Search Candy

Author: Colin McDermott

  • Best Ecommerce Platforms

    Best Ecommerce Platforms

    Compare the best ecommerce platforms by a range of metrics and categories, from SEO, to pricing and ease of use.

    Unlike pretty much every single other article on the internet comparing ecommerce platforms, this guide has no affiliate links, and is – we hope – as unbiased as possible.

    Choosing a platform

    Choosing the right ecommerce platform is something to consider very carefully.

    Once you have your site set up and products added, changing platforms isn’t always easy: migrations and site redesigns will often lead to SEO issues and lost traffic.

    So what should you look for in an ecommerce platform? The answer to this question depends quite a lot on your needs, and level of technical resources.

    Some of the main things to consider when choosing an ecommerce platform include:

    • Security
    • Pricing and upgrades
    • Features
    • Ease of use
    • Plugins and extensions
    • Developers
    • Support
    • SEO
    • Growth and scalability
    • Performance

    The best and most popular ecommerce platforms usually have a wide feature set and an eco-system of agencies and freelance web developers that can help you fix problems and implement features on your website.

    The biggest ecommerce systems often have a plugin/app store where you can download and install plugins, to extend and improve the functionality of the platform.

    Some platforms can be more flexible and more powerful than others, but you should look into how good developer support is if you don’t have the in-house resources already to take care of development.

    Whether you are starting your first ecommerce store or are already running a large ecommerce site, we have a range of options to cover you.

    Hosted / SaaS Ecommerce Platforms

    Hosted or SaaS (software-as-a-service) ecommerce platforms handle the hosting for you, which takes away a lot of the work of server management and software upgrades.

    This can be great for small businesses and people that don’t have the financial or technical resources to invest in development.

    Below we list some of the best hosted ecommerce platforms available to companies in the UK.

    Shopify

    Shopify is the most popular hosted SaaS ecommerce platforms in the world in 2022 and has a full eco-system of plugins and developers that can help you build your store.

    Extend the functionality of your e-commerce store with access to thousands of free and paid plugins and bespoke services designed specially for Shopify.

    Shopify is a good choice for small and medium sized ecommerce operations, and for larger sites there is Shopify Plus.

    Out of the box you can quickly set up an ecommerce store that will function well – but make sure to customise your store unless you want people to think it looks generic and untrustworthy.

    Pricing

    Shopify’s pricing starts at £24 per month for a basic site, rising to £69 and £259 for more features.

    BigCommerce

    BigCommerce is a hosted ecommerce platforms for all sizes of businesses from small to large.

    With BigCommerce you can set up a site in minutes and make use of the offered 15 day free trial in case you change your mind.

    BigCommerce has an app marketplace with a range of different apps to help extend your stores features.

    For large high performance ecommerce sites, with BigCommerce you can also make use of headless ecommerce using their APIs.

    Pricing

    BigCommerce pricing starts at $29.95 for the cheapest package, increasing to $79.95 and $299.95 for the larger packages.

    Wix

    Wix could be a good option for beginners with no web design experience and a small budget.

    The Wix platform has a decent range of apps in their marketplace and a lot of different drag-and-drop features that you can use to build out your site, including ecommerce functionality.

    However the functionality of the Wix platform is limited compared to some of the competitors and the eco-system is not as big.

    Pricing

    Wix’s pricing is below that of the main competitors, with prices for the business/ecommerce packages starting at £13 a month, going up to £22 per month for more features.

    Squarespace

    Squarespace is another good platform for beginners that can help you to build a beautiful ecommerce store.

    Often used by creatives and people who want to design things their own way, Squarespace is a good platform for people who want to set up a simple ecommerce store in the cloud.

    Again however the platform does not have as many advanced features and upgrades available as the best competitors.

    Pricing

    Squarespace’s ecommerce pricing starts at £15 per month for a pared down basic offering, rising to £20 and £30 per month for more fully featured offerings.

    Best Overall SaaS Ecommerce Platform

    Shopify is without a doubt the best hosted ecommerce platform available in our opinion, and according to many other ecommerce experts.

    The combination of ease of use with the availability of powerful upgrades and an eco-system of different apps makes Shopify hard to beat for small, medium sized, and even large businesses with Shopify Plus.

    Self Hosted Ecommerce Platforms

    Self hosted ecommerce platforms involve managing your own hosting infrastructure and software installations.

    The benefit of self hosted is you own your own infrastructure so can upgrade and downgrade as you decide, and have more control overall – which can potentially be more cost effective as well as flexible compared to a hosted solution on someone else’s hardware.

    Self hosted (and ideally open source) platforms generally speaking also provide more flexibility at the software level – allowing you to make customisations to themes and code as needed, something that is rarely possible with hosted solutions.

    WooCommerce

    WooCommerce is the most widely used self hosted ecommerce platform in the world as of 2022.

    Highly flexible and able to make use of the rich and wide WordPress open-source infrastructure, WooCommerce has access to a huge range of both free and paid plugins to extend functionality.

    There are a huge number of talented WooCommerce developers and agencies available to help you build and manage your WooCommerce site.

    SEO functionality for WooCommerce can be tuned to be excellent and there are a wide range of plugins to help you sort out the SEO basics.

    Magento (Adobe Commerce)

    Magento, or Adobe Commerce as it is now known as, is a self hosted ecommerce platform that has long been a popular choice for a range of mid to large sized ecommerce sites.

    Magento is highly flexible and customisable and has add-ons available for many different functionalities.

    Development can be very expensive and good Magento developers can be hard to find.

    Although add-ons are available and with good theme development many SEO functionalities can be provided, the amount of and quality of reliable SEO plugins to extend Magento are just not as good when compared to WooCommerce which can utilise WordPress plugins.

    Magento is far from being an easy to use platform, so is not suitable for beginners or operations with low or no technical resources.

    Best Overall Self Hosted Ecommerce Platform

    WooCommerce is our recommendation for the best self-hosted ecommerce platform, though Magento is also an excellent choice.

    Best Ecommerce Platforms for SEO

    Many e-commerce platforms can have outdated or sub-standard SEO features out of the box – which means they can require a heavy investment and lots of customisation to get them to the same level as other more mature e-commerce platforms such as WooCommerce or Shopify Plus will provide.

    The best ecommerce platform for SEO depends a little on the resources and skill level you have available.

    If you do not have access to an SEO professional who can help you with the best ecommerce SEO setup, a hosted ecommerce platform may be the best – such as Shopify or BigCommerce.

    However if you do have the ability or resources to hire someone to optimise your site, WooCommerce is our recommendation for the best ecommerce platform for SEO – due to how flexible, powerful, and easy to customise it is compared to hosted alternatives.

    If we had to choose one single platform to call the best for SEO, it would be WooCommerce.

    Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business

    Not all small businesses have the same needs, however generally factors like pricing, ease-of-use, as well as a wide plugin and developer ecosystem are things to look out for.

    Shopify is a great recommendation for any small ecommerce business. Shopify provide access to everything a small site needs to get started, and more.

    WooCommerce is another excellent option for smaller ecommerce businesses. It can require a little bit more technical work to get started than hosted alternatives like Shopify – but offers access to huge ecosystem and number of ecommerce features, plugins and more.

