SEO is important for any e-commerce website to enhance its online presence and reach the correct set of audiences. It helps generate traffic and leads and eventually helps turn these potential leads into existing customers. Usually, e-commerce SEO is similar to general SEO. However, a few things related to e-commerce SEO can help you maximize traffic to your site and sell more products.
To maximize your SEO efforts, selecting the right e-commerce platform is essential. So, if you are thinking of the best e-commerce platforms for SEO, you are at the right place. There are several platforms available online.
However, choosing a platform that meets your business goals and helps you achieve greater traffic and leads is essential. Today, we will list the top e-commerce platforms for SEO and help you choose the best for your online business.
Why is SEO Important for E-Commerce?
SEO(Search Engine Optimization) ensures online growth and a strong presence. A great SEO is believed to bring the highest ROI for any e-commerce website. Below are five reasons o why SEO is important for your e-commerce website:
Increased Visibility with Organic Traffic
E-commerce websites thrive with SEO as it helps increase organic traffic and enhances visibility on search engine result pages (SERPs). By optimizing your website’s content, meta tags, and product descriptions with relevant keywords, you can attract potential customers to your store. This ultimately leads to increased website traffic and brand exposure.
Enhanced User Experience
A key aspect of SEO is optimizing your website for a fine user experience. User-friendly navigation, fast-loading pages, and mobile responsiveness are crucial factors that search engines consider when ranking sites. When you invest in SEO for your e-commerce website, you prioritize improving these aspects, making it easier for users to browse, find products, and make purchases.
Lead Generation
SEO allows you to target precise keywords and terms relevant to your e-commerce business. By optimizing your website for these keywords, you attract highly targeted traffic of users actively searching for products or services you offer. This helps in traffic conversion into qualified leads and customers, resulting in higher sales and revenue.
Competitive Advantage
In the highly competitive e-commerce landscape, SEO gives you a competitive edge. With great SEO strategies, you can outrank your competitors and secure top positions on search engine results. When your e-commerce store appears prominently in search results, customers perceive it as a credible and authoritative source, increasing their trust in your brand.
Long-Term Investment
SEO is a long-term investment for e-commerce websites. SEO helps you drive organic traffic and generate results after initial optimization efforts. With consistent optimizing efforts, you can maintain high search engine rankings and reap the benefits of increased visibility and traffic for an extended period.
Read: 5 SEO Practises to Avoid in 2023
Features to Check While Choosing an SEO-friendly E-Commerce Platform
Before choosing any particular e-commerce platform, you need to check its SEO-friendly features and functionalities that complement your online store. So, below are some features to consider while selecting an SEO-friendly platform:
Clean and Optimized Code
When selecting an SEO-friendly e-commerce platform, ensure it offers clean and optimized code. This means the platform’s underlying structure and codebase should be streamlined and free of unnecessary elements. Clean code improves website loading speed, enhances crawling by search engines, and contributes to a smooth user experience.
Mobile Responsiveness
In today’s mobile-centric world, having a mobile-responsive e-commerce platform is crucial for SEO success. A responsive platform ensures your website adapts seamlessly to different screen sizes and devices. This improves user experience and satisfies search engines’ mobile-first indexing criteria, leading to better rankings and visibility in mobile search results.
Customizable URL Structure
Having control over your website’s URL structure is essential for SEO. An SEO-friendly e-commerce platform allows you to customize URLs, ensuring they are concise, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. Customizable URLs make it easier for search engines and users to read and understand your content, eventually improving your website’s visibility and click-through rates.
User-Friendly Interface and Navigation
An intuitive and user-friendly navigation system is important for users and search engines. Look for an e-commerce platform that offers easy-to-use navigation features, such as dropdown menus, breadcrumb trails, and category hierarchies. Simple navigation enhances user experience, helps visitors find products efficiently, and enables search engines to crawl and index your site effectively.
SEO Tools and Integrations
To simplify and enhance your SEO efforts, opt for an e-commerce platform that offers built-in SEO tools or integrations with popular SEO plugins. These tools may include features like meta tag customization, XML sitemap generation, structured data markup, and integration with Google Analytics. These SEO tools and integrations save time and help you optimize your website for Google without extensive coding or technical expertise.
Top Five E-Commerce Platforms for SEO
Having an SEO-friendly e-commerce website is crucial for long-run business success. It helps attract potential customers and ensures you remain on the top of your game. Here are the five best e-commerce platforms to take your online store to a new level:
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin and the most popular and widely used e-commerce platform. If you are looking for cost-effective and SEO-friendly e-commerce platforms, then WooCommerce is an ideal choice.
