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Online retailers are sometimes convinced that to generate traffic, it is enough to list hundreds or even thousands of products on their online sales site. Nothing could be further from reality! Indeed, SEO optimization is a much more complex process for online sales sites than for blogs or simple business websites. Indeed, natural referencing is affected by daily changes in content. This problem makes SEO of e-commerce sites difficult. Today we will review the 5 most common mistakes when optimizing the SEO of online stores and Internet sales sites from an SEO content point of view.
Quick reading: the 5 most common mistakes made by e-commerce stores in SEO content management
By analyzing e-commerce sites, we have spotted 5 recurring content errors that penalize their Google SEO:
- Duplicate content
- Pages without content
- Management of non-stock products
- The absence of customer reviews
- Non-compliance with search intent
Read on to learn how to identify these errors and know the solutions to fix them 🙂
1- Use of content provided by the manufacturer/dropshipper
If you want to avoid being taken into account by search engines, simply use the manufacturer’s description! In fact, this will guarantee you reduce your visibility on search engines.
These descriptions are given for information purposes to many online stores by their suppliers. And most of them keep the text in its original form. Thus, many pages with identical content are penalized by Google.
Marouane’s opinion about duplicate content
In my opinion (as an SEO expert), however, it is difficult to talk about a duplicate content penalty for e-commerce sites. Google (via the Rankbrain update) grants a certain tolerance to product pages, particularly because the supplier base is the same among many e-retailers. However, duplicate content is really detrimental for informational type queries or to stand out from the competition.
In addition to the impact on SEO, there is a negative effect on sales: in fact, the way in which these descriptions are written does not encourage the act of purchasing.
You must therefore always write unique content for your online business! Google is increasingly efficient in prioritizing websites and effectively takes plagiarism into account. Want to know if you have duplicate content on your site? All you need to do is use anti-plagiarism software!
Creating unique content for thousands of products or a wide variety of inventory can be a daunting task. However, professional web editors are used to this kind of challenge. If you don’t have the budget to hire an in-house editorial team, automatic writing software could be very useful to you.
Trick In this specific case, it makes sense to put a noindex tag on product pages for which writing unique content is impossible.
2- Lack of product description
In my experience, this mistake is usually made by online clothing sites. Unfortunately, the complete absence of text describing the products practically ends the page’s chances of making it into the top ten search engine results (SERP). So don’t forget to add the description to the product sheet, don’t ruin the chances of your page!
Furthermore, be sure to describe the product with a sufficient number of words. Indeed, choosing the right content length is an essential technique for transmitting a clear and complete message to Google.
Obviously, the more detailed and unique your content is, the more effective your SEO will be. However, the following points should be kept in mind:
- Write only quality descriptive content that helps customers in their purchasing decisions;
- Not copy the content of another website or the supplier;
- Test the ideal number of words to promote visitor conversion. Too long content can also harm the SEO of your product pages!
3- Catastrophic management of non-stock products
Nothing is worse for your customers than finding the product they are looking for, but not being able to buy it! If this is the case and no alternative is offered, you are sure to quickly lose your traffic! However, there are techniques to avoid this type of mishap for your visitor.
These strategies will nevertheless be different depending on the availability of the product in the future. In fact, you will not proceed in the same way if it is a temporary or permanent out of stock.
Permanently out of stock
When you are certain that you will no longer be able to submit an article in the future, do not make the most common mistake: delete the page! Indeed, this will create a 404 error code which is not appreciated by Google and Internet users.
If you have product pages that are inaccessible or are about to no longer be part of your inventory, then you will need to be careful to exclude them from search engine indexing. To do this, add the “noindex” tag to the relevant pages.
Also consider making a permanent 301 redirect to a similar product. As a result, Internet users will always obtain a result that corresponds to their purchasing desire. Indeed, even if it is deindexed, the URL could still be accessible from the favorites of your regular customers or from an external site.
Temporary out of stock
This case is very common and can be linked to several factors (big sale, supplier waiting, customer delivery problem, etc.). In this scenario, the two most common mistakes are to unpublish the page or create a temporary 302 redirect.
These two ways of proceeding will give a negative message to Google, which is likely to penalize your positioning on the search engine results page!
The best practice is therefore to update the content of your product sheet. Warn your visitor about the problem and offer them alternatives so as not to miss your sale. Here are some ideas for updates you could do:
- Proposal of similar articles,
- Pre-order,
- Notification when the product will be available again,
- Collection at the store or depot,
- etc.
4- Lack of product reviews
Before making a purchase, around 70% of buyers look for reviews on products, on forums or on e-commerce sites. This means that if your site has no reviews, you will lose a lot of potential customers. In addition, pages containing reviews benefit from better SEO on commercial type queries.
Customer reviews allow:
- to create unique content for free! Now you know that creating original content is important, even if it is a difficult task. So here’s some good news: reviews help solve this problem!
- for the product page to be modified often: search engines will analyze it more often. Each update of your site has an overall positive effect on SEO.
5- Failure to respect the intention and keywords by product pages
It is essential to take into account search intent (see our video below) as well as the keywords that Internet users use in search engines. This is especially the case when you write your titles and product descriptions.
Otherwise, you risk promoting something no one is looking for. Stores that have a large number of different products often make this mistake!
Let’s take the example of a page whose title, the H1 title tag as well as the ALT tag of the image have the keyword expression “Bose QC35”. In this case, choosing more specific keywords like “Bose QC35 noise canceling headphones” makes more sense.
With that, here are some tips to help you better optimize product pages:
- Use numbers in your titillated tags and H1 tags;
- Include brand names in your title tags and H1 tags;
- Don’t forget to fill in the ALT tag of the image;
- Do not use the same keyword everywhere on the product page;
- Optimize the hot areas of web writing (introduction, conclusion, internal links, etc.);
- Use the right lexical field adapted to your key expression.
Tips for avoiding duplicate content in e-commerce
The main scourge of e-commerce sites is duplicate content. Here are some tips for reducing similar content:
- Use the robots.txt file to block access to areas with high duplicate content such as archives, tags and, in some cases, category pages.
- Enter the canonical tag to indicate which web pages should be indexed. For example, if your shopping cart creates new URLs because of reviews or comments (meaning you have more than one page with the exact same content, one with reviews and one without) , the canonical tag will direct search engines to the page that should be considered.
- You can add the nofollow attribute to links that direct to areas with duplicate content. However, be careful not to forget any links, otherwise Google will be able to analyze them.
The golden rule of SEO in e-commerce: prioritize user experience
As you know, Google is a search engine that cares about its users. This is why it is important that your online store is practical and well adapted to customer needs. What pleases your customers pleases Google!
The more time people spend on your online business, the less they return to the results page (SERP) and the more Google is convinced that it has directed them to the right answer. By offering good SEO content on your e-commerce and optimizing your internal linking, you maintain your traffic on your site.
Additionally, users who like your website and what you offer are much more likely to post a link to one of your pages. As you already know, backlinks help boost SEO.
Have you already identified SEO errors made by ecommerce sites? Among the 5 proposed in this post, have you also committed any? It’s never too late to improve the SEO content of your e-commerce!
Now, it’s your turn to play ! Update the texts of your product sheets and make the necessary adjustments to improve the UX and your SEO! Your turnover will thank you!