    Best Ecommerce Platforms for Enterprise

    Enterprise ecommerce is a different beast to everything else. Many top ecommerce sites use a combination of different platforms and integrations – often custom built, and headless ecommerce is becoming the gold-standard for site infrastructure.

    The selection process for choosing ecommerce platforms at enterprise level can be complex – more than we can hope to cover in one article.

    Shopify Plus is one popular choice for enterprise level headless ecommerce.

    Magento/Adobe Commerce is another popular choice at enterprise level.

    Headless ecommerce can come with SEO challenges – it is important that Google and other search engines are able to render your site.

    We hope this ecommerce SEO guide was useful. For more ecommerce content check the related article links below or subscribe on Twitter @SearchCandy.

  • Google’s Helpful Content Update & Ecommerce

    Google’s Helpful Content Update & Ecommerce

    Google announced this week the upcoming launch of what they have named the Helpful Content Update.

    If you own or manage the SEO for an ecommerce website, you might be wondering how this update could affect you.

    Read on for our helpful content update ecommerce assessment and predictions, as well as some considerations for how to move forward over the next few weeks as the update rolls out.

    Update: the Google Helpful Content Update started rolling out today, the 25th August 2022 – as confirmed by the Google list of search ranking updates.

    First, a little context:

    Why is the Helpful Content Update Needed?

    If you have been working in the SEO community and active on Twitter, you are probably aware of a generation of new social media influencers claiming to have achieved SEO success using spam techniques such as bulk content production with AI writing software, often posted to expired and repurchased authoritative domains.

    Product searches in Google can often lead to low quality affiliate focused content sites with hundreds of links to Amazon; sites with questionable review methodologies and standards.

    Google’s ad-focused business model is supported by its ability to reliably surface high quality spam-free organic search results to users, so Google being dominated by lower quality results that do not provide a satisfactory experience would be a major problem – something Google’s search quality teams will absolutely want to prevent by any means necessary.

    Earlier this year Google launched the fourth iteration of their Product Reviews Update – a set of algorithm updates first launched in April 2021 which are designed to increase search visibility of the most helpful product reviews.

    Google Search is always working to show the most useful and helpful information possible, through testing, experimenting, and review processes. From this, we know people appreciate product reviews that share in-depth research, rather than thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products.

    The Helpful Content Update can be seen in the context of Google’s ongoing work to improve search results in an era where easy access to AI writing tools has led to content spam reaching levels never seen before on the web.

    What is the Helpful Content Update?

    The Helpful Content Update is an algorithm update from Google designed to improve search results for users by showing higher quality content.

    The update makes use of a machine learning powered classifier process that provides a new site-wide signal which Google can use for ranking web pages.

    The classifier identifies content that may have low value or is unhelpful to users conducting the search.

    According to Google the Helpful Content Update processes run automatically and continuously, able to classify and apply the signal to new websites and content.

    How will the Helpful Content Update affect Ecommerce SEO?

    This ranking update will help make sure that unoriginal, low quality content doesn’t rank highly in Search, and our testing has found it will especially improve results related to online education, as well as arts and entertainment, shopping and tech-related content.

    More content by people, for people in Search

    As per Google’s blogpost – quoted above with emphasis added, ecommerce is one area where the search giant has tested the Helpful Content Update and found that it was beneficial to search experience for users.

    Content quality at scale has always been a problem for ecommerce SEO.

    Lots of products and product variations, short and non-existent product descriptions, and multiple sites reusing manufacturer product descriptions have been just some of the issues that have given ecommerce SEO consultants headaches.

    Equally this update could be an opportunity for brands that have invested heavily in high quality and helpful site content to reap the rewards of their previous hard work and investments.

    Only time will tell at this stage, as we are still only guessing at how significant the impact of the update may actually be.

    What should I do next? How can we check if our content is helpful enough?

    Assess & monitor impact

    As the update rolls out starting the week beginning the 22nd August, it would be sensible to assess and monitor the impact of the update on your ecommerce store.

    Have products, categories, or any other types of content been impacted?

    What systems are available to make a reliable assessment?

    Content auditing process

    A content auditing process could be a sensible move for brands that want to check existing content on the site.

    Google have provided a list of questions you can ask to make an initial assessment.

    External auditing and user satisfaction testing could plug the gaps if you lack the resources internally.

    Content production guidelines & training

    If the Helpful Content Update hits your ecommerce store’s SEO significantly, or you feel like this could be a good opportunity to improve the quality of your content moving forward – activities like producing a set of content production guidelines and training writers may yield results.

    2022 and 2023 Additional Helpful Content Updates

    Google have so far released two additional Helpful Content Updates.

    In December 2022 Google released an updated classifier for the Helpful Content Update.

    Then in September 2023 Google announced another iteration of the Helpful Content Update, which started on the 14th, and finished rolling out around the 28th of September.

  • Full Content RSS feeds no longer needed for Google News

    Full Content RSS feeds no longer needed for Google News

    Last year Google announced they were making changes to how they display and render articles, and as part of this they would no longer be using full RSS feed content to populate articles on Google News.

    We recently expanded the frequency that we link to non-AMP web content (i.e. your web pages) across several surfaces, including the Google News app, as part of the page experience update. As a result of this change, we will no longer directly render article text provided in RSS and Atom feeds in the Google News app.

    Simplifying content management in Google News

    However there was no update made to any of the documentation with regards to whether or not Google News publishers still needed to submit full RSS feeds in Publisher Center.

    In fact, the documentation still explicitly states that for an RSS feed to meet Google News specifications, it must contain the full article contents and associated media.

    For readers to fully engage with your content, provide full articles and media assets. Set up your feed properly to prevent errors, failed approvals or removals.

    Google News Technical feed requirements

    As part of my consultancy work for a news client we reached out to our Google contact, and after some time received confirmation back from Google News that no, full RSS feeds are no longer needed.

    Google confirmed that having entire articles (HTML, images and all) inside RSS feeds is no longer required since web-pages have started to be shown in Google News, however they also directed us to the requirements in the ‘Article content and markup’ section of docs found here.

    This section states that although Google News no longer displays content from full feeds, other Google products such as Google Assistant’s text-to-speech News service may still do so.

    But let’s stop for a second. Before anyone goes out and without doing any research switches to standard partial feeds – it is vitally important to note the second half of the statement, and to bear in mind that just because Google News don’t need the full-fat RSS feed with the entire article’s content and HTML, it doesn’t mean it is sensible to simply switch to a partial RSS feed.

    There are still numerous essential elements that would be missing if a publisher switched to using just a normal partial RSS feed, such as you would find in WordPress.

  • Google Launch Retail Search Service for Ecommerce

    Google Launch Retail Search Service for Ecommerce

    A user-friendly and efficient onsite search process is vital for ecommerce platforms. Users that are unable to quickly and easily find the product they are looking for may abandon their search.

    Most ecommerce platforms have their own built-in search capabilities, however more companies are starting to invest heavily in their product search experience – whether by improving existing technology stacks or utilising third-party ecommerce discovery platforms and Search-as-a-Service.

    Google search study stats
    Google Cloud for Retail: Why search abandonment is the metric that matters (source)

    Retail Search

    With the mission of helping shoppers find more relevant results in onsite search and mobile apps, Google have this month announced a retail discovery service for ecommerce platforms called Retail Search, which is integrated with and offered by Google Cloud Platform.

