklist which can optimize your website properly and can help you gain the heights of your dream.

1. Keyword Research
2. Title Tag
3. Include keywords in the site URL and Headings
4. Image optimization
5. Reduce page load time
6. Minimum Content
7. Meta Description
8. Avoid Plagiarism
9. Reviews
10. Mobile Friendly
11. Website Structure
12. Breadcrumb Navigation
13. Resolve 404 Error
14. Ensure that the sites are crawlable and indexable
15. HTTPS
16. Backlinks and Internal links
17. Use Multiple Keywords
18. Block Unnecessary pages
19. Schema
20. Filter product category

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the most crucial step in generating organic traffic to your eCommerce website. Before starting with the actual content writing one should have done keyword research very thoroughly. A few of the important aspects that one should keep in mind while doing keyword research are-

• Search Volume
• Competition
• Cost per Click
• Search Intent
  

Let’s just go through these topics, in short, to help you get a clearer idea about what they mean. Long-Tail Keywords works better in eCommerce.

Search Volume- we can define search volume as the number of people searching for a specific keyword.

Competition- As the name suggests it represents the competition or difficulties related to that keyword. The most common mistake that people tend to do is they just check the search volume and opt for the highest one neglecting its level of difficulty.

A few of the tools that you can use to do the keyword research tools are;

• Semrush
• Ahref
• Keywords Everywhere
• Google Keyword Planner

Meta Title

It is very important to have a catchy title for the products on your eCommerce website because it is the very first thing that a viewer sees and if it does not appeal to the viewer then there is no means of having the best content inside.

Your Title should be under 50-60 characters.

Few of the tips that can help you to achieve the perfect title;

• Keep the title clear and simple to understand and avoid confusion
• Use number and statistical information
• Demonstrate emotions
• Include keywords
• User-friendly

Include keywords in the site URL and Headings

Try including the specific keyword in the URL, heading, and the subheading of the page so that it can be easily understandable by the crawlers what exactly the pages focus on.

This also helps in improving the visibility because the h1 tag and the URL are of the highest priority.

However, from this, we don’t mean to use the keyword in every next sentence. Also, ensure that the URLs and then heading on every page of your eCommerce s website is unique.

Image optimization

Image optimization helps google understand the context behind the image used on your eCommerce website. It makes the page more crawlable for the google spiders. Which in turn helps in improving the ranking.

This also helps the viewer that is visually impaired or is having network issues. Image optimization involves using appropriate

• File names
• Alt text

Try using file names that are more user-friendly rather than using the default names such as screenshot43556.jpg. It is also recommended to use images of small size such as jpg or jpeg format.

Reduce page load time

The page load time is a very important factor in determining the efficiency of your eCommerce website. Because nowadays people have a very busy lifestyle and if the website fails to keep up with the pace then it could lead to a loss of the potential customer.

It is also an important factor while determining the user experience. What also happens here is, that if the spiders find that the page load time is higher than expected then they assume that the quality of the page is not up to the mark and thus decrease the visibility.

Minimum Content

Every page of the eCommerce website is assumed to have a minimum of 250 unique words to improve the quality of the content and the experience. Product descriptions must be short and to the point so that user can take the action as it helps them in taking purchasing decision.

Product description should be written by keeping the target audience in mind by including the key points which can solve their issue.

Meta Description

The Meta description is not directly related to SEO management but it has a great impact on the click-through rate because after the title tag this is the only description available to the viewer.

Ideally meta description length should be around 150-160 characters and it must summarize the page content.

It is the main space where you can advertise the best about your eCommerce page. You can attract people by,

• Asking an interesting question
• Stating an interesting or shocking fact
• Providing statistical data

Avoid Plagiarism

It is the most common reason for the site not being able to rank. If the content up on your site is copied from other sites then it leads to Plagiarism. It could be related to the content, the images, data, or anything. Plagiarism can be of type intentional or unintentional.

Your website must have unique quality content and must give the user the reason to read. Plagiarism content can drop your ranking which results in low traffic.

However, this doesn't really matter whatever type it may be google treats it as a practice to alter the ranking and deceive the crawler by irrational means.

Reviews

One might think that reviews or customer testimonials are not related to SEO however this is not what happens, the crawler and the viewer analyze the products more efficiently. It also helps in improving the content on the eCommerce website.

You can use different ways to get Customer testimonials that can help you convert the visitors into customers, which can grow your brand's reputation and sales.

Mobile Friendly

It has now become one of the mandatory parameters from an optional checkmark. Back in the day, it was not essential for the sites to be responsive or mobile-friendly now as time passed it has become one of the basic requirement as the viewer tend to use the site on different devices such as phone, laptops, desktops, and pads.

Around 64% of searches come through mobile as compared to the desktop search percentage of 35%. So it is necessary to have a mobile-friendly website.

You can run mobile friendly test on this website to check if your website is friendly or not.

https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly/

The search engine appreciated the e-commerce website of a Mobile Friendly label. This label tremendously helps in improving the site ranking.

Website Structure

Websites shouldn't just be a random collection of posts or blogs instead they should be well organized and should have some meaning to them. You all might have heard about Website architecture from many people. “That your website should have a good architecture” and so on.

