Ecommerce SEO Audit Best Practices
Ecommerce site owners juggle a lot of moving parts. Website construction, product management, and marketing are all vital parts of a successful e-commerce site. But if your site is not getting the traffic you would like, weak SEO may be the culprit. Checking or auditing an eCommerce site regularly for updated optimization practices is required to keep it up to date with current search engine trends to ensure your search rankings will remain high. Let’s look at the steps involved in performing an eCommerce SEO audit to reveal what your site is doing well and what areas need to be improved to increase site traffic.
On-Page Audit
The first step is evaluating on-page content. An on-page audit assesses the content and HTML source code’s ability to rank high on search engines. Three categories of appraisals should be made on-page.
- Keyword Assessment – Keywords and terms related to the site’s content focus determine how well a site ranks on searches. SEO keywords must be used on each page organically (not “stuffed” into a page) to rank high.
- Meta Descriptions and Title Tags -These descriptions and tags are what customers see when they get search results. The audit should evaluate each to make sure they are adequately describing the content and therefore driving searchers to the site.
- Content Value – Ecommerce sites should have inspiring, interesting and informative content for consumers to read appropriately matched to the site’s focus. Evaluating the site for content value may also include looking at competitor sites that rank higher on search results to understand the content value they are providing consumers.
Off-Page Audit
Next, an evaluation should be performed on SEO content that your eCommerce site does not directly manage but that still influences the success of (and traffic to) your site.
- Backlinks – Evaluate the quality of sites you are backlinked to and remove ones that are spammy or unreliable. Improve backlinking when possible by checking with authoritative source sites to see if they would agree to backlink your site.
- Social Media – An Ecommerce SEO audit should always include a thorough review of social media strategy. A strong social media presence on multiple platforms is key to driving traffic to a website.
Technical Audit
The technical auditing focuses on how your eCommerce site functions.
- Robots.txt and XML Sitemap – An eCommerce SEO audit should evaluate whether search engines can index and crawl your site’s robot and sitemap files, or if changes to either should be made.
- Load Time – Sites should be visible to users within two or three seconds, so an SEO audit should evaluate your eCommerce site’s load time. Slow loading can reduce traffic significantly.
- Mobile Friendliness – Since Google now ranks based on how friendly sites are to mobile applications, evaluate your eCommerce site for excellent user experience on multiple platforms.
- Site Security – Audit your site to be sure your SSL is up to date and review your site’s URL for the secure “https”.
Ecommerce SEO
All eCommerce sites are not exactly the same. If your eCommerce site uses Shopify, specific SEO strategies can be put in place to help drive traffic and improve your site. Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Squarespace, and the other platform options all have their own unique nuances that need to be addressed during an eCommerce SEO audit.
Contact the professionals at Renaissance for expert help with an eCommerce SEO audit to begin optimizing your eCommerce store.