Technical SEO for Ecommerce: Common Issues and How to Fix Them

In the intensely competitive environment of e-commerce, it is critical to implement efficient and appropriate SEO techniques that will bring organic traffic. However, what happens is that the owners of ecommerce websites dedicate lots of time to aspects concerning on-page optimization and content planning and strategies while completely overlooking the technicalities.

This is where partnering with an experienced eCommerce SEO company can make a significant difference, ensuring that both on-page and technical SEO are optimized to drive maximum traffic and conversions.

A survey revealed that as many as 68% of buyers use search engines to start their purchase. Poor technical SEO is actually quite problematic if not handled well. In this article, we will explore common technical SEO problems you might have with your ecommerce site and what you can do about them.

Common Technical SEO Issues and How to Fix Them

1. Slow Page Load Speed

The speed at which a page loads is critical for influencing a site’s ranking particularly if it is an ecommerce site. Slower site speed negates conversion rates because users are likely to abandon sites that take long to load. And for those particular to those ecommerce sites where consumers are in a position to ‘window’ shop, any delay no matter how small as far as browsing is concerned will reduce bounce rates.

Solution:

It is possible to reduce the image size by using the right formats like WebP. Browser caching is also a useful caching service as it cuts down the amount of time it takes for a visitor to revisit a website. Further, use NS-CDN for better and faster distribution of the website content to reduce latency chosen based on the geographic location of customers.

2. Duplicate Content Across Product Pages

Duplicate content is a common problem in ecommerce, which now arises from similar product descriptions, variations or product URLs, and pagination. When there are more than one page within a particular site that share similar or same content, search engines are confused as to which page to rank.

Solution:

To address the problem of duplicate content, the ecommerce sites should incorporate the use of canonical tags, which inform the search engines as to which of all the existing versions of a page is original. Also factor in writing product descriptions to be unique as much as possible especially to highest-selling or most visited products. Whenever it is possible, combine two or more pages with content relevant to the same product and do not use categories if minor differences were made in the product. Creating good URLs and employing hreflang tags for several languages websites also prevent duplicate content problems in different versions of a website across the globe.

3. Poor Mobile Usability

Approximately more than half of the ecommerce traffic globally is from mobile devices, hence, mobile usability is important for technical SEO. Mobile-friendly sites are crucial because a poor mobile experience may lead to a decline in rankings, and many mobile users will not make any purchases. Some of the issues that are evident when inspecting the mobile usability of a site are unresponsive design, texts that cannot be read, and close positioned buttons.

Solution:

When it comes to fixing mobile usability, it’s highly recommended to use responsive design. It is the ability for any webpage to automatically adjust to perfectly fit any screen size. You can also use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to explore mobile usability issues of your site.You will get a detailed list of improvements that you can make on your Ecommerce site.

4. Broken Links

Broken links and 404 not found messages lead to user frustration. In the case of large numbers of products, the reasons are: deleted or no longer popular products or services, the change of product page addresses, or broken internal links. On the user side, such mistakes degrade the experience, and, on the SEO perspective, prevent proper crawling and indexing.

Solution:

To fix broken links problems, perform periodic site crawls using Screaming Frog or Ahrefs to determine 404 errors and broken links. For products that are no longer in stock, setting up 301 from the product to related pages will be better than leaving the users in front of a 404 page. Moreover, it was also universally agreed that having a custom 404 page that brings users back to the main shopping categories or provides recommendations is also great for the usability. Ecommerce sites should especially ensure they are monitoring and updating internal links every time products are deleted, certain products get out of stock, or categories changed.

5. Improper Use of Structured Data Markup

Schema is the process of marking up the structure of a webpage to ensure the ease of understanding by a search engine. It also allows for better snippet display, which increases click-through rates. For ecommerce sites, the structured data can depict the details of the product, such as the price, rating, and availability in SERPS. However, lack of proper or properly structured data markup is a technical SEO problem that makes ecommerce sites ineligible for optimal visibility in search results.

Solution:

To use structural data markup efficiently, it is useful to use types like Product, Offer and Aggregate Rating that are all immediate and specific to ecommerce. Include repositories that are responsible for specific products and monitor data for schema markup accuracy and relevance. For the validation of your implemented markup Google provides the Structured Data Testing Tool for this purpose. Updating schema data should be as frequent as possible especially for the e-commerce websites which are likely to change their products, prices or sales promotions more often.

To summarize, technical SEO is crucial for any ecommerce sites that expect to retain a proper position in searches and provide a classy user experience. Solving these common technical problems can greatly improve site positioning.

For any ecommerce business that needs professional help regarding the technical SEO, EZ Rankings can come up with individual recommendations that can fit any ecommerce business. In addition to standard services such as keyword research, link building, competition analysis, and others, EZ Rankings – one of the best local SEO companies has a strong team of SEO specialists focused on site speed optimization, mobile usage optimization, and more.