How To Address Technical SEO Issues on Large Ecommerce Sites

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It is important to have a high-performing well-optimized Ecommerce site to achieve business growth. Common SEO issues that plague large Ecommerce sites include poor site architecture, load time, and internal linking. 

The below screenshot shows an example of an inconvenient, disturbing, and hard-to-access site structure. 

Every search engine crawls a website first to index it. Based on the indexing results, the website appears in the search results. Only Ecommerce sites with good technical SEO get a higher ranking, more traffic, and better sales. 

What is Technical SEO?

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SEO, as we know, stands for Search Engine Optimization. Technical SEO for Ecommerce sites is the part of SEO directly related to the website's construction. From your codebase to page layouts, SEO optimization plays a major role.

Whenever a search engine crawls your website, it takes account of information to index your website. Each page, backlink, and overall sitemap should be easy to navigate. Websites that are hard to crawl do not appear in the top search results.

Let’s address seven technical SEO issues that affect Ecommerce sites.

1. Bad URL structure 

A good URL structure makes it easier for search engines to index different website pages. Large Ecommerce sites usually have several product categories that users can choose from. So, most companies enable auto-generate URL features on their platform to save time and effort. 

While this may seem like a smart idea, companies soon realize that these URLs do not clearly state what the page is about. SEO-friendly URLs are separated by words that are easy to understand instead of numeric values and special characters. 

Tools To Check URL Strength 

Prepostseo: It offers URL checker tools that tell you how strong your URL is. It chauffeur bulk analysis of whether or not your URLs are user-friendly. 

SEOmator: It helps you structure your URL’s so that they rank higher. 

SEOsitecheckup: It helps you set the right URL structure according to relevant searches. 

Read: Tips to Design an SEO Friendly Website

2. Poor site architecture

Site architecture is critical for websites to rank well. A lot of websites do not follow SEO best practices during site construction. 

Search engines are looking for specific information in the site architecture. This includes the page title, H1 tag, Image alt tags, schema markup, and the right HTML tags in the code.

All the product pages must include schema markup to appear on search engine result pages. Implementing this helps ecommerce sites an edge over others by letting them secure top spots, as shown below. 

Also, schema markup refers to microdata like product reviews, rating, price, and availability. Users click on products with schema markup instead of those that do not.

Tools To Check Website Architecture

Screamingfrog: It helps you visualize how your site architecture appears to search engines through graphic illustrations. 

Meta forensics: It ensures that your website architecture is sound and gives you an extensive radar visualization of your website.
FandangoSEO: It helps optimize unindexed pages, reduces navigation depth, and improves overall site architecture. 

3. Slow load time 

Ecommerce websites receive a lot of visitors every minute. They must load fast. Visitors abandon sites that take time to load, which means they do not convert into customers.

Businesses need to ensure that their website loads fast. Also, they should remove any unnecessary advertisements or duplicate pages that can slow down the website. 

Tools To Check The Load Time Of Website

Pagespeed insights: It tells the current page speed score and expert suggestions to boost it. 

The below screenshot shows the loading speed of Amazon on mobile and desktop, which is quite faster than recommended by the search engines. 

Pingdom:  It helps improve all the website speed metrics so that your visitors can browse at ease.
GTMetrix: It helps improve the load time of your website as per the best practices. 

Read: Tips to Increase Page Loading Speed

4. Ineffective link strategy 

The link strategy of Ecommerce sites plays a major role in ranking on search engines. Businesses need to pay attention to the anchor text, use the right keyword, and link to the relevant pages. 

Link building best practices include category page links on the homepage and interlinking of similar product pages. Also, it is important to consider that the links are relevant as per the content and ensure seamless navigation.

Tools To Create Strong Links

SEMrush: SEM rush is a comprehensive tool that helps you interlink pages and tells how SEO-friendly your website is. The below screenshot shows how effective a site’s internal links are. 

Dr.LinkChecker: It helps businesses learn which links are working properly and the ones they need to fix. 

SEOquake: It offers a great link examiner that checks all the links on your website and gives improvement suggestions if required. 

5. Incomplete XML sitemap

Ecommerce websites with an incomplete XML sitemap find it difficult to rank on search engines. A sitemap clarifies the different web pages a website contains to search engines. 

Well-structured sitemaps are easy to discover, crawl, and index for search engines. Also, as and when an update occurs, the date changes, asking the search engine to crawl the page again. 

Tools To Generate Excellent Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps: It is a free XML sitemap generator service that provides a complete sitemap as in the below image

Slickplan: It helps you import your website URL to generate an easy to crawl sitemap. 

Dynomapper: It offers different sitemap styles that you can choose from to build an SEO-friendly sitemap.
Writemaps: It helps you create search engine-centric sitemaps to improve your online ranking. 

6. Poor Images 

Images play a major role in making users shop for a product on your website. They should be easy on the eye and must integrate well with the overall design of your website. 

Other things to consider for images include the file format, compression rate, use of keywords in image names, and alt tags. 

Tools To Optimize Images

Bunnynet: It offers a range of features in real-time like image optimization, compression, and resizing. 

Yoast SEO: It allows you to make all your images SEO-friendly by optimizing them with the right metrics. 

Optimole: Optimole helps you scale images on multiple pages by reducing their size and offers image CDN to make them available on over 200 server locations.

7. Mobile friendly 

It is not a surprise that websites that are not mobile-friendly lose out on a lot of traffic. With a major amount of website traffic coming from mobile and tablets, it is important to build a responsive website. 

There are plenty of tools available that help you make websites that appear as per the user’s device. Businesses with and without mobile applications must make mobile-friendly websites to engage new visitors. 

Tools To Build Mobile-Friendly Websites

GTmetrix: GTmetrix allows you to check website performance across devices and how to optimize it for each device.

Hotjar: Offering key insights into user interaction lets you build the best website for each device. 

TestProject: It allows you to check your website for design, SEO, and performance metrics across devices. The image below shows that it also helps record how the users interact with the website.

Technical SEO Issues on Ecommerce Sites FAQs 

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Q1: What Are Technical SEO Issues?

Technical SEO issues include duplicate content, mobile experience, internal and external linking, slow load time, and bad navigation. They prevent Ecommerce sites from ranking on search engines and send users away instead of luring them. 

Q2: What Is The Technical Part Of SEO?

The technical part of SEO concerns the optimization of your websites. It ensures that your website is designed and coded to make it easier for search engines like google to crawl and index it. Doing this improves your ranking in search results. 

Q3: Why Does Technical SEO Matter?

Technical SEO is important so that search engines do not misunderstand your website. Without technical SEO, you won’t be able to get visitors who search for your business or the products your business offers. 

Key Takeaways

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• Use the right URL structure.
• Build the correct site architecture
• Make sure that your website loads fast. 
• Employ an intelligent link strategy for website pages 
• Create easy to read and search engine friendly sitemap 
• Optimize images as per SEO best practices 
• Ensure the website is mobile-friendly