Over the past couple of years, several companies have shifted to online models due to changing market conditions.
Competition is heating up rapidly in many sectors.
Some companies did well with original eCommerce templates and solutions. But with so much competition in search, you need to provide the best possible user experiences.
At some point, you’ll need to get into the technical side of your website to avoid errors that could affect search performance, especially if you’re thinking about migrating your site or moving away from available services.
While you can run even large e-commerce stores on platforms like Shopify, you should still take the time to understand the technical tasks these platforms do for you.
A crucial part of this is technical SEO for e-commerce stores, which is divided into two areas: technical competence and technical optimization.
Website architecture and URL structures
I use the term site architecture vs. site structure because structure often causes people to focus only on URL structure.
The idea site architecture should follow that of a standard catalog.
Catalogs have been around for centuries.
If you go back over 100 years and look at the classic catalogs of Sears, Roebuck & Co. of the 19th century, very little has changed in the way we structure offline catalogs and even our e-commerce websites today.
Years of repetition have effectively trained users to become familiar with this format, so following a simple site structure of:
Home > Categories > Subcategories > Products
It’s something users know and makes logical sense. It should then translate into the URL structure, which should be consistent and descriptive of the page (to users).
Products should also be placed in their own category-agnostic subfolder, meaning you can include them in multiple relevant categories without creating duplicate product pages.
For example:
Category page: example.com/category
Subcategory page: example.com/category/niche-1
Product page: example.com/p/product-name or website.com/products/product-name
From experience, trying to use keywords for eCommerce URLs is not a “move the needle” tactic.
If you use major e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Salesforce Commerce Cloud, they force you to have URL structures that include subfolders and product SKUs. And these websites can compete just as well with any other.
Sitemaps (XML and HTML) and Google Search Console settings
An HTML sitemap may not be strictly necessary for e-commerce websites to work, but they are a good idea. HTML sitemaps can allow for better internal linking to category and subcategory pages. They help track and organize your pages and help users navigate your site.
An XML sitemap isn’t essential either, but they can help Google with URL discovery.
And when you trace your URLs connected to the Search Console Inspection API, you can also identify potential issues (eg, a category page is only found via an XML sitemap and not via internal links).
To get better data (less filtered) and more information about the quality of your pages, you can:
Submit structured XML sitemaps to Google Search Console Add a Google Search Console property for each subfolder on your website: yoursite.com/clothing, for example.
This data can help you identify whether you need to improve the value proposition and quality of certain categories, subcategories and product pages.
You can also incorporate an XML sitemap form into your homepage design to provide a natural crawl path to pass PageRank from the homepage to categories and subcategories without spammy link lists, like this example of the MoneySupermarket.com home page:
Screenshot from MoneySupermarket.com, July 2022
Stock handling and soft 404s
When your products are out of stock, your product page templates will reflect this.
It can cause Google to interpret the page as a soft 404, removing it from indexing, which means you’ll lose traffic and rank for search terms associated with the page.
If a user is looking for a specific product and lands on your page only to find they can’t buy it, they’ll have a negative brand experience.
But, it’s also an opportunity to cross-sell other products or incentivize the user to wait until it’s back in stock.
You can do this through automation.
When a product template’s stock level reaches zero, if it shows default messages out of stock, Google will identify it as a soft 404. To avoid this, introduce similar products and elements on the product page to create a different value proposition. The user has guidance on what to do next and you can avoid the soft 404 error.
For example, let’s say your stock for Brand X 3mm HSS drills runs out. Add an automatic check that replaces the “out of stock” message if you have similar products in stock. You can do this through your product information management (PIM) system. Modify the template to show similar brands and products that meet the same or similar criteria, in this case a 3mm drill bit.
If you also operate brick-and-mortar stores, you can change the message to “outlet online” and direct users to a store locator.
You can also create templates that use your PIM to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities for other pages.
And if you use custom labeling in your PIM, you can target customers to similar products using different variables (eg, size, color, shape, launch event).
These PIM integrations with product pages can also help prevent negative user experiences.
Using PIM data to add user value should be a standard practice for optimizing your eCommerce store. Additional usability can help your product pages stand out from the competition, especially if your competitors have similar pages or value propositions.
Structured data
Using structured data can help improve an e-commerce website’s products in search results by providing rich snippets in the SERPs. It also presents information clearly to search engines, helping them understand all the basics of the product (to compare with competing websites).
Rich snippets can help improve click-through rates from SERPs to your pages, but they’re not guaranteed.
For product pages, product outline is important and can allow review rich snippets.
For your category pages, you can also use the ItemList schema. If you have local stores, you can include the LocalBusiness outline on individual store pages.
In addition to the product schema, the site should also use other types of generic schemas, such as:
organization Breadcrumbs. website Sitelinks search box.
A perfected technical website provides a better user experience and can help you gain an edge over the competition. If you want to learn more, check out SEJ’s technical SEO category or this complete guide to eCommerce SEO.
Featured image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
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