Common mistakes that are harming your e-commerce SEO strategy

SEO is the most effective technique for e-commerce customer acquisition and retention. Research shows that almost half of online buyers begin the shopping process with a search engine. SEO optimization for e-commerce is essential for a steady and targeted traffic.

In the attempt to achieve short-term gains, some online shops try to trick the system with black hat SEO tactics. E-commerce businesses that use these techniques end up being penalized by Google, offer the wrong image to their visitors and ignore the long-term benefits of strong SEO optimization campaigns. Black hat tactics are just one of the ways you can destroy your e-commerce business, here are 18 more common mistakes that harm your e-commerce SEO optimization campaign and the ways to fix them.

 

1. The lack of product reviews

If your online shop doesn’t have client reviews for the products, you may lose significant volumes of traffic. Research shows that about ¾ of online shoppers read the reviews of a certain product before they buy it. Reviews represent a simple method to get new content for your product pages constantly. You can improve your positions in search engines for the keywords „product X reviews” as well as long tail keywords in the reviews.

The solution

Try adding reviews to the product pages. You can add reviews from www.facebook.com or www.trustpilot.com.

 

2. Your e-commerce business has too many pages

Some online stores have too many products for sale. Since each of these products requires a unique page, the website accumulates lots of pages. If your online store has too many pages, it will be really difficult to create unique content for each of them. If you don’t have a clear e-commerce SEO strategy, there are great chances the pages offer duplicate content.

The solution

First of all, identify the pages that can be no-indexed or deleted without affecting your business. Make a list with the products that haven’t produced any revenue and think about deleting or no-indexing them. After you’ve removed the unnecessary pages, correct and improve the remaining ones.

 

3. Duplicate content

Most e-commerce business owners are aware of the fact that duplicate content will harm their positions in search engines. However, even now most of them don’t know precisely what duplicate content is and how to solve this problem. The guidelines provided by Google on duplicate content offer a clear overview of the best practices to solve this issue. Additionally, the lack of canonicalization in the case of identical content is a common mistake which generates duplicate content.

The solution

First of all, test your website by using duplicate content tools, like www.semrush.com or www.siteliner.com, then deal with the results. You should be careful about these aspects:

1. Empty pages
2. Content syndication
3. Using strong domains, with country-specific content
4. Using 301 redirects

 

4. Creating thin content

Thin content refers to posts or pages that don’t offer valuable information for the readers. Even though now Google can spot thin content a lot faster than before, this still represents a critical problem in SEO. According to Google, thin content is characterized by:

1. Content from other sources (very low-quality guest posts or fragmented content)
2. Weak affiliate pages
3. Doorway pages
4. Automatically generated content

Adding thin content to your website could harm your e-commerce SEO strategy, because you can be penalized or you can receive a Google Manual Action notice that will affect your positions in the search engine.

 

The solution

Offer relevant data, in a way that Google can easily detect it as a reliable source. This implies creating internal links to and from reliable sources, and linking out to credible websites. In order to simplify things, start with a list of questions and make sure that the information in your content answers them.

 

5. The pages of your website have a slow loading speed Google has publicly declared it uses loading speed as a part of its algorithm. Loading speed is not just necessary for e-commerce SEO optimization, since it directly affects your conversions. An e-commerce website can load slowly due to stuffy e-commerce platforms, very large images or slow hosting and servers.

The solution

1. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Using a CDN is a fast and cheap solution to increase your site’s loading speed. CDN also protects you against attacks and hackers
2. Optimize the sizes of the images with resizing
3. Upgrade your hosting if your not sure of your problems, you can check this with the help of Page Site Insights or www.gtmetrix.com.

 

6. Ignoring metrics in Google Analytics

Ignoring metrics in Google Analytics is a serious SEO optimization mistake, since these metrics represent an important resource for the SEO optimization of your e-commerce website. Google Analytics helps you measure the success of your website with the help of real-time results on individual campaigns and it compares data to the previous results.

The solution

Set up your Google Analytics account and familiarize yourself with Googles’s SEO reports, in order to establish which SEO optimization tactics are suitable for your website. In addition, Google Analytics is free, why aren’t you using it?

7. The lack of Mobile- friendliness

Metrics show that more and more people are searching and buying products from mobile devices. An unresponsive website represents a horrible user-experience, and Google won’t recommend your website to people who use mobile devices for their search.

The solution

1. Firstly, check if your e-commerce website is mobile-friendly. Google has a special tool that helps you verify this. If you notice that it's not mobile-friendly, there are a few ways to do this, depending on your situation.
2. If your website is on a WordPress platform, search for a responsive theme
3. Work with a developer to implement a responsive code into the website

 

8. Keyword stuffing and spams

If the product descriptions, meta tags and URLs have an unnatural quantity of keywords, this can drop your positions in the search engines.

