7 e-commerce Web design & dEVELOPMENT TIPS FOR BETTER seo results!
Nothing is worse than having to tell an owner that all of those dollars spent on their new snazzy design and functionality is really bad for SEO traffic…
It’s like tripping over the aux chord at a party and cutting of all the music.
Serious party foul.
But sometimes you just have deliver some bad news and fast:
“You need to fix your expensive site and the price will be…”
Nobody want’s a Corvette with bad transmission.
Fortunately, if you are designing a site and want incorporate SEO (you know bake it in and charge more), then these are critical SEO tips to help e-commerce web designers.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling blue widgets or creating a lead generation workhorse these are some killer real-world SEO tips to bake into your site design and development.
#1 Mobile-friendly RESPONSIVE DESIGN
It’s 2018 and many e-commerce sites still have terrible mobile experiences. This is like quick sand for any site that is trying to do business over the internet in 2018 and beyond.
People are using their phones to research, review, register, and buy.
Depending on your client’s industry, they might have users that engage on mobile and are forced to purchase on desktop because the site doesn’t have a good mobile checkout experience.
At the bare minimum, it’s critical to have a good mobile experience for the future online transaction. If not your client’s site is a dinosaur asking for extinction as more users get comfortable mobile payment systems, in-app purchases, Venmo, Paypal etc.
#2 site speed is huge
If your client’s web page loads slow on desktop, image how slow it loads on mobile. Imagine a user trying to navigate your client’s site and comparing two or more items on your site and they both load slow.
Now image your client’s competitor sells the same thing, but has a faster site.
Why would a customer want to buy if the website makes it difficult?
Imagine this at scale.
Compress images, limit use of background images, use gradients, decent hosting and caching.
This should get you started on the right foot. There’s plenty of other optimization you can do with your CSS but tips listed above should help out immensely.
#3 static urls, static urls
“Code Blue! I need 3 cc’s of URLs – stat” – ER TV Show (Client Website Edit)
Use static urls where it’s appropriate and makes the most sense.
A lot of time developers create the system for creating content dynamically and don’t think about the overall SEO impact to the site.
Dynamic content is fine, but dynamic urls could severely hinder SEO efforts.
If the developer has enough foresight to 301 old urls to new urls, you still have a problem in which you lose url age and some of the link equity as it passes through the 301.
If this process continues over time, then you will have a multiple redirects and 301s each time a new version of the content is created. This is terrible practice trying to rank for evergreen keywords.
It’s better to definitely decide what urls can be static and whether the content can be dynamic instead of url.
#4 heading tags in the right places
This is really simple. Place the header tag in the appropriate places.
Allow for the H1 to look different from the rest of the heading tags.
Use the range of heading tags all the way down to h4 in order of importance.
Don’t use multiple H1 tags.
Simple stuff don’t mess it up.
#5 dynamic sitemap
When your client has new content, ideally their xml sitemap should update automatically with that new content.
This is so that the search engine spiders can crawl the new urls.
It’s may be best to create both an xml and and html sitemap.
The html sitemap doesn’t have to be as detailed or as in depth as the xml sitemap, but it should allow for easy crawlability to key critical pages.
#6 interlinking strategy
Depending on the type of e-commerce site your client has there needs to be some serious SEO thought around interlinking.
Category pages may need link to subcategory pages. Product Pages may need to link to related products or even back to the category pages.
Blogs, Press Releases, FAQs and product pages may need to crosslink.
Eitherway making it easier for the site to interlink is good for crawlability, navigation, and SEO
#7 design for content under the fold TOO
Many e-commerce site design miss this critical opportunity in the page design and layout.
They focus on making above the fold and make everything look pretty. However, depending on the target keyword, longer content maybe necessary and often, a patch work job is done trying to stuff content below the fold while not impacting conversions.
There huge opportunity to optimize the design and layout of content below the fold with more SEO in mind.
Examples maybe H3s H4 usage, column usage, accordions etc.
Be mindful of the wealth of SEO opportunity below the fold and just make sure it’s not ugly.
Now you know 7 different e-commerce web design and development tips to enhance your SEO.
It doesn’t hurt to have an experienced e-commerce SEO expert, review your design in order to find more opportunity to drive more SEO traffic.
If you are in a pinch or need SEO advice, fill out the contact form below and let’s chat.
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