    The new services are designed to enable retailers to provide Google-quality search results to potential customers, increasing conversions and reduce search abandonment.

    Google Retail Search banner

    According to the Google Cloud product page for Retail Search, the benefits of using Google’s discovery solutions include (emphasis added):

    • Reduce search abandonment by leveraging Google-quality search capabilities
    • Enhance shopping experience by making it easier to search for products with an image
    • Improve conversion and order value by personalizing the shopping experience

    Retail Search is the newest feature in Google Cloud’s Product Discovery Solutions, a suite of solutions aimed at improving retail operational efficiency, streamlining digital shopping experiences, and addressing changing customer preferences.

    Search Intent

    Standard onsite ecommerce search engines often use simple keyword based search and ranking algorithms, potentially resulting in long lists of similar products, or even just variations of the same product.

    Assessing complex and long-tail queries can be complicated – a problem that Google have a lot of expertise at solving.

    One of the key components of Retail Search is the ability to assess and provide customised results based on user intent, making use of technologies such as machine learning and AI.

    When a user initially hits the site and no information is known about them, this is known as a ‘cold start’.

    As users interact with an ecommerce site or app a personalisation profile can be built via the Retail API which allows Google to provide more relevant customised results based on user intent.

    Using Google’s Recommendations AI retailers can train and tune machine learning models to provide intelligent product suggestions to customers.

    Each recommendation served in real-time time, based on a user’s behaviour like views, clicks and searches.

    Image search

    Consumers expectations for what a top-level ecommerce platform’s onsite search capabilities should be are increasing.

    Ikea image search
    Ikea image search

    Both for users with mobile phones – potentially out shopping or browsing a magazine; and for desktop users at a computer or laptop: image search functionality can be a useful tool to quickly find a particular product.

    Vision Product Search from Google Cloud Platform uses machine learning powered object recognition to allow ecommerce sites and apps to provide product recommendations of similar and complimentary items.

    Retail API

    Both Recommendations AI and Retail Search use the Retail API.

    According to Google it usually takes a number of weeks to implement the Retail API, depending on the amount of data to be ingested.

    Retail Search is presently accessible as a private release to Google Cloud clients, which means you must contact a Google Cloud representative to learn more and enable the service.

  • Ecommerce Business Models & Types of Ecommerce SEO

    Ecommerce Business Models & Types of Ecommerce SEO

    The deeper you dig into ecommerce the more opportunities and ways you will discover there are to optimise for SEO.

    In this article we take a look at some of the different types of ecommerce business models and sub-types of ecommerce SEO.

    Ecommerce Business Models

    Some sites can sell to both businesses and consumers, and there can be crossover between different markets and business types.

    However there are typically three main ecommerce business models:

    Business modelTypical process
    B2BBusiness 🠒 Business
    B2CManufacturer 🠒 Distributor 🠒 Retailer 🠒 Consumer
    DTCManufacturer 🠒 Consumer

    B2B – Business to Business

    Business to Business ecommerce involves selling goods direct to businesses and organisations.

    Example: a stationary and office supplies retailer that sells primarily to businesses.

    B2C – Business to Consumer

    Business to Consumer ecommerce involves supplying goods to consumers.

    Example: a make-up and beauty website that sells products direct to consumers.

    DTC – Direct to Consumer

    Direct to Consumer ecommerce is when a manufacturer supplies consumers directly, skipping out distribution to wholesalers/retailers.

    Example: to give a specific example, Nike manufacture and sell their products direct from Nike.com to consumers.

    C2C – Consumer to Consumer

    Typically found in the form of a marketplace that allows consumers to sell to each other, examples of popular Consumer to Consumer ecommerce platforms include eBay and Etsy.

    Non-Traditional Ecommerce Business Models

    Traditional ecommerce business models are a good place to start, but looking at more modern, non-traditional business models can potentially provide more detail and insight into current ecommerce trends.

    Subscriptions

    Pact - subscription coffee
    Pact – subscription coffee

    Subscription based ecommerce platforms potentially have a very profitable business model that has become more popular over the last decade.

    Consumers in the UK and USA can order a monthly subscription for everything from razor blades, to coffee and wine.

    Digital Goods

    Colophon font foundry
    Colophon font foundry

    Retailing digital goods can be a highly profitable ecommerce business model.

    By digital goods, we non-physical items which can be bought and downloaded by users, such as ebooks, music, digital artwork, and fonts – even NFTs can fall under this category.

    Ecommerce Inventory Models

    Dropshipping, white-labelling and other examples typically found in lists of ecommerce business models are actually what are more correctly known as ecommerce inventory models.

    Examples of ecommerce inventory models are:

    • Dropshipping
    • Wholesaling and warehousing
    • White-labelling and Private-labelling

    Dropshipping

    Dropshipping is less of a business model, and more of a fulfillment method/inventory model.

    Dropshipping describes the process of distributors/manufacturers sending stock direct to the customers of an ecommerce platform – rather than the platform/retailer having to handle stock themselves.

    Dropshipping can be much more challenging to make work than the gurus will tell you.

    Dropping shipping setups are often beset by a variety of customers service, quality, and logistical problems.

    Print on Demand (POD)

    Print on Demand is a type of dropshipping that allows you to print products on demand, with both manufacturing and distribution handled by the manufacturer.

    Wholesaling and Warehousing

    Wholesaling and warehousing involves purchasing inventory in bulk from manufacturers or distributors, storing it in a warehouse, then selling it to customers.

    White labelling

    White-labelling is the process of adding your own brand to goods mass-manufactured by another company.

    Private labelling

    Private-labelling involves providing a third-party manufacturer with the specifications to have a product built, with your labelling attached.

    Ecommerce SEO

    Traditionally ecommerce SEO focuses primarily on optimising ecommerce sites for best performance in popular external search engines, such as Google and Bing.

    Below we take a look at some of the different sub-types and variants of ecommerce SEO.

    Onsite Search Optimisation

    Onsite search can often be massively important for ecommerce sites. Onsite Search Optimisation concerns the optimisation and improvement of onsite search functions on a website.

    This can involve improving the usability, speed and most importantly the results provided by onsite search systems.

    Marketplace Optimisation

    Marketplace Optimisation, or Marketplace SEO, focuses specifically on the optimisation of products and other features on ecommerce marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay or Etsy, for example.

    A marketplace can be seen as a single multi-vendor platform that brings together vendors and buyers to facilitate purchases and services.

    Marketplace Optimisation can have numerous sub-levels.

    A vendor may be highly focused on one or more specific markets such as Amazon, and may then be primary concerned with algorithms and optimisation techniques that will be effective on that specific market.

    Amazon SEO for example, focuses on ranking products effectively and delivering traffic / sales on Amazon.

    Looking at ecommerce on a global scale, there are hundreds of different highly popular local ecommerce marketplace websites and apps around the world.

    Comparison Shopping & Google Shopping

    Comparison shopping allows users to compare products and prices.

    Comparison shopping SEO involves putting together and implementing strategies to deliver more sales and traffic from comparison shopping sites and platforms, such as Google Shopping.

    Google Shopping is Google’s in-search product comparison service, which contains a mix of paid and organic product listings.

