Ecommerce SEO Mistakes - Complete Guide-2023

We understand it very well that-

“You started Ecommerce website because you believe in your products and its market”

The truth is, selling products online is becoming easier and easier every year. However it is not true for every business especially when you are working with limited budget and resources. If you are struggling to get sales from your ecommerce website, you've come to the right place. In this blog post we will give you an idea about common mistakes people do on ecommerce website SEO and digital marketing. You’ll learn how you can fix Ecommerce issues on your website and earn from it. This is complete guide about Common Ecommerce SEO mistakes in 2023.
Keep reading.

Why you’re not getting any (or enough) traffic?

The most common issue of non-performance of your ecommerce website is poor traffic. When we speak of poor traffic, it means poor quality and less quantity. Quality traffic is directly proportional to sales. Now the question arrives that why your website is not getting enough traffic? The main and important reason behind this is Poor Ecommerce SEO. Once you know the right Ecommerce SEO strategy you can optimize your website. So, making your Ecommerce website SEO-friendly is the ultimate way to gain quality traffic and enough sales. In this blog post, we will discuss common Ecommerce SEO mistakes that you should avoid in 2023.

#1 Not Choosing the Right Technology Platform

According to recent research from a well-known magazine, 90% of small and medium-sized businesses choose CMS (Content Management System) for their e-commerce needs. Out of this only 15% knows about the technology behind the CMS they are using. Most of them either using it because website developer asked them to do so or the CMS was free. Technology is the core of any Ecommerce website and it should be as per the SEO guideline. Choosing CMS shouldn’t be a problem until and unless you or your developer is capable enough to do customization as per SEO requirement. If you don’t know coding and your developer is reluctant to do modification there must be chance that your website wouldn’t perform well in SEO. This is the first and most common Ecommerce SEO mistake.

#2 Poor Website Structure and UI

The biggest challenge for Ecommerce website is to convert traffic into sales. Somehow, if you manage to gets traffic to your website with certain paid techniques or via influence marketing, but what if your user is not buying a product. The one of the main reason behind poor selling is poor website structure and UI (User interface). If your website’s UI is not proper then it is a negative point in SEO as well. Whether it is a Ecommerce SEO or normal SEO it wouldn’t provide results on poor website structure.

#3 Hosting issues – Your server is not up to date

If your server is not up to date or slow then it may harm your chances of getting business from internet. It is not always about the server speed however the IP address of your server should not be in SPAM category. Apart from the speed and spam issue, your hosting location and target audience location should be the same. For example you are selling some product in Australia and your location of the server is in India, it may harm your ranking chances especially when you have country specific TLDs.

#4 Poor Keyword Planning

Keyword planning is the key to success in Ecommerce SEO. It is always advisable to target high volume keyword of your products and categories. However, it is equally important to understand the keyword difficulty level. If you choose high volume and high difficulty level keywords then it is obvious that you wouldn’t get top SERPs. If your website is not appearing in the first page of the Google or any Search Engine then you wouldn’t get enough traffic. Keyword planning should be done by proper SEO expert who understand keyword difficulty level and SEO algorithms.

#5 Missing Quality Content

Content is the king in SEO. If your website does not have original content and or you spin the content from some tools and using it, it will definitely harm your SEO score. The content should be plagiarism free and unique. If you are selling very common products and your category are also very common then you must try to address the specific segment of target audience. Selecting a small audience pool will not help you in business, but also some of your keywords will position themselves. You need a solid content marketing strategy to compete with big market places and other website. It is now a fact that 80% Ecommerce website has content issue and it considered as a most common Ecommerce SEO mistake.

#6 Missing Mobile and Desktop Compatibility

The search engine market is dominated by Google. In recent newsletter Google announces that its algorithms provide preference to mobile indexing. Google crawler works on the primary mobile index. If your website is not mobile and smart devices compatible then you must loose points in SEO. Your all pages should be mobile compatible and smart devices friendly. There are various tools available online where you can check mobile friendly score of your website.

