SEO Mistakes In E-commerce

The main SEO mistakes in E-commerce

Having the courage to embark on the creation of an online store is a good start . However, taking the leap is not enough. The goal of an e-commerce is to convert and sell. To do this, the website must be visible. SEO errors are therefore to be avoided.

Without in-depth natural referencing work, your online business cannot stand out and find a place in the market.

What practices should be avoided? Which errors are fatal? See our guide to SEO in E-commerce.

What are the SEO mistakes to avoid to guarantee the success of your store?

Skip product description

One of the biggest SEO mistakes is with product descriptions . If you have an e-commerce, take advantage of this insert to highlight the characteristics of your offer. However, do it strategically. The text must be exclusive. Copy and paste is not a good idea if you want to improve the natural referencing of your store.

In writing these inserts, write only descriptive, quality content that has the ability to help consumers in their decision making.

Moreover, when you receive the items from your suppliers, the temptation to copy the description provided to save time is great.

This thought is natural, but don't consider doing it. It is one of the mistakes not to make.

The key to success is to create unique, exclusive content and tailor-made descriptions for each product sold on your e-commerce. It is important to write powerful introductions and give advice to future buyers to attract their attention.

If you have a catalog with many products, it will probably be impossible for you to create exclusive content for all pages. In this case, do not index these products. It is better to have few descriptions and perform better than several descriptions that drag your site down.

Video content is not to be overlooked and can be separate marketing elements. This work can be used to attract by using this video content to generate views on Youtube.

Ignoring customer reviews

70% of consumers look at reviews published on the internet before buying. This figure proves the strength of social proof at the digital level. To gain the trust of users, but above all to increase the conversion rate of your website, motivate your customers to post a review on your offer. They give legitimacy to your products. Consumers are more likely to believe third-party reviews than your business descriptions.

This consumer review strategy has advantages for your e-commerce:

Writing reviews about your offer creates exclusive content on a regular basis.
Customer reviews allow the information provided on your page to be updated.

Not optimizing pages

Within your pages, use words that consumers type into search engines to find your products.

Build your site with optimized title tags, subtitles and descriptions. This structure allows you to offer content that really appeals to your audience. In H1 headings, use the main keyword. For example, if your online store sells baby clothes, choose an H1 “Children's Clothing 3-6 months”.

Lack of share buttons

Mistakes are to be avoided. One of them is not to integrate social media buttons to motivate the sharing of your content.

The Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Linkedin buttons give Internet users the opportunity to share your content with their acquaintances and their network.

If your offer is targeted, the chances of reaching people interested in your offer are high, this also contributes to the creation of backlinks.

Rushing the creation of a buyer persona

Talking to everyone means talking to no one . Your store must have a precise positioning and target. To succeed in this funnel job, create one or more personas. These are fictitious profiles of the ideal customers of your e-commerce.

Thanks to all the elements defined (city, interests, tastes, etc.), you will be able to adapt your communication, be present on the right media and highlight the key elements. Visits to your online business will increase.

You can, with the popularity of your content, score points with search engine algorithms.

Do not fill in physical information

To improve the natural referencing of your business, provide as much information as possible. Indicate the address of a physical store if you have one. If not, feel free to put your head office.

This information builds user trust and can help your website rank on local search.

Abusing guest posts (Guest Blogging)

Guest blogging is a known practice for improving natural referencing . This strategy aims to invite people to post on your blog and exchange links. If you have a shop, the invitation can be made to a professional in your sector of activity or to bloggers.

This idea arose after Google statements. During a meeting, the company explained the importance of publishing quality content. Indeed, according to them, if your content is relevant, other sites will want to share it and talk about you.

For Google robots, the mentions of your store prove that your website deserves to be highlighted.

Why is this method one of the errors? Internet users have abused this approach. The URLs were present on many sites, without this being relevant. Google's algorithms have adapted to restrict these practices.

Today, guest articles can still be a good technique to improve the natural referencing of your business. However, do not overdo it.

Using over-optimized link anchors

Following an abusive use in netlinking, overly optimized link anchors are sanctioned. Your store may receive a penalty from Google and lose visibility.

This concept has evolved.

Now, “natural” anchors look like:

• A bare link like www.name.com .
• A simple sentence with the name of the site as an anchor, for example "  find all the advice on Nom.com  ".
• A piece of sentences, a series of coherent words. Here is an example of what you can use on your store “to make your website known, be present regularly. But for that, you still need to have a content strategy .  »

Not choosing the right keywords

Using the right keywords is important for SEO of a website . However, one of the SEO mistakes is not using them in the right way. Choose words that still generate traffic to attract consumers and appear in Google results.

