It’s often thought that having an eCommerce business with a well established brand, aesthetically pleasing website and the best products is enough to rely on when it comes to making online sales organically however that’s not always the case especially if you’re a start up eCommerce company.
However these three factors do not directly correlate with having keyword rankings on page one, an optimal conversions rate and ultimately organic revenue.
With that in mind over the past four years I have analysed a large number of eCommerce websites who all make these common SEO mistakes. From large retailers such as John Lewis to newly founded Lively Root who are still suffering with these issues to date.
It is for this reason that 5 common eCommerce SEO Mistakes with solutions have been highlighted in this guide to help you enhance your SEO strategy to boost your organic revenue. However if you require any help with this get in touch.
- Incorrect Handling of Filters
A common mistake for eCommerce websites with faceted navigation is for all available filter’s to be indexable. This is something Lively Root is currently doing and as a result they have lots of indexable filtered category URLs with under 5 products without any on-page HTML content and therefore often deemed as thin content pages with little value.
For example: https://www.livelyroot.com/collections/all-plants/xlarge-size+im-easy+low-light+high-water
Upon further inspection we can see that these thin pages highlighted above have not been indexed by Google despite them being eligible. Which in turn means Lively Root’s site isn’t optimised for crawl budget which could have the potential for key commercial pages to not be crawled, rendered and indexed.
In my opinion with faceted navigation it’s important to only have a selection of filtered categories eligible for indexation instead of using sweeping rules such as no indexing every filtered category to avoid crawl bloat, thin content and content duplication or opting for the other extreme of indexing every filtered category URL.
I personally believe the best solution for this is to determine if there is demand for each of the filters available within your faceted navigation. Following on from this you should evaluate if your website can be competitive for the high demand filters. If that is achievable I would normally say it makes commercial sense to consider indexing the filtered category URL.
The next step of this strategy is to check if there are enough products within the filtered categories that make commercial sense to index. As a rule of thumb I would want a minimum of 5 products displayed on the filtered category page.
This is to ensure the pages are likely to be perceived as of high quality by search engines to encourage the page being indexed instead of Google opting to soft 404 the URL or automatically noindex the page instead because it provides little value.
- No Product Descriptions
It’s increasingly common for eCommerce websites to either have no product description displayed on their product pages or to opt for a manufactured product description.
Both of these options are not ideal because if you choose to not display any product information it can make it increasingly difficult for search engines to understand the page and with eCommerce websites falling within Google ‘Your Money, Your Life’ it is important to display expertise, authority and trust to a higher level to encourage search engines to return your products on the search results page.
Product pages without indexable HTML content often suffer from thin content which can signal to search engines that this page is not of quality, doesn’t benefit the user and because of this Google usually decides against indexing these pages.
In addition to this, product pages within a visible description do not provide the best experience to potential customers as it’s normal for people to find certain information out before making a purchase. Such as colours, size, nutritional information, dimensions or features. As this information is not provided it can significantly hamper the amount of revenue generated because users are less likely to convert.
You may have the opinion that something is better than nothing but when it comes to using manufacturer content for product descriptions you could be doing more harm than good. This is because if you directly copy and paste content word for word from the manufacturers websites to your product pages Google sees this as duplicate content.
Typically, SEO’s usually like to avoid any form of duplicate content occurring because it often isn’t inline with your brand, it usually isn’t created with SEO in mind and therefore it’s normally lacking in optimisation. The final reason for not using duplicate content is because it makes it harder for search engines to decide on returning your product page within the search results due to the content being identical to other websites.
This is why we suggest creating your own unique product descriptions as it helps users and search engines understand your products. This in turn is likely to encourage potential customers to purchase the item, improving the page conversion rate.
In addition to product descriptions having the ability to improve your eCommerce website’s conversion rate, well optimised product descriptions can increase the likelihood of your site’s keyword footprint increasing for relevant transactional keywords. This in turn gives your website the ability to be displayed on the search results page for more relevant queries and this can positively impact the amount of revenue generated per product.
