Having a well-designed online store with great products and a smooth checkout is important, but it won’t matter much if people can’t find it. One of the biggest reasons eCommerce websites struggle with visibility is because of overlooked technical SEO issues. When search engines have trouble crawling your site, it can hurt your rankings. In this post, we’ll go over some of the most common technical SEO problems in eCommerce and what you can do to avoid them.
1. Poorly Structured Online Store Architecture
A poorly structured online store refers to a website with an unclear, inefficient, or confusing hierarchy of pages. It can be difficult for both users and search engines to navigate, which negatively impacts search engine crawling, indexing, and user experience.
Search engines like Google use the site’s internal structure to understand its content. If your pages aren’t logically organized or accessible, search engines might miss important content.
Recommended Actions:
- Logical Hierarchy: Ensure that your eCommerce site has a clear hierarchy, such as homepage → categories → subcategories → product pages.
- Internal Linking: Use internal links to connect pages and help search engines discover your content more efficiently.
- Breadcrumb Navigation: Implement breadcrumbs so users and search engines can easily navigate between categories and product pages.
2. Ignoring Mobile Optimization
Mobile optimization refers to making your website responsive and user-friendly on mobile devices. Ignoring this can result in a poor experience for users accessing your site from smartphones or tablets.
Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking and indexing. If your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices, it can hurt your rankings and lead to a higher bounce rate from frustrated visitors.
Recommended Actions:
- Responsive Design: Ensure your site is designed to adjust properly to different screen sizes.
- Mobile-Friendly Tests: Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool to check your site’s compatibility.
- Fast Load Times: Mobile users often have slower internet connections, so optimize images and minimize unnecessary scripts.
3. Faceted Navigation Causing Crawl Issues
Faceted navigation refers to filters on product category pages that allow users to refine their search (e.g., color, size, price). These filters often create multiple URL variations for the same product, which can lead to crawl issues and duplicate content problems.
If not handled properly, faceted navigation can generate thousands of unnecessary URL variations, wasting crawl budget and creating duplicate content that dilutes the value of your pages. This affects both user experience and SEO.
Example
You’re shopping for shoes on a website.
You go to the “Running Shoes” category page. Then you filter by:
- Color: Black
- Size: 10
- Brand: Nike
Now, the URL changes from:
example.com/running-shoes
to something like:
example.com/running-shoes?color=black&size=10&brand=nike
Recommended Actions:
- Canonical Tags: Use canonical tags to consolidate similar pages into a single version to avoid duplicate content.
- robots.txt: Block unnecessary parameters from being crawled (e.g., filter-based URLs).
- AJAX Filtering: Where possible, use AJAX-based filters that don’t create new URLs, making it easier for search engines to crawl only the essential pages.
4. Slow Page Speed
Page speed refers to how quickly your website loads for visitors. A slow-loading site can deter users and impact SEO because search engines like Google use page speed as a ranking factor.
Slow loading times can negatively affect both user experience and search engine rankings. Users expect fast load times, and Google prioritizes faster websites in search results.
Recommended Actions:
- Image Optimization: Compress large images to reduce file sizes without losing quality.
- Minify Code: Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce page load time.
- Use Caching: Set up caching to reduce server load and improve page load speed for returning users.
- Content Delivery Network (CDN): Use a CDN to serve content from servers closest to the user, speeding up load times.
5. Improper Canonicalization
Canonicalization refers to the process of specifying (to the search engine) the preferred version of a page to avoid duplicate content. Without proper canonicalization, search engines might index duplicate pages or incorrectly treat different versions of the same page as separate entities.
If you have multiple versions of the same product (e.g., with different filters, sizes, or colors), search engines may get confused about which one to rank. This can split your link equity across multiple pages and hurt your SEO.
Recommended Actions:
- Canonical Tags: Always use <link rel="canonical"> to indicate the preferred version of a page, especially for products with variations.
- Avoid Duplicates: If possible, limit the number of variations indexed by using “noindex” for filtered pages.
6. Misconfigured Robots.txt File
The robots.txt file tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of your site to crawl and which to avoid. A misconfigured robots.txt file can accidentally block search engines from crawling important pages or resources.
If important pages are blocked in the robots.txt file (e.g., product pages or category pages), search engines won’t be able to index them, making them invisible in search results.
Recommended Actions:
- Audit robots.txt: Regularly check your robots.txt file to ensure critical pages aren’t blocked.
- Allow Key Pages: Ensure that important product and category pages are accessible to crawlers.
7. Not Using hreflang Tags for International Stores
Hreflang tags are HTML attributes that help search engines understand the language and regional targeting of your web pages. If you have multiple versions of your site for different countries or languages, missing or incorrect hreflang tags can lead to content misinterpretation.
Without hreflang tags, search engines may serve the wrong version of your content to users in different regions, which can negatively affect user experience and rankings in different countries.
Recommended Actions:
- Implement hreflang Tags: Use hreflang tags to specify the language and region for each page.
Example:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="https://example.com/us/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="https://example.com/uk/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-fr" href="https://example.com/fr/" />
- XML Sitemaps: Include hreflang tags in your XML sitemap to assist with proper indexing.
8. JavaScript-Only Product Loading
JavaScript-based loading means that critical content (such as product details) is loaded dynamically after the page is loaded. If search engines can’t render or read this content, it won’t be indexed.
If your product pages or key content are loaded exclusively through JavaScript, search engines might not be able to crawl and index that content, leading to missing product pages in search results.
Recommended Actions:
- Server-Side Rendering (SSR): Implement SSR or dynamic rendering to ensure search engines can index JavaScript-rendered content.
9. Ignoring Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are a group of performance indicators that track the user experience of a website. They include LCP, FID, and CLS.
Core Web Vitals are used by Google as ranking signals. If your site doesn’t meet the thresholds for these metrics, you may see a drop in rankings. Additionally, poor Core Web Vitals lead to a frustrating user experience, increasing bounce rates and decreasing conversions.
Recommended Actions:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): Enhance the load speed by compressing images and decreasing server response time.
- FID (First Input Delay): Minimize JavaScript time to execute so that the page becomes interactive as soon as possible.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Prevent sudden shifts by defining size attributes for images and videos.
10. Not Using XML Sitemaps Effectively
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs of your website that you want search engines to crawl and index. It helps search engines understand your site's structure and find all important pages, especially for large eCommerce stores with thousands of product URLs.
If your XML sitemap is missing, incomplete, or not regularly updated, search engines may miss key pages like new products, categories, or blog posts. This can limit your visibility in search results and delay the indexing of important content.
Recommended Actions:
- Generate a Dynamic Sitemap: Use an automated system (such as your CMS or an SEO plugin) to generate a sitemap that updates whenever you add or remove pages.
- Include Only Indexable URLs: Ensure that only canonical, non-duplicate, and indexable URLs are included — exclude “noindex” pages, filtered variants, or 404s.
- Split Large Sitemaps: If your site has thousands of URLs, break them into multiple sitemaps (e.g., /sitemap-products.xml, /sitemap-categories.xml, etc.) and use a sitemap index file to manage them.
- Submit to Google Search Console: Always submit your sitemap(s) through Search Console to help Google discover your content faster and identify any errors.
- Set Priority and Crawl Frequency: Assign priority values (e.g., homepage = high, contact page = low) and set appropriate crawl frequencies (e.g., homepage = daily, blog = weekly) to help search engines understand which pages matter most and how often they change.
Fixing these technical SEO errors is essential to having your eCommerce website rank well on search, offer an excellent user experience, and achieve the best conversions. Always check your website for these issues and use best practices to get your technical health in shape.