SEO tips for large e-commerce websites | Weboptim
Search engine optimisation certainly differs depending on where and in what industry you work, and e-commerce is no exception.
What to look out for on large sites?
The most important things to do when working with an e-commerce site are:
- Let's look at the options
- What optimisation can be implemented that has the highest availability and requires the least internal resources?
- Let's look at what needs to be mobilised
- Do we have hundreds of thousands of indexed pages? Do we have millions of inbound links? Taking advantage of these opportunities should be a priority.
- Take a user-centric SEO approach
- The big e-commerce sites have many customers. These are not empty faces - empty people with empty wallets - they are the lifeblood of the company and brand advocates
- Also focus on getting users to pay a reward. What are the links if not votes for the search algorithm?
What are the objectives?
What exactly are the goals of SEO for e-commerce sites? Sales of course! Revenue is the key. But what tactics and strategies lead to sales? And what is the general purpose of these? In short, the goal is SERP (Search Engine Results Page) domination (relevant, user-centric domination of course).
What are the main factors?
Large pages mean a large number of links and a large number of indexed pages. On-page SEO becomes paramount, but it's not about what others are doing, it's much more than that. Getting links matters less if you already have plenty of them. The main factors will be URLs, content and internal links. This is especially true in the case of Google.
- URL - Search engines like nice, user-friendly URLs without excessive duplication (one URL per page). They improve the user experience, provide context and relevance. For this reason, keyword domain names are pretty big trump cards. 🙂
- Internal links - The internal links are not about search engines, but they are certainly helpful for them. A good information architecture should be the foundation of any e-commerce website. In addition and beyond that, related product and category links (relevant, targeted and limited in quantity) are very effective from a user and SEO point of view.
- Content - Everyone knows that people want content. Because people want content, search engines want content. So let's make content that people want to read, want to share, want to bookmark and want to find easily by bots.
- Getting inbound links - As mentioned earlier, the increase in the number of inbound links is less important. However, links are still important, especially when a company wants to break out and expand its brand with new product or category variations.
SEO is not just about SEO
Yes, you read that right - SEO is not just about search engine optimisation. It's also about people (so to speak). Getting sales can be very difficult for a large organisation where development resources are scarce.
What is the solution? Create projects that are not about SEO, but are also valuable from a search perspective. Projects that are based on interesting and creative ideas but also have SEO power can be very effective.
With fewer SEO aspects, more visitor aspects + sufficient value, it will spread well on its own (or at least have a good chance of doing so), so that SEO can be somewhat integrated into some part of the company lifecycle. Why is this a good thing?
User-centred projects:
- sometimes lead to easier purchases
- takes the focus away from SEO and instead gives it to basics like UX
- focus on the value provided
The full picture
Apart from the benefits and challenges that come with large-scale e-commerce sites, there are also political factors. The bottom line: we need to know our place in the overall process. SEO isn't everything, and our team is just a team, with its own specific needs, goals and priorities.
Resources are a constant barrier to SEO success for any large company.
Source: merkleinc.com