Setting up an online store requires delving into a lot of things. One of them is choosing the right e-commerce platform, perfect for your business and customers’ needs and one that is SEO-friendly. With several e-commerce solutions available for businesses of different sizes and each platform different from others, you have to make an informed decision. However, you may not have proper SEO knowledge or any idea about what the platform would offer. Therefore, hire companies that provide SEO services as the first step towards your dream website.
The experts can aid you in understanding whether the platform is SEO-friendly or not. It means it was built with SEO in mind and has certain SEO functionalities in place. Such incorporation also helps when you decide to make structural alterations to the website later on. You will come across several e-commerce companies claiming their websites to be SEO-friendly, though the reality is far from that.
Before determining which platform to choose, read the following SEO features of the ultimate e-commerce platform. Hopefully, this guide will make it convenient for you to select a home for your merchandise.
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Has customized Title Tags, Meta descriptions, URLs, and Header Tag Fields
E-commerce pages have to be changed structurally. Your chosen platform should allow you to edit meta descriptions, title tags, URLs, header tags (H1, H2, etc.) for customizable pages, such as product pages, home pages, collections pages, etc. Or else, you will be incapable of controlling and monitoring the way your website appears on Google. Meta descriptions and title tags should be edited as they act as your call to action, compelling searchers to click on your listings over that of your competitors. These fields are also important as they allow you to add your business’ target keywords.
Has a blogging platform
Blogging is the best way to publish dynamic, rich, link-worthy content on your domain. Therefore, it is an integral part of e-commerce marketing. Blogging at least eleven times a month can bring you more traffic than not posting a single blog or posting only two or three blogs in a month. Your e-commerce platform should have a blog included to enable you to streamline the process so that it is suitable for SEO. For example, if you set up your blog on one platform and your shop on another, you would have to find a way to link the two. This can lead to a poor user experience.
Displays a well-optimized URL structure
E-commerce platforms often generate URLs independently, and search engines find it hard to understand such URLs, especially on dynamically generated pages and product pages. However, URLs are significant for SEO. The first reason is that they tell the search engine what the page is about. The second reason is that the search engine uses the URL as a road to find the page. In an SEO-friendly eCommerce platform, you can easily edit the URL strings and change their structure.
Allows hand-held device customization
You cannot win the competition just by creating an online store. Several people access the Internet through their handheld mobile devices. Thus, you too will have to go mobile to ensure a smooth shopping experience for such users. A cutting-edge e-commerce platform can optimize the website for a mobile device either through a responsive design, which alters the shape and size according to the screen on which it shows, or by creating an app for your customers.
Now, if the e-commerce platform is SEO-friendly, it can handle any potential issue that may come up when both the mobile site and the website’s root domain have duplicate content. The platform should have built-in features like sending notifications to Google Webmaster Tools, rel=canonical tags, and a mobile XML sitemap. If they are not present, the SEO services providing company and the e-commerce support team can assist you to avoid such problems.
Permits a powerful internal search
The majority of the e-commerce platforms provide website visitors the option to conduct an internal search. They allow users to look for categories or items they may not have found while browsing the online portal. However, users often get poor or no results for simple searches because many internal search engines possess poor functionality. If the platform is good, users can get accurate results whether they type the product category, name, SKU number, or other vital descriptions to filter through the products.
It is essential in SEO that the platform allows you to monitor whether these pages appear on external search engines or not and how they get displayed on those pages. For this to happen, one of your support team members or you should edit or add content, meta descriptions, and title tags to individual internal search result pages. Since the information on internal search pages is entirely based on what users search for, these pages are potent tools to leverage SEO strategy. But, as they have duplicate and thin content, they are not indexed on major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Provides excellent customer support and a tech-savvy team
The strategies, as mentioned earlier, can be implemented only if the platform allows them. Therefore, maintain a strong relationship with the platform’s support team so that your online store can comply with these SEO suggestions. Web developers and designers need assistance from the support team to set up the store or customize it as each platform is unique. Discuss what you want from the CMS before signing a contract with the e-commerce platform company. You do not want to own an invisible online store because of a platform with limited functionality and the incapability of its technical team to solve the issue.
If you want to begin a new e-commerce store or migrate your site to a new platform, opt for companies offering reliable SEO services. They help you choose an e-commerce platform and launch your new website with the best search engine optimization practices in mind.
The ultimate idea is that you require a platform, which is helpful for SEO. If it is not SEO-friendly, there is no point in using it because if you cannot obtain organic traffic, you have to invest a lot in acquiring customers.