    CMS Specific Ecommerce SEO

    There are many thousands of different ecommerce platforms available around the world, from widely available open source CMS and plugins, to tightly controlled custom platforms ran by single ecommerce agencies.

    CMS specific ecommerce SEO is focused on specific CMSs and ecommerce platforms. Examples would be Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify SEO.

    Web3 SEO

    Still very much in the early stages, the last decade or has seen the advent of web 3 and decentralised marketplaces.

    NFTs recently saw a huge surge in popularity and attention, offered for sale in a variety of centralised and decentralised marketplaces.

    Need help with your ecommerce SEO? Check out our ecommerce SEO guide here, or find out more about our ecommerce SEO consultancy services here.

  • Ecommerce SEO Guide – Getting Started, Strategies & Best Practice

    Ecommerce SEO Guide – Getting Started, Strategies & Best Practice

    Ecommerce SEO can be one of the most challenging and complex areas of Search Engine Optimisation.

    In this guide we will cover everything you need to get started with SEO for your ecommerce site.

    What is Ecommerce SEO?

    Ecommerce SEO is the process and application of Search Engine Optimisation techniques when applied to ecommerce focused websites and platforms.

    Ecommerce SEO campaigns can vary in scope but usually involve the optimisation of ecommerce specific site elements such as product listings, categories, feeds/sitemaps, titles and descriptions; as well as standard SEO processes looking at areas such as technical SEO, content, internal links, and offsite SEO/link building.

    Ecommerce SEO as a practice sits under digital marketing and broadly under ecommerce marketing; involving processes designed to generate increased traffic, customers, and ultimately sales for ecommerce operations.

    Getting started

    Whether you are starting from step one, or being tasked with creating an SEO strategy for an established ecommerce site, getting started with an ecommerce SEO strategy can be a little daunting.

    In this guide we are going to try cover as many of the main components of a modern ecommerce SEO strategy as possible.

    If you already have an ecommerce site set up in your platform of choice and have decided which products to sell, you can skip the next few sections.

    If however you are just getting started – read on for some advice on how to choosing an ecommerce platform for SEO and researching the products you are going to sell.

    Woman packing an ecommerce order

    Ecommerce niche, products & store type

    You may already have an idea of which niche you want to enter and the products you want to sell.

    If not, the first steps in setting up an ecommerce site will often involve decisions and research in the following areas:

    • Niches & markets to enter
    • Choosing & sourcing the products to sell
    • Digital or physical goods
    • Hold stock, create products on-demand, or dropship
    • Competitor research

    Niches & Markets

    What is a ‘niche’?

    By niche we are talking about the specific product category or categories in which the products you want to sell will be in.

    Choosing a niche

    Choosing what niche you want to focus may involve something you are interested in, or simply an area where you see a business opportunity.

    You can look at other physical retailers or ecommerce sites in the same or similar industries to find out what they are selling and for how much.

    Keyword and market research is important here to assess the popularity of different product categories.

    What is a market?

    In marketing, a market is a group of potential buyers who may be interested in purchasing a product, and have the legal ability, as well as the resources to do so.

    Choosing a market

    Choosing your target market involves researching your competition, customer base, and any possible opportunities you see across different markets and market-places.

    The location of your market can be significant: there may be competition at a global level but lack of competition in local or regional markets.

    Ecommerce platforms

    Different ecommerce platforms have different features and benefits, as well as limitations and potential drawbacks when it comes to customisation and the ability to optimise a site for SEO.

    Hosted vs Self-hosted

    One of the first distinctions to make between different ecommerce platforms is between hosted and self-hosted.

    Hosted ecommerce platforms such as Shopify or Wix don’t require the purchase of web hosting and or involve as much technical work to build or maintain a site.

    Hosted ecommerce solutions can be great for smaller operations and startups that don’t have technical in-house experience or don’t want to invest resources on development and infrastructure.

    Self-hosted ecommerce platforms such as Magento or WooCommerce require the provision of web hosting, and will usually involve much more technical work to both build and maintain a site.

    Self-hosted sites will often be more powerful in regards to the degree to which they can be customised – something which can be very important when it comes to optimising a site for SEO.

    Choosing an ecommerce platform

    Choosing the right ecommerce platform will involve evaluating a range of services to find the best platform across a range of different commercial and business needs that will relatively be unique to your specific requirements.

    SEO is just one part of the equation, so depending on how SEO fits into your marketing mix it may not be the first consideration when it comes to choosing an ecommerce platform and building a site.

    Often different ecommerce platforms will have some standard SEO functionality, and there may be add-on plugins or modules for SEO and sub-functionalities that you can use to supplement where the barebones setup leaves anything missing.

    At a most basic level almost all platforms will require users to set up an XML sitemap for example.

    Often different platforms will have trial functionality where it may be possible to test out SEO features, and research can be conducted on how many different SEO plugins/modules are available on the market – considering their functionality, support, and potential reliability.

    Best ecommerce platform for SEO?

    Best ecommerce platforms for small sites

    For small ecommerce sites Shopify (paid – hosted) or WooCommerce (free – self hosted) are both good options.

    Shopify is not as freely customisable as WooCommerce, but there are so many different features and add-ons available that you can probably get most of the things running which you would want as a smaller store.

    WooCommerce has a greater degree of flexibility, but depending on how complex you want to make your store you may need to get some development help – as well as having to arrange your web hosting.

    Best ecommerce platforms for larger sites

    For larger operations with significant developer resources most mature ecommerce platforms can be customised to the degree to which SEO changes can be made effectively.

    Custom built and headless platforms can also be best practice at larger scale as the amount of business functions a site needs to perform increases.

    For larger or enterprise businesses that don’t want to invest as highly in infrastructure or developer resources Shopify Plus or BigCommerce are two potential options.

    Ecommerce SEO Strategy

    Creating an effective SEO strategy for ecommerce site, like any good SEO strategy, involves working back from what you want to achieve and then creating an effective plan to achieve your goals.

    For most ecommerce operations the primary goals are likely to be generating an increased amount of relevant organic traffic via additional and improved keyword rankings; leading to increased sales, customers, returning customers, and ultimately: profit.

    In the below guides we will cover some of the main elements involved in building an SEO strategy around those goals.

    At the most basic level ecommerce SEO strategies will usually involve:

    • Onsite SEO & technical auditing
    • Product page optimisation
    • Product category optimisation
    • Navigation optimisation
    • Site speed
    • Core Web Vitals

    For larger sites international SEO, involving multiple site, location, language, and Hreflang implementations are likely be key components of an SEO strategy.

    Keyword research

    Keyword research is integral to ecommerce SEO at multiple levels.

    Keyword research can be used to optimise content and meta information, to acquire more relevant traffic and customers.

    Some of the areas of an ecommerce store which can be optimised include:

    • Product pages
    • Product categories
    • Navigation & internal linking
    • URLs, Tags, filters & facets
    • Homepage
    • Title & meta descriptions
    • Blog and content marketing

    Keyword research can also be used as part of the process of deciding how to structure a site and create search engine friendly product category implementations.

    Product Page SEO

    Product pages are one of the most important components of an ecommerce site.

    For small ecommerce operations with a very small number of products, it is possible to look at individual product listings and work to optimise them for best performance.