Also, don't create your content to please bots. Choose your words naturally and expand the semantic field with synonyms. With overuse of keywords, you will scare them away. Nobody likes to read a succession of keywords.

Repeating the same word 40 times in a text of 400 characters does not optimize your positioning.

Ignore pop-up penalty

In 2017, Google announces penalizing sites with pop-up windows . The update is also known as Intrusive Interstitial Penalty . This was created to avoid interrupting the user experience. According to Google, sites using this type of communication will see their natural referencing impacted.

If you want to integrate pop-ups into your store, make sure they appear at strategic times. Avoid disturbing Internet users as soon as they arrive on your store.

Leave predefined URLs

Your store's page links must have a specific construction. Now, to improve your site's natural referencing and readability, the main keyword and subject must be present in your URL.

Why build this type of links?

• Make your site content easier to understand.
• Have a good positioning in the Google SERPs thanks to the use of the main keyword.

Duplicate content: approaches considered to be errors

One of the great scourges that impact the natural referencing of a store is duplicate content . It is difficult to create exclusive content for all pages. This is the reason why, avoid indexing the pages having the same texts.

In the lines of code, do what is necessary so that search engines do not take them into account:

• Use robots.txt to block all areas where duplicate content predominates (in tags, archives, etc.)
• Add the "noindex" meta in the code of some URLs.

Ignore titles

The #1 SEO rule is to watch for duplicate content . However, in many e-commerces, this rule is forgotten, especially in the titles. The shops generally offer the same products in different models or colors.

The trap here is to give all products the same name like “handbag”, “men’s watch” or “night cream”. The SEO of your store can be penalized.

To build and optimize a good title tag and guarantee the natural referencing of your pages, here is the ideal structure: the name of your brand — the model — the type of product.

Not monitoring meta descriptions

Meta descriptions do not impact the positioning of a site. However, they help users understand what's on your site in seconds and influence click-through rates. These have the power to differentiate you from other brands. Avoid generic, automatic or copied meta descriptions. Be inventive.

Do like the competitors

Your product descriptions should be different from other sites . How to stand out if all the shops have the same content?

To show the power of your site to search engines, create exclusive texts resembling your company's brand image.

Embed visuals with generic names

To optimize the SEO of your e-commerce, avoid using the names “IMAGE 378” or “CN_6201”. They do not bring any quality data to search engines.

Some consumers may search from Google Images . Robots and algorithms must be able to classify your visuals.

Give strategic names to your images. Fill alt tags with keywords.

If you want to deepen this theme, make sure that the integrated photos are less than 100 KB. In this way, you lighten the weight of your store and your site will be faster (good practice to improve the user experience).

Do not respond to 404 errors

404 errors are the most well-known SEO errors in terms of natural referencing. Their level of importance is high. If your store has these types of errors, react quickly.

These appear when your server cannot find the landing page. On your store, they can exist for various reasons:

• Pages no longer exist: promotions, products, categories…
• Products are no longer sold on the site or the stock is unavailable.
• The migration of some elements was inconclusive.
• The URLs listed in your content no longer exist.

For example, in practice, on your website you publish an article about the benefits of a range of shoes that you sell. To improve the sales of these products, you put a link so that consumers can find them easily and buy them.

A few months later, you decide to stop selling them. However, the published article is still online. If a user clicks on the embedded link, they will land on a page with a 404 error. This is because the page is gone because the product line is no longer available.

Having a slow e-commerce site

Internet users are increasingly impatient. Within seconds, they should access the desired information and products . Studies prove that consumers want to wait less than 2 seconds.

If your store pages take longer to open, users are likely to leave your site. Faced with these reactions, the bounce rate of your e-commerce will explode.

To improve the loading time of your business:

• Choose the right web host.
• Reduce your lines of code.
• Lighten the weight of visuals (photos and/or videos).

A multitude of wordpress SEO plugins can correct these errors on the shops that use this CMS.

A non-responsive store

Millions of people only use their smartphones to do their research and purchases . With the popularity of social networks, this figure continues to increase.

Faced with this enthusiasm, Google robots have undergone changes. Now, the algorithm favors mobile content before desktop content.

Without a mobile version of your store, you risk being penalized by Google and not being visible on search engines.

Not being interested in evolutions: the practice of voice searches

There are many digital developments. The most recent is voice searches . Search engines analyze this type of use more. According to Google studies, 1/4 of Americans surf the Internet using voice searches.

This is a trend to watch in terms of natural referencing. The robots undergo evolutions according to the habits of the users. If the use of voice searches increases, we are not immune to an evolution of algorithms.