#7 Inefficiently Optimized Category Pages

Category pages are very common phenomenon in Ecommerce websites. If you do have category pages and it is not properly optimize then you wouldn’t get visibility. The research model shows that people search for the category, not the products. If your category pages are not optimized or poor in appearance then it would be a big Ecommerce SEO mistake.

#8 Inefficiently Optimized Product Pages

The product pages are core of your SEO strategy and if it is not optimized properly harm your SEO. A properly optimized SEO pages are those pages that has proper content, description and keywords. Apart from that pages should have proper product information in various aspects e.g.- colour, variation, technical specification and useful reviews. Ecommerce website pages should be properly optimized to avoid Ecommerce SEO mistakes.

#9 Non Speaking URLs

The biggest challenge in Ecommerce SEO is handling the URLs. Ecommerce websites usually use CMS and hence the URL structure is bit complicated. As it is standard practice in SEO that URL should not be long, duplicate and readable. It is also a well-known fact that either CRM generate non SEO friendly URL OR use some plugins to make it SEO friendly. In both the cases if you don’t have control on URL structure or your URL is not speaking about your product or category, it is useless from SEO perspective. So, URL should be SEO friendly to avoid penalty in SEO ranking.

#10 Improper Image Optimization

Ecommerce websites are full of product images. In certain cases you have many images for same product which define the variations. If your product and category images are not properly optimized then the SEO score will be poor. You can put proper naming culture to images and alt tags should be used as per keywords.

#11 Toxic Backlink Strategies

Most of the SEO companies and freelancer provide great importance to backlink building. Nothing wrong in that however, backlink without any strategy can harm your visibility chances in Search Engines. If you get backlink from irrelevant or SPAM websites then it will spoil backlink score. A proper backlink strategy with proper high PA and DA website will improvise your SEO.

#12 Absence of Structure Data Mark Up

If you have not committed any of above mistake then you are ready for structure data implementation. It can help your potential customers get more product and category details before they visit your website. Another important aspect of structure data is, it improve your CTR (click to ratio). If you don’t use structure data then it is a biggest Ecommerce SEO mistake. If you don’t know how to use structure data correctly contact us.

#13 Poor Strategy to handle negative SEO

Most of the time either you don’t have a strategy to handle negative SEO or it is very poor. Despite of the product or category there must be some competition exists on internet. You need a solid strategy to handle competition and negative SEO techniques.

#14 Poor Social Signal to Product Pages

Do you know that social signal is equally important like backlinks? Social Signal are last ranking parameter and most of the SEO professionals are either not aware or do not know how to use it. If you provide proper social signal support to your product pages and category pages, the chances of ranking without much backlink is more in SERPs. Social Signal is now the backbone of Ecommerce SEO and effective usage can make you on the top of Google.

#15 A Proper 360 Degree Content Marketing

You must be using blog section in your website but do you think it is enough? No it is not enough because your visitor is not here to read blog but to purchase stuff. A proper 360 degree content marketing campaign can only help you to get visibility. Use effective content marketing strategy under the guidance of SEO experts. Fixing the above most common Ecommerce SEO mistakes on your store’s website can help you aim for better ranking on Google. Your chances of failure on Ecommerce website are reduced when understanding the website and how to get conversions from it. So, take note of the above points to avoid all the common SEO mistakes discussed in this blog post.

Ecommerce SEO with ARE InfoTech

We have provided a glimpse of our expertise in above article. We have been doing Ecommerce SEO since last 15+ years for many domestic and international website. We understand that when you’re creating an Ecommerce website, you are bound to face intense competition from the market. Hiring a cheap SEO resource is just waste of time and money. To improve organic traffic for a Ecommerce website is sometimes very tricky and requires Advanced Digital Marketing skills. If you are looking to expand your Ecommerce business, reach more customers and improve the sales, ARE InfoTech can help. We will work with you to understand your business needs, challenges and goals. Get in touch to see how we can help your Ecommerce website hit the ground running again.