- Un-optimised Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
The next common mistake I discovered across eCommerce websites is not creating unique title tags and meta descriptions for the high priority commercial pages.
In my experience the sole purpose of title tags and meta descriptions are used to persuade and encourage potential users/customers to click through to your product page hence, a weak or auto generated title tag and meta description displayed on the search results page can cause a low click-through rate.
Several years ago Google used to consider meta data as a ranking factor and therefore everyone would incorporate this within their organic strategy to help move the needle however this is no longer the case.
In order to help maximise your on-page SEO effort we suggest crafting your meta data for all commercial pages on your eCommerce website. When creating your title tags and meta descriptions it’s vital to include your primary keyword and any unique selling points that may be of interest to your target audience.
Following on from this you need to be mindful your meta data doesn’t truncate within the search results which is why your title tag should be approximately 55 characters and the product pages meta description should be about 155 characters.
For large enterprise websites this can be extremely time consuming to achieve which is why I’d recommend using Google Sheets formulas such as concatenate to help automatically generate your eCommerce websites meta data.
- Absence Of Product Reviews
The way in which consumers shop has significantly evolved from heavily relying on visiting a physical store to purchase goods to primarily buying items online in the 21st century. This has meant the customer journey has transformed from relying on local word of mouth to using customer reviews to help convince new users to make a purchase.
This is why having social proofs on your eCommerce website is necessary as people are wanting to hear from previous customers if their experience was positive and if the product was worth the money.
Showcasing your customer reviews can help alleviate any potential concerns a new customer might have and in turn encourage them to place their order instead of abandoning their shopping basket.
This in turn helps to increase your eCommerce website’s conversion rate which has a direct impact on the average order value and overall revenue generated through online sales.
Alongside this since April 2021, Google has been taking into account product reviews when ranking product pages on the search results. This is because product reviews help to show votes of confidence to search engines, increase the level of trust and likelihood of the product pages being returned on the search results page.
Further to this Google now showcases a product star rating within the search results which is derived from the customer review. This feature can help increase the click through rate to your website as people are more likely to be swayed by the aggregate rating due to having a higher level of confidence.
Based on the above information where possible I would always recommend pulling third party customer reviews on to the relevant product pages. However I would suggest that you create rulings on this to reduce the likelihood of less than 3 star reviews being displayed.
I realise this is easier said than done as customers are quick to leave a negative review instead of a positive review. With that in mind I would suggest creating a strategy that would encourage customers to leave a review. This could consist of money off their next purchase, a discount code or free shipping.
- Handling Out Of Stock Products
With eCommerce websites it’s only natural for products to come in and out of stock however the way you handle these is critical as constantly presenting 404 pages to users and search engines is not optimal.
Taking this approach can result in link equity being lost, providing a poor user and search engines crawling experience along with risking the amount of revenue generated from the site.
Over the recent years we have noticed Google has become more intelligent and therefore when the googlebot crawls your eCommerce website and detects products being permanently out of stock and unable to purchase search engines have the potential to soft 404 the URL. This results in the page no longer being within Google’s index which in turn causes keyword rankings and organic traffic to be lost.
In order to reduce the negative side effects of products being out of stock there are a couple of ways you can handle these. The first being using dynamic content to inject a message onto the page suggesting similar alternative products that could be of interest to customers.
By taking this approach it will help to provide a smooth customer experience, maintain keyword rankings and link equity. This strategy can be used for products temporarily and permanently out of stock.
However for instances when a product is permanently out of stock with no alternatives available you can either 301 redirect the out of stock product page back to the category page. Where possible I would avoid pointing redirects to other product pages as it’s likely other products will be permanently removed which will then lead to extensive redirect chains being formed.
Or you can update the out of stocks product pages status code from a 200 to a 410. This is used to tell search engines they can no longer access the product page at the original server.
Key Takeaways
Now that you’ve heard my top 5 SEO mistakes which eCommerce websites experience I would advise you run a couple of checks to make sure the site isn’t being held back by these. If you would like any help doing this feel free to get in touch.
Leave a Reply