It offers free and paid plugins to get you with the setup process on the WordPress interface. You can have complete control over how to set up your store, products, designs, themes, and much more.
With WordPress as your interface, a well-SEO-optimized website is a piece of cake! WooCommerce provides a platform where you can create and modify content, URLs, meta descriptions, set keywords, structure, etc.
SEO Features
- Offers SEO-friendly design that helps in site rankings.
- It has an easy to use user-friendly interface allowing customers to navigate to your online store easily.
- Features a wide range of customizations to build an exceptional online store that meets your business goals and needs.
Pricing: WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that can be accessed for free. However, you might need to upgrade to the premium version for more advanced features.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an industry-leading e-commerce platform renowned for working with the top brands in the world. It is open saas solution with powerful features and comprehensive solutions for all-size businesses.
With its user-friendly interface and advanced functionalities, BigCommerce empowers entrepreneurs to create online stores with less friction and more freedom and flexibility for online scalability.
SEO features
- BigCommerce has an inbuilt SEO tool that allows you to optimize your website for higher rankings.
- Offers a wide array of great plugins and themes to customize the store the way you want.
- It has a user-friendly interface that enables customers to locate whatever they are searching for on your online store.
Pricing: They offer monthly plans starting from $39 and go up to enterprise plans that are customizable according to the business goals and needs.
Read WooCommerce Vs. BigCommerce
Shopify
Shopify is one of the top e-commerce platforms with a user-friendly interface and extensive features. The platform offers SEO-friendly features, excellent blogging capabilities, and social sharing buttons.
It offers various features that automatically generate SEO-friendly URLs, canonical tags, and XML sitemaps, simplifying your optimization efforts.
Moreover, Shopify’s app store provides a range of SEO plugins to enhance your website’s visibility. Its responsive themes and fast-loading speed contribute to a positive user experience, another crucial factor for SEO success.
SEO features
- Offers great SEO plugins with advanced features to improve your site’s SEO.
- Integration with Google Analytics to measure and create reports on traffic, sales, and conversions.
- Active online community and detailed informational guides for website issues and assistance.
Pricing: Its basic plan starts from $24.21/month and goes up to $366.19 for the Advanced plan.
Read: WooCommerce Vs. Shopify
Magento
Magento, now known as Adobe Commerce, is an Enterprise-Grade platform Ideal for larger e-commerce businesses. Its advanced and unique interface requires excellent developer skills to use the platform efficiently.
What sets Magento apart from the others in this list is that it is specially designed for developers looking to customize websites per their needs. With several plugins, extended capabilities, and SEO-friendly redirects, it is a powerful e-commerce tool.
While Magento requires technical expertise, its SEO potential makes it a compelling choice for businesses aiming to dominate the SERPs.
SEO- features
- Wide range of themes and templates for customization and flexibility.
- Exceptions API integration with third-party applications.
- Flexible and robust architecture that allows for developing custom-made modules.
- Inbuilt- tools with high-end capabilities to manage your online store, shipping, and payment gateways.
Pricing: Magento offers different pricing based on different services, including hosting, e-commerce, and design.
Wix
SEO-Friendly Website Builder Wix, primarily known for its website builder, provides an intuitive platform with SEO-friendly features. It is a renowned platform associated with many top brands like Nike and Coca-Cola.
The platform also integrates with Google Analytics and offers tools for optimizing page speed and mobile performance. While Wix may not offer as extensive SEO capabilities as other platforms, it provides a user-friendly option for small to medium-sized businesses.
SEO -features
- It has inbuilt SEO tools to optimize your website and the best SEO features.
- A range of unique templates and designs to modify and customize your store.
- It has easy to use interface, allowing customers to navigate easily.
- Blogging capabilities to help create SEO-friendly content.
Pricing: With the business VIP plan, Wix e-commerce basic plans start from $2.73 and go up to $6.07.
Read: Wix Vs. WordPress: Which one is Better?
Conclusion
When choosing an SEO-friendly e-commerce platform, contemplate its features and capabilities that meet your business needs. Selecting the right e-commerce platform is critical for any business looking to succeed in the online marketplace. Regarding SEO, specific platforms stand out for their ability to optimize websites and drive organic traffic.
However, while picking from the above-listed platforms, learning and researching all about their functionalities, features, system, and how they would benefit your growth is essential.
By selecting one of these best e-commerce platforms for SEO, businesses can enhance their online visibility, attract more qualified leads, and ultimately achieve greater success in the competitive e-commerce landscape.
