Online shopping and ecommerce adoption picked up major speed throughout the pandemic. Both online selling opportunities and competition are greater than ever before.
And making sure you’re using the best ecommerce platform for your business needs is a huge consideration.
Whether you’re just getting started or have an established store and are considering switching platforms, BigCommerce has likely come across your radar.
It’s a popular option for merchants who are looking for SEO-friendly features right out of the box.
In this column, you’ll learn about those BigCommerce SEO features and how to make good use of the optimizations available.
You’ll find some more tips and resources to help optimize your BigCommerce store, as well.
Let’s get to it!
BigCommerce SEO Features
BigCommerce is a leading ecommerce software platform that provides businesses large and small with everything they need to start and grow their online store.
It’s a robust platform with a user-friendly interface, exceptional built-in features, and SEO capabilities.
BigCommerce comes with built-in SEO features for your online store including:
Optimized URLs: These will be auto-populated for you with SEO-friendly URLs for product, category, and other pages. The platform also gives you the option to alter your URL settings.
Unique URLs: BigCommerce guarantees that each unique page has only one URL, so your online store isn’t compromised by duplicate content.
Microdata: Microdata, or “rich snippets,” is automatically built into your website’s product pages to enhance your search result listings with information like ratings, pricing, brand, and stock levels.
301 redirects and URL rewrites: If you decide to rename one of your products, the auto-populated URL will adjust to reflect the product name change. The previous URL will redirect to the new URL. Automatic redirects and rewrites allow search engines to understand that you’ve made changes or moved pages within your online store.
CDN: There are several things you can do to increase your site’s speed, but BigCommerce’s unique content delivery network is constantly working in the background to ensure your site loads quickly for shoppers and search engines alike!
Using BigCommerce SEO Fields
Now, let’s see how to use each of the SEO fields included in the BigCommerce platform and learn some best practices for each.
URL Structure
URL structures can be adjusted for different products, webpages, and categories.
By default, the BigCommerce platform uses an SEO-friendly structure, but you can customize the formatting of the URL structure to suit your unique business needs.
In most cases, SEO Optimized (Short) is sufficient.
This helpful article explains that the URL structure should be easy to track, easy to maintain, easy to monitor, be compatible with your CMS, and also be compatible with your server.
BigCommerce can help make that happen.
Metadata
As Loren Baker says, “Think of metadata as ads for your content. Why should users click? What can you tell them? Use the meta to encourage clicks, which will drive traffic, which will lead to more traffic.”
And according to BigCommerce, “It is best practice to add meta descriptions to every page of your store, including products, content pages, blog posts, category pages, and the home page.”
If you are targeting specific keywords, be sure to include them at the beginning of the description tag.
But keep in mind that Google rewrites or creates its own meta descriptions 70% of the time. Often, the meta description Google chooses or creates contains content from the first few sentences visible on the page.
Keep that in mind as you’re creating your product descriptions.
Product and Category Description
Product and category descriptions are located under the Product Information section when you add and/or edit a product in the BigCommerce platform.
Descriptive copy on these pages allows search engines to find terms for search results.
It’s an opportunity to use the target keyword within your content, as well as sharing the compelling information and details that sets your brand apart from competitors.
Check out these 13 tips for writing product descriptions that convert.
Keywords
These are words and phrases in your page descriptions and metadata that are relevant to the content on a page and are an essential part of both your SEO and paid marketing campaigns.
BigCommerce also comes with this important SEO feature to help you understand your keyword density (how many keywords are you using), and whether or not that density is a good or bad number when it comes to SEO success.
What BigCommerce can’t tell you is what keywords you should be using in the first place.
For that, you need a solid keyword research process. Maddy Osman’s How to Effectively Perform Keyword Research for Ecommerce is a great place to start.
BigCommerce SEO Apps & Integrations
BigCommerce natively integrates with big players such as Google, Amazon, eBay & Walmart Channel Cloud.
These apps and integrations will allow your ecommerce store to have a greater impact worldwide while opening new channels to your company’s revenue stream.
This is important, as 73% of shoppers use multiple channels in the course of their shopping journey.
These integrations enable you to expand your reach and market to a much larger audience.
More SEO Tips to Help Your BigCommerce Store Get Found Online
Link Building
Links play a crucial role in driving organic traffic to your ecommerce store via search engines, especially in overly competitive industries.
When they are combined with strong technical SEO foundations, on-page SEO, content, and user experience, link building can be effective at driving more organic traffic to your online store and improving your rankings.
Our ebook on link building can not only help you to learn effective link building strategies, but also show you how to succeed with the right strategy and goals in place.
Check out this piece where Kevin Rowe shares his specific link building tactics for ecommerce stores, too.
Social Media Promotion
If you combine SEO strategies with your social media marketing plan, you can boost engagement and bring new traffic to your store.
It’s important that you’re authentic and engaging in social. Avoid being overtly sales-driven, but don’t be afraid to share offers that offer your audience real value.
Learn more in 11 Social Media Marketing Strategies for Ecommerce Websites.
Content Marketing
Content marketing can be an incredibly effective way to expand your visibility in search and improve discovery.
But if you are creating and optimizing your content around the wrong topics, you will lose out on sales.
See these great examples of the types of creative content that can resonate for ecommerce brands.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is a necessity because it is what allows search engines like Google to know that you have a website of high value to customers.
Having strong technical SEO can prompt search engines to rank your website higher than the competition and also help improve your customer’s experience.
The good thing about using a platform like BigCommerce is that their team is invested in keeping the platform as a whole technically sound, so you don’t have as many technical concerns as you might on your own build.
Takeaway
In the end, if you’re in the market for a reliable ecommerce software solution, BigCommerce is worth checking out.
It provides everything you will need to manage your new or existing online store. As a bonus, BigCommerce goes the extra mile in providing you with its SEO features and the additional support and information made available in its knowledge base.
More Resources:
Featured image: Katy Flaty/Shutterstock
