Setting up an online store has never been easier, thanks to BigCommerce, a robust and effective eCommerce platform. When building your BigCommerce site, it’s important to optimize it for search engines. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play.
While the platform offers numerous SEO tools to help your site rank in search results, knowing how to utilize these tools can make a difference. So, whether you’re new to SEO and BigCommerce or are a seasoned veteran, this guide will help you rank your BigCommerce site.
Understanding SEO for your BigCommerce Site
Your ecommerce must have good SEO to generate more organic traffic from Google and other search engines. At its core, SEO involves optimizing your site to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal is to increase organic traffic, which can translate into more leads and sales.
BigCommerce offers built-in SEO tools and features to help you improve your ecommerce site visibility. But to make the most out of these tools and features, it’s important to understand basic SEO.
Search engine optimization is often complex, which is why many businesses hire Bigcommerce SEO experts for these tasks. Therefore, if you don’t understand SEO, you might want to hire a BigCommerce SEO expert like Canesta.
BigCommerce SEO features
BigCommerce comes with advanced features to help boost your SEO efforts and ranking. The platform allows you to elevate your search strategy with Google and Microsoft Bing-friendly URLs, automated redirects, and “Rich snippets” for enhanced search results.
Some of the BigCommerce SEO features include;
- Automated URLs: The platform auto-generates SEO-friendly URLs for product and category pages, among other pages. This gives you more time to optimize other areas of your eCommerce site.
- Unique URLs: With BigCommerce, every unique page on your site will only have one URL. As a result, search engines won’t penalize you for duplicate content.
- Customized URLs: BigCommerce offers descriptive URLs to support SEO optimization and improve rankings. But while these options are default, you can still change the settings if you have a better strategy.
- Automated redirects: The platform provides automatic 301 redirects and URL rewrites as you move pages or make changes on your site. For instance, if you rename a product, the auto-generated URL adjusts to mirror the name change—the old URL is then redirected to the new URL.
- Enhanced Listings: BigCommerce allows you to utilize “rich snippets” or built-in microdata in your product pages to enhance your search results listings with information like brand, ratings, pricing, and stock levels.
- Increased site speed: BigCommerce uses a content delivery network (CDN) that runs in the background to ensure your ecommerce site loads quickly for shoppers and search engines. This helps increase rankings.
- Simplified robot.txt editing: BigCommerce places your search strategy in your hands. This feature allows you to control the pages to be crawled by Google, optimizing your site for SEO.
Optimizing SEO on your BigCommerce site
Want to make your BigCommerce site rank higher on search engines? It’s possible. You can do it yourself (if you have the knowledge, skills, and tools) or hire a BigCommerce SEO company. Regardless, here are some tips to help you.
Do keyword research
If someone wants to find something online, they’ll go to their preferred search engine and search for it. If they know exactly what they want, then they’ll just key in the name, and the results will pop up. If not, they’ll try various words related to the product they want until they find what they are searching for.
Now, these words are what we call keywords—they are simply words or phrases people use to find products, services, or information online.
Keyword research is an essential aspect of BigCommerce SEO. When you know what your users want, you can easily utilize those keywords to help them find your site and product easily. SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help you get keyword data and identify the right keywords to target on your BigCommerce site.
Make Your pages and product Meta descriptions engaging
Meta descriptions offer short summaries of your ecommerce web pages. Technically, Google says they aren’t a ranking factor. However, well-written meta descriptions encourage more clickthroughs to your ecommerce website. This, in turn, increases the clickthrough rate.
Clickthrough rates may impact your site rankings. Search engines do reward results that get higher CTRS. Therefore, you should ensure your product and pages have engaging meta descriptions. Try to keep them short and concise, typically around 160 characters at maximum. Also, ensure your meta descriptions have the keyword you wish to rank for.
Focus on on-page SEO
On-page SEO can significantly impact your rankings. It involves optimizing your web page content for users and search engines. On-page SEO can be grouped into three major categories: content, HTML, and website structure. Optimizing your HTML elements, headlines, and photos is part of on-page SEO.
So, why should you focus on on-page SEO for your BigCommerce site? The primary reason is to increase visibility and get more visitors to your site.
Hiring a BigCommerce SEO Company
SEO is not a one-time task. It requires time and dedication. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t have enough time to handle SEO. Therefore, hiring an SEO expert becomes crucial to your site and business. An SEO agency will save you time and money while offering excellent results.
But with the many options available, finding a good SEO agency can seem daunting. But it doesn’t have to be. Here are some factors to help you find the best BigCommerce SEO agency.
- Experience and expertise: Look for a company with experience in your industry and specific Bigcommerce SEO services your business needs.
- Tools and technologies: The company should have access to state-of-the-art tools and technology to achieve better results.
- Communication and reporting: You want a company with a clear line of communication and enhanced collaboration.
Final Thoughts
Building a Big Commerce site is one thing, and making it rank on search engines is another. There are numerous SEO tools and strategies to help boost your search results ranking. And since SEO is often an ongoing process, hiring a BigCommerce SEO company like Canesta is always a good choice.