    For medium and above sized websites with any significant number of products, optimising product page templates and page features can yield results at scale, across a site.

    Product pages can be optimised in areas such as:

    • Title and meta description
    • Product description & supplementary text
    • Headings
    • Product images & image attributes
    • Internal linking & related products, product options
    • Speed and Core Web Vitals

    Below is a screenshot of product page on the johnlewis.com website.

    johnlewis.com product page

    Some of the features of this product page include:

    • Product heading including brand name and generic product type
    • Multiple product images
    • Product description & specification
    • Customer reviews
    • ‘Shop the look’ and ‘Style it with’ related items
    • ‘Customers also bought’ related items

    Product Structured Data

    Use product structured data to add information to your product pages that Google and other search engines can use to create rich snippets.

    Product rich snippet example in Google desktop search
    Product rich snippet example in Google desktop search

    There are two types of pages that can use product structured data:

    • Product pages that describe a single product
    • Shopping aggregator pages that lists a single product, along with information about different sellers offering that product

    Using product structured data can help your product pages stand out in the search results, generating extra traffic and sales.

    You can test your product structured data using Google’s Rich Results testing tool.

    Product Category SEO

    Product categories are often an essential component of ecommerce sites.

    Improving the SEO performance and usability of product category pages can be a win for users as well as bringing in additional relevant traffic from search engines.

    Areas to look at for product category pages as part of an ecommerce SEO audit include:

    • Title and meta description
    • Category text and headings
    • Internal linking to products, other categories and sub-categories
    • Product images & image attributes
    • Pagination
    • Canonicalisation
    • Speed and Core Web Vitals
    • Product filtering and faceted navigation

    Navigation allows site users and search engine bots to move between the different pages, products and categories on your site.

    Good ecommerce navigation can improve the user experience for users, and the priority you give specific products and categories can be a signal to both users and search engines as to which are the most important.

    Look at navigation elements such as:

    • Mobile menu
    • Main menu / mega menu (if you have one)
    • Filters & faceted navigation
    • Homepage navigation
    • Onsite search
    • Related categories, sub categories and products

    Navigation can be audited for product/category priority and internal linking, and links should be closely audited to ensure they use actual <a> hyperlinks and not buttons or JavaScript based linking.

    Check out our full guide to ecommerce navigation SEO, which includes best practice and examples of good navigation.

    Auto-complete on the Next website
    Live auto-complete on the Next.co.uk website

    Optimising onsite search on ecommerce sites can yield increased product views and sales.

    Auditing and improving onsite search for usability, aiming for users to get to browse, find and select products with as minimum effort (and clicks/taps) as possible is ideal.

    On a technical note: for search engines, it is important to block bots from search results in the majority of situations – for the simple reason that search engines don’t want to index other search results pages – and it can caused duplicate content issues.

    Site Speed

    Website speed and performance for ecommerce sites is important for SEO and also has been shown in studies to have a direct correlation with page views and sales for ecommerce stores.

    As a baseline it is important to test all the different main areas of your website: your homepage, product pages, category pages and the checkout process to make sure it all runs quickly.

    Core Web Vitals

    Core Web Vitals are a set of user experience signals Google use to measure performance, which is now baked directly in Google’s mobile and desktop search algorithms as confirmed ranking factor.

    Improving the Core Web Vitals of an ecommerce site can have a direct impact on search rankings as well as improving user experience and ultimately traffic/sales.

    In extensive testing and research we have conducted, Core Web Vitals is an area that many ecommerce sites really struggle with for various reasons.

    In the below video you can see a screen recording taken of the Currys.co.uk website, on a top-end desktop computer using an unthrottled 70mbs broadband connection.

    Currys.co.uk screen recording showing severe CLS issues & poor loading performance

    The site suffers from severe Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) issues that can make browsing the site an unpleasant experience.

    Benchmarking

    The first step is to assess your site and competitor sites to see where you are.

    One way of benchmarking your site initially is to create CrUX Data Studio reports.

    If you find that your site performs significantly worse than your competitors, then you can know for sure you need to put in place measures to rebalance this.

    Testing

    The next step is testing your Core Web Vitals – looking at the site homepage, categories, products, and any other key templates.

    Do not just check the homepage. Check every type of template on your site, starting the ones with the highest traffic.

    Do not just test locally from your own modern desktop computer (which just so happens to be on a high speed broadband connection).

    Conduct tests using a range of different applications, making sure to include mobile tests and tests which throttle performance to simulate lower and mid-end internet connections and devices.

    Monitoring

    It is recommended to monitor your Core Web Vitals on an ongoing basis.

    Monitoring allows you to spot any negative fluctuations in your Core Web Vitals and generally allows you to keep tabs on your scores, so you can see the impact of the improvement works you are putting in place.

    You can monitor Core Web Vitals with paid tools such as DebugBear, or just set up a CRuX CWV report.

    Ecommerce SEO FAQs

    We have tried to answer some of the most common ecommerce SEO frequently asked questions below, that are not answered directly above.

    How do ecommerce sites do SEO?

    Ecommerce SEO can vary in approach depending the size and market. Some ecommerce sites do all their SEO work inhouse, others outsource to an ecommerce SEO agency or consultant. For smaller sites with no budget there are often SEO plugins available to extend the existing functionality of your ecommerce platform.

    Which is the best ecommerce SEO plugin?

    The best SEO plugin can vary a lot for each ecommerce platform, and unfortunately many can be unreliable and unsupported. If possible make sure to find the plugin that seems to offer the features you need and ensure there is reliable and ongoing support available.

  • Amazon deliver £23 billion sponsored ads revenue in 2021

    Amazon deliver £23 billion sponsored ads revenue in 2021

    Amazon.com, Inc, the world’s largest ecommerce platform, this week revealed the 2021 revenue figures for its mammoth sponsored advertising network for the first time ever in a quarterly earnings report for investors.

    Splitting out the earnings figures for the advertising business from AWS and other parts of the Amazon business revealed Amazon delivered $31 billion (£23 billion) of revenue from ecommerce products ads across its platforms in 2021.

    Despite $9.7 billion (£7.1billion) of ad revenue in Q4, alongside record profits, Amazon also announced a 17% increase to the price of Prime membership for its US-based customers – the first increase since 2018 – due to increased operating costs.

    Whilst Amazon’s advertising business is substantial, looking at the revenue split with the rest of the business it still only represents a small percentage of total income.

    At $9.7 billion, sponsored advertising revenue makes up just over 7% of the total reported business revenue of $137.4 billion in Q4 2021 for Amazon.

    Amazon 2021 ads revenue vs other revenue

    Amazon vs Google Ad Revenue

    Google also announced their revenue figures this week, revealing a whopping $209.5 billion (£155 billion) of revenue direct from their advertising business.

    Google’s revenue from advertising has increased over 43% YoY, from $146.9 billion (£108.5 billion) in 2020.

    As this is the first year for Amazon to specify their revenue from advertising we are unable to make a similar comparison.

    Google vs Amazon revenue from advertising in 2021

    Google’s combined advertising business still dwarfs that of Amazon, with 575% more revenue generated from sponsored advertising in 2021 compared to Amazon.

    Ecommerce Product Ad Business

    Similar to when users search in Google, Amazon uses a large percentage of the most visible areas of the page for product searches – both above and below the fold – to host sponsored product and brand ads from paying customers that want to increase their sales on the platform.

