Building a visually appealing eCommerce website isn’t enough to attract maximum target customers. You should focus on technical SEO and optimize your website’s backend to deliver a positive UX on the front end.
But how to do technical SEO for your eCommerce website? Follow the tips below:
1. Create a Breadcrumb Navigation
Use breadcrumb navigation as that shows the route to getting to a specific web page and products on your website. It is the way your pages are structured on your website. The structure helps both search engines and users to easily navigate your website.
2. Boost Website Load Time
The loading speed affects how long people stay on your website. Many users will leave your website if it takes more than three seconds to load. You may lose customers, sales and profits because of slow page speed. Improve your website load time if you don’t want to lose sales. Use a tool, like Google PageSpeed Insights, to learn your website’s present load time and even suggestions to improve the load time.
You can boost your website load speed by doing the things below:
- Decrease redirects
- Minimize JavaScript, CSS and HTML
- Reduce image file sizes
- Enable browser caching
- Host videos on an external platform
Once you improve your website’s backend, your website loads faster and delivers a better UX.
3. Build a Clean URL Framework
Create a clean URL structure, i.e., an URL with a logical navigation path, which doesn’t have random numbers and letters. Build a clear navigation path, which shows the positions of users on your website. Then, search engines and users would know where they are on your eCommerce website.
You and the search engine may not know your position on that website. A clean and structured URL can tell where you are. When you create website pages, ensure you optimize the URL so users and aea xh engines can read that. URL optimization gives you the chance to include your keyword. It makes your page seem more relevant and helps in ranking in relevant SERPs.
4. Add Structured Data
Include adding structured data to your to-do list if you want to do technical SEO for your eCommerce website. Structured data helps you to strengthen your product listings so you can rank higher in search results. The data gives search engines information or clues about a webpage’s content.
You can add information, such as product name, rating, price, and availability. Such information can help in showing that your web pages are product pages that help you rank in more relevant product searches. It can intrigue more people to click on your web pages and check out products if they see you have a 4-star product in their collection within their budget.
5. Level Up the Security of Your Website
Security is a crucial part of your eCommerce website’s technical SEO. When people buy products on your website, they are providing sensitive personal information and want that to stay safe when submitting. You can add security to your eCommerce website to make shoppers feel safe when browsing your website.
Get a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate for your website. It will ensure that the customers’ sensitive data stay protected and encrypted. Users will know your website is secure after seeing the closed padlock symbol and “HTTPS” in your address.
6. Use an XML sitemap and Robots.txt file
Your XML sitemap and Robots.txt file are two key components of your eCommerce website’s technical SEO. An XML sitemap is a map for how search engines should navigate your website. You should implement a sitemap to help in guiding search engines to crawl and index your most vital pages to rank high in relevant search results.
Robots.txt file shows which pages you don’t want search engine bots to crawl and index. It doesn’t block such bots from crawling those pages but prevents bots from overloading your website with crawl requests and slowing it down. The two components are crucial for your eCommerce website’s technical SEO as they affect the way Google crawls your website. Google should discover, crawl and index your web pages if you want to rank high in search results. Such two directives help guide Google to crawl your website smoothly.
7. Add Canonical Tags
Canonical tags boost your eCommerce website’s SEO as they tell Google that a specific URL represents the main copy of a page. As your website grows and scales, you tend to move, delete, and replace pages. You may leave with web pages that are considered to be duplicated.
Duplicate content can be the same content on the same domain or across multiple domains. If you have the same page more than once on your eCommerce website, it may create confusion with search engines and won’t know which page to rank. The canonical tag fixes that issue. You can tell search engines which page is the “main” page, so it ranks that page in SERPs.
Here are some places where you should use canonical tags for your eCommerce website:
- Product options: You should create a canonical tag to guide search engines to the primary product listings if your products have individual page URLs for sizes or colors.
- Products on multiple pages: You should choose the main page for that product listing and use the canonical tag if you have a product listed in multiple categories
- Index pages: You will want to use a canonical tag to build the main page if you have product category pages, which stretch across multiple web pages.
The Bottomline
Working on technical SEO and getting the desired results isn’t a cakewalk. You require knowledge of coding and optimizing the backend of your website. From boosting the website load time to building breadcrumb navigation, you can follow the tips above to optimize your eCommerce website and get the desired results. Technical SEO is inevitable when it comes to impressing maximum target customers by delivering an excellent UX and growing your business.