The Key Practices Of Technical SEO For Ecommerce

As said on Think With Google, the moment a website’s page speed goes from 1 to 3 seconds, the bounce rate will increase by 32%. Do you know what does it mean? Well, frustrated users will abandon your site, reaching higher bounce rates and lower conversion rates. This obviously means that Google will prioritize a fast-loading website in its search results. 

With an increasing bounce rate, your website will rank lower and lower regardless of how helpful or unique content you post. Therefore, it is important to get SEO services from industry experts like us. Otherwise, lower rankings will jeopardize your bottom line and your sales. 

1 – Product Page Optimization

Do you know for ecommerce websites, product pages have more value than other pages? This is where all the sales are rendered. Therefore, it is important to optimize these pages thoroughly with unique and accurate product details. 

Write Unique And Compelling Product Descriptions

You have to write compelling product descriptions that inform potential customers about the product details and also influence them to make a purchase. In fact, a study by Salsify declares that 87% of people prefer detailed product descriptions to help them make an informed decision. When you write product descriptions, consider the following:

• Avoid generic, manufacturer-provided descriptions.
• Naturally, add relevant keywords throughout your descriptions to improve search engine visibility.
• Instead of saying “made with cotton,” say “feel the comfort of pure cotton.”
• Weave a narrative around your product. 

High Quality Product Images

Besides, you must also consider using high quality product images. You want people to know about your product in detail and don’t want to write a negative review and claim your product to be fake later. So, always keep things clear from the very first step of the purchase cycle. 

For this, you can take the help of professional product photographers who can accurately portray the color, texture, and size of your products. Make sure you get and upload multiple angles (closeups, lifestyle shots, from and back clicks) of each product. 

Image Optimization

A heavier image slows down the loading process and makes your site speed slow. Hence increasing the bounce rate. Therefore, you must optimize images to reduce file size without compromising on quality. This will improve the page load speed, user experience, and search engine rankings. 

Consider using descriptive file names (e.g., “red-dress-front.jpeg”) to help search engines understand the image content. Include descriptive alt text for each image. This improves accessibility for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers. 

Alt text also provides valuable information to search engines about the image content, which can improve your search engine rankings. Websites with high-quality images are more likely to engage users and drive conversions.

Structured Data Implementation

Each page of your website has this structured data, which is also known as the Schema Markup. This helps search engines understand the information on your website. With Schema Markup, you get the opportunity to feature your product for rich snippets. It gives information about your products, such as:

• Product name
• Description
• Price
• Availability
• Brand
• Reviews
• Images

2 – Fix The Site Architecture And Navigation

Google ranks a site that is well structured for users. By well-structured site, we meant clear and concise site structure, internal linking, breadcrumb navigation, etc. 

Structuring Clearly

First of all, organize your website with a logical hierarchy, i.e., categories, sub-categories, and product pages. This will help users scroll through your website, understand what each page is about better, and find the products they are looking for.

Add clear and concise menus such as dropdown menus or mega menus to improve user experience by providing easy access to different sections of your website. Besides, it is recommended to add internal linking strategically throughout your website. 

Internal Linking

You add a link from one page to another related product page, category, and other relevant pages on your website. This has to be strategically planned and not throwing random links on pages. For example, use the link of conversion pages on traffic pages so that when the user comes to your traffic page, they will see the conversion page link and click on it. 

This will also help with the crawlability of your website for search engines. Internal links also help distribute “link juice” across your website, boosting the overall search engine ranking of your pages.

Add Breadcrumbs

“Home – Men Clothes – Denim” This is what breadcrumbs normally look like. When you implement breadcrumb trails on your product pages, you offer users a clear understanding of their current location and website hierarchy. The users can easily go back to the previous page and explore other parts of your website.

In fact, if you own an ecommerce store in the Middle East, you might know how important it is to have a proper site structure because most websites are in Arabic or English only, and breadcrumbs help you understand your current position. This is one of the most important aspects of technical SEO for ecommerce websites. 

3 – Make It Mobile Friendly

Most of us use our cell phones more often than desktops, right? We like being couch potatoes and scrolling through social media on our phones until we see a product and place the order. Do you know around 79% of online shoppers use their smartphones to visit a website and place an order? 

Responsive Design

The entire customer journey takes place on a smartphone, so don’t you think you can be at a loss if your website is not optimized for smartphones? Well, mobile-responsive websites are quite obvious these days. A responsive website adapts to different screen sizes (large desktops, medium-sized tablets, and small smartphones). This way, your website will look and function properly on all devices. 

