Ecommerce SEO audit: 8 Steps & Tips Checklist Guide – The SEO audit is a must in e-commerce. Indeed, a good referencing is essential to ensure a stable and continuous source of traffic and thus ensure the sustainability of the activity.
Although SEO finds commonalities in e-commerce and with a more classic site, there are still certain specificities that it is important to master in order to be able to carry out a clear audit of an e-commerce site.
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Ecommerce SEO Audit: What are the challenges?
The objective of an SEO audit is to have an overview of an e-commerce site while being able to identify each page of the latter in order to identify the strengths and areas for improvement.
The idea is therefore to compare the performance of the pages with that of the competition in order to identify areas for improvement that will allow the e-commerce site to remain competitive and ensure the sustainability of its activity over time.
Continuous work to please Google’s robots and thus benefit from sustained and continuous traffic from the search engine.E-commerce SEO audit: 8 tips
The specifics of an SEO audit for an e-commerce site.
The SEO audit of a commercial site often begins with a technical background analysis. By means of a crawl tool, it will be possible to measure the loading performance of a page.
But also to identify any errors that reside on the page and which can penalize the quality of the referencing of the latter. Here are the main points that will constitute the analysis indicators of your SEO audit.
Content Indexing
An indexed page will simply be present in the search engine. While pages that are not will remain untraceable. For a page to be indexed, there is normally no manipulation to be done, but it is possible that undesirable pages are indexed and that others are simply not.
A badly indexed page will be detrimental to the overall SEO of the site, while a quality page that is not indexed will bring nothing to the e-commerce site.
By analyzing the indexing of content, it becomes much easier to have an overview of all the pages and therefore to make indexing choices. For example, it is not recommended to index all the content pages that you have optimized for SEO, but also your product pages in order to allow users to access them directly at checkout.
On the other hand, help or personal account pages should not be indexed, because they generate significant errors and can affect the quality of the user experience who may be on your website for the first time with a page of error.
Do not give popularity to pages that do not deserve it, because they will do so at the expense of others who will really be able to do the conversion work.
The indexing of pages is also the way to channel the flow and to bring users where you want in order to make them enter your sales tunnel as well as possible.
Managing filters and layered navigation
Faceted navigation and filters are tools that are widely used and highly appreciated by Internet users. They allow sorting among hundreds of products in a simple and fast way.
In the case of an online clothing store, for example, you can choose the type of clothing, the size or the color in order to save time and find your happiness among hundreds of articles.
However, each filter combination has a different URL and indexing all these URLs can quickly lead to thousands of different pages online. A not always optimal situation that you have to know how to master if you don’t want to see your referencing penalized.
For an optimized referencing, the best solution is to index only the pages which constitute combinations which correspond to requests sought by the Net surfers. “XL white t-shirt” will thus have more interest in being indexed than “men’s white XL” for example.
By indexing the right combinations, it is possible to gain a very significant amount of traffic to your online store.
A significant and above all reliable and sustainable source of income compared to advertising campaigns. To identify the best queries, the ideal is to carry out an audit on the most used keywords in relation to your activity.
Hn markup
Markup is the basis of good SEO. It allows crawling tools to indicate the different parts that make up the text with titles, subtitles and paragraphs. This markup saves precious time for the crawl tools which will then promote the referencing of the pages.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content does not add value to search engines. An e-commerce site that has a lot of duplicate content will therefore naturally be penalized. So remember to reformulate your content, even for similar categories.
Some tools to carry out an e-commerce SEO Audit
Performing an SEO audit takes time and a lot of work, fortunately there are tools to make your life easier that can help you perform an audit quickly and easily on your entire e-commerce site. Here are some tools you can rely on.
SEMrush: the reference for mapping your e-commerce site in a few clicks
SEMrush is an SEO reference. The tool will carry out a complete mapping of your website by taking into account each page, each link and by editing the most relevant keywords on which your pages are positioned. A very good start to get an overview of areas for improvement that need to be made.
Neilpatel: The analysis tool for your netlinking
The importance of netlinking is crucial in order to strengthen the notoriety of your website. Indeed, the crawl tools will also take into account the number of links entering and leaving your website in order to define a level of notoriety of the latter. An essential asset to further strengthen your position on search engines. the website analysis tool .
E-commerce SEO audit: the importance of the CMS
The CMS plays a crucial role for the quality of your SEO. Indeed, many CMS directly integrate their own SEO rules in order to propel your pages in the best conditions.
Some CMS even offer you extensions that allow you to analyze all of your pages quickly and easily without having to use another software.
A poor quality CMS can seriously harm the SEO of your site, both on the performance side with poor quality hosting and on all the rules relating to SEO that are already in place to support the creators of site.
Audit SEO Shopify
Shopify is by far the N°1 reference for e-commerce. With millions of users to its credit, Shopify aims to be a simple CMS that allows you to create a functional sales store in just a few clicks. Performing an SEO audit with Shopify is relatively simple, you can already count on all the rules that are already in place thanks to the platform’s themes.
In addition, there are extensions that allow you to better highlight your product pages in order to reference them on well-targeted keywords.
Read Also: The impact of chatbots on eCommerce
However, it is more difficult to properly reference its pages due to the lack of customization that is available on Shopify, unless you know how to develop your website yourself.
Audit SEO Prestashop
Prestashop is a direct competitor of Shopify which also offers to create an online store in a simple and fast way. There is no shortage of SEO tools on the platform, which stands out for its more advanced customization capabilities that allow for unique structures that are highlighted by search engines. Prestashop has good tools to allow you to work on your SEO;
Audit SEO WooCommerce
WooComxmerce is not the easiest CMS to learn. Nevertheless, it is the one that offers the most freedom and allows extensive SEO optimization. A quality SEO audit on this CMS makes it possible to identify all the weak points of your website and to modify each point in order to highlight your SEO.
All this by following your own rules, and not preconceived policies that are applied uniformly to all users.
Our tip for carrying out your SEO audit for your e-commerce store
The SEO audit for an e-commerce site is above all focused on sales and therefore the promotion of products. The idea is therefore not to prioritize added content, but to bring users into a sales tunnel as quickly as possible in order to boost the results of the e-commerce site.
It is therefore essential to work well on the referencing of the product pages and regularly carry out an SEO audit on the latter in order to optimize it continuously. Indeed, they are the ones who will be responsible for a large part of the traffic generated naturally and therefore the resulting turnover.