ECommerce businesses often get so caught up in promoting their products that they tend to neglect their website and SEO. However, due to the number of products and their respective pages, eCommerce websites are usually complex and difficult to manage. If you are not careful, you could easily fall prey to one of these 8 eCommerce SEO mistakes you should avoid.
1. Duplicate product descriptions
Any business that sells multiple products is bound to have similar items in its inventory. When dealing with similar products, it can be hard to come up with separate descriptions for every single one. Copying and pasting the same product descriptions is one of the most frequent eCommerce SEO mistakes you should avoid. Unfortunately, this can cause Google to flag your pages as duplicates, and you can even get a negative SEO penalty. It’s recommended that you regularly perform SEO audits to find and remove duplicate content. Make sure that each page on your site has unique content, including product descriptions.
2. Missing images and alt tags
Most eCommerce business owners don’t bother updating their pages when products go out of stock. Unfortunately, if you don’t maintain your website, you could end up with many missing images and alt tags. This can happen due to server errors, or you may start deleting old content and only delete some files. You should either replace missing images or remove them from your pages entirely.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that you have missing alt tags for product pages. You might think you shouldn’t bother with sprucing up individual pages with so many products. But you need to optimize all the pages on your site. This includes entering alt tags and meta descriptions for every page.
3. Not monitoring website metrics
Every business is interested in improving the bottom line, and for many eCommerce businesses – tracking how well your products are selling is essential. However, this doesn’t mean that you can neglect every other website metric. We recommend monitoring how well your website is performing to get a better sense of the bigger picture and know where you can improve. If you observe where the traffic to your website is coming from, you will be able to pinpoint which of your marketing strategies is more effective. The same can be said for many other website metrics, such as session duration or bounce rates. You can get info on what isn’t working and then fix those aspects of your site.
4. Lack of mobile-friendliness
The average user is probably accessing your website through their smartphone. Unless you make your website mobile-friendly, you will receive a negative SEO penalty. Google has openly stated its intentions of promoting mobile-first websites, so you will lose a lot of organic traffic if you don’t optimize your eCommerce site for smartphones and tablets. We can help assess your site and provide mobile analytics and then work with you to optimize the site to reach more mobile users.
5. No product reviews
A simple and elegant website design is something that every business should strive for. Unfortunately, your SEO will suffer if you leave out too many design elements and features. Neglecting to have product reviews and customer testimonials are eCommerce SEO mistakes you should avoid. This is especially important for online stores since users are typically encouraged to make a purchase after looking up product reviews. Thankfully, this situation is easily remedied. You can claim your Google Business profile and send users a URL link to leave a review. Alternatively, you can also host a review section on your website to increase user engagement.
6. Locked in design that makes it hard to scale your website
When deciding how to design your website, it’s important to leave yourself room to grow. Work with professional website designers who can make a scalable website that can adapt to your business needs. Don’t just think small, but actively plan a strategy that will help you achieve business growth. However, your website will need to grow along with your business. This means that you should integrate your business plans with your website design. If you want to conquer new markets or add new services – you should inform your web designer or eCommerce platform representative. Don’t have the design of your site hold back your business. Trying to retrofit your ideas will lead to a poorly planned website with multiple SEO issues.
7. Complex forms and complicated checkout
Web design trends come and go rather quickly. On the other hand, there seem to be some evergreen designs that have stood the test of time. One of the main features of good web design is simplicity, and you need to incorporate that into every aspect of your website. Far too often, we have seen websites that require users to fill out complicated forms. This scenario inevitably leads to users not following through with the form and shopping cart abandonment.
If you want to sell your website visitors a product or service, the least you can do is make the process simple and intuitive. Streamline all of your forms, and only ask for the information you really need from users. Check to see how the forms function on mobile devices and smaller screens.
8. Lack of customer support
Having an eCommerce business isn’t just about putting up an online storefront. You also need to help your users and guide them through their customer journey. Make sure that you respond to all inquiries you get from customers in a timely manner. Help them resolve any issues they are having and have an effective refund policy. If you don’t deal with customer complaints, you will end up with negative reviews, which can tank your SEO.
In conclusion
If you want to boost SEO for your eCommerce business, your main priority should be ensuring a positive customer experience. We’ve gone through the list of 8 eCommerce SEO mistakes you should avoid, but they all boil down to having a website that helps your users find what they are looking for.
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