Website architecture is the means by which the content on the website is linked together. In simple words, we can say that it is a way to simplify the navigation of the user and also for the search engine crawlers. Website structure includes a Navigation menu, URLs, Internal links, and breadcrumb. We will be discussing all of these topics in detail below.

What a good website structure actually looks like?

A website where a lot of thinking has gone behind its architecture consists of grouping based on the type of content, highlighting the most important pages and posts, using hierarchical order, and providing easy navigation.

Breadcrumb Navigation

It is a nice habit to have breadcrumb navigation to the subpages. Because this turns out not only to be helpful to the humans but also to the crawlers.

It helps the humans to understand where and on which page they are on the site and whereas it helps the crawler to understand the structure of the eCommerce site and helps in creating neat and simple internal site links.

Resolve 404 Error

Most of the time the viewers acknowledge errors like 404 error- page not found. This occurs when;

• There’s a change in the permalink
• Removed or deleted content from the eCommerce website
• Misspelled links

These errors definitely create a negative impression thus we need to resolve them. The best way to resolve the 404 error is to use 301 re-direct.

This redirecting method helps in redirecting the viewer to the new URL if they type in the old URLs.

Ensure that the sites are crawlable and indexable

For the search engine to be able to crawl and rank your eCommerce website it should be optimized for both on-page and technical SEO.

If the site is not optimized then completing the above-mentioned checkpoints will also be of no use, You can check if your eCommerce website is crawlable or not from the google console.

HTTPS

The search engine offers a very minor advantage to the sites using HTTPS over the sites using HTTP. This not only has become a source of advantage but has become essential for the viewers. Let me explain to you how

The eCommerce website uses payment gateways that are connected to the cart. What HTTPS does is provide encryption between the servers and the website. Thus this helps and provides a means of safety to the buyer thus it is essential to have HTTPS. We can simply get our site protected by HTTPS we just need to install an SSL certificate.

Backlinks and Internal links

One of the top ways to optimize off-site SEO is by using backlinks. Backlinks from another site show the search engine that your site is trustworthy as it is being backed that is used as a source of reference from other sites.

However, it is very important to assure that your site is backed by an authorized source rather than being linked with untrustworthy and spam websites.

We can also use internal links that link to different pages of our own eCommerce website. This helps in increasing the visibility of other pages as combined.

Use Multiple Keywords

We can also try using multiple keywords on our eCommerce website rather than only focusing on a single Keyword. It helps to improve the reach because by using multiple keywords we can cover a particular topic in different ways.

Block Unnecessary pages

There are some pages on the eCommerce website that are not up to the mark in terms of UI/UX or landline. Some of the examples of these pages are Checkout pages, wishlist pages, and thank you pages. We can tell the search engine to exclude such pages from being indexed or crawled.

This indication can be done by adding the “robots.txt” file.

We can check which pages are excluded from the google console and get a double assurance about the pages which are to be crawled and which is to be avoided.

Schema

Having a schema markup on the website is a great way of telling the search engine about the content on your web page. Adding schema helps the bots crawl faster and also boosts the ranking of the web page i.e increases the click-through-rate.

We all must be aware of HTML which is a markup language. One of the other and very useful markup languages that are used to add another layer to the websites is Schemas.

There are different of Schema Markup and here are few which eCommerce websites must have on their website-

• Organization
• Breadcrumb
• Product Page
• Item List
• Rating & Review
• FAQ

JSON-LD is an amazing free tool to generate different types of Schema Markup.

Filter product category

These are the key tools to help the user find the desired product simply in a few steps. However, if it is not done carefully then it can backfire as well.

A few of the common filters for the product which are mostly used by eCommerce websites are size, brand, color, occasion, range, relevance, popularity, etc.

Design strategies that must be considered while designing the filter are;

• Test the filter as you design. (The filter should be working)
• Keep it simple.
• Add specifications related to the product.
• Use a variety of ranges and scrollers.
• Make it look attractive.

Conclusion

As of now, you have a complete checklist to get the perfect SEO rank and increase visibility and productivity. So get ready and complete them to get ranked in the top 10 searches on the first page of google.

And we assure you that it is not that hard to achieve just calmly complete and consider the checkpoints mentioned above and before its end, you will be able to observe the difference in your eCommerce website.

FAQ

Is SEO Important for eCommerce?

Yes, SEO is important for E-commerce businesses. It helps in getting rank for the relevant customer searches and also boosts the sales.

What is the best eCommerce platform for SEO?

There are so many eCommerce platforms for SEO from which you choose from and you must choose the platform which can optimize your store as per the search engine. Here are few best SEO eCommerce platform which you can choose from-

• Shopify
• Woocommerce
• Magento
• Wix
• BigCommerce
• Squarespace

What are the main benefits of eCommerce SEO?

There are numerous benefits of doing SEO of your eCommerce store like-

• Increase Brand Visibility
• Boosts the sales
• Enhance the User Experience
• Develop Customer Trust
• Lower PPC Cost
• Helps with Remarketing Audience