Technical SEO for E-commerce: Why isn’t your site performing as well as it should? 

Understanding technical SEO 

You probably already know that an SEO strategy involves optimising your website for a range of different elements to provide your visitors with the best experience and the information they need to turn into paying customers. 

Technical SEO refers to the work you do to help search engines crawl and index your e-commerce website more effectively. Unlike content or on-page SEO, which focuses on optimising the content and elements within your website pages, technical SEO deals with the infrastructure of your site. It ensures that your e-commerce platform is set up to give both users and search engines the best experience possible. 

Technical SEO is different from other parts of SEO such as content, on-page and off-page, because it focuses on the foundational aspects and the backend structure of your website.  It involves diving into the architecture of your website, ensuring that search engines can crawl and index your site efficiently. It deals with site speed, mobile-friendliness, SSL security and creating an XML sitemap - elements that are crucial for foundational visibility but often invisible to site users. 

Site architecture for e-commerce 

Site architecture plays a critical role in both user experience and SEO for e-commerce websites. A logical and well-structured site makes it easier for users to navigate and find your products, and it also allows search engines to better understand and index your website’s content. Good site architecture helps to distribute page authority across your site more evenly, which can positively impact the SEO performance of your whole site. 

You need to keep your site architecture as flat as possible which means that no important pages should be more than three clicks away from your homepage. This not only makes products easier to find for your users, but it also improves your site’s crawlability, ensuring that search engines can more easily access and index your pages.

The key to effective site architecture involves using main categories and subcategories logically. Your main categories should be broad, covering the primary types of products you offer, while subcategories should break these down into more specific items. 

The hierarchy of your site should reflect how customers typically search for products. For example, an electronics store might have ‘laptops’, ‘cameras’, and ‘smartphones’ as main categories, with further breakdowns such as ‘gaming laptops’, ‘DSLR cameras’, and android smartphones’ in subcategories. 

When organising categories and product pages, consider the following tips: 

• Consistent navigation - ensure navigation is consistent across your whole site. This helps users to learn the layout of your site and navigate with confidence. 
• Descriptive labels - use clear and descriptive labels for categories and links. This helps users and provides search engines with relevant keywords to understand the content of the pages. 
• Optimise URLs - create clean, keyword-rich URLs for each page. They should be easy to read and include relevant keywords to improve SEO. 
• Breadcrumb navigation - implement breadcrumb navigation to help users keep track of their location within your website. This also adds to the contextual relevance for search engines, improving your site’s SEO. 

By focusing on these aspects, you can enhance both the user experience and SEO of your website, leading to better user engagement and increased visibility in the search engine results. 

Mobile optimisation 

Statistics show that 69% of online purchases in 2023 were made on a smartphone. As a result, it’s crucial that your e-commerce website is fully optimised for the mobile experience. Not only is this for the people who are likely to purchase from you but it’s also a key ranking factor for search engines when considering where to place your website in the search engine results pages. 

Your website's speed will play a huge role in its mobile optimisation because mobile users aren’t going to wait around for a slow website and it can have a huge impact on the user experience. 

Here are a few of the factors you need to consider to ensure a mobile friendly e-commerce site:

• Responsive design 
• Simple navigation 
• Optimised images 
• Touchscreen readiness
• Mobile-first content
• Reduce pop-ups

Speed optimisation 

Site speed is critical because it affects both SEO rankings and user experience. A fast-loading website helps maintain user engagement, reduces bounce rates, and boosts overall satisfaction, which can result in higher conversion rates. Search engines like Google prioritise faster websites in their rankings, recognising that users prefer sites that deliver quick and efficient experiences. 

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a great tool that provides a comprehensive analysis of your website’s performance on both mobile and desktop devices, along with specific recommendations for improvement. 

Other tools, such as GTmetrix and WebPageTest, offer detailed insights into factors that affect load times and how to address them. These tools analyse everything from server response times to script optimisation, providing a clear roadmap for enhancing site speed. 

