Could your site do with a comprehensive ecommerce SEO audit? Read on to find out if there are any of the following 8 killer ecommerce SEO mistakes you’re making.
SEO is a complicated game. You can use PPC advertising to boost traffic, but that’s expensive and there is no guarantee that it will actually work anyway. Let’s get started by checking out your site and see what we can do from there.
You Do Not Use www.redirects
Let’s say that someone just types in your domain name, but doesn’t add in the www in front. Not a big deal – you don’t need to do that anymore, surely? It isn’t a problem for Google to find the site.
The problem is that then Google views the name with the www in front of it and the other as two different sites. And both sites get points taken off because of duplicate content.
All you need to do is to redirect any non-www version of the URL to your main site.
You Have Page Titles that Have Been Duplicated
The problem with this is that it makes your site harder to navigate. Is it the first “Home” page that we should visit, or the second “Home” page? This makes navigation for your visitors harder, but it also won’t score you any SEO points either.
If a search engine crawls the site, it will have to decide which “Home” page is more important. They are more likely to ignore the page completely.
Meta Descriptions that Have Been Duplicated
A meta description is not there for the search engines but rather for your readers. They should be worded carefully because it is these descriptions that will encourage people to visit your site.
The meta description doesn’t count directly to your SEO ranking, but it has an indirect effect because it affects your click-through rate.
You Have Used the Same Product Description Your Competitors Do
In many instances, the problem is that you have been given the product description by your suppliers and have used that as is. Why is that a problem? If even just two or three of the other companies stocking the same product use that description, it counts as duplicate content.
Worse still, if Google has to decide between your site and that of a competitor, they will choose the one that has better rankings.
Check for duplicate content quickly and easily by running a search on Copyscape. It is very reasonable and will highlight potential problems for you immediately.
You Haven’t Used File Names or Alt-Text Properly
Google cannot analyze what is in a picture. It takes its cue from the file name or the alt-text attached to the image.
That’s why it is important to succinctly describe the image in the alt-text and use a filename that makes sense.
So, “Image 450”, for example, doesn’t win you any points. “Image of Train Leaving Tunnel,” on the other hand, is a lot more descriptive.
You Are Not Using Analytics Tracking
Okay, you have a lot to do so you don’t really have a lot of time to check all the stats on your website. Unfortunately, without doing so, you won’t know how many people click on the links or buttons you provide, how many watch videos and how many download things from your site.
It’s not a business killer, but it does mean that you know less about what is working on your site and what is not. How can you provide content that will draw clients if you don’t know what they respond to in the first place?
No Category Page Information
Your site looks beautiful. Anyone who visits it is going to fall in love with your products. Unfortunately, because you haven’t filled in the category page text, a lot fewer people are going to be able to visit your site.
Why? People will search for goods using keywords. If these aren’t present on your page, you could be missing out. Someone wanting a pair of Nike trainers, for example, would probably type in “Nike Trainers” and not something like “Nike Air Max 270” instead.
Missing Page Errors
This is a personal pet peeve. You click on a link, and a 404 error is returned. It could be that the page was deleted, it could be that you have changed something on the site. Or a link to the site is incorrect. Whatever the reason, it does not look good.
This is going to affect your SEO rankings, and you could also lose link value as well. There are tools that you can use to check your site for errors, and it pays to run these regularly.
Have you been making any of these killer SEO mistakes? Well, now that you know about them, you never need to fall into the same trap again!