11 technical SEO tips for e-commerce

You have great content on your site and have followed all the tips regarding SEO, yet you still don't have good results. This is because SEO advice often does not discuss the technical side of SEO. In this article, you can find our tips to get your technical SEO on point and see more results. You can also find a small technical SEO checklist at the bottom of the article.

Technical SEO is the part of SEO that focuses on the backend of your website. By applying technical SEO to your website, you make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your website.

Search engines will also reward you with a better ranking in search results when your website meets their expectations. Now that we know what technical SEO is, it's time to look at what we can improve.

It is obviously important that search engines can find your Web site. You can check if your Web site is present on Google by using the site operator. For example, if you enter “site:www.phpro.be” on Google, you will get all indexed pages returned for PHPro.

If there are no results for your website, you can submit your URL to Google yourself. Of course, you can also do this with other search engines such as Bing.

The robots.txt file indicates which pages a search engine should not index. Certain pages such as a shopping cart or check-out pages should not be indexed because it is not relevant to a search engine and is different for each user.

You also don't want to index pages with parameters because this leads to many pages with similar content. An example is product pages with multiple variations that just add parameters to the URL. Here it is better to have the original product indexed and not the variations.

Also check that robots.txt does not block pages you want indexed. This can prevent search engines from finding an important part of your Web site.

A sitemap shows the most important pages on your Web site. A search engine will look at this sitemap to see where each page can be found. It is also important that pages in robots.txt do not appear in the sitemap, as you do not want these pages indexed.

A sitemap can also contain other useful information about each page such as:

• When a page was modified
• What priority a page has on the website
• How often a page is updated

The sitemap should be present on your website, but you can also submit it to the search engines yourself.

You ensure a secure connection on your website by using https. For this, you need an SSL certificate that will encrypt all traffic. With http, traffic is not encrypted and anyone can just intercept it.

You can find a more info regarding https in cybersecurity tips for e-commerce. Besides security, a website URL with https will also have a positive effect on your ranking in search results. Since 2014, https has been one of the factors Google uses to rank a website in search results.

In addition to better placement in search results, https also creates more trust in your website among your online visitors.

In 2015, Google announced that they were going to rank websites that are responsive and mobile friendly better in their search engine. With the increasing amount of mobile traffic, this is a logical evolution in the search engine algorithm.

There are several tools that scan your website and check if they are mobile friendly. Some examples are

• Google's Mobile-Friendly Test
• HubSpot's Website Grader
• Bing's Mobile Friendliness Test Tool
• GTMetrix

The speed of your Web site is a factor that affects your place in search results. So it is important to check how well your pages score on speed. There are several tools available that give your site a score and also give suggestions on possible adjustments.

Some of these tools are:

• Google's PageSpeed Insights
• DareBoost
• Pingdom

An e-commerce Web site often has a lot of images. Many heavy high-res images slow down your site tremendously. Fortunately, you can optimize these images for speed.

Here are some points to check for the images on your Web site:

• Upload your images in the size in which you display them
• Images have the correct file type (JPEG for photos, PNG for digital illustrations and vectors).
• Add descriptive alt tags to your images
• Limit the file size of images (Max. 100 to 200kb) You do this by compressing images. You can do this with tools such as Kraken.io and JPEG optimizer.

If your website has 404 pages it means that these pages do not exist and are linked to. This could be because of links that are on your own website or because the page was once indexed by Google, but now no longer exists. A link to a non-existent page is also called a broken link.

When a search engine encounters a 404 page during a crawl, it negatively impacts your placement. It's best to replace a 404 page with a 301 redirect to a relevant page.

Finding 404 pages and broken links can be difficult, so you can use the following tools to detect them

• ScreamingFrog
• SEMRush
• Google Search Console under Crawl Errors à “Not Found”.

When a page disappears permanently, it is important to use the 301 code (permanently moved). A 301 code causes a search engine to pass the value* of the page to the new page if it is relevant to the original.

If you use a 302 or 307 code, it is considered a temporary move. A search engine will not immediately transfer the SEO value of the page to the new page because this is a temporary adjustment.

After a longer period, the value will still be transferred to the new page, but it takes longer than with a 301. Therefore, it is better to use a 301 code immediately if a page is permanently moved.

Also note that each page has only one redirect. A search engine does not know which redirect to follow when several are present, so it is important that each page has only one.

Duplicate or very similar pages on your website can have a negative impact on SEO. That's why it's important to use canonicals.

A canonical tag indicates that an original version of the page exists. A search engine will only index one page with similar or identical content, so you want the correct page indexed.

Because the canonical indicates the original version, the search engine can index the correct page. To determine placement, the search engine also includes the information on the other pages in its algorithm.

Optimizing your code does not directly impact your SEO, but it does impact your speed. While building your website, some CSS or javascript code may have been written but not used in the final product. Don't forget to remove this unused code.

Your CSS and javascript can also be minified. This removes all unnecessary characters such as spaces and enters from the code to create a smaller file. This ensures that a smaller file has to be loaded by the user and thus the website will load faster.

1. Website is indexed?
2. Robots.txt is completed?
3. Sitemap is present?
4. https is being used?
5. Website is responsive and mobile friendly?
6. Images have the correct format?
7. Images have the correct file type (.jpg, .png)?
8. Alt tags of images are filled in and descriptive?
9. File size of images are limited (Max. 100 to 200kb)?
10. No 404 pages and links on website?
11. Correct 3xx codes used?
12. Avoid redirection loops?
13. Canonicals present?
14. Unused CSS removed?
15. CSS is minified?
16. Javascript is minified?
17. Use Hreflang for language and regions?

Following and implementing these tips may seem like a lot of work, but it will make your website perform better. If you take the time to apply technical SEO now, you will definitely reap the benefits in future search results. In fact, better rankings in search results will lead more organic traffic to your website. Why do you want this? First, it is free traffic and second, it is traffic that is interested in your offerings. Such traffic will lead to more customers and more sales.