With these tips, your shop will rise to the e-commerce summit.

The number of new online stores has significantly increased in recent years, leading to a notable rise in competition. Consequently, the importance of e-commerce SEO is growing, as website operators want their offered products to be found and purchased via search engines. Nowadays, not only pure online businesses but also many offline companies sell their goods on the Internet.

When it comes to optimizing the search engine performance of an online store, a certain level of expertise is required to succeed in this highly competitive market. E-commerce companies face different challenges than blogs and other websites. We will show you what these challenges are and how you can improve your organic visibility in this article.

The Importance of Internal Linking

A well-thought-out internal linking strategy allows you to direct your visitors to the key areas of your site. Web crawlers also work from link to link. For this reason, you should pay special attention to internal linking.

Web Crawlers Need Good Internal Linking

Meaningful internal linking plays a crucial role in optimizing your online store's search engine performance. It increases the likelihood that web crawlers will discover your entire offering, including all relevant products and categories. Important subpages can be ignored with poor internal linking, which in the worst case can result in your products not ranking on Google. Ensure that important content does not lie deep down in your hierarchy and link it prominently. This way, you ensure that relevant subpages can be quickly reached by web crawlers.

Guide Your Site Visitors Smartly Through Your Store

With good internal linking, you can also ensure that your customers can quickly and easily navigate your store and find your most important offers. Furthermore, you can encourage your customers to remain on your site longer than they initially intended. Poor linkage increases the risk of your visitors quickly leaving your site. This could negatively impact your ranking because search engines evaluate a short visit duration as a sign of non-relevant content.

Uncovering Potentials and Sources of Error in Products

The main goal of an online store is to sell products. To encourage your store visitors to buy from you, you must create a positive search experience. What you need to keep in mind is elaborated in the following points.

Describe Products Individually and Informatively

To ensure that your products are found as well as possible on Google, you should write informative, detailed, and unique product descriptions for each individual product. Give the descriptions your personal touch that specifically fits your store. Under no circumstances should you adopt the manufacturer’s descriptions verbatim as this would create duplicate content. Search engines recognize when content is copied and will accordingly downgrade your page’s relevance for the specific search term. This also happens when you use identical descriptions for multiple articles. You also risk warnings, as not all manufacturers allow their product descriptions to be used. Therefore, write an informative, individual description for each product. Ideally, integrate testimonials from satisfied customers, which, in addition to the description, make it easier for the customer to make a decision. Your customers and search engines will appreciate it.

Place Same Products in Multiple Product Categories

In online stores, it is unavoidable that individual products are placed in multiple categories. However, for some online store owners, it is very tempting to create more categories than necessary, aiming to be found for as many search terms as possible. As empty categories rank poorly, assign products that are already found in other categories of the store even if they have little to do with the category. Here, however, caution is advised. If your visitors too often find the same products in different categories, it may confuse them, leading to a negative user experience. In the worst case, they leave your site without making a purchase. Web crawlers will also rate your site as not relevant if too many products are found in inappropriate categories.

Options When a Product is No Longer Available

Product pages in shops are sometimes not accessible. This can have multiple reasons, such as items being sold out or removed for other reasons. What do you do with this product detail page now? There are various options depending on the situation:

• Delete URL and content. This option makes sense if your product has been permanently removed from the range and no 404 error is generated. Without a special tool, it is not possible to find out whether an external link possibly points to the product. Checking for internal links to the product can also be quite laborious.

• If you are permanently removing a product from your range, it is preferable to set up a 301 redirect. This can lead to a new similar product, a suitable category, or the internal search.

• If a product is only unavailable for a limited period, we recommend that the product page remains intact. In this case, you could offer your visitor the possibility to reach a similar product via text, image, or link. You can insert these references below the product description.

How to Optimize Your Product Images

Product images are very important for an online store. Firstly, very few people will buy your product without seeing it, and secondly, your products can also be found in search engines’ image searches. At the same time, high-quality and unique images give your product detail pages an individual touch again.

Pay Attention to Image Size

To positively influence the loading times of your pages and the ranking of the images, the images should be compressed. This also positively affects the user experience, as your visitors will not take too long to see a fully displayed image.

Utilize the Potential of Image File Names

To show Google and other search engines which keywords your images are relevant for, these should be included in the file name of each image. Ideally, name the file succinctly and informatively and use a unique file name for each image. For products, the product name should be included. For multiple keywords in the file name, we recommend using hyphens rather than underscores.

Use Title Tag and Image Alt Tag

Both the Image Alt Tag and the Title Tag can positively impact your images’ rankings and even your entire website. Both tags should provide unique descriptions for each image and should not be identical. The Title Tag is primarily interesting for web crawlers because it shows them what is depicted in the image.

The Image Alt Tag is displayed if the image cannot be displayed for some reason. This can be the case, for instance, with high loading times or slow Internet connections. Then this tag informs your visitor what would be seen in the image. Well-maintained Image Alt Tags also benefit visually impaired people, as these tags can be read by screen readers.

The Risk of Using Standard Meta Data

Many store owners take the easy way out by using standard meta data generated by their content management system. However, this results in duplicates within the page title and meta description. Keep in mind that the meta description and the page title are your opportunities to appeal to potential visitors on the search results pages and motivate them to click. Search engines will also appreciate it if you provide individual meta data because they can see that you are trying to create unique and engaging content for your visitors. Through this extra information, you can positively influence your customers’ click behavior.

Figure 1: Page Title internetwarriors GmbH

How Pagination Pages Affect the Index

If you have so many products in a category that they cannot be displayed on one page, you will need several pages. These pages need to be numbered, which is called pagination. Even though paginated pages of a category are actually different from each other in terms of products, a duplicate content problem often arises because the embedded content is identical on all pages. To prevent this, you have the option to exclude paginated pages from indexing using 'Noindex' or ensure that unique content is available on each paginated page.

Figure 2: Pagination internetwarriors Blog

What We Can Do For You

By considering these points, you create the best conditions for your products to be found well in search engines, for visitors to navigate your page instinctively, buy, and be happy to return. Furthermore, by considering the relevant points, you can offer your customers a positive shopping experience, increasing the likelihood of another visit and purchase. Need professional support with on-page optimization? Then contact us.