Table of Contents
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When we take on a new E-Commerce SEO client, we look for the obvious traffic patterns, click through rates, competitive stack performance, and any stand-out tech issues on the site we can fix right now. Of course, that’s not the only thing we look for. When starting to build an E-Commerce strategy, it’s important to know where the website has come from to assess what patterns are breaking and if that’s a good thing.
Most of the time, when E-Commerce retailers look for a new SEO team, something has happened to performance. Whether that’s sales or just pure traffic, there usually is something going on. It’s important - when analyzing past performance - to segment the website to identify where the decline is happening and if there’s any chance for improvement.
Identifying Shifts in Buying Behaviours
Identifying buying behaviour shifts allows us to isolate what areas on the site to focus on first and what will increase the number of people converting at a macro or micro level.
There are some key questions we ask ourselves when we look for shifts in buying behaviours; Has traffic increased or decreased, is there more revenue movement in one area of the site than others, and - my personal favourite - has there been a shift in where people are converting? When we look at buying behaviour, we look at demographic data, but we also take into consideration the behaviour funnel - where are people most likely to make a purchase, how much are they buying, and how often are they coming back. The 10 thousand foot way to see this is through:
- Average Order Value (AOV)
- Changes to AOV shows the effectiveness of internal linking, product page optimization, and the user’s experience of the cart.
- Conversion Rate (CVR)
- Shifts in CVR could indicate that the consumer life cycle is extending/contracting, that newer users that are higher in the funnel are not/converting as quickly as users that are familiar with the brand, that the conversion process has been altered in a way that introduces/removes friction, and could indicate a variety of different things. The important step here as an SEO professional is to not take conversion rate at face value, and pair it with other metrics like traffic, new and returning users, and any metric listed here.
- Add to Cart rates (ATC)
- Changes in add to cart rates are usually an indication of friction being introduced or removed at the product level page (PLP).
- Transaction Data
- Changes in number of transactions could indicate any number of things, ranging from a departure from older styles on the site that aren’t resonating with your audience to fluctuations in pricing and sales items to inventory issues.
Identifying Errors in Technical Implementation
Finding errors in technical implementation on E-Commerce websites allows us to pick up quick SEO wins and allow greater accessibility on the site. This is usually the first starting point for many SEO audits across any industry.
Updating or migrating a website with a large volume of SKUs is a big task and requires a lot of hands-on work. Some of the elements we analyze include:
- 404s and error pages
- This can show where redirects and technical implementations are necessary.
- Organic traffic increases/decreases per site section
- This will show if the change or migration was successful for traffic growth and what areas of the site were most affected.
- Tracking code implementation
- Without tracking, there’s no measurement, no measurement means mismatched data and inaccuracies in reporting.
- Accessibility for crawlers and rendering of code and text
- The long and short of it is if search engines can’t see your site, there’s a big problem. Yes, this is more common than you might think - I’ve seen countless sites and changes pushed live without triple checking their noindex and disallow tags, without making sure their pages were indexable, and a number of times, have seen sites built entirely using JavaScript and non-indexable content. This is one of the most important things we check, even if it takes a total of 5 minutes.
Most of the time, there's no silver bullet when looking for areas to improve on a website; Fixing no one issue is going to immediately reverse trend. It takes a wide variety of SEO fixes to improve overall site health. By identifying both errors in implementation and shifts in buying behaviour, it becomes easier to identify a path forward and a significant strategy that will lead up to reversing the current performance trend.
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Ready to identify and fix common SEO issues on E-Commerce websites?
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E-Commerce SEO Goals[/fusion_button][/fusion_builder_column_inner][fusion_builder_column_inner type="1_2" layout="1_2" align_self="auto" content_layout="column" align_content="flex-start" content_wrap="wrap" spacing="" center_content="no" link="" target="_self" min_height="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" sticky_display="normal,sticky" class="" id="" type_medium="" type_small="" order_medium="0" order_small="0" dimension_spacing_medium="" dimension_spacing_small="" dimension_spacing="" dimension_margin_medium="" dimension_margin_small="" dimension_margin="" padding_medium="" padding_small="" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" hover_type="none" border_sizes="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_radius="" box_shadow="no" dimension_box_shadow="" box_shadow_blur="0" box_shadow_spread="0" box_shadow_color="" box_shadow_style="" background_type="single" gradient_start_color="" gradient_end_color="" gradient_start_position="0" gradient_end_position="100" gradient_type="linear" radial_direction="center center" linear_angle="180" background_color="" background_image="" background_image_id="" background_position="left top" background_repeat="no-repeat" background_blend_mode="none" animation_type="" animation_direction="left" animation_speed="0.3" animation_offset="" filter_type="regular" filter_hue="0" filter_saturation="100" filter_brightness="100" filter_contrast="100" filter_invert="0" filter_sepia="0" filter_opacity="100" filter_blur="0" filter_hue_hover="0" filter_saturation_hover="100" filter_brightness_hover="100" filter_contrast_hover="100" filter_invert_hover="0" filter_sepia_hover="0" filter_opacity_hover="100" filter_blur_hover="0" last="true" border_position="all" type="1_2" first="false"][fusion_button link="https://uproer.com/articles/identify-fix-common-seo-issues/" text_transform="" title="" target="_self" link_attributes="" alignment_medium="" alignment_small="" alignment="right" modal="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" sticky_display="normal,sticky" class="" id="" color="default" button_gradient_top_color="" button_gradient_bottom_color="" button_gradient_top_color_hover="" button_gradient_bottom_color_hover="" accent_color="" accent_hover_color="" type="" bevel_color="" border_width="" border_radius="" border_color="" border_hover_color="" size="" stretch="default" margin_top="" margin_right="" margin_bottom="" margin_left="" icon="fa-arrow-right fas" icon_position="right" icon_divider="no" animation_type="" animation_direction="left" animation_speed="0.3" animation_offset=""]3. Common E-Commerce SEO Issues[/fusion_button][/fusion_builder_column_inner][/fusion_builder_row_inner][fusion_code]PGJyPjwvYnI+[/fusion_code][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
