As you learn how to do an eCommerce SEO audit, don’t forget about the technical side of your website.
Technical SEO affects how your website works and how search engines find your website pages. As an eCommerce site, you will have dozens of pages with your products, content and more, which can open the door to technical problems.
With this eCommerce SEO audit, you will assess the technical aspects of your site to ensure they are working properly.
Primarily this includes –
ANALYZE YOUR SITE AGAINST ROBOTS.TXT AND XML SITEMAP
Your robots.txt file and XML sitemap plays a key role in helping search engines understand your site.
Robots.txt: Your robots.txt file tells search engines which pages it can and cannot crawl, which helps to keep your site from becoming overwhelmed. You can use this to tell Google not to crawl certain pages, such as shopping cart pages, wish lists, and more.
XML Sitemap: This file on the website will guide Google to index the most critical pages on your site.
You must have both of the above elements if you want Google to crawl your site and index your pages.
What to do if you don’t have the robots.txt file or the XML sitemap. If you don’t have any of these elements, you’ll need to add them to your site. You can get help from the eCommerce SEO agency or experts to setup these.
What to do if you already have the robots.txt file or XML sitemap. Let’s assess them and make sure you set them up correctly.
ANALYZE YOUR SITE FOR CRAWLABILITY AND INDEXABILITY
The next part of your eCommerce SEO audit is to examine your crawlability and indexability. You cannot appear in search results if Google cannot index or crawl your site. Evaluating this information is essential to ensure you can appear in front of interested leads.
You can use Google Search Console to check if Google can crawl and index your site.
EVALUATE YOUR PAGE LOAD TIME
Your site’s load time has a significant impact on your rankings in search results, so you don’t want to skip this step on your eCommerce SEO audit! If your site doesn’t load quickly, users will leave your page and go to another listing. You need to deliver a website fast to deliver information to users quickly.
Users expect your site to load in two seconds, so you need to ensure your site loads quickly.
Use a tool like Google Page speed Insights to find your site’s load time and see where you can make improvements.
What to do if your site’s loading time is too slow. If your site doesn’t load quickly, follow Google’s suggestions to improve your page speed. These suggestions may involve compressing large image files or reducing the number of redirects. If you find you have a long list of optimizations to improve your website load time, you can get the help of eCommerce SEO agency to make it easier to optimise.
What to do if your site’s load time is fast. Make sure there is no additional optimization you need to do to improve your site’s load time!
CHECK COMPATIBILITY WITH MOBILE DEVICES
In addition to fast load times, you need to include mobile device compatibility as part of your eCommerce SEO audit. As mobile users continue to grow, you need to ensure your website works well on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.
If users don’t have a great mobile experience, they will jump off your page and hurt your ranking.
In addition, Google uses mobile-first indexing, which takes your site’s mobile compatibility into account when ranking your site. So, if you want to rank better in search results, make sure your site is mobile-friendly.
You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to see if your site is compatible to mobile-first indexing.
What to do if your website isn’t mobile-friendly. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, make it mobile-friendly by integrating a responsive design. Responsive design allows your website to adapt to any device used by the user. You will have a website that looks great and performs well on mobile devices and computers.
What to do if your site is mobile compatible. If your site is already mobile compatible, you can move on to the next step in this SEO audit for eCommerce!
Looking for a stunning new responsive eCommerce website for your store? Select your Layout, and using our Free Online All-In-One Website Quotation Tool choose the customisation you require and get an immediate no-obligation quotation. Let us Build a Ready-Made Website for You!
MAKE SURE YOUR WEBSITE IS SECURE
The last item on your eCommerce SEO audit is checking the security of your website.
As an eCommerce website, you must have a secure website.
Your audience enters their personal information to order products from your eCommerce website. If your site isn’t secure, they won’t feel comfortable shopping with you. In addition, Google always favours safe sites because users feel comfortable navigating those sites.
Having “https” in front of your URL instead of “http” means your site is secure. This is also considered as one of ranking signal by the Google.
What to do if your website is not secure. If your website is not secure, you can protect it by purchasing an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. This certificate will ensure that when users enter personal information, such as credit card numbers, it is protected.
What to do if your website is secure. If your website is secure, don’t worry! Just check when your SSL certificate expires so you can stay on top of the renewal.
GET STARTED WITH YOUR ECOMMERCE SEO AUDIT TODAY
These are just a few examples of eCommerce SEO optimisation. Our eCommerce SEO audit will help you re-evaluate the current state of your SEO optimisation so you can work on improving it OR let’s contact us to get it done from our side.