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Security

In the e-commerce world, ensuring the security of customer transactions is essential. Not just for protecting sensitive data but also for maintaining consumer trust and confidence. A fundamental element in ensuring transaction security is the implementation of SSL technology. 

SSL certificates create an encrypted connection between a web server and a browse, ensuring that all data passed between them stays private. This is crucial for protecting a user’s personal and payment information from interception by malicious activity. 

SSL is now a standard expectation for any reputable online business and plays a significant role in SEO and trustworthiness. Google has explicitly acknowledged this by making SSL a ranking factor. 

Implementing SSL will ensure a safer shopping experience for your customers, enhancing their trust and confidence. This, in turn, positively impacts your site’s SEO performance, contributing to better search rankings and increased traffic. 

Schema markup 

Schema markup is a powerful tool for your e-commerce website, enhancing the way search engines read and represent your site in the search engine results pages. 

By implementing schema markup on product pages, you can provide search engines with detailed metadata that will improve the visibility and attractiveness of your listings. This helps to create rich snippets which are enhanced descriptions that appear below the URL in the search results and can include elements such as price, availability and customer reviews. 

Rich snippets tend to have higher click-through rates because they provide key information and draw the searcher’s attention with a more compelling and informative display. These enhanced search results can also help build trust and credibility by providing potential customers with additional information before they even visit your website. 

Types of schema markup include: 

• Product schema: this markup describes products and their features such as name, image, description, SKU and more. 
• Offer schema: this provides details about product offers, including the price, currency and availability status of the item. 
• Rating schema: often seen in review-rich snippets, this schema displays star ratings and the number of reviews, crucial for products as they provide social proof and influence buyer decisions. 
• Breadcrumb schema: helps to categorise the product within the site hierarchy, enabling users to navigate the site structure directly from the SERPs. 

Schema markup can significantly enhance the searchability and visibility of your website. This leads to a direct improvement in how information is presented in search results, potentially increasing traffic and sales by making product listings more attractive and informative to prospective customers. 

Canonical tags and duplicate content 

Duplicate content poses a challenge in e-commerce, particularly when you have similar or identical products that are displayed on different URLs. 

This can occur due to variations in product colour, size or other attributes. Search engines can penalise sites with duplicate content by lowering search rankings or not displaying duplicate pages in search results, as they prefer to show unique content. This can dilute page authority and split search rankings across multiple similar pages, reducing the effectiveness of SEO efforts. 

Canonical tags offer a solution for managing similar or identical content effectively. A canonical tag (rel=”canonical”) is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. The tag allows you to point search engines to the original page, or the one you’d prefer to be indexed, when multiple versions of a page exist. This can help to prevent problems caused by duplicate content appearing on multiple URLs. 

For example, if product listings are accessible through multiple paths due to the site’s filtering or search functions, a canonical tag can help to consolidate ranking signals to a single, preferred URL, ensuring the primary page gains and retains maximum search visibility. 

Addressing duplicate content issues can enhance your site’s SEO performance, improve user experience, and ensure your products are as visible as possible in the search engine results. 

Key takeaways 

From the foundational elements of site architecture and mobile optimisation to site speed, security with SSL and the strategic application of schema markup, every aspect of technical SEO helps to boost the performance of your e-commerce website. 

Implementing technical SEO isn’t just about adhering to best practices; it’s about creating a seamless and secure experience that meets modern consumer’s expectations and the requirements of search engines.

Technical SEO is an indispensable part of a successful e-commerce digital marketing strategy. We have provided essential steps to propel your e-commerce site to higher visibility, improved user engagement, and ultimately, increase sales. 

Remember, in the fast-evolving world of online retail, staying updated with the latest SEO practices is a necessity. 

If you’d like to know more about areas in which your website could be delivering better results, book a 30-minute free consultation call with one of our experts. 

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