    Allowing different brands and vendors to fight among themselves for business makes sponsored product ads a highly profitable revenue source, able to generate income regardless of the number of products actually sold and delivered on the platform.

    Amazon sponsored brand ads for a tablet search
    Amazon sponsored brand ads for a tablet search
    Amazon product ad with product features
    Amazon product ad with product features
    Amazon vertical banner format examples from sidebar
  • How much do Ecommerce SEO services cost in the UK? 2022 Pricing Guide

    How much do Ecommerce SEO services cost in the UK? 2022 Pricing Guide

    Good ecommerce SEO is not cheap. Cheap ecommerce SEO is not good. You get the idea.

    Similarly, the level of work needed on ecommerce sites can vary considerably:

    Ecommerce sites can range in size from smaller sites with a handful of key products, to larger enterprise sites with potentially even millions of products, categories and filters.

    How much do Ecommerce SEO services cost in the UK?

    At Search Candy we work with medium to larger-sized companies, so our minimum pricing for ecommerce SEO is £2,000 per month. This means that we only work with clients that pay at least £2k per month or higher.

    Ecommerce SEO services in the UK can cost anywhere from £250 to £20,000+ per month depending on the site/campaign size.

    Below we will take a detailed look at the pricing levels you can expect to pay for ecommerce SEO services in the UK in 2022 and beyond.

    Starter Ecommerce SEO

    SEO services for smaller ecommerce sites and startups with a low budget.

    For smaller ecommerce sites and new sites with a low budget you may be able to find ecommerce SEO services ranging from £250 to £1500+ per month.

    We wouldn’t recommend paying any less than £500 per month if you want to achieve any significant results.

    This type of budget may be suitable for smaller sites on hosted platforms such as Shopify or Wix.

    At this level you can expect to get some technical/onsite work but there will not be much room for link building or other supplementary work every month.

    To grow more quickly you may to look at expanding to higher level package.

    Mid-level Ecommerce SEO

    Ecommerce SEO services for medium sized ecommerce operations.

    For mid-sized ecommerce sites budgets can range anywhere from £1500 to £5k per month for an ecommerce SEO retainer at an agency.

    This level of budget would be suitable for stores using out-of-the-box self-hosted ecommerce platforms like Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce.

    Typically mid-level ecommerce sites will primarily be targeting sales nationally or to a smaller number of international locations.

    Large & Enterprise Ecommerce SEO

    Ecommerce SEO services for large and enterprise level ecommerce operations.

    Ecommerce SEO for larger websites can vary considerably depending on the size and scope of the campaign.

    Larger-sized ecommerce SEO campaigns will generally come in between £5k and £20k per month.

    International SEO is often a major consideration for bigger ecommerce projects, with customers and platforms in different countries and languages.

    Larger ecommerce sites are often built on one or more custom platform/CMS, connected to other often complex back-end systems and infrastructure.

    More modern ecommerce platforms may make heavy use of JavaScript frameworks and headless architectures.

    Need help with ecommerce SEO? At Search Candy we specialise in organic search marketing for ecommerce. Get in touch for a free quote or visit our ecommerce SEO page to find out more.

  • Core Web Vitals: Page Experience Update to hit Desktop February 2022

    Core Web Vitals: Page Experience Update to hit Desktop February 2022

    Google have officially announced that the Page Experience Update will be rolling out for desktop search starting from February 2022.

    (more…)
  • Ecommerce Navigation SEO Best Practice Guide with Examples

    Ecommerce Navigation SEO Best Practice Guide with Examples

    SEO is one of the most important channels in ecommerce, so it is vitally important you make your ecommerce site friendly to Google and other search engines if you want to reap some of that sweet organic traffic.

    Essential reading: just this month Google published additional guidance for ecommerce site owners relating to navigation which can be found here.

    Why is navigation important in ecommerce?

    The navigation menus and process of an ecommerce store can be super important: allowing both users and search engines to understand the structure/hierarchy of your store, enabling them to find their way around the different categories, sections and product offerings.

    For this reason it is important to spend a solid amount of time planning out navigation systems across the site, and of course a strong focus the primary navigation menu to ensure it effectively links to all the key areas of the store. Also to conduct testing to make sure that your navigation systems are functionable, accessible, and easy to use for both customers and search engine bots.

    A poorly designed, slow, or confusing navigation system can lead to both lower sales as well as worse indexing & performance in search engines.

    Search Engine Friendly Ecommerce Navigation

    From an SEO perspective there are a few things you want to avoid if you want bots to be able to easily use your navigation.

    Most of the below tips are focused around the primary navigation menu. However we also drill down into a wide selection of specific navigation systems, providing advice and SEO considerations for each – as well as taking a look at all important mobile menus and Core Web Vitals.

    Text Based Links

    Navigation links should ideally always be text based, as opposed to using images, animations, or anything else too fancy that a search engine would struggle to read.

    So for example your design team may think it looks creative and cool to link to your toys category using only an animation of a spinning yo-yo – but to simply use the word “Toys” would be far more descriptive.

    Google finds it easiest to understand actual HTML based links, using the <a> tag.

    Avoid using JavaScript based ‘onclick’ type links, and especially avoid using <buttons> as part of your navigation as these are designed for actions, not navigational links – and are not read by Google as links.

    Content Hierarchy & Internal Linking

    Google looks at how many links different pages get and uses this information to assess which content is most important on your site.

    So it is a good idea to ensure the menu links to the most important areas of your site, and avoid pointing too many internal links towards areas which cannot be accessed or indexed by Google.

    So for example linking to your privacy policy as the first link in the navigation on every page might not be sensible, compared to linking to your primary ecommerce category.

    Similarly, as pleasing or easy to program as an alphabetical list may be, it may be more effective to order lists by popularity or choose the order manually.

    It is important to think about your most important keywords and products, then to make sure they are linked to with sufficient priority.

    Similarly think about sub-categories and any important areas. Can Google and users find their way to these pages quickly using the onsite navigation?

    Overly Complex Navigation

    Google recommends avoiding overly complicated navigation which forces users to click dozens of times to get to a specific area or product, and going overboard with segmenting your content into too many niche categories to the point where navigation becomes more difficult.

    Avoid:

    • Creating complex webs of navigation links, for example, linking every page on your site to every other page.
    • Going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (so that it takes twenty clicks to reach from the homepage).

    Source: Google SEO Starter Guide

    Core Web Vitals & Ecom Navigation

    Following Google’s page experience update – whereby fast and user-friendly sites are now eligible to get a boost in the search results – ensuring your navigation is fast loading and Core Web Vitals friendly is very important for SEO.

    Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

    Navigation menus that are slow to load (even by just a few split seconds) can be the cause of layout shifts that cause a bad experience for users.

    Diagram of a navigation menu causing CLS on a web page
    Navigation menu causing CLS on a web page – From left to right
    Diagram by SearchCandy.uk

    As ecommerce site navigation often appears at the very top of a page, if the navigation bar or an important element inside it (such as an image, search box or icon) is slow to load – then consequently ‘pops’ into place – it is possible it will push all the other content on the page below it downwards creating an unpleasant layout shift.