In addition, this is not helping user experience. Even if you have enough keywords on your page to assure you high positions in the search engines, this won’t have a positive influence on customers in the buying process.

The solution

Always create unique and valuable content and avoid stuffing your paragraphs. It is recommended you use the primary keyword once in the title and 2-3 times in the content. For the rest of the text, you can use secondary keywords.

 

9. Creating unnatural links

Creating valuable content is a way to interact with your target audience and to establish authority and also a way of obtaining natural links. The more you offer valuable content, the more your website will generate leads and, eventually, links from relevant websites. Unfortunately, most e-commerce business owners are trying to improve their online reputation with the help of unnatural links.

There are two things that can impact negatively the reputation of your website: aggressive posts that have the purpose to get links, not to build authority, and anchor texts using exact match keywords.

The solution

If you have a website with a lot of links using exact match anchors, you need to dilute your link profile. You can do this by building naked URL anchor texts from citation sources and social networks profiles. Blog comments are an efficient source for diluting links.

 

10. Unclear product descriptions

Have you ever visited a website and after reading a product description wonder “Still, what does that product do?” if you’re selling a unique product, you must get used to answer the questions of your potential customer to determine him to buy from you. There are still lots of websites not doing this.

The solution

Gather data from your sales team on frequently asked questions and incorporate the answers to those into your product pages. You don’t have a sales team? Then use the example offered in the similar products pages to get an idea on the information you should add.

 

11. Neglecting your target audience in keyword research

Most website owners make this mistake. When you’re researching keywords, you need to find the targeted ones, which will help you understand how users think. Are they looking for information? Are they ready to buy? Or are they comparing brands? If you don’t know their intent, how are you going to offer them great information?

The solution

Think of keywords based on specific questions your audience might type into the search. These keywords are usually long-tail keywords that have less competition and that will help you increase your positions in the search engines. Ubersuggest is a very good tool that can help you do this.

 

12. Using too many images on the same page

Using images is necessary for an attractive design, but these need to be optimized appropriately to increase website loading time and to lower the bounce rate. Websites with excessive graphics and large images have a slower loading speed.

The solution

Using images efficiently for an e-commerce website can be the drive that the user needs in order to make a purchase. To make sure this happens, check if your images are uploaded in the right format or size.

 

13. Using too many plugins or too much Javascrispt

Using too many Wordpress plugins or too much Javascript can reduce your page load times. If incorrectly used, Javascript can lower your positions in the search engines.

The solution

Don’t use plugins or unnecessary scripts. If you insist on using Javascript, read JavaScript for Non-Developers to better understand your options.

 

14. No physical address on the websites

Google prefers websites that struggle to prove they also exist in the real world. You can lose a great percent of traffic from local searches that include the product and the city at the query. You can also lose the trust that comes from mentioning your address on the website.

The solution

If you own a physical store, include the address on your website. If you don’t have a physical address, at least fill in the city and state you operate in. by doing this, consumers will have more trust in your business.

 

15. The lack of URLs optimization

This is also a common mistake for e-commerce businesses. If your URLs are not optimized, it is difficult for search engines, as well as for the users to know what the page is about.

The solution

Make sure your URL structure is simple, descriptive and that it includes the main keyword.

 

16. An ineffective link structure

An ineffective link structure has a negative impact on your e-commerce SEO. This increases bounce rates and makes it difficult for the crawlers to find all the pages of your website. Both of these factors can lower your positions in the search engines.

The solution

Make sure you have a solid link structure for your online business and create internal links to other pages and products, if possible. If you built the website yourself, add an internal link or extra navigation where you think it’s necessary.

 

17. Blocking the indexation process while going live

This is a simple mistake that frequently occurs. Always check your website to make sure it’s not set to no-index or no-follow.

The solution

After you’ve launched your website, open the robots.txt file and make sure that no-index and no-follow tags have been removed during development.

 

18. You frequently forget to update your website

No one appreciates a dull website, or one that hasn’t been updated in 10 years. When a user goes to a website that isn’t updated, they get the wrong idea about your company and they might think it’s dated.

The solution

Update your website on a regular basis to keep up with the changes in your field. Consider updating the theme and content. Use A/B testing like Experiments in Google Analytics to test changes and increase conversions.

 

E-commerce is a rapidly growing field and if you want to earn more and show up higher in the search engines, these 18 e-commerce SEO tips are a great start.