E-Commerce SEO: Do you face this SEO challenges??

Posted by Sanket Patel

October 08, 2012

SEO 20 min read

E-Commerce sites often face unique search engine optimization challenges. In this post, I am going to reveal an advanced SEO technique for E-Commerce websites concerning technical SEO issues. We discuss the challenges of SEO for E-Commerce sites as well as solutions to developing and growing organic search traffic. I have researched the technical problems that are frequently asked by E-Commerce marketers.

1)  Which E-commerce Platform is Right for You? Finding the perfect platform is not easy. When choosing an E-commerce platform, it’s important to choose the service that will make your website the best, many people can’t decide among a different development platform. So choose SEO friendly E-Commerce platform. I suggest osCommerce and Magneto because it has better SEO modules and they are the world’s fastest-growing E-Commerce platforms. Word Press E-Commerce Plugin is by far the most popular plug-ins to develop an E-Commerce website. So prefer SEO friendly development platform for your site.

2)  URL Structure for an e-commerce site: If your site isn’t well structured, then your SEO work becomes a lot more challenging. The main thing is the arrangement of the product page. Products can be easily found in a logical and consistent way. New visitors should easily navigate and access. The other most important thing is the URL structure. The structure of the URLs chosen should be based upon your desired outcome is regarding what your site is associated with. Google says it doesn’t want you to go deeper than about three levels in your directories; a shorter URL is better for the user navigation. A shorter URL will give a higher click-through rate when your page comes up in the Google search result.

Don’t choose this kind of URL: www.domain.com/supergroup/main-group/sub-group/product-range/product

This most reliable URL structure: www.domain.com/category/product

<HTTP://www.domain.com/store/glassesusa/

3)  Duplicate content error on E-Commerce sites: This question is commonly asked by many marketers. Most of the business owners are having issues with duplicate content. Many E-Commerce websites use the product descriptions provided by the manufacturers of the products. I just want to explain something about duplicate content.

The term “Duplicate Content” refers to a large part of the same content available on different pages within a site or across different domains. This might not be a problem initially, but it may prove unfavourable for SEO purposes. Google isn’t penalizing you to hurt your ranking, but they will only give you SEO value for the page they think is unique. For example, if you have 40 pages of the same product but small variations in colour or size, and little to differentiate the pages, then Google will count those 40 pages as one page, not a different page. You lose the opportunity to build 39 pages of unique content value. One thing is very important if you have a product that other companies have. You are a distributor or supplier, not the manufacturer. You post that content with a little variation then you will surely be penalized by Google for copied or duplicate content.

4)  How to implement Pagination and Canonical tag on E-commerce site? Most of the E-Commerce site has this both issues. To implement both tags intelligently to avoid duplication. The canonical tag acts as a strong hint for duplicate content. You can now use the rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to indicate the relationship in the paginated series.

How to use canonical Tag: For Example, I have these all URLs

  • example.com/inventory.php
  • example.com/inventory.php?category=used
  • example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high
  • example.com/inventory.php?category=used&location=seattle

<You can use rel=canonical to example.com/inventory.php on above category URL

How to do pagination: Implement rel=”next” and rel=”prev” on the below URL including price=high parameter.

  • example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=1
  • example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=2
  • example.com/inventory.php?category=used&price=high&page=3

If your site contains View all, then you can “No-index” that page because the view-all page is undesirable as a search result and its load time is too high or difficult for users to navigate.

5) How to Market Your E-commerce Site? Now the question is how to market your E-commerce site to get the best response and sales.

  • Some of the greatest challenges for E-Commerce owners are how to develop marketing strategies.
  • Understand how your best competitors are attracting links. Understands what services everyone offers to attract visitors.
  • Sign up for forums in your niche and actively start posting valuable content. Don’t Spam, be transparent about who you are, but offer genuine, useful content and discussion.
  • Get social media marketing– sign up for FB, Twitter, Pinterest, G+ etc and become active – share, like, follow, comment.
  • Use products as link bait. You can also do interlinking with your products.
  • Pictures are also an effective link-building tactic, you can increase the visibility of your site with attractive images.

6) How to differentiate your E-Commerce website? It is challenging to differentiate your site from your competitor’s site. Below mentioned points will be helpful to you for creating uniqueness.

  • Increase E-Commerce Ratings & Reviews: Product reviews and ratings are a great way of providing on-topic content, useful to both customers and search engines alike. It indicates you deliver guaranteed fresh content. When consumers buy products online, everyone must rely on the reviews of their peers to build their confidence and guide their purchasing decisions.
  • Use security certificates for the building trustworthy image of your site. An E-Commerce website needs to host on a secured server because it contains personal information like Card or bank details of customers.
  • Include the multiple payment options for the increasing comforts of your visitors. It is one of the most important factors in an E-Commerce site.
  • Make its easy for customers to find products they want in addition to the one item that they’ve been searching for.

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