    This could be caused by slow loading resources needed by the navigation, and/or by not properly instructing the browser how much space will be required by the navigation when it does eventually load.

    First Input Delay (FID)

    First Input Delay measures the delay from when a user attempts to interact with a webpage and the interaction starting.

    For example if a user were to click a link in a navigation menu, FID measures the delay in how long before the browser begins the process of fulfilling the request to load the new page.

    A delay may be caused by resources/elements on the page loading, or the ‘main thread’ being busy doing other work.

    As well as affecting SEO, the faster users are able to interact with navigational elements the faster they will be able to browse products – which is certain to directly impact sales.

    Spend a suitable amount of time testing, monitoring, and limiting the impact the navigation system has on your site’s Core Web Vitals performance.

    Different Types of Ecommerce Site Navigation

    • Navigation menu / mega menu
    • Onsite Search
    • Product filters
    • Faceted navigation
    • Breadcrumbs
    • Static sitemaps
    • Related products
    • Language/location selector

    The below header example from British ecommerce site Next.co.uk includes a navigation menu and onsite search box, as well as links to key pages such as the account login, checkout, and a language selector.

    Hovering over primary categories in the navigation menu reveals a mega menu format below.

    Faceted Navigation & Product Filters

    Faceted navigation/product filters on the Next.co.uk site (truncated)
    Faceted navigation/product filters on the Next.co.uk site (truncated)

    Faceted navigation is one of the most complex and difficult areas of ecommerce SEO to get right.

    Whether to allow search engines to crawl and index all your product category filters and variations, and how to go about doing it, is a big decision for ecommerce sites – potentially opening up a site to hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions of extra URLs/parameters for Google to assess.

    Some product filters may be worth indexing – such as the first level of a colour filter – but many other filters may not.

    There is no simple answer to recommend here and Google provide relatively scant resources to assist webmasters in this area, but we can point you towards this document published by Google which lists 5 of the best and worst practices when it comes to faceted navigation – and also this ecommerce URL structure best practice guide.

    Google used to provide a parameter handling tool in Search Console which could be used to let Google know how to treat parameters on your site. This tool was retired in 2022.

    Ecommerce breadcrumb navigation
    Category level breadcrumbs on the JD sports website

    Breadcrumbs are an essential navigational element for any website or ecommerce store.

    Many ecommerce breadcrumb implementations fall down by either not existing at all, or by using a flat structure that misses out categories and sub-categories.

    Home > Example Product

    If your ecommerce breadcrumbs look like the above, they need work!

    Making sure to use the correct breadcrumbs markup is important, with a good implementation potentially being rewarded with breadcrumbs direct in Google search results.

    Breadcrumbs can be used on both product category pages and product pages.

    Google recommend using breadcrumbs that reflect a typical user path to a particularly product or URL, rather than simply mirroring the URL structure.

    So for example a bad breadcrumb structure (with multiple superfluous levels) might be:

    Home > Shop > Products > ID > 343423 > Example Product

    Mega Menus

    Asos.com women's clothing mega menu
    Asos.com women’s clothing mega menu

    Mega menus can be a great way of laying out your product categories and site architecture for users.

    Try to keep to the general principles laid out above, avoiding: overly complex navigation; linking to an excessive number of resources; and considering Core Web Vitals or usability issues.

    One of the primary SEO concerns with mega menus is undoubtedly the high risk of having an excessive number of linked resources.

    For example a menu that has 10 primary categories, each with on average 50 sub-categories/links, would have 500 total links just inside the primary navigation – something which would recur on every single ecommerce page on the website.

    Mega menus can also often be large and unwieldy, being almost always both powered by and heavily reliant on JavaScript resources which may be slow to load and render in the browser.

    Many sites also rely too heavily on mega menus for navigation. Consider the following test: could your users find their way to a specific category or product without using the mega menu? If the answer is no – it is highly likely the site has improvements to be made in terms of navigation and internal linking.

    There are multiple ways potential customers may attempt to find their way around a website, and search based navigation is a method users may choose to utilise – especially if they feel like they are unable to quickly find their way to a resource using the existing navigational UI.

    An effective onsite search engine can allow users to quickly and easily find their way to appropriate products or categories.

    Let’s take another look at Next.co.uk’s onsite search for an example of this.

    The Next search box functionality provides auto-complete suggestions before the user hits enter/taps to search – potentially reducing the user journey by one click or more. See the screenshot below for an example of this.

    Next.co.uk onsite search auto-complete
    Next.co.uk auto-complete example. At this point the user has entered only ‘Nike’ into the search box, without hitting enter.

    Another potentially good strategy is redirecting searches to specific products, ranges or category pages in some situations – which can save a step in the user journey if done effectively and without any frustrating errors.

    For example on a grocery ecommerce store a search for [vegan] could redirect users directly to the primary vegan range/category, rather than simply listing all search results that include the word ‘vegan’.

    Blocking Search Results from Search Engines

    From an SEO perspective it is important to ensure that onsite search results pages are blocked from indexing by offsite search engines, such as Google and Bing.

    A robots.txt disallow rule is not strong enough here. A noindex based solution is going to be ideal for most situations – to fully prevent Google from indexing the results.

    Why is it important to block Google/search engines from search results pages? Allowing search results pages to get indexed can create an attack vector for hackers/spammers, as well as potentially causing SEO issues.

    Here are some UK based ecommerce sites that have not blocked their search pages from indexing:

    Clintons Cards

    Clintons cards Google results

    Casio

    Casio.co.uk Google results

    Mobile menus & navigation

    With the majority of visitors to ecommerce sites now being on mobiles for many sites and industries, and Google having moved firmly towards mobile first indexing, getting your mobile menus right is vitally important for both users and SEO.

    There is a huge amount to consider when building and optimising a mobile navigation and menu system. It is worth considering that mobile navigation/UI includes more than just a standard mobile menu, especially on ecommerce sites.

    For example let’s take a look at the UK fashion etailer Missguided.co.uk. Note before we even look at what most would consider standard mobile menu accessed via the hamburger icon, we can already navigate using swipeable sub-menu of trending/featured categories, breadcrumbs, links to important sub-categories with images, and a product filtering system.

    Having the mobile menu in a swipeable format in theory could save potential customers a click when accessing popular resources. It also means the links are in plain sight for both visitors and search engines.

    MissGuided mobile menu
    Missguided mobile menu
    MissGuided mobile menu
    Expanded

    Next up is an example from global ecommerce giant Ikea. The first image shows the upper navigation area for mobiles, which includes a prominent search box (including a visual search feature), delivery and store information, breadcrumbs, and a mobile menu with a hamburger icon.

    Ikea mobile menu

    The mobile menu features two very prominent links dividing up the two main ways users can find their way to products – via a product list, or a list of rooms. Clicking either of the two primary links brings users to a list of resources without refreshing the page or leaving the menu system.

    HTML Sitemap

    Internal linking is important for SEO, and a good HTML sitemap can potentially help with internal linking across an ecommerce site.

    Static sitemaps can also be useful for users who by last resort have been forced to use a sitemap to find their way around a large website.

    Tip: Neither users nor search engines should NEED to rely on HTML sitemaps to easily navigate a site. There should ideally already be an effective and intuitive to navigate UI, that doesn’t require users to have to find what they need by browsing a large and cumbersome HTML sitemap.

