Dhanuka Agritech Limited - Sales and Marketing Intern
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
1. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
2. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
SEO PowerSuite
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SEO is an area where many online retailers still struggle, especially technical issues. With
this in mind, here are some actionable SEO tips that can be be used by retailers today.
3. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Get More From Your Review Content
Review content represents a huge opportunity for e-commerce websites, purely because of
the level of unique content available for product pages. If you optimize your review
acquisition process and ask the right questions, this could be a really big part of your organic
growth strategy.
If you are using an enterprise-level platform like BazaarVoice, you can send review prompts
and follow-up emails to optimize the success rates of obtaining customer reviews. This will
generate more volume as well. Also, provide some kind of incentive, such as a monthly prize
draw, to help make the review proposition more enticing.
4. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Get More From Your Review Content
If you are not using a third-party review service, you can still to achieve this. Just map out
the process with your developers and create the functionality yourself.
Asking the right questions is really important, as it will help to make the content on the
product pages more relevant. You should also build relevance into the algorithm to ensure
that you are keeping the best and more contextual content on the page.
In addition to this, I integrate this activity with your email service provider (ESP) to give you
more data, such as conversion rates.
5. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Get More From Your Review Content
If you are not using a third-party review service, you can still to achieve this. Just map out
the process with your developers and create the functionality yourself. Asking the right
questions is really important, as it will help to make the content on the product pages more
relevant. You should also build relevance into the algorithm to ensure that you are keeping
the best and more contextual content on the page.
In addition to this, I integrate this activity with your email service provider (ESP) to give you
more data, such as conversion rates. Then, read learn more about getting the most out
of BazaarVoice for SEO, and more on review vendor SEO. Both resources provide great detail
about your platform implementation.
6. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Be Vigilant With Low-Quality Pages
Panda represents a huge risk to e-commerce websites with low-quality pages (too many
dynamic pages, pages without content, duplicate variants of content, or just duplicate
content). Panda is notoriously difficult to overcome, so listen up.
Focus on the following items (in order) to future-proof your website:
7. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Dynamic Pages
Dynamic pages can cause issues when left accessible to search engines, which is you
should prevent them from being indexed. I have seen plenty of cases where a website had
been either affected by Panda or generally saw a drop in rankings as a result of allowing
these pages to be indexed.
8. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Here are some of the most common types of dynamic pages:
• Layered navigation
• Pagination
• Tracking parameters
• Sort filter
In order to prevent this from being an issue, perform regular website crawls and keep an eye of what is being
indexed.
Here are a few resources that provide more guidance on this issue:
Magento’s article on dynamic pages in great detail (along with the fixes)
Another detailed guide from GoInflow
Econsultancy’s guide to e-commerce SEO
9. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Duplicate Product Content
Duplicate product content is probably the most common e-commerce SEO problem. And, it results in low
search position due to Google’s Panda update. The most common issues relates to retailers opting for
supplier content (usually because they do not have the resource internally). This will, unless it is a strong
domain, prevent a website from ranking for product queries. If you are in this position, gradually edit the
copy. Prioritize with product pages that already generate a lot of traffic and revenue.
Another common issue is the use of product feeds which results in the same duplicate product copy. This is
happens when retailers provide a shopping feed to affiliates, resellers, and marketplaces. To combat the risk
of duplicate copy, create a second feed with separate content to eliminate the risks associated with sharing a
product feed.
10. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Duplicate Product Content
Duplicate product content is probably the most common e-commerce SEO problem. And, it results in low
search position due to Google’s Panda update. The most common issues relates to retailers opting for
supplier content (usually because they do not have the resource internally). This will, unless it is a strong
domain, prevent a website from ranking for product queries. If you are in this position, gradually edit the
copy. Prioritize with product pages that already generate a lot of traffic and revenue.
Another common issue is the use of product feeds which results in the same duplicate product copy. This is
happens when retailers provide a shopping feed to affiliates, resellers, and marketplaces. To combat the risk
of duplicate copy, create a second feed with separate content to eliminate the risks associated with sharing a
product feed.
11. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Duplicate Product Content
Here is some further reading on this:
Search Engine Watch’s guide to fixing duplicate or thin content
The Kiss Metrics SEO guide
12. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Out of Stock Pages
There are many different opinions on what to do on a product page when it is out of stock. I would suggest
to leave it, especially if it is a only a temporary issue. When you leave an out-of-stock product page, you run
the risk of unhappy customers, so you need to provide some helpful information. Do one of the following
options:
• Provide the user with some indication of when the product will be back in stock. This can either be a static
date or a countdown to show the user when they can purchase the product.
• Capture the user’s email address and automatically send an email once the product is stocked again.
• Allow the user to continue to purchase the product, and deliver it direct once it is is back in stock.
• Finally, provide the user with products similar to the product they are looking at.
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5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
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Out of Stock Pages
Any of these techniques will enable you to provide a positive outcome for the user and the search engine…
until the time the product is discontinued.
When that time comes, have a strategy in place to ensure that the product pages are not left in the
wilderness. For websites with thousands of pages, create an automated process to reduce the amount of
hours spent on implementing redirects.
When creating rules for discontinued products, there are a number of internal factors that may affect the
decision. Here are some suggested methods:
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5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Out of Stock Pages
• 301 redirect the product to either an updated model, or the most relevant alternative product.
• If there is no product available, then redirect the product to the category or sub-category.
• Remove the product completely and provide the search engine with a 410 status code to have it
removed the index.
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5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Rich Snippets
I am often surprised by the lack of online retailers who have not yet implemented rich snippets.
With structured data becoming more of a factor, those who have implemented rich snippets are
starting to see the benefits.
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5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Rich Snippets
Implementing rich snippets provides the user with further information about a product and also
allows the result to stand apart from other search competition.
Rich snippets are fairly simple to implement. And, there are a number of helpful resources to take
you through the process, including:
• How to use Google Rich Snippets – HubSpot
• Google’s Structure Data Markup Helper
By implementing rich snippets you will not only stand out from the crowd, but you will also start to
see an increase in click through rates.
17. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Get Granular With Sitemaps
Sitemaps can be the forgotten SEO technique. In fact, a large number of companies only have a
single sitemap containing all of their content. Although it does the job, it does nothing to help
inform where your indexing issues are.
Using a sitemap index allows you to be more granular with the categorization of the sitemaps,
providing you with more information, but sometimes it’s not enough. With larger websites with
multiple categories, it is essential to use multiple sitemap indices.
Breaking your website into multiple sitemap indices makes it easier to understand where the
indexing issues lie.
18. Trimax Solutions
5 E-Commerce SEO Tips You Can Use Today
SEO Services Sydney Northern Beaches Social Media Packages Sydney
Get Granular With Sitemaps
Here are some useful links for creating best practice sitemaps:
Sitemap Generator
Schema for Sitemaps
And that is it…five SEO tips for e-commerce to put to practice today! How many of these do you
currently in place? Any you disagree with? I’d love to hear your comments below.