This ensures that your website looks and functions correctly on all devices, providing a consistent and enjoyable user experience regardless of how customers access your site.

Mobile-First Indexing

When you make your website responsive to different devices, it creates versions of your site. Google prefers mobile-first indexing, which means it will index the mobile version of your site first and rank the pages. 

It implies that you need to make your site mobile-friendly as it is your chance to provide a better user experience. Also, make sure the ecommerce site loads quickly and navigates easily through the checkout process. 

4 – Website Speed And Performance 

We can’t emphasize enough the importance of web speed and performance in technical SEO for ecommerce businesses. Just to get a picture, note that 47% of users don’t wait for a website to load for over 2 seconds. This invites the looming tension of bounce rates. Anyway, here is what you can do to improve your web speed and performance. 

Optimize Images

As we said earlier, images are extremely impactful for your website’s speed and performance, so make sure they are properly optimized. For this, you can read our detailed blog on Core Web Vitals, in which we have shared some ways to optimize images for better site performance. 

A study found that a 1-second delay in page load time can lead to an 11% reduction in page views and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Minification

Sometimes, our websites are burdened with large-sized HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, which slows down their speed. Minification means removing unnecessary characters like spaces, line breaks, comments, etc., from the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. 

This will reduce the file size and speed up the time it takes for browsers to download and render these files. According to Google, minifying files can significantly improve page load times, resulting in a better user experience and improved search engine rankings.

Use Browser Caching

Turn on the browser caching option because it will allow browsers to store static files (images, CSS, JavaScript) locally on the user’s device. This way the user’s system won’t need to download these files repeatedly on subsequent visits to the website. This will speed up the need to download these files repeatedly on subsequent visits to the website, resulting in faster page load times and a smoother browsing experience.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN distributes your website’s content across multiple servers located geographically closer to your users. This significantly reduces latency and improves page load times, especially for users located far from your website’s primary server. A study by Akamai found that using a CDN can reduce page load times by up to 50%.

5 – Technical SEO For Ecommerce Website’s Audits

SEO audits are very important to know if your website is lacking somewhere. You have to regularly conduct technical SEO audits to maintain a healthy and high perfoming website. With the help of these regular audits, you can fix the technical issues that can hinder your website’s ability to be crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines.

Finding And Fixing The Technical Issues

A website has multiple technicalities that might hinder its performance. Technical SEO audits will help you find these issues. It includes crawlability issues and indexation issues. Web speed and performance issues, mobile friendliness issues, and security issues. 

Using Tools For Technical SEO Audits 

You can use several tools to conduct a thorough technical SEO audit. For example, you can use Google Search Console (GSC) to get valuable insights into how Google sees your website which includes indexing errors, crawl errors, and mobile-friendliness issues. Besides GSC, you have tools like Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights, Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc. 

6 – Security

For any ecommerce website, security is important because your customers will put your trust in you and give you their confidential information. If this information gets stolen or misused, you will be responsible for the loss of your business.

HTTPS

HTTPS means Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, and it is an absolute must. HTTPS encrypts the communication between a user’s browser and your website’s server, protecting sensitive information like customer names, addresses, and payment details from interception by hackers. 

This not only safeguards customer data but also builds trust with your audience. Moreover, Google prioritizes HTTPS websites in search results, giving them a competitive edge in organic visibility.

7 – Internationalization And Localization

If you want to offer your products or services to your target audience, you have to make your website internationally and locally available. To touch the Middle Eastern markets you might want your website in multiple languages like Arabic, English, and potentially other regional languages like Farsi or Turkish. This will help you reach a wider audience. 

Besides the language, you might want to display prices in local currencies, such as UAE Dirham, Saudi Riyal, or Egyptian Pound, to offer a hassle-free shopping experience that builds trust with customers. 

Beyond language and currency, there are cultural nuances like considering factors like preferred payment methods (e.g., cash on delivery is popular in some regions), cultural sensitivities in imagery and messaging, and adapting to local customs and holidays. 

Summing Up

We have summed up all the possible actions you can take to improve the technical SEO for ecommerce sites and hope that you implement all of these. If you can’t get into the nitty gritty technicalities, consider taking help from professionals like Emerging Software x Emerging Digital Agency. We can help you with regular site audits, ongoing performance monitoring, and a commitment to continuous improvement.