With an influx of online retailers taking to the digital stage, standing out in the sea of search engine results has become both imperative and significantly more challenging for eCommerce businesses. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play here. However, implementing SEO for ecommerce stores comes with its own set of challenges. Let’s delve into some of the major ones.
High Competition For Popular Keywords
Perhaps the biggest challenge for online stores is the highly competitive environment. Prominent keywords related to popular products have immense competition from big names in the industry. As a result, online stores often find it challenging to rank well for these keywords.
Managing Product Variations
Product variations such as size, color, or type add to the complexity of eCommerce SEO. Every product variation can technically be its page with a unique URL, which can lead to issues like duplicate content, weak product descriptions, and difficulties in managing so many pages.
Frequent Changes In Product Listings
Online stores often deal seasonally with new product additions, old product removals, or out-of-stock items. These changes can cause problems with existing SEO tactics. Broken links from discontinued products or outdated information can negatively impact your site’s SEO.
Duplicate Content
Many online stores sell products that multiple other sites might also offer. Using the standard product descriptions provided by manufacturers can result in your site featuring the same content as countless others, which search engines flag as duplicate content, hurting your site’s SEO value.
Creating Unique Content for Thousands of Products
For eCommerce sites that boast a broad catalog of products, creating unique product descriptions, titles, and metadata for each item can be a daunting task. However, having unique content is crucial for good SEO performance.
User-Generated Content
Ecommerce sites often have user-generated content like product reviews. While these reviews can boost your SEO as they keep your site updated with fresh content, managing spam or low-quality reviews can be challenging.
Mobile Optimization
More consumers are shopping on their mobile devices than ever before. Ensuring your eCommerce site is mobile-friendly is crucial, but it’s often challenging to maintain fast page-loading speeds and a user-friendly interface on a small device.
Website Structure
Your website needs to be structured logically to be user-friendly and SEO-friendly. However, creating and maintaining a clear structure with easy navigation becomes challenging as your product base expands. And despite these challenges, ecommerce stores should not be disheartened.
By acknowledging these obstacles and crafting a meticulous SEO strategy, eCommerce owners can tackle them head-on. SEO experts recommend focusing on long-tail keyword strategies, fresh, unique content creation, and efficient site structure to combat these issues effectively.