E-commerce is essentially one of the most flourishing avenues of business in recent times, with the growing popularity of online shopping. A business that offers its products online is more likely to succeed than those that do not.
A common misconception about e-commerce is that leading companies like Amazon alone dominate this sector. Smaller e-commerce businesses can flourish as well.
A large section of people uses search engines like Google while looking for a product. This means that the sites that rank high among the search results are likely to draw traffic. With eCommerce SEO, smaller businesses can rank high alongside the reputed e-commerce sites.
What is technical SEO, and why is it important?
The search engines gather information about websites by sending crawlers to crawl the pages and extract data. Hence, the smoother a search engine crawls through your website, the higher the chances of ranking high. To promote a smooth user experience, the search engines also give preference to websites with certain technical features. This is why, alongside content SEO, technical SEO is essential too. By optimizing the technical features of your e-commerce site for search engines, you may significantly increase the number of page visits.
Technical SEO techniques that you should know about
There are numerous technical SEO techniques that one can master to make an e-commerce site rank among the top search results. Some of the key ones among these are:
1. Provide product data
Unlike most other types of data on websites, Google cannot extract all the data from product pages. Instead, you would have to provide Google with the relevant information using a product feed, structured data markup, or Google merchant center. Businesses also need to help the search engine verify that certain data is accurate, especially in the costs.
2. Use SSL
Google has already announced that the search engine gives preference to websites with URLs starting with HTTPS instead of HTTP. The HTTPS prefix shows that the website is safe and secure. To obtain an HTTPS URL, you would have to install a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate. This is a security technology that builds an encrypted link between the browser and the website.
3. URL structure
The URL structure is one of the significant factors that help search engines gather information on what the page is about. Hence, the URL structure must be easy to read and should be able to give an idea of the contents of the page quickly. It is best to keep the URLs short and simple and hierarchically build them. If possible, include keywords in the URL, and it would significantly enhance the likelihood of ranking high.
4. Ensure that the site loads fast
Search engines tend to prefer sites that load quickly, so loading speed is an essential factor. A fast loading speed also helps to improve the conversion rate because the visitors may leave the page if it takes too long to load. Several techniques improve the loading speed of a site, such as using fast hosting and DNS and minimizing HTTP requests. Always try to keep the image sizes as small as possible without causing them to become pixelated.
5. Optimize the site structure
A good site structure helps the visitors navigate through the pages easily and enables the search engine crawlers to do the same. Structure the site in such a way that the relevant information or products would remain easily visible. Any vital page should be at most three clicks away from the homepage. Keep the site structure well-balanced and sync the URL structures with it.
6. Use an XML sitemap
XML sitemaps are files that act as roadmaps for search engine crawlers. These sitemaps carry valuable information, such as the location of specific pages, the website’s contents, the frequency of updates, etc. You may also use an XML sitemap to tell the crawlers which page to prioritize. Try to get an expert website developer to build a proper XML sitemap for your e-commerce website.
7. Fix errors
In contemporary times, various online tools and technologies help to detect technical SEO errors. Thus, if there are problems on the website that may prevent search engines from crawling your site, these tools would alert you. Accordingly, you may fix these issues and improve the technical SEO score.
Hence, technical SEO is essential and quite complex as there are various aspects to keep in mind. A reputed seo service provider can optimize the technical aspects of your website to help it rank high on search engines and attract more visitors.
