Reference
What is E-commerce SEO?
E-commerce SEO is search optimisation for online stores. It differs from ordinary SEO in three ways: faceted navigation creates enormous duplication, product data must match its markup exactly, and out-of-stock handling is a decision with ranking consequences.
Also called: online store SEO · product SEO
The three problems unique to stores
- Faceted navigation, which multiplies URLs into the thousands if left crawlable
- Product markup that must match the visible price and availability at all times
- Products that go out of stock or get discontinued, each needing a deliberate decision
Where the traffic actually is
Category pages usually carry more organic sessions than the home page, and long-tail product queries convert best. Optimising the home page is the instinct and the least valuable use of the effort.
The content problem
Publishing the manufacturer description gives a search engine no reason to prefer your page over the two hundred identical ones. Rewriting the descriptions for the products that actually sell is the highest-return content work in most stores.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. The e-commerce SEO checklist, in the order the checks actually matter covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.