Ecommerce SEO Services

The first step in our ecommerce SEO services, before we even begin working on optimizing, is to perform a full audit of our client’s site and develop a comprehensive plan. This means our strategy is always based on your unique business’s data and not just a one size fits all approach.

Accessibility – We examine how your clients are currently finding you (or not finding you) on search engines
Indexability – We find out how many of your site pages are currently indexed on search engines (too few or too many) and address any problems.
On-Page Ranking Factors – We look at how well your on-page SEO is currently performing and create a report outlining where to improve and what to change.
Off-Page Ranking Factors – We assess the quality and quantity of the site’s links and develop a plan to build on positive links and remove the negative ones. 
Competitive Analysis – We perform an analysis of the competitors in your niche: What are they doing in terms of SEO and content marketing? How can we ensure you have a more effective strategy to achieve high rankings and improved conversion rates?
Internal linking: We make sure every page links to another within the site to facilitate visitor flow, achieve high SEO value for every page, and maximize conversion. We root out duplicate pages due to CMS or human error, and eliminate duplicate content on product pages using the same text by implementing canonical site elements and other strategies to ensure high-performing SEO optimization

Advantages of an SEO for ecommerce audit:

• dramatically improve on-page SEO
• any subpage can be tested for optimal SEO across the site
• receive pro SEO tips on how to improve your website top to bottom

Although there’s a growing complexity of factors that affect website ranking, when it comes to SEO, content is still king. To succeed you need content that won’t just bring any traffic, but targeted traffic—visitors that will want to buy. That’s why our content optimization services are tailored to providing content optimized for conversion. How do we do this? We research the user intent for each keyword that we employ. In other words, is the user searching for information/researching a subject, or are they looking to buy? This is an essential content marketing strategy for attracting the traffic you’re aiming for and achieving high conversion rates. We create content based on themes developed from our keyword research, this approach tells the search engines that your content is organic and will actually line up with user intent. Our keywords research also includes analysis of the competition to ensure that each of the site’s pages are well positioned for maximum conversion.

The importance of link building to an overall SEO plan cannot be overestimated. Having quality backlinks is one of the key ways that search engines determine your site’s authority and popularity. Our strategy involves only white hat techniques, meaning we won’t spam links around the web, which will only hurt your website reputation and may lead to devastating penalties from Google that could destroy your ranking. We also offer link pruning (we remove backlinks that will have a negative long term effect) and leave you only with quality links that will improve your ranking.

If you’re asking yourself, what’s Schema?, you’re not alone. Though Schema can have remarkable effects on overall search engine ranking, very few people actually know what it is and how to implement it. This is precisely where an innovative SEO agency like Engine Ready can make a difference. Schema is a markup format that we add to a webpage’s content that tells the search engines what is there and how to parse it. In short, it makes the search engine crawler’s task easier and provides more information, which boosts ranking. Pictures and other content from your site will also appear in SERPs meaning higher click-through rates, more clients and revenue. Schema is a collaboration between Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Yandex  meaning it’s also a way to achieve international SEO results.

What we do:

• We assess whether schema is already implemented and if so, what improvements need to be made. If not, we develop an implementation plan
• Once we have double-checked the updated schema markup we will resubmit the site to Google for re-indexing
• Shortly after re-indexing you will see the results in SERPs on the selected keywords and should see higher rankings directly as a result of schema implementation

A key aspect of our content optimization services is the elimination of duplicate content. Any content that is copied from elsewhere on the web or even from other pages within your website will have a negative effect on search engine ranking. Therefore duplicate content is discouraged by the latest SEO practices and any comprehensive content marketing strategy needs to take this into account.

What we do:

• We identify any duplicate content whether caused by human or CMS error
• We create a report of the problems identified
• We implement rel=canonical markup to remove duplicate text
• We also implement 301 redirects if necessary
• We work through the webmaster tools to identify and correct any other errors that may have been missed.

Breadcrumbs are part of the internal link structure of a site (usually displayed at the top of a page) that show the user where the page is in relation to the rest of the site. (eg. HOME > iPhone Accessories > headphones). They can be used for navigating back through the pages and subpages like a trail to follow back home (hence the name). There are 3 types: Location-based breadcrumbs visualize the page location in relation to the site structure. Path-based breadcrumbs visualize the path the user followed to get there. The third type is keyword-optimized breadcrumbs wherein keywords appear within the page names. This is a neat trick when internal linking for SEO but we only recommend doing this if it can be done organically—always prioritize user experience over SEO. Google has also started displaying the breadcrumbs of web pages in the SERPs, which means well-crafted breadcrumbs are another way to attract users to click.

Best Practices for Breadcrumbs: The Engine Ready Way 

• We always prioritize usability over SEO. Breadcrumbs are for user navigation more than they’re for Google
• We never replace the navigation menu with breadcrumbs (the menu allows users to navigate anywhere on the site, breadcrumbs allow them to trace their way back to home)
• We don’t link any page to itself (so the last breadcrumb will never be hyperlinked)
• We always use breadcrumbs consistently (so the user can quickly understand)
• We never use breadcrumbs in <title> tags. This leads to long and untargeted titles.

What we do:

• We assess the current breadcrumb implementation
• We either start from scratch or edit the breadcrumbs both for the user and for SEO (adding keywords where its natural)
• We ensure a consistent use of breadcrumbs throughout the site

One of the ways our content optimization services go above and beyond the standard is that we pay close attention to user generated content. This includes all the comments, reviews, testimonials, mentions on Facebook, Twitter etc.—any user created content that appears on the site or elsewhere in reference to your business. We believe this is a key, and often overlooked, aspect of any content marketing strategy. User generated content affects reputability, brand awareness and SEO (reviews or mentions on third-party sites particularly help SEO).

What we do:

• We identify and analyze user generated content on the site and on other sites
• We ensure all the user generated content on the site has embedded structured data in place: this makes it SEO relevant by telling the search engines what it is

Most of the pages on an ecommerce site are bound to be product pages since every product will have its own unique page. This makes it crucial not to overlook them in your content marketing strategy. These pages are rich in content and links meaning they must be optimized to achieve the best possible SEO ranking. Product pages are also the most common spot where duplicate content is found due to CMS or human error, copy/pasted information, or the same products appearing in multiple categories. And as we’ve discussed above, duplicate content hurts search engine ranking. Our content optimization services include a full analysis and optimization of all product pages. We will ensure that every page has a perfect SEO score.

What we do:

• We check for duplicate products caused by CMS or human errors
• We correct any problems caused by CMS/human errors
• We check for 404 errors and out of stock products and eliminate these pages
• We optimize every product page for SEO using our in-depth keyword research
• We ensure that canonical tags are implemented for any repeating variations of the same product