7 Aspects of eCommerce SEO You’re Ignoring [but Shouldn’t]

Depending on which source you trust, there could be upwards of 200 direct ranking signals that tell Google whether or not your website is an authority and how it should be ranked accordingly. With so many items to track, even the eCommerce SEO experts can lose sight of a few of them from time to time.

But your goal should not be to cut excuses. It should be to rank as competitively as you can for as many target keywords as you reasonably (and practically) can. These factors of eCommerce SEO are either ranking signals themselves or will impact UX in ways that will in turn affect conversions.

Don’t overlook them, or you’re opening the door for your competitors to waltz in and steal your business.

Duplicate content will result in a penalty

Dreadfully easy to rectify, and allowed to fly on category and product pages (and even in blogs) with even more depressing frequency, is duplicate content. The first on this list, and one of the cardinal sins against eCommerce SEO best practices, duplicate content can and will result in a penalty from Google. Even if somehow you avoid the penalty, any authority you would gain will simply be assigned by Google to the original publisher.

So you think, the manufacturer has just said it so well! Who cares? Google doesn’t and as long as you allow duplicate content to remain on any of your pages, you’ll be harming your business. It’s easy to flag and easy to remove – and if it’s too hard to replace with fresh writing, simply hire a team of eCommerce SEO expert copywriters to do that for you, or do it yourself.

Boring, unoptimized meta descriptions

You can alter the content yourself or drop in a plugin like Yoast to help you rewrite the copy in your meta descriptions. It’s really not hard, takes only a few minutes per page (provided you are knowledgeable on the subject matter and the keyword strategy) and will give a decent SEO boost to your target pages.

Succinct, informative, keyword-optimized content is the name of the game for meta descriptions. It’s your chance to catch online visitors’ attention as well.

URLs with poorly optimized slugs

Look at the top of whatever page is open on your eCommerce website right now; switch tabs from this post, we’ll be here.

Did you see that slug at the top of your page? Did it make any sense whatsoever or was it just a nonsense amalgam of letters and numbers with some symbols thrown in for spice?

If it can be described as the latter, that’s another big eCommerce SEO transgression. Not that users care, no one is reading URL slugs anyway, but Google will notice, and every little bit counts. Either change your slugs yourself pursuant to your keyword strategy or hire a group of eCommerce SEO experts to optimize them for you.

Confusing navigation, or lack thereof

Another feature that will adversely affect your overall SEO score is confusing or intuitive navigation. The chief reason for this is that confusing or complex navigation that leaves users scratching their heads usually corresponds to a high bounce rate. Google takes note of high bounce rates and assigns authority accordingly.

Stale content

Back in the day, some content writers believed SEO was simply about peppering in a few keywords here and there, but has it ever evolved. Today, SEO copy is all about the user experience in addition to length, keyword density, and how the copy is structured.

If it doesn’t offer real, usable value, it’s unlikely to garner any visits from real readers, which in turn will be noticed by Google. The other thing is, while evergreen content is valuable, failing to issue a steady stream of new material is not good for eCommerce SEO. You need not only a content plan, but a plan for publishing quality material.

Title tags and content headers

Once you’ve settled on a keyword strategy that will work for your company’s competitive positioning (see below) you should go through your website and update all of your page title tags as well as the headers associated with content on your landing pages, product and category pages and in your blog, as well as any other pages on your site. Dropping key search terms and keywords in these titles and headers is easy to do and it is a vital on page optimization, and will help them rank more effectively in Google searches.

Investing in keyword research that pays

Much of search engine optimization hinges on the efficacy of the keyword research that underlies the keyword strategy. Pouring money into chasing the wrong keywords is one of the biggest mistakes an eCommerce business can make. It all comes down to identifying keywords that are balanced in terms of density and highly targeted to the search intent and intents-to-purchase of the target audience.

All effective eCommerce SEO services should be underlied by a cohort of keywords that are not impossibly competitive and which are relevant to your eCommerce site as well as to your customers. You just need to find them.

Visit 1Digital Agency online at 1DigitalAgency.com to learn more about what goes into developing an eCommerce SEO strategy for long term success. They’ve authored and managed hundreds of successful marketing strategies since 2012, and can do the same for your business – just get in touch with them at info@1digitalagency.com or by phone at 888-982-8269 today.

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