What does SEO for an online shop involve?

An online shop can be well designed and still hard to find. Shops create many pages, many near-copies of those pages and many chances to confuse a search engine. This guide covers the parts of e-commerce SEO that matter most and the questions to put to whoever builds your shop. It makes no promise about rankings, because nobody can.

Category and product pages do the work

• Category pages answer searches such as "leather boots" or "garden furniture". Give each one a clear heading, a short useful introduction and links to its products.
• Product pages answer searches for a specific item. Each needs its own title, a description written for the product and honest details: size, material, delivery and returns.
• Write for the buyer, not for the supplier. A description copied from the supplier's catalogue appears on many shops. A page that answers real questions is more useful to a buyer and to a search engine.

A clear URL and navigation structure

Use short, readable addresses that follow the shop's structure. Keep the number of clicks from the home page to a product small, and link categories to their products and back. Google explains this in its guides on designing a URL structure for e-commerce sites and on navigation structure.

One product, one address

Colour and size options, filters, sort orders and tracking parameters can create many addresses that show nearly the same content. Decide which address is the main one and tell search engines with a canonical link. Google's guide to consolidating duplicate URLs explains the methods. Filters should help shoppers without producing endless crawlable pages.

Structured data for products

Product structured data can help search engines understand the name, image, price and availability of an item. It must match what the page shows. Follow Google's product structured data guide. Markup does not guarantee a special result in search.

Products that are out of stock or gone

• Temporarily out of stock. Usually keep the page and say so clearly.
• Gone for good. Redirect to the closest alternative or category, or let the page answer "not found". Do not send every old product to the home page.

Reviews

Show only real reviews from real customers. Never write or buy reviews. Keep the review text on the page that the product belongs to.

Several languages or countries

A shop for the UK and France needs more than translated text. Prices, currency, delivery rules, tax display and the words people search for differ. Each version needs its own addresses and the correct language and region links between them. See multilingual websites and choosing an e-commerce platform.

Speed on a phone

Many shoppers browse on a phone. Large images, many scripts and slow checkout pages lose visitors. See website speed.

Questions to ask whoever builds your shop

• How are category, product and filter addresses created, and which one is the main address?
• Can I edit the title, description and text of every product and category?
• How are variants, filters and sort orders handled so they do not create duplicate pages?
• Is product structured data included, and does it match the page?
• What happens to the address of a product that I remove?
• How are languages and countries kept apart?

Sources and further reading

• Google Search Central: e-commerce guides
• Google Search Central: product structured data

How DMC Kreatif handles it

We plan the category and product structure, the addresses and the language versions before we build the shop, and we test a complete order on a phone first. We do not promise rankings or sales. Active clients keep a direct line for changes and new products. Read about our e-commerce service, then ask for a quote. Within 48 h you get a concrete approach, a realistic timeline and a clear quote.