If you run your own E-commerce business, you’re probably on the lookout for ways to drive conversions.
One place to start? Improving your SEO.
But SEO for E-commerce sites is entirely different than SEO for content-focused sites. Beyond the on-page SEO fundamentals, SEO for E-commerce is much more technical.
So, without further ado, here are the key technical SEO terms that any E-commerce business owner should know about (and optimize).
5 Technical SEO Tips For E-commerce Business Owners
#1. Update Your Schema Markup
Notice how some products show up differently in search results than others?
For example: take a look at the IKEA product result in the image below compared to others.
Notice how the IKEA result shows an image, reviews, rating, price, and availability? That’s because of schema markup.
Schema markup is what you implement on the backend to tell search engines the data that you want your users to see. So, if you want your E-commerce products to show up in search (if you’re NOT Amazon or Etsy), and you want your users to see factors like images, price, and reviews, then product schema markup is a must-do.
Here’s how to implement it:
Go to schema.org and add the following markup to your product pages:
name: The product's official name.
description: A compelling and informative product description.
image: High-quality product images from various angles.
priceCurrency: The currency your prices are listed in (e.g., USD, EUR).
price: The actual product price.
availability: Whether the product is in stock or out of stock.
brand: The brand associated with the product.
aggregateRating: Leverage this property to showcase your product's average review rating.
And if applicable, include properties like "colour," "material," "size," “review,” and "MPN" (Manufacturer Part Number) to offer more detail for search engines—and your users.
This is a sure-fire way to ensure that search engines truly understand your products, prioritize your products over others, show richer search results to users, and ultimately, help drive higher conversion rates.
#2. Faster Indexing
Another technical SEO term that you should know about: quick indexing.
When you have dozens of products that you’re constantly updating, you need search engines to show the latest versions to users. And you also just want to show up at all.
The best way to ensure search engines show your updated site is with indexing. This is the process of search engines adding your website's pages to their massive database.
Without proper indexing, your product pages are invisible to search engines. This means that potential customers searching for products like yours won't be able to find them, significantly hindering conversions.
To improve your site’s indexability, make sure you have your ducks in a row by:
Creating high-quality content
Establishing clear website structure
Writing search-optimized title tags and meta descriptions
Submitting your sitemap to search engines
Fixing any broken links
Here are some ways to check your indexing status. And if you have an E-commerce site with thousands of products, you can also use services like Prerender.io for fast, on-the-go indexing.
#3. Improve Your Page Load Time
If your product pages lag for even one second… your conversion rates can drop by up to 20%. For every second after that, your conversion rates fall another 20%, says Google.
Page load time is seriously important—especially for E-commerce businesses.
Here are a few ways to improve your page load time:
Compressing images. Use a service like Image Compressor to do this manually.
Minifying code. Whether with HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, you can remove unnecessary characters and whitespace, leading to faster loading times.
Make sure to choose a reliable hosting provider who can handle the bandwidth of your site.
Consider a dynamic rendering service like Prerender. This loads all of your content before users land on your site, ensuring that your load times are speedy when shoppers get there.
Work with your developer to prioritize this one—it’s important!
#4. Optimize Your Crawlability
Imagine Google sends out tiny robots called crawlers to explore the web to discover and index sites. These crawlers follow links and navigate through your website's structure to understand its content.
Strong crawlability ensures these crawlers can efficiently access and index all the valuable product pages and information on your E-commerce store.
Crawlability is based primarily on two core factors: user-friendliness and improved search engine visibility. Here are a few ways to improve your site’s crawlability:
Clear website structure. Organize your website with a clear hierarchy, making it easy for crawlers to navigate from the homepage to product categories and individual product pages. Use descriptive internal linking to connect relevant pages.
Optimize your sitemaps. A sitemap acts as a blueprint for your website, providing crawlers with a clear list of all your important pages. Regularly update your sitemap to reflect any new product pages or changes to your website structure. Submit your sitemap to search engines like Google Search Console to improve crawl efficiency.
Fix broken links. This one’s important! Broken links not only frustrate users but also greatly hinder crawlability—and your overall SEO score will suffer. Regularly check your website for broken links and redirect them to the appropriate pages, or use a site audit tool from Semrush to identify and fix all broken links quickly.
Avoid crawl traps. A crawl trap is a series of interconnected links that create an endless loop for crawlers, preventing them from reaching other parts of your website. Ensure your internal linking structure is well-organized to avoid crawl traps and improve your shoppers’ experience.
Beyond crawling, your team should also be using robots.txt to tell search engines exactly what to do.
#5. Prioritize Mobile
Last but not least, make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
In fact, your developer should optimize your site for mobile first and then desktop—rather than the other way around.
Not only are shoppers increasingly using their phones to buy products, but Google actually favours sites that prioritize mobile friendliness. So ensuring your site is mobile-first is a win-win all around.
To do this, here are a few areas to focus on:
Responsive design.
Fast load time, like mentioned above.
Easy navigation.
Optimized product pages.
Ideal user experience across different devices (not just iOS!).
Checking each of these off the list will ensure a smooth shopping experience for your mobile users and a higher presence in search results.
But at the end of the day... technical SEO isn’t just for developers.
Sure, technical SEO might be for developers during the execution phase. But it touches every aspect of the online experience.
So before your developers go into the backend, it’s crucial for every E-commerce business owner to have a solid understanding of the various technical SEO factors that play a big role in their business’ performance.
SEO goes beyond keywords. Whether it's on-page or technical, it's far-reaching and has a massive impact on sales.
Interested in learning more about how to improve your business’ SEO? Get in touch!