Top 6 SEO Mistakes ECommerce Websites make
Ecommerce is one of the most cutthroat industries out there when it comes to SEO because you’re competing against many other businesses that offer similar products, as well as affiliates. But receiving significant levels of search engine traffic is vital to the success of virtually every ecommerce website, so SEO is something that ecommerce business owners cannot ignore. Avoid these 6 SEO mistakes in order to maximize your ecommerce website’s rankings and prevent penalties.
1. Using Manufacturer Descriptions
Most ecommerce use manufacturers’ descriptions of products instead of writing their own descriptions. Ecommerce websites often sell dozens, hundreds or even thousands of different products, so it’s understandable why they do this. The problem is that there are many other ecommerce websites using the exact same manufacturers’ descriptions, which means you could end up getting hit with the duplicate content penalty. To prevent this from happening, write original product descriptions for all of your products. Or if that’s too much, write unique product descriptions for your best-selling products.
2. Slow Page Load Times
Get rid of unnecessary code on each page of your ecommerce site so that the pages load as quickly as possible. Search engines are concerned with delivering a great user experience, so they are less likely to give ecommerce sites that load too slowly good rankings.
3. Not making the most Important and Popluar pages Easy to Find
If you already know which pages or products are the most popular on your site, make sure those pages are within two clicks of your home page, site map, and other important pages. If your most popular pages are too hard to find, customers won’t stick around.
4. Not Focusing on the Best Keywords
Determine which pages of your site have the best conversion rates and which keywords are delivering the most qualified traffic and then focus on those areas in your SEO campaign. Don’t waste time and money on keywords that bring you a lot of traffic if they don’t also bring you a lot of sales. Avoid measuring the results of your SEO campaign based on how much traffic you get. Instead, focus on attracting traffic that achieves results.
5. Not Paying Attention to Affiliates
Many ecommerce businesses can profit from a good affiliate program. Nevertheless, it’s important to communicate effectively with your affiliates and let them know what they can and can’t do. For example, don’t let affiliates target your brand name in their SEO campaigns if your own site’s search engine results for your brand’s terms are weak. Otherwise, you’ll create unwanted organic SEO competition for yourself and end up paying for sales that could have come directly to you.
6. Making site-wide changes without testing them first
Commonly, ecommerce business owners hear about the latest SEO trends and then implement site-wide changes without doing any testing first. This often leads to the misuse of SEO tactics and a decrease in search engine visibility. If you want to improve your website’s SEO, implement new tactics on a small group of pages first and then measure the results before making site-wide changes.