    Sitemaps can be designed to cover an entire site, or just specific sections or page types. For example the Asos.com site features HTML sitemaps listing brands (see below).

    Asos.com HTML sitemap example
    Asos.com HTML sitemap example

    Search Candy provide ecommerce SEO consultancy services. Get in touch to book a free initial consultation with an ecommerce SEO expert.

  • W3 Total Cache causing Mobile Friendly Test fails, blocks Google from CSS/JS

    W3 Total Cache causing Mobile Friendly Test fails, blocks Google from CSS/JS

    Multiple users are reporting SEO issues with the latest update of the popular WordPress caching plugin W3 Total Cache (W3TC) released late last week.

    We have tested and confirmed both the presence of the code blocking Google (and other search engines), as well as the circumstances in which Google will be blocked.

    Impact

    Users on SEO and WordPress forums are reporting that the new code is causing issues in Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool, resulting in submitted URLs failing the test.

    CSS and JS files are used by Google to render the content found on URLs. Blocking Google from these important site resources could potentially have a negative SEO impact.

    We can see here for example that without access to these resources Google are unable to confirm if a page is mobile-friendly or not.

    The impact could be more significant than this however, potentially leading to both crawling and indexing issues for sites affected – which could in turn affect rankings.

    What is happening?

    The latest W3TC update adds a new instruction to a site Robots.txt file blocking all user agents, including Google, from the cache directory – specifically when the CSS/JS minification option is enabled in the plugin settings.

    Minification option enabled in the W3TC settings

    When minification is enabled, site resources are served from the /wp-content/cache/ directory – which has been blocked from crawling by the latest update.

    All In One SEO Plugin Conflict

    There are also reports that the newly created robots.txt file is conflicting with the virtual robots.txt file created by the All In One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin if users also have that installed on their site.

    The physical file created by W3TC is overwriting/taking precedence the virtual file originally put in place by All In One SEO.

    Robots.txt

    You can see the new instruction set below (enclosed between two comments):

    # BEGIN W3TC ROBOTS
User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
# END W3TC ROBOTS

    We confirmed the presence of this code in the latest plugin update via the W3TC GitHub repository and live on a test site.

    Although the robots.txt instruction appeared straight away, files were not moved into the /cache/ directory until we turned on the minification option.

    Solution

    Disabling minification in the plugin options (and flushing all caches) should move the site JS/CSS files back out of the cache directory.

    If you don’t want to turn off minification, an alternative temporary fix would be to simply to remove or comment out the lines in your site’s Robot.txt file – though the issue could recur potentially depending on how W3TC handle this.

    Hopefully once W3TC realise their error – in response to what I expect will be a lot of negative feedback from the SEO/webmaster community – they will remove this from future versions of the plugin.

    For users that are also having a conflict with the All In One SEO plugin, the best fix would probably be to downgrade to the previous version of W3 Total Cache and turn off automatic updates until the issue is resolved.

    Update/Patch

    W3TC released an updated version of the plugin (2.1.8) to fix the issue.

    If you update your plugin (or have automatic plugin updates enabled) the problem should be resolved.

    To check simply visit your robots.txt file and confirm the disallow rule is no longer in place.

  • What to do if your Development Site is Indexed by Google

    What to do if your Development Site is Indexed by Google

    We take a look at what to do if your development/staging/testing site has been indexed in Google, including expert advice direct from a Google employee.

    Oops! Our Dev site has been indexed in Google

    First of all, don’t beat yourself up: a development site getting accidentally indexed in Google has happened at least once to every agency, developer, and inhouse team on the planet.

    Perhaps you found out about it via an angry email from your client or their SEO consultant, or maybe you discovered it yourself whilst checking for indexed pages.

    How did the dev site get indexed?

    If Google is able to find its way to your development site unimpeded, and finds there no instruction not to crawl or index the URLs available to it, there is a high chance Google will store the pages in their search engine for users to find.

    This can happen reasonably quickly – even if your dev site was only available for a few days or weeks – this could be enough time for Google to index the entire site.

    So if your development site does get indexed in Google, what can you do about it, and are there any urgent solutions for situations where for example the client or management is upset?

    How to quickly remove a dev site from the Google index

    As recommended by Google’s John Mu, if you find your staging site has been indexed and there is an urgent requirement to remove it, the quickest way to remove content from Google is to use the official ‘Removals Tool‘ found in Search Console.

    I’d do a site-removal request in search console – if the site is verified, it’ll be hidden in search within less than a day. After that, you have time to figure out what to do for the long run.

    John Mu via TechSEO subreddit
    Official video: Removals in Search Console – Daniel Waisberg

    To use the Removals tool you will first need to verify the specific domain you want to remove in Search Console if it is already verified.

    John goes on to offer some footnotes and warnings regarding use of the tool:

    • If you make a mistake and need to cancel a removal request, this process should be fast.
    • Remember that removals apply to both www and non-www, and both http/https.
    • Using the tool properly should clear the URL from Google for around 6 months.

    After temporarily removing URLs from Google, it is sensible to then work towards a permanent removal.

    How to permanently remove a development or staging site from Google

    Process chart: how to remove your staging site from Google

    The most effective way to request Google no longer indexes a page is to either use a noindex command, or ensure the resource responds with a 410/404 HTTP response to indicate it is no longer available.

    Google have stated in the past that a noindex tag and 404/410 should work at the same speed.

    If Google returns to a resource following a temporary removal request and finds a 404/410 or noindex tag they will cancel the removal request as it is no longer needed.

    You could also set up authentication which would result in Google being unable to access a resource (eg with a 401 HTTP response).

    Using a robots.txt block is not a good solution if your site has already been indexed. It can take a long time to have any impact and is not a direct instruction to remove content from the index, so Google can ignore it and leave the page indexed if they wish.

    If your site is already indexed in Google, using a robots.txt rule to prevent Google crawling the site will also prevent them from seeing a noindex tag/header if you add one to a page.

    How to remove a development site from Google’s cache

    Using the Removals Tool in Search Console will by default remove the URLs entirely, including the cache.

    When using the tool you are given the option to remove the cached URL – which will clear the snippet shown in search results – until the resource is recrawled and a new snippet will be shown.

    How to prevent a development site from getting indexed by Google

    To prevent your dev site getting indexed in Google there are a variety of methods you can use:

    Methods to block a staging site from appearing in Google
    • Authentication (password, IP address, CMS/plugin based, etc)
    • Noindex tag or header
    • Robots.txt disallow rule (least recommended option)

    Google’s John Mu recommends the use of server side authentication as the best method:

    My recommendation is always to use server-side authentication for staging / dev sites, since it’s obvious when it’s blocked, and obvious when it’s forgotten. Robots.txt and robots meta tags are easy to accidentally deploy to your live site.

    Note: Robots.txt is not a good option because it can be ignored by Google and other search engines.

    How to stop Google indexing a WordPress development site

    You can use any of the standard methods to stop Google indexing a WordPress staging site – eg password protection, noindex or blocking Google from crawling the site with robots.txt.

    The easiest method if you have access to the WordPress admin dashboard is to set WordPress to enable the ‘Discourage search engines’ option via Settings > Reading. This method should add a